Law Students

Ms. JD Public Interest Summer Scholarship Winner: Christina Calloway

By Ms. JD

Ms. JD is pleased to feature our second winner of Ms. JD's Public Interest Summer Scholarship, Christina Calloway.  Here is her winner essay submission:

?You?re getting old. You should get married soon before you are too old to have children.? At 26 years old and finishing my second year of law school, my grandmother said these words to me. Once I processed the words the woman that I love dearly had said to me, I realized that my grandmother and I have very different expectations about the role of a woman and how the career she chooses affects her personal life. My grandmother has lived through 80 years of changes in this country, including the historic election of the first African-American president and having an African-American First Lady, yet she still believes women should be married and actively pursuing a family at my age. I am one generation removed from the idea advanced by men, and sometimes women, that a woman?s role in society is as a wife and mother.

Although I accept the great significance of a woman in this capacity, for the women that have fought for my right to choose to be anything, I refuse to accept the stereotype of a woman as only one thing. My mother represents another generation: progressive, ambitious, and strong. Basically, she could care less about the fact that I am not married and that I have yet to make her a grandmother. My mother is extremely proud of my decision to take a journey that many do not have to courage to pursue. She loves the idea that I will be a part of a group of women that have that courage to become an attorney. The woman who told me those words above raised her and she had followed them. Her ?career? expectations were to get married, have children, and have a stable family life and at the age of 21 that is exactly what she achieved. By the age of 26, the same age I am now, my mother was divorced, had two children, and no education past high school. I believe she understood at that age that her daughters would achieve more than she had by being educated beyond high school and she pushed that idea my entire life. In her 30s, my mother followed the tone of her generation, progressive, ambitious, and strong, and pursued higher education. She is the example that propelled my ambitions and dreams, whatever they may be.

My career expectations differ from those of previous generations, even different from those of my mother?s, because I do not want to be one thing.

read more

Full post as published by Ms. JD on June 12, 2009 (boomark / email).