Mita Lakhia

Learning Record – My Vision.

My friend Namrata and me at a football game experiencing life as a freshman at UT.

For as long as I can remember, all I ever wanted was to become a lawyer. A combination of my first John Grisham book, The Firm, and my favorite Tom Cruise movie, A Few Good Men, planted the image of “Mita Lakhia – Attorney at Law” in my head. The image persisted from age six until the beginning of my freshman year at the University of Texas but has changed drastically in the months since then. The courtroom portrayed in books and movies, filled with action and drama, always culminates with the good guys beating the bad guys. The lawyer, however, is not always seen as the good guy. Lawyers are evil, corrupt, and driven solely by money. Or are they? The answer is often based upon perception. “The object of the artist is the creation of the beautiful. What the beautiful is, is another question.”¹ Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, as is purpose and dignity. My vision of a lawyer, the type of lawyer that I want to be, is an honorable, kind and compassionate human being who truly affects the lives of others and helps those who cannot help themselves. Much like a doctor cures an ill patient, a lawyer defends a wronged client. In order to bring my vision to life and leave my mark on society, I plan to be an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union (the ACLU). I will be active in a variety of issues, but my focus will be on Women’s Rights and International Human Rights.

Mock Trial was one of my favorite activities in high school.

Left: Cross examining a witness at Mock Trial rehearsal in High School.

Below: My Mock Trail team ready for competition.

Unfortunately the road that lies before me is filled with twists and turns. Over the past few weeks I feel as if I have not been moving in the right direction. The shells around campus remind me to think of my higher purpose and where I want my journey to end, but I feel lost along the route there. The world has so many choices and options to pick from. I can be a lawyer, an accountant, a writer, even an entrepreneur. With all these doors open, the only fear is making the wrong choice. “College is the only time in your life, or your adult life anyway, when you can really experiment and at a certain point when you leave, when you graduate or whatever, everybody’s memory like evaporates.”² Experimentation can be great, but the trouble is deciding what you want people to remember about you. For the first part of this semester I found that I was too caught up in myself. All I could see were the difficulties of pledging. I saw myself approaching a slippery slope of falling grades, relationships and health. There was no way for me to continue the path I was on. I had to learn what to focus on and how to balance what was important both educationally and socially. As I move forward the present transitions into my future at the ACLU. Having faith that the road will get me there is the only thing I can do when the world feels like it is getting a little blurry.

Blurry images: Balancing life often leads to these situations. At left: Bump’s class hits the President’s Office. The trip was another chance for us to reflect (as we are pictured doing in the mirror) on what we want to do/be in life.

The ACLU is a non-profit organization that handles over six-thousand cases annually to protect American liberties. Among others, the ACLU stands for the right to due process, equal protection in the law, the right to privacy, and the rights guaranteed in the first amendment. As a lawyer I will be able to fight for those who need protection from injustice and work to stop similar injustices from occurring. For example, I have always felt very passionately about Women’s Rights. As my parents always tell my sister and me, a woman can do anything a man can do. While shopping for my dorm room supplies with me, my dad would joke that I needed an iron, “Because one day, Mita, you will iron a boy’s shirt and he will help you with your math homework.”

Graduation – My family is very close. My mom and dad both stress the importance of their girls reaching for the stars. My older sister (on my right) is a second year at UT Southwestern Medical School. She and I both graduated Valedictorians of our high school class.

Although my dad would joke about such things, he always stressed the importance of education and how I am is capable of anything. We all have the potential to do great things. Often the only problem we run into is finding the motivation. “We sit, and listen, and let it all fall into place. Sometimes it does, and sometimes it doesn’t.”³ When one wastes time sitting around and waiting, countless opportunities slip by. Not every door stays open forever, and not every one is presented with the same opportunities. The worst feeling is seeing people not live up to their potential, not because they are not trying, but because they truly believe they are incapable of great feats. Often, I believe this lack of confidence results from a flawed system that unintentionally degrades women. If women are capable of anything, than why have they not accomplished everything? There are only eight CEOs of Fortune 500 companies. There has never been a female President of the United States. There has been only one female President of The University of Texas at Austin. Lorene Lane Rogers served as President of UT from 1974-1979, but no other females have had such a prominent role on this campus since. Diversity is a vital part of what makes The University of Texas such a great place, but bias and sexism can easily rob UT of other great leaders. As a civil rights lawyer I will be able to fight the root cause of this misconception and leave a lasting impact.

International relations have always captured my attention as well, and I am deeply moved by the troubles of others. The foundation for this feeling stems from my family. Although my parents’ immigration from India took place many years ago, it has a strong effect on my view of foreign relations. I am an American in every sense of the term. I do, however, have a strong connection with my heritage, which motivates me to learn about other cultures. The world is much smaller than it once was, and the events around the globe affect our daily lives. Technology, commerce and communication are factors which draw us closer to our neighbors. Ten years from now the world will be even more connected, and it is important to realize the results of actions around us. At the ACLU I will work to stop the atrocities that occur all over the world, from human rights violations in China to issues as close to home as American prisons in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The natural rights of the individual are inalienable, and the idea of someone taking those away sickens me. Once again, my vision all relates back to helping those who cannot help themselves. To me, the idea of being helpless is scary, and I cannot understand how people survive in such situations. The fear felt in these atrocities is unimaginable. I cannot relate to those affected, but I can relate to how a situation can seem unreal. Just as Jude the Obscure forgets where he is and gets lost in his thoughts, I too lose my grasp of reality. It is far too easy to lose track of what is real and what is not: “[I] thought you might come; but I got so deeply interested that I didn’t remember where I was.”⁴

If I have learned anything this year, it is that I am capable of anything, as long as I put my mind to it and stay committed. Ten years from now I will be a lawyer for the ACLU fighting for what I believe in. After all, I do believe that the only true measure of success is happiness, which as a lawyer I will achieve through following my passion. I must be “prepared not to predict the future but create it.”⁵

A picture truly is worth a thousand words – I can think of none to describe this picture. It feels so long ago and so much has changed since then.

A sharp turn was thrown in my path last week when my classmate Willie passed away. Everything that once seemed vital suddenly became incredibly insignificant. The world I knew spun out of control, and I lost all feeling and grasp of what was truly important. I could not write this essay without writing about Willie and everything he has taught my freshman world literature class. I feel blessed that I had the opportunity to know such an amazing person and saddened that I never knew him as well as I would have liked to. Only after it was too late did my classmates and I actually realize what we had been missing out on all along. Through this lesson I have realized the importance of taking advantage of every day and living life to the fullest.

Throughout the year we have learned as a class and bonded as a family. I know that I am not alone in feeling I have changed greatly and grown as a person through this year. Over this year the top of our course page displayed a picture of our predecessors, the previous year’s class at the “tree of life.” It has been a long, winding journey for our

E603B – Bump’s World Literature Class of 2005 -2006 on the “Tree of Life.”

class to get to the “tree of life” and now that we have surpassed that milestone we must realize what we want to do while we are there. Lately, I have realized the importance of taking advantage of every day and live life to its fullest. As I continue on my path, I will be taking quite a bit from this course and this family with me. I do not think I will ever be able to walk past a shell without pausing to look at it and pondering the familiar question, “Where am I going?” Due to this course I have seen the inside of the Office of the President of the University, discovered a hidden library in the tower, and visited countless places on campus that others do not even know exist. Each adventure we have partaken has resulted in my own personal growth. I realize that the future is unknown, but it is not uncertain. I will accomplish my goals. I will be a lawyer. I will change the world. I will never, however, forget how much this part of my world has changed me and I will always appreciate it.

Members of the family: Left – Rachel and I; Below: Me between the “brothers” (Brian and Ben) at Plan II formal.

Word Count: 1,601

Works Cited:

1. James Joyce, A Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man, 184.

2. Tom Wolfe, I am Charlotte Simmons, in Composition and Reading in World Literature E603A, ed. Jerome Bump (Austin: Jenn’s Copying and Binding, 2005), 370.

3. Ram Das and Paul Gorman, How Can I Help? in Composition and Reading in World Literature E603A, ed. Jerome Bump (Austin: Jenn’s Copying and Binding, 2005), 161.

4. Thomas Hardy, Jude the Obscure, 113.

5. Roy Spence, Our Core Values, in Composition and Reading in World Literature E603A, ed. Jerome Bump (Austin: Jenn’s Copying and Binding, 2005), 298.