I was born in Ypsilanti, Michigan, and raised in a working-class trailer park by a single mother. My mother and I moved to Maryland, Utah and New Mexico in search of better job opportunities before she was offered a stable position. For years, my mother struggled to make ends meet, waking up at 3:30 a.m. every day and working 50 hours a week to support us. Her example gave me strength in my own fight against discrimination. As a child, I felt the impact of prejudice in school. By the time I reached the seventh grade, I had fallen behind and teachers categorized me as academically problematic, putting me on a track not to graduate. I knew that they had low expectations of me in part because I was black and poor. Though I would later meet a mentor who would help me to excel, these early childhood experiences made me forever attuned to the ways in which institutional structures can reinforce low self-esteem and cycles of poverty.

It wasn’t until I studied abroad in Paris during my freshman year of college that I became exposed to an educational world that presented itself as the polar opposite of my childhood. Introduced by my neighbor to the student culture of ESCP Europe, one of Europe’s top business schools, I became exposed to the Parisian elite. In the first weeks, I was invited to listen to presentations given by the CEO of Total, a French oil and gas company, and Laurent Fabius, the French Foreign Minister. I built relationships with students who had been sent to the best schools since their earliest years, visiting their loft apartments sprawled across Paris. Though a few of the students I met came from modest backgrounds, most were raised in an environment where their potential for success was never questioned. Their placement at top firms post-graduation was virtually guaranteed, and a culture of assured success radiated throughout campus.

In integrating with these students, the issues of race and class that I had faced before were much more subtle than they had been in America. No longer were my peers asking me how I felt about being the only black student in my class, and no longer were professors unresponsive to my questions. What propelled me into their ranks was the aura of the institutions that housed us. Yet my sense of otherness persisted. Amongst the students I met, I was an American member of the French upper class, but on the streets I was mistaken for being a Moroccan immigrant. The feeling of estrangement I thought I had escaped when I left America came rushing back, and I realized that France was still a country with a history of colonial subjugation, where the overwhelming majority of successful businessmen, bankers, lawyers, and politicians were white. Though the sense of alienation was more nuanced and less straightforward, I remained on the outside.

When I returned to New York to continue my education, the feeling of otherness continued to preoccupy me. But for the first time, rather than seeing it as a plight, I began to see how it was a gift that made me both receptive to help and more gifted in my capacity to understand those in need. As a boy, moving around with my Mom so often made me open and eager to adapt to the diverse spectrum of American life. I had been hosted by a Mormon family in Salt Lake City, and then warmly welcomed by the Mexican-American community in Los Alamos without prejudice or hesitation. From the trailer park in Michigan to the marble halls of ESCP, I felt I came of age through the hospitality of strangers. Having seen the world from the perspective of the American working class and the European elite, I have glimpsed the common humanity within us all that pushes us to survive and excel. It is extremely hard, if not impossible, to be given so much without being humbled by the generosity of others.

In the last few years, I have become increasingly involved as a campus ambassador for the career center, a president and mentor on the debate team, a tutor for the LSAT, and an intern for an organization against human trafficking. In each of these experiences, I felt that my own personal hardships had given me the skills to better assist those around me. In the cases of students struggling from cultures of low expectations, or women working relentlessly to make ends meet for their families, I reached back into the literature of my experience. When I remember how I felt watching my mom struggle, or how I felt sitting in the classroom wanting to give up, I feel a greater motivation to succeed. I see my identity as an ever-changing phenomenon and my destiny as open-ended. Each night I spent struggling with homework when I was younger, each midnight walk along the Canal Saint-Martin, each day I spent becoming a better learner - all of these taken together will tell who I am. In all my travels, I have learned to define myself not according to my struggles or privileges, but according to my character and actions. I look forward to law school as an opportunity to make the most of what I have been given.