By Adamari Alamillo, Fellow Class of 2017
Stanford University
Career options were limited. As for many first-generation kids, we grow up watching doctors, lawyers and teachers on the different forms of media we consume. I was a young child when I chose law and never questioned it again. Fast forward a few years, I am a freshman in college trying to choose a major that will enhance my abilities to attend law school.
Sophomore year, I have chosen psychology because it will allow me to understand societies and human interactions. A skill that will prove useful in law school and as a future lawyer trying to understand why someone would commit a crime and how to market their deserving forgiveness to a judge and jurors. I would be interning at the public defender’s office and was excited to learn how the system functions for migrants with criminal convictions. However, I spent every day in what seemed like a never-ending cycle of moral conflict. I felt like I was compromising some of my morals for others and never felt at ease with the balancing of this. Who was deserving of forgiveness and which victims deserved advocacy? I felt hypocritical. I ended the summer being convinced I no longer saw a future in law because my only interest had been in helping marginalized folk, but helping some meant hurting others, so I wanted no part of it at all.
I entered my junior year feeling anxious about the uncertainty surrounding my future. I felt as though I had no time left to figure things out. I had dedicated so much time and effort in pursuing law. I still felt the insecurity of being first-generation and not knowing what career options were out there. Not to mention, the new ones I had been exposed to such as consulting, software engineering, and academia seemed so daunting and out of reach. I was deep into my psychology coursework and found myself being excited even more by the material I was learning. Meanwhile, without the pressures of appealing to law school admission boards, I found myself being drawn to law-related courses and extracurriculars that fell in line with my morals and was engaging passionately, with a nuanced view developed from my previous internship and my psychology coursework.
My coursework led me to a psychological study focused on reducing recidivism for domestic violence offenders by instituting different interventions at a police-response level. I was stricken by the idea that psychology could be used in this way. After deep reflection on my interests and having spoken to various mentors, I am now hoping to pursue a joint PhD-JD degree where I will be able to intersect my interests in research and academia, social-cultural issues, as well as law in order to continue advocating for the abolition of prisons in order to begin rehabilitative reform that honors victims of crime but also provides resources for people to learn and grow.
