I wish I was like you, easily amused

A lot of the things I write about have to do with my family.  Mostly silly anecdotal things with a serious piece every now and then.  The one person I’ve never sat down to write something serious about is the one person who has probably had the biggest influence on my life: my dad.  I have always had the intention of writing about him.  But for whatever reason, the jumble of thoughts and ideas running through my head never combined into a single coherent piece.  I always found it difficult because there was never a big event in my life involving my dad.  My mom had cancer, so immediately that was something I could write about.  With my dad, it was always subtle.  It was the little things he did when he didn’t think anyone was looking.  But I was.  And if you asked my brother, I’d be willing to bet all the money in my pockets that he would say the same thing.

Integrity is an adjective used entirely too often to describe people who don’t deserve it.  Countless politicians are called men of integrity only to get caught up in scandal.  Bernie Madoff.  Tiger Woods.  Eliot Spitzer.  Men of integrity.  They put forth an appearance to the outside world that does not match up with who they really are.  My dad is the same person whether he’s dealing with family, friends, strangers, his secretary or Jehovah’s Witnesses.

When it came time to write my personal statement for law school, I thought maybe it was time to try to write about my dad.  And to be honest, it’s the easiest thing I ever wrote.  Within two hours I had pumped out 1500 words.  The only problem was most of the applications limited your statement to two pages, which is about 1000 words.  I spent the next month or so trying to cut 500 words and then having a few people read and critique it.  What follows below is exactly what I submitted to each school I applied to.

My biggest mistake was not saving that original 1500 word draft.  I was happy about how the piece ended up as a law school personal statement, but I fear it doesn’t quite do justice to my dad.  Then again, I’m not sure anything I could write ever would, so here goes.

———————————————————————————-

As I embark on the beginning of what will likely have the single biggest effect on my career and the rest of my life, I find myself looking at my father and wanting to live up to the bar he has set.  This is not an expectation that he has thrust onto me.  Instead, he has been the inspiration of this goal I have set for myself.  The harder I look, the more I realize my father still is the giant that I looked up to when I was five.  And a giant has big shoes to fill.

My father is an impressive person.  He became one of the youngest federal government employees to reach the Senior Executive Service (SES) level in the U.S. Department of Transportation.  In his spare time he served as a church elder and started, then spent twenty years running, the youth group at the church in which I grew up.  All of which was done while making it to almost every one of my sports games.  But when I talk about big shoes to fill, I am not talking about accomplishments, prestige or respect.  The shoes I am trying to fill are borne out of my father’s determination, focus and, most importantly, commitment to serving.

My father grew up in New York City, poor and motherless.  He and his siblings spent much of their free time helping his father run the family restaurant.  My father studied hard in high school, did well and was granted a New York State Regents scholarship.  Because the scholarship would only pay for him to attend college in New York, his choices were limited, and he had to turn down offers of admission from several prestigious schools.  Armed with one suitcase and a desk lamp, my father took the train to upstate New York and arrived on campus with the goal of getting as much as possible out of his classes so he could get a job with the Department of Transportation and serve his country.

I grew up in Potomac, a tony D.C. suburb, spending my free time playing various sports and learning to play the piano, trombone and guitar.  I studied hard in high school as well, and when it came time for me to apply to colleges, my parents made it clear that they would find a way to pay for whatever school I settled on, regardless of the cost.  When I moved into my freshman dorm I had a minivan full of stuff ready for fun, new experiences and meeting new people.  My future career was an afterthought.  I had four whole years to figure out what I wanted to do.

My father was focused and determined.  I was neither

There is very little in common between these two life stories.  My father had to work tirelessly for everything he got.  I was taught to work hard, and certainly did, but was also given everything I needed and many of the things I wanted.  Yet somehow, I am more like him than I ever realized.  Maybe it is that I just never noticed it before, but I seem to be developing many of the same mannerisms and quirks my father possesses.

When I was a kid, if my father told me I could not have some new toy, I thought it was because we were short of money.  I would ask him why he worked for the government when he could be making more money in the private sector.  He would gently respond that both the denial of a new toy and his job had nothing to do with money.  Serving his country gave him such satisfaction and fulfillment that a bigger payday would never be enough to pull him away from the public sector.  Of all the qualities and traits my father possesses, this sense of duty is the one I want to inherit the most.  The challenge is that this is not a quality that just gets passed on like athletic ability or good skin.  It is something you have to dedicate yourself to and consistently do.

My family used to do community service projects together which eventually led to me doing community service projects on my own time.  In college I was heavily involved in serving the entire student population through the Student Government Association as the Chief of Staff to the Student Body President.  In the year and a half that I have worked as a paralegal, I have worked on scores of multifamily and commercial real estate transactions, which has served as an excellent learning experience.  But the most rewarding work I have done has been on the law firm’s pro bono projects.  I helped a tenants’ association work out conflicts with an unfair landlord and assisted an advocacy group for injured war veterans organize and build case files for individual claims.  The law can be a powerful tool to serve those who cannot help themselves.  With little formalized training, though, there is only so much I can do; this is one of the chief reasons behind my desire to attend law school.

I believe my experiences have provided me with a good foundation to develop a commitment to service. But perhaps the best foundation is the great example my father has set.  The more I examine myself it becomes even more apparent that I have been standing on the shoulders of a giant my entire life.  It is time to get down and start making footprints of my own.

———————————————————————————-

There’s an episode of The West Wing where one of the storylines revolves around a rather common struggle that a lot of kids have: living up to a certain perceived standard set by parents.  President Bartlet doesn’t realize that his daughter has lived with a perpetual fear of disappointing him.  After coming to this realization, he delivers this gem: “The only thing you ever had to do to make me happy was come home at the end of the day.”

Growing up, I didn’t have a perpetual fear of disappointing my parents.  But, I certainly believed there was some sort of standard I had to live up to in order to please my parents.  I’m not sure where I got this from, because I can’t ever remember my parents explicitly stating I had to do x, y and z to gain their approval.  I think it came from one of my cousins.  He was probably my grandfather’s favorite (and there’s probably some good reason to that) and set the bar pretty high in my family.  I thought if I could just live up to that, my parents would be impressed.

As I mentioned in my personal statement, my dad was an elder at the church I grew up in.  Around the age of thirteen or fourteen, a lot of the kids in my youth group started getting baptized.  It seemed like some sort of rite of passage.  So, when I turned thirteen, I signed up for the two classes you were required to attend in order to get baptized.  I did this for no reason other than I thought this was what my parents expected me to do.

One night while sitting at the kitchen counter, my dad asked me why I was getting baptized.  I couldn’t give him a reason.  Instead I broke down crying, trying to tell him in between sobs, that I only wanted to make him happy and I thought this was what they wanted.  My dad looked me dead in the eye and told me, “There is nothing you could do that would change how much I love you.  If you don’t know why or aren’t ready to get baptized, don’t.  Don’t do this for me or your mom.”

Fear of disappointing your parents is one of the worst feelings you can ever have.  It’s also completely irrational.  In that moment, any fear of disappointment I had evaporated.  Disabusing me of that fear is one of the best things my dad ever could have done for me.  Needless to say, I didn’t get baptized then.  In fact, I never got baptized and I’m fairly certain my dad doesn’t care about that.  I stopped going to church regularly a few years later which my dad didn’t agree with.  But it hasn’t altered our relationship.  Like he said, there’s nothing I can do that would change how much he loves me.  I love you too dad.