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I submitted my college applications from the Burger King around the corner from my house. I used their internet because my parents didn’t have the money to pay our WiFi bill. I still remember that I was wearing one of their iconic cardboard crowns as I pressed submit.

It wasn’t always that way. I grew up with an enormous level of privilege one can only describe as excessive. My parents owned a many-room mansion in a major US city and rented a beach house in a tropical location, where we went to school on a mountain. They threw my brother an extravagant first birthday party—replete with carnival games, rented zoo animals, and elephant rides in the backyard—and held glitzy parties and fundraisers for their friends. It was undoubtedly the life of the .001%.

In an economic recession, we lost almost everything. My father’s businesses failed and my life’s trajectory changed. Although I was able to remain in the tropical location to finish the last two years of high school thanks to the generosity of family friends, my twin sister and I moved to an apartment with my aunt and uncle, where the four of us survived on food stamps and the occasional money my parents could send us from the major US city. Never before had I been forced to think of the value of a dollar or the cost of a gallon of milk at the supermarket. Now I found myself cutting coupons and scouring the weekly paper for food deals.

When my sister and I came home to the major US city, we couldn’t help but notice how our home had fallen into disrepair. The gas was shut off in the summer of 2010, and with it, all access to heat and hot water. At times, we were at risk of having the electricity shut off as well. My mom, who has two chronic illnesses, survived the winters in the major city by wearing a ski-suit. We washed our hair in the sink with an electric kettle, and we all lived together in my parents’ bedroom, heated to the 50s by electric heaters. I remember distinctly one Christmas during a particularly bad winter, when my dad and I had to create a strategic plan to keep the water pipes warm enough not to burst without using so much electricity that the circuits would trip. My family lived in these conditions for four years.

I had always been a Republican without thinking too much of it. That began to change when my family had to rely on government assistance for the first time. I remember worrying about how my mom would afford her doctor visits and medications, and I remember watching on CNN as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act was signed into law on March 23, 2010. Tears rolled down my face. The next day, after a breakfast paid for by my dad’s Social Security check, we talked about FDR in my history class. I reflected on the fact that my family was able to survive thanks to FDR’s leadership on Social Security; now, my mom would have healthcare because of Obama’s. That was the moment I realized I had become a Democrat.

A few years later, I had the good fortune of being able to put these new beliefs into action. Leaving a corporate job behind, I joined a democratic candidate's political campaign brimming with optimism. I was on the high-dollar fundraising team in a major city. In August, as the election campaign was in full swing, the candidate and our team spent four days in a famously wealthy neighborhood, including at a private celebrity benefit at a celebrity's home in a famously wealthy neighborhood and a reception at a mansion of the owner of a sports team. I was experiencing the extreme wealth of my childhood in a new way, and it felt deeply elitist. In the next few weeks, I watched the candidate continue to focus on fundraisers instead of meetings with voters. Although I was proud to work for the candidate, our campaign’s priorities began to seem remarkably out of touch. Thus I had my second great epiphany: the Democrats, though aligned much more closely with my own values than the Republicans, still weren’t perfect.

I am now committed to changing the Democratic Party, and law school will help me accomplish that. Although my journey has been circuitous, I have thought about pursuing a JD for a long time, and I’ve spoken about it with many lawyers, mentors, and activists. Law school will let me advocate for the voiceless and understand the legal structures underpinning our nation. After attaining my JD, I plan to work as a direct services attorney in a major US city, providing legal services to our city’s most vulnerable. Eventually, I’d like to run for political office. Having lived on both sides of America’s stark wealth gap, I have seen this country’s deep inequalities firsthand, and I hope to spend the rest of my life ameliorating them.