Personal Statement Sample #3Search for Enlightenment: A
Personal Statement
So, I've decided to become a lawyer. After twenty years of preservation,
history, activism and scholarship, it's what's left to do. So begins a
six-year expedition. First, let's see how we arrived at this place; where
we've been, where we're going, and, perhaps, What do we hope to find there?
Preservation runs in my family. When my grandfather, a hillbilly from the
Virginia mountains, returned from W.W.I., he settled in Arlington County,
near Washington, DC, and started a tree-care business. Forman and Biller
Tree Expert Company, now more than 75 years old, would soon become the
company of choice for Washington's millionaires. They would entrust to my
grandfather, and then my father, their precious oaks, maples and other aged
shade trees, even through the Great Depression. In time, the "ladies" at
Mount Vernon, George Washington's homestead, would recruit my grandfather to
help restore the mansion and grounds of that historic plantation. In the
next generation, Jacqueline Kennedy would bring Forman and Biller to the
White House to restore that historic landscaping on Pennsylvania Avenue.
What began with two-man saws and teams of horses would be finished by
high-tech chainsaws, hydraulic cranes, and even more modern technologies.
But in 1959, when I was born, preservation had become a family legacy, one
which I would inherit. Little did I know how complex and challenging the
pursuit would become as times changed and preservation became not just an
aspiration, a personal struggle, but a career.
First came reading. Boy, did I read. Biographies, fiction, non-fiction; I
ripped through my elementary school library, moving on to the public library
by age 10, and tearing through those stacks, too. By age 15, the stacks of
George Washington University became my home-away-from-home. There was, of
course, all the boy-stuff: camping, Eagle Scout, sailing at the beach house
my family owned in the 1970s. I built a racing boat when I was 16, with
plans from Popular Science. Having a fully-equipped workshop was a
big advantage. I could build almost anything. When I got older, I realized
the value of a full workshop.
When I reached high school, there was trouble at home. My parents
separated. I went off to college in Richmond, Virginia, and did as well as
one might expect: terribly. I had been accepted at Cornell University, but
with the divorce and lawyers and settlement financing, Cornell did not
happen. I did manage to hook up with a rock n' roll band, though. It didn't
help much with college, but ina few short years the technical skills I
learned would help me land a job at the venerable Smithsonian Institution.
You never know where things will take you.
From 1981 to 1987, I served the Smithsonian as an audio-visual
specialist. I worked hundreds and hundreds of shows, met luminaries such as
the artist Christo, VIP's such as Jimmy Carter and George Schultz, and spent
many an early morning listening in on top-secret Wilson Center breakfasts
with the Trilateral Commission, as they laid out their plans to usurp
Communism. The pay was good; the education was unparalleled. Even at Ivy
League institutions, I could never learn such things. But in 1987, after
nearly 30 years in the DC area, I heeded the call to "Go West, Young Man."
California would become home; San Francisco my new port of call. In
California, my history and future would unit.
I wasted no time catching up on California history. Soon after arriving,
I began a local history library, which now contains 5,000 books and some
25,000 periodicals; it will all go to U.C. Berkeley's esteemed Bancroft
Library, soon. I became involved in local preservation efforts. A friend and
I began archiving 400,000 historic SF blueprints at U.C. Berkeley, a project
still in its infancy. By 1991, I was publishing books and newsletters and
tackling one preservation/education effort after another. And in 1994, upon
discovering that the deYoung Museum had given away a 12th Century monastery
received from William Randolph Hearst in 1941, an illegal gift to 27 aging
monks 200 miles north of the city, my local career in activism began.
Although we have not yet returned the two-million pounds of hand-carved
limestone home, we did manage to see published a national article on the
controversy in a major New York-based publication, Metropolis Magazine.
And before that event had transpired, another major controversy arose. The
ongoing desecration of the San Francisco Public Library was discovered.
Books are being written about the "San Francisco Public Library Revolt."
Thanks to the work of myself and others, the plight at SFPL reached millions
of Americans via newspapers, television and magazine accounts. Along with my
colleagues, we created, and pushed ahead, the most comprehensive library
media campaign in American history. Corporate profieteers were running amuck
in that noble institution. Through our massive political/media efforts, the
henchmen were repelled. Today, thanks to our work, a million books and
periodicals have been saved from destruction and the library is being slowly
restored. If you'd asked me five years ago if I could predict this, I would
have questioned your sanity. After all, nobody would trash a great library
with SFPL, now would they?
So here I am. I learned from the SFPL and monastery projects that
political and media skills are not enough. One needs the law. So, with every
other tool in my toolbox, these last assets, a law degree and bar
certificate, would make my workshop complete. So I returned to City College,
to begin that expedition. As a matter of fact, I may attend Cornell after
all. But not as an undergrad; as a law student, this time. Life has a way of
taking us backwards to the future.
In the classic Hollywood film, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indiana
Jones' greatest discovery, the Ark of the Covenant, is unearthed and as
suddenly returned to the sacred tomb of history. The modern-day buccaneer
turns to his father, Indiana Jones, Sr., and asks incredulously, with
everything seemingly lost, "What was it all for?" The wizened senior laughs,
and beaming, answers: Enlightenment!
That is, after all, what we seek through our work, our education and our
worldly aspirations. From City College to Cornell University, the trail of
discovery beckons. Nothing can be sure. Enlightenment, after all, is not an
end, but a path.
