法学院申请文书——我在IBM的工作经历

As I prepared to retire from the IBM Corporation, my 102-year-old grandmother reminded me of the Cherokee tradition, where one is not an adult until age 51. The Cherokee believe that it takes time to sense and understand the many subtle life flows of one’s energy and knowledge. But I was not planning to retreat from the world; in fact, I was leaving IBM to pursue a new career -- perhaps I should call it my "adult" career.

I had been quite successful at IBM, especially as a tax policy strategist. Still, I craved more personally meaningful work in a culturally diverse community, where making a living and helping others could be equal priorities.

Dispute resolution is the ideal vehicle for meeting these professional and personal needs. My interest in the field is long-standing. It began twenty years ago, when my systems engineering position at IBM relocated me to Atlanta. There I became a volunteer consumer affairs counselor at the Neighborhood Justice Center. NJC’s mantra was that workplace misunderstandings and conflicts could be avoided with proper communication. This approach sparked my interest in law school, and I quickly enrolled. My studies were surprisingly exciting. While the issue analysis aspects were similar to problem-solving at IBM, the stakes were vastly different: individual lives instead of dollars and cents. Despite my seventy-hour work weeks at IBM, I graduated with honors. When I passed the bar examination on my first attempt, I considered leaving IBM to pursue a career in law.

I stayed. My manager advised that my combined technical, marketing, and legal background made me uniquely qualified and well-suited for promotion. Also, the intensely adversarial culture of law school had been somewhat off-putting. I was more comfortable in business settings that encouraged teamwork, collaboration, and conciliation.

However, I soon learned that the corporate model of cooperation does not eliminate workplace conflict. As a manager in Baltimore, I often witnessed cases of employment discrimination, which at IBM alone were astounding: the manager who tried to fire a stereotypically ethnic employee because he "looked funny"; the marketing team that consistently excluded an Asian team member; the managers who mocked an employee for having an "offensive" toothpick in his mouth. Each of these employees eventually left IBM, and two of them filed employment discrimination complaints. I realized that these problems were caused by ignorance of cultural differences, and I believed that the application of conflict management systems could have prevented such problems.

These incidents in my workplace embarrassed and infuriated me, and I felt the need to take a stand against such insensitive behavior. In the Master of Law in Dispute Resolution program, I will gain the comprehensive background to prepare me for my long-term goals: teaching in an urban community or historically black college, designing multicultural conflict management systems, and participating in community mediation. I am particularly interested in the multi-disciplinary analysis, the independent research, and the global externship program. I’m confident that this path would satisfy and please my grandmother.

点评：

这是一篇比较优秀的申请法律专业的PS，作者选取了自己在IBM工作的一个与法律相关的切入点“争议解决”来表明自己对于法律的兴趣和志向。争议解决存在于生活的每个角落，作者在二十年前就开始担任志愿的法律顾问，并且通过学习一次就考取了bar。虽然他在IBM取得了很大的成功，但是他对于工作中目睹的种种歧视却是无能为力，他觉得要学习更多的法律知识来帮助那些被歧视的员工。整篇文章环环相扣，逻辑性很强，充分表现出作者对于法律的热爱和对于社会的责任心，这些都是法律专业要求申请者所具备的素质。因此这是一篇目的性强，表达充分的优秀PS。

译文：

当我准备从IBM公司退休的时候，我102岁的奶奶提醒我，在切罗基族人的传统里没有51岁不算成年。切罗基族人相信去感受和领会一个人生命中精力和知识的精妙之处需要很长一段时间。但是我没有打算放弃，事实上，我离开IBM去追求一份新的事业――也许我应该说这是我的“成年”事业。

我在IBM是相当成功的，特别是作为一名税务政策战略家。但是我仍然渴望一份在多元文化社区内的更加具有个人满足感的工作，我可以谋生并且帮助其他人取得公平的机会。

争议解决是实现这些个人和职业需求的良好途径。我对于这方面的兴趣是由来已久的了。那是二十年前，当我在IBM的系统工程师的职位被重新安排到亚特兰大时候我开始对争议解决产生兴趣。在那里我在邻里司法中心志愿担任消费者事务法律顾问。邻里司法中心的宗旨就是工作场所的误会和争端都可以通过正确的沟通来避免。这种方法激起了我对法学院的兴趣，我也很快就入学了。我的学习出奇地令人兴奋。虽然这里的案例分析跟IBM的问题解决很相似，但是本质上却有很多的不同：单独的个体代替了美元和美分。尽管我在IBM一周要工作70个小时，我还是很荣幸毕业了。当我第一次去考bar就通过的时候，我开始考虑离开IBM去谋求在法律领域的工作。

我暂时留在了IBM。我的经理建议我说我身兼的技术，市场和法律背景使得我在晋升的时候处于独一无二的有利地位。而且法学院激烈的竞争氛围也有些令人不愉快。他认为我更加适合在团队协作，相互支持的商业环境中生存。

但是，我很快发现公司的团队模式并不能消除工作场所的冲突。作为在巴尔的摩的一名经理，我看见许多职场当中的歧视现象，仅仅是在IBM这种现象都是非常严重的：经理会因为一个少数民族职员长得“搞笑”而解雇他，市场部长期排斥一个亚裔成员，经理也会因为一个职员嘴里咬着一根“攻击性”牙签而嘲笑他。每一个被歧视的员工最终都是离开IBM，他们当中的两个还提出了职场歧视的起诉。我意识到这些问题是由于忽视文化差异而产生的，我也相信冲突管理系统的应用可以防止这些问题。

这些发生在我工作场所的事情让我感到尴尬甚至愤怒，我觉得自己需要坚决反对这些冷漠的行为。在争议解决的法硕课程，我可以获得一个全面的知识体系，为自己的长期目标做准备。而我的长期目标就是在城市的社区和黑色学府做教师，设计多元文化的冲突管理体系，还会参与到社区仲裁中去。我还特别喜欢多学科分析，独立的研究和国际实习项目。我相信这个历程会让我奶奶感到高兴和欣慰。