Have someone else read your essay
I don’t think I understood about being black. Everyone in my world just was. Of course there were white people and black people, but race and its complexities seemed to play out mostly on TV, in movies, in newspapers. But in my world, and let me try not to sound cliche, there were just deepening and lightening shades of people.
Mr. Siegel owned the bodega in Brooklyn where I had my first job stocking condiments and toilet paper. I understood why we kept that toilet paper but things like pickles and canned beets always confounded me. Here we had 400 square feet to keep on hand important last-minute items. Somehow I could never imagine someone running into a late night canned beet emergency.
Mr. Siegel’s skin was sort of milky gray. I certainly wouldn’t call him “white.” He was mostly kind except when he was hungover and then he just grunted. But he was never mean or disrespectful.
Mary Johnson was our neighbor. I called her ma’am. Her skin was lilac purple with ashy elbows. Lisa worked by the Utica train station and always stopped the high school kids and introduced herself so you’d know you had someone looking out for you. Her skin was sandy brown and her eyes were green. She spoke Spanish to the Latina kids and my best friend from high school Diego who is Dominican said she told him a really funny joke that just didn’t translate to English. I tried to get her to tell me but instead she said I’d have to wait until I learned Spanish.
Billy had skin like coffee with a tiny bit of milk. My first girlfriend Melissa had pink skin that smelled like oatmeal with honey and cream. My mama’s skin was gray and gold depending on how the sun shone on her. And my sister, Tara, had skin the color of roasted almonds.
I left Brooklyn and came to Pennsylvania, where I felt my blackness like a hole in the middle of an expansive white sea. I looked around and felt invisible, like I’d somehow sucked all the light out of any room I’d enter. I thought they couldn’t see me, the color of my skin, a dulled and muted shade of theirs. I suddenly understood about being black, and I didn’t like what I was understanding.
The silence of my first month of college was profound and colorless. Until slowly, in classes I’d raise my hand and speak and eyes would find me, or maybe they already had. In fact, I began to see that they had seen me all along. It was me that for the first time had discovered a color in me. It was the color of my own fear and prejudice. One by one I met the individuals. And everything I saw went from a vast sea of white to a giant sea shaded by many colors, faces and people.
I want to be a lawyer so that I can suss out the details, go beyond the stereotypes we see when we meet someone for the first time or walk into a new room, or leave the neighborhood where we grow up. It fills me with fire to think that the job of a lawyer is to break each fact down to its smallest part and reveal something that once seemed cut and dry-black and white-is in fact different shades across a spectrum.
Broad strokes might be easier to see, a grabbed image to which you attach all your preconceived ideas. Details are harder to spot and remember. They require consideration, patience and a willingness to look closely. For the world and even more, for myself, I will continue to notice our details, and I will draw attention to them for others.
JD MISSION REVIEW
Overall Lesson
Have someone else read your personal statement to help you smooth any rough patches.
First Impression
The basic idea behind this essay is great: the candidate did not understand what “being black” meant until he went to college. However, the way he expresses this idea in his opening sentence (“I don’t think 1 understood about being black.”) does not work well. The same goes for the last clause of the first paragraph, which reads, “there were just deepening and lightening shades of people.” Saying “deeper” and “lighter” shades instead would make more sense.
Strengths
Overall, the essay is strong. I like the theme, which is that for a long time, he did not “see” color, then he did see it, and finally, he learned to look past it. And the idea that his ability to observe detail and nuance is fueling his interest in law is a nice tie-in. I particularly like the idea he expresses here: “Broad strokes might be easier to see, a grabbed image to which you attach all your preconceived ideas. Details are harder to spot and remember. They require consideration, patience and a willingness to look closely.”
But despite the candidate’s affinity for details, his essay could still use a hearty edit!
Weaknesses
The candidate uses some phrasings that simply do not read smoothly and could therefore be distracting or even confusing to a reader. I mentioned two such instances in the First Impression section of this review, and this issue persists throughout the essay, in some places more than others. For example, the candidate writes, “It was me that for the first time had discovered a color in me.” A better way of phrasing this would be to say, “I was the one who, for the first time, had begun to see my own color.”
This sentence has the same problem: “I suddenly understood about being black, and 1 didn’t like what 1 was understanding.” A more effective wording would be “I suddenly understood what it meant to ‘be black,’ and 1 didn’t like it.”
Final Assessment
This candidate needs to have someone with excellent editing skills and a keen eye to review his essay. Every sentence should be read clearly, and every subject and verb should match flawlessly. The ideas are there, and the scenes he describes are visually compelling-he just needs to work on polishing and finessing the prose a bit.
