My Greatness

So my new writing prof gave the us a simple assignment that was due on friday. We were each supposed to write a one page personal essay. Something that would tell him a little bit about each of us. I took his instructions at face value and wrote a one page ran t detailing the ins and outs of why I am the way I am. On friday, as the collection of personal essays passed by my desk on their way up to the front, I was shocked to see that every single essay was a mini resume. For real, every single one of them began with, "I was born in... insert laundry list of achievements... and now I'm here in law school." I had done it again!!! My mind is just incapable of "clicking" like a drone law student. I'm glad I still have a personality, I'm not to excited that it was too late to pull my essay out of the batch. I can see it all unfolding, he's sitting at the kitchen counter sunday morning, hot coffee and cereal, leisurely reading through the pages of intelligent, articulate biographical information, necessary for his judgment and gage on who we will be as lawyers and what we will become in the future; and then he reads this:

"I have four names. First, two middle and last. When I get married I hope to keep all of mine and add a fifth, then I will resemble a true law firm and my dreams of having the world’s most disorganized business cards will be realized. I was born and raised right here in the great state of Arizona, which is also the proud home of the world’s largest solar telescope and the producer of over one million metric tons of lettuce annually. I didn’t always want to be an attorney, in fact for the first decade of my life I wanted to be a waitress, a profession I dabbled in during college and I have since retired from.

I was pretty convinced that I wanted to be an attorney from about middle school on. I grew up in a house full of attorneys. Both of my parents as well as my older brother are lawyers. You might think this would lead to a massive amount of arguing at home, and you would be correct. However, it is because of that environment that I have grown into a person who can have a debate, about the most serious of issues and not take personal offense when someone disagrees with me.

High school was uneventful; I was in the marching band, played on the basketball team and was president of the speech and debate squad. I went back East for college and I was ecstatic to be as far away from the southwest as my acceptance letters would take me. The excitement was cut short when just a few weeks after arriving I sat at my window and watched the twin towers fall to the earth. A few months later in February of the following year my brother was in Tempe during Mardi Gras celebration on Mill and was attacked by a drunk college kid who stabbed him. My brother almost died a number of times over the next few weeks but in the end he walked out of the hospital alive but unable to ever use his left arm again. I decided to come home.

I lived in Phoenix again for a year, then moved to Los Angeles, a city whose inhabitants all tend to treat one another like something they’ve stepped in. After a couple of years of people watching, creative writing and enjoying a semi lucrative career slinging TV’s to B list movie stars at Best Buy, I came home ready to finish school and start something new. I have a condo in north Phoenix and live with my best friend who also happens to be my dog, Sy. Sy is the funniest aspect of my world. He is the most massive K-9 in a 3-mile radius, yet he’s convinced he’s a lap dog and the poor guy is afraid of everything. A loud noise occurs and I have a bear trying to squeeze himself under my bed, only to get his gigantic head stuck and in need of rescue.

Back at ASU and with three years till graduation, I needed an outlet. So, I decided to join the speech and debate team. I love to write, perform and persuade. Forensics allows me to do all of that competitively. Last year I finished nationals as one of the nations top 14 speakers for both prose and poetry interpretation and I won the 2008 national title in dramatic interpretation. I continue to be heavily involved with the team. I write the way I speak and perform. Unfortunately the years spent writing persuasive speeches and programmed prose and poetry, is proving to be less than helpful in law school. If only briefs could be written in haiku, the reading might be more interesting, albeit perhaps more confusing. I am hoping to drastically improve. If not, perhaps I will divorce my first husband, keep the name, marry again and pride myself on having a business card that’s even more disorganized than originally thought possible. "