I Will Write My Apps in a Pleather Mini

Today I will begin to write personal statements for law school apps. I don't know why I feel so defensive every time I mention law school. Have you seen how stuttery and angry lawyers make George Bush? Defense rests.

Writing a personal statement is cleaning a loaded gun. A personal essay is liable to go off at any time, and pointed in the wrong direction, will leave a gaping, bloody hole through the writer. The statement must be carefully calibrated. Confident, yet not narcissistic. Moments of levity, but not glib. Purposeful, but not pretentious. Honest, but not too earnest.

Ugh. I've got to "sell myself": an expression that makes me think I should write the thing in fishnets and a tube top.

"Ignore your calculations, write from the heart!" Bad advice. My heart is a dark, Scandinavian thing. Written from the "heart," my personal statement will metastisize into a suicide note.

The reason for the personal essay is not to fill lacunae left by one's resume and transcript. It is so that the Admissions folk have something to blackmail with. My personal embarassments are all a matter of public record. J Edgar Hoover would have nothing on me. Well, he would have plenty on me by 1950s standards, but nothing that I would'nt openly admit to. But a leaked, schlocky, personal statement could extort thousands in blood money from this turnip.

I'm really not not looking forward to writing this. Essays are fun. Maybe too fun. In college I got consistently high marks on them. Though for one class, as the semester wore on eventually written in the margin of one of them was the comment: "Too flip!" I reeled myself in. Maybe I should channel Ingmar Bergman. Wait. I just IMDB'ed him. He's still alive. He's such an eminent director and such a mordant one, that I thought he was born a dead eminent director.

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The continuing story of my friend, Belle: Our girl was wasting away in the world of non-profs. A "501 (c) 3 office B..." she called herself. So girlfriend made some phone calls. Now she is in Florida, working as a real-live Kerry-Edwards campaign operative! Paid, natch. And free car, free room. I bet those MoveOn kids are hott too. Jeal jeal jeal. Because you know shit's not ending in November.

She should rent a couple of mini buses advertising the Perkin's Early Bird Special then Hover Round-jack the Lawrence Welk set to polling stations. Fair's fair: they can be taken to gum their surf n' turf after they vote.