I grew up within the walls of a prosecutor’s office and spent more time around attorneys and judges than I did around family members. Despite this immersive experience, I swore off becoming a lawyer because my initial view of law was two dimensional; constrained to the rules of a criminal justice system that felt like a zero-sum game. I saw my mother’s profession as one more focused on the State's conviction rate rather than its impact on the people. So, my perception of the field established a false notion that the people affected by the law were only an afterthought and could not be the driving force behind any outcome. While my occupational aspirations have been ever-changing, my desire to have a people-centered career has been ever-present. As a Black queer woman from a multicultural family, I aspire to magnify the voices in my community and other marginalized communities. Despite my initial hesitance, a culmination of choices I made during my academic career revealed that a legal career was most aligned with my vision of public service. My desire to interact with marginalized communities outside of my own and better communicate with my extended family led me to learn Spanish. Learning the language was difficult and I constantly struggled with sentence structure, colloquialisms, and conversational diffidence. To challenge myself, I took a photojournalism course in Argentina and lived with a host family. Surrounded by people who could not speak my native language and had a drastically different social history, my task was to examine and create a study of current issues affecting Argentine society. Although it seemed easy to distract myself with the beauties of Buenos Aires and the delicious Argentine delicacies, an impromptu Thursday trip to La Plaza de Mayo changed my trajectory. I discovered that every Thursday for the last forty years the mothers and grandmothers of los desaparecidos, the disappeared, march in front of the president's house in hopes of being reunited with their missing children. Watching those elderly women march around La Plaza transcended language and sparked my interest in international human rights. When I returned home, I chose to direct my studies and career path toward immigration and other domestic policies with international impacts. To see how immigrant communities were treated at the local level, I returned to an office I originally turned away from. As a paralegal, I noticed that the immigrant victims I worked with were less likely to know about the free resources provided. I will never forget telling a mother, whose daughter was attacked, in Spanish that not only were our legal services free but that we could provide her family counseling and transportation reimbursement for coming to our office. These experiences showed me that a career as a lawyer will allow me to achieve a people-focused career as well as adequately engage and positively impact the immigrant and international communities I have become connected to.

I grew up within the walls of a prosecutor’s office and spent more time around attorneys and judges than I did around family members. Despite this immersive experience, I swore off becoming a lawyer because my initial view of law was two dimensional; constrained to the rules of a criminal justice system that felt like a zero-sum game. I saw my mother’s profession as one more focused on the State's conviction rate rather than its impact on the people. So, my perception of the field established a false notion that the people affected by the law were only an afterthought and could not be the driving force behind any outcome. While my occupational aspirations have been ever-changing, my desire to have a people-centered career has been ever-present. As a Black queer woman from a multicultural family, I aspire to magnify the voices in my community and other marginalized communities. Despite my initial hesitance, a culmination of choices I made during my academic career revealed that a legal career was most aligned with my vision of public service. My desire to interact with marginalized communities outside of my own and better communicate with my extended family led me to learn Spanish. Learning the language was difficult and I constantly struggled with sentence structure, colloquialisms, and conversational diffidence. To challenge myself, I took a photojournalism course in Argentina and lived with a host family. Surrounded by people who could not speak my native language and had a drastically different social history, my task was to examine and create a study of current issues affecting Argentine society. Although it seemed easy to distract myself with the beauties of Buenos Aires and the delicious Argentine delicacies, an impromptu Thursday trip to La Plaza de Mayo changed my trajectory. I discovered that every Thursday for the last forty years the mothers and grandmothers of los desaparecidos, the disappeared, march in front of the president's house in hopes of being reunited with their missing children. Watching those elderly women march around La Plaza transcended language and sparked my interest in international human rights. When I returned home, I chose to direct my studies and career path toward immigration and other domestic policies with international impacts. To see how immigrant communities were treated at the local level, I returned to an office I originally turned away from. As a paralegal, I noticed that the immigrant victims I worked with were less likely to know about the free resources provided. I will never forget telling a mother, whose daughter was attacked, in Spanish that not only were our legal services free but that we could provide her family counseling and transportation reimbursement for coming to our office. These experiences showed me that a career as a lawyer will allow me to achieve a people-focused career as well as adequately engage and positively impact the immigrant and international communities I have become connected to.

I grew up as an only child and my relationship with my cousin, Martha, was the closest thing I had to a sibling relationship. We were only one month apart in age, were almost always in matching clothes, and were constantly mistaken for twins. Since she grew up with the Dominican side of her family, she effortlessly switched between Spanish and English and would tease me for not being able to communicate in Spanish. Martha was not my only Spanish-speaking relative, so I decided to learn the language when I started secondary school. Learning Spanish proved to be difficult and I constantly struggled with sentence structure, colloquialisms, and conversational diffidence. I did not know the statistics that indicate a decline in the ability to learn a second language after a certain age. However, I was aware that native speakers switched to English once my replies came out slow, choppy, and grammatically incorrect. I continued to learn Spanish throughout college and had a couple of semesters with low grades due to my struggle with grammar and lack of confidence in my speaking abilities. By my sophomore year, I developed a passion for the language and a strong desire to be able to communicate with my family and other Spanish speakers. That year, I decided to take an upper-level Spanish grammar course and was one of three sophomores in the class. I spent every day studying the Spanish grammar book and volunteering to speak in class or with my bilingual friends. I went to many of my professor's available office hours to go over my understanding and get additional practice materials. I was proud to finish the class with a B, but the best reward was my professor’s comments on my final assignment. She wrote a paragraph about my significant improvement and the increased confidence she saw in my conversational skills. Although the class was extremely difficult and I by no means aced it, I got exactly what I wanted out of it. The confidence and determination I developed from taking this Spanish grammar course motivated me to do a legal internship the following summer in Spain. My professor became my academic advisor and I graduated with honors as an American Studies and Spanish double major. Struggling through this class taught me that success can be more than just a good grade and that overcoming obstacles can lead to bigger discoveries. This experience helped me foster a deep connection with Spanish-speaking immigrant communities. Once I graduated I actively looked for jobs that would allow me to interact with Spanish speakers. As a paralegal in New York, I was able to interpret for Spanish-speaking victims and discovered that they were less likely to know about the free resources my office provided due to the language barrier. Now, as a law student and future lawyer, I hope to provide resources and services to this community.

I grew up within the walls of a prosecutor’s office and spent more time around attorneys and judges than I did around family members. Despite this immersive experience, I swore off becoming a lawyer because my initial view of law was two dimensional; constrained to the rules of a criminal justice system that felt like a zero-sum game. I saw my mother’s profession as one more focused on the State's conviction rate rather than its impact on the people. So, my perception of the field established a false notion that the people affected by the law were only an afterthought and could not be the driving force behind any outcome. While my occupational aspirations have been ever-changing, my desire to have a people-centered career has been ever-present. As a Black queer woman from a multicultural family, I aspire to magnify the voices in my community and other marginalized communities. Despite my initial hesitance, a culmination of choices I made during my academic career revealed that a legal career was most aligned with my vision of public service. My desire to interact with marginalized communities outside of my own and better communicate with my extended family led me to learn Spanish. Learning the language was difficult and I constantly struggled with sentence structure, colloquialisms, and conversational diffidence. To challenge myself, I took a photojournalism course in Argentina and lived with a host family. Surrounded by people who could not speak my native language and had a drastically different social history, my task was to examine and create a study of current issues affecting Argentine society. Although it seemed easy to distract myself with the beauties of Buenos Aires and the delicious Argentine delicacies, an impromptu Thursday trip to La Plaza de Mayo changed my trajectory. I discovered that every Thursday for the last forty years the mothers and grandmothers of los desaparecidos, the disappeared, march in front of the president's house in hopes of being reunited with their missing children. Watching those elderly women march around La Plaza transcended language and sparked my interest in international human rights. When I returned home, I chose to direct my studies and career path toward immigration and other domestic policies with international impacts. To see how immigrant communities were treated at the local level, I returned to an office I originally turned away from. As a paralegal, I noticed that the immigrant victims I worked with were less likely to know about the free resources provided. I will never forget telling a mother, whose daughter was attacked, in Spanish that not only were our legal services free but that we could provide her family counseling and transportation reimbursement for coming to our office. These experiences showed me that a career as a lawyer will allow me to achieve a people-focused career as well as adequately engage and positively impact the immigrant and international communities I have become connected to. The scholarship pool for graduate students is small, so I am grateful to have found this scholarship. My first semester of law school has presented two difficulties. The first is that there are many unexpected costs and the second is that I have limited time to do anything outside of school work. The Barbara J. DeVaney Memorial Scholarship would greatly assist me with covering those costs and would allow me some freedom to use my time to volunteer with clubs that support my aspiration to help marginalized communities instead of looking for ways to get more financial assistance.

@bri.adams17

I will be a financially independent self-assured, outgoing, and caring person who helps marginalized communities with my legal career and I will finally be able to support my mother's future aspirations as she did mine.

Growing up in Newark, New Jersey I am grateful to have had teachers who constantly encouraged me to dream bigger, to have had classmates that looked like me and lived like me, and to be from a city known for its unwavering resilience and industrialism. Due to this background, I have never been afraid to challenge myself to learn more and explore more. At twelve years old, stocked with various brochures and a well-rehearsed presentation of boarding school pros and cons, I convinced my parents to allow their only child to join a program that sent underrepresented children to boarding school. At seventeen, I traveled by myself to Latin America to study abroad. At eighteen, I decided to attend a college located in a city with a large Puerto Rican and refugee population in the center of a Republican county known for its Amish community. While I have been fearless with my academic pursuits, coming out as a bisexual queer woman to my religious black parents was an obstacle I struggled and continue to struggle to face. My family always encouraged me to be a bold, outspoken, and proud Black woman. However, I was acutely aware that that energy did not apply to my queer identity. I mustered the courage to tell my mother I was bisexual only after weighing the pros and cons of my decision and hoping that her love for me outweighed her discomfort with my identity. Now, she continues to be my biggest supporter. Sharing that part of my identity with my parents was my greatest challenge and most impactful achievement. I knew that not only was I disrupting their idea of who their daughter was but I also used that moment to validate who they taught me to be. Although my father chooses to ignore my queerness, the principles that he and my mother instilled in me to take up space in a room, use my knowledge to help those around me, and always be proud of my identity and unique perspective fuel my determined nature. My background has fostered in me a confident, can-do spirit and my experiences thus far prove my ability to thrive in adversity and demonstrate my innate desire to embrace every obstacle authentically and sincerely. Furthermore, as a young queer black woman, my intersectional identities color the way I understand the world and the way the world responds to me. The perceptibility of each of my identities has proven to provide access to certain communities and spaces and deny access to others. This partially fluid trait of my identity has given me the ability to recognize that the law, though meant to be black and white, is full of hues and fortunately ever-changing. Therefore, I believe that embracing my identity to my parents and the values they instilled in me coupled with my experiences grants me proximity and understanding of the qualms of marginalized communities. I hope that this knowledge will allow me to be the best advocate for marginalized communities in my journey to becoming a lawyer.