From LA to L.A.
by Christine Hoang, Southwestern day student
I first heard of Southwestern when I came out to L.A. for summer vacation, a month before entering my senior year in as an undergraduate at Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge. During that summer, I met a Southwestern law student who encouraged me to visit the school's law library. I thought that was a very odd sight-seeing recommendation, but when he took me on a tour of the Southwestern library the next day, I thought it was beautiful and I was very impressed.
When I returned to Louisiana, I began applying to law schools, keeping west coast schools in mind. In the fall, I went to a law school fair at Tulane University in New Orleans where I met Anne Wilson, Director of Admissions at Southwestern. I told her of my interest in the field of Entertainment Law and was pleased to hear that Southwestern had a great Entertainment Law curriculum as well as externship program. I was also very attracted to the scholarship opportunities Southwestern gave to incoming students.
I traveled to California again where I went to another law school fair and visited a few southern California Law schools, including a return trip to Southwestern. I stepped into Christopher Darden's Criminal Law class that morning. To my surprise, the class discussion engaged me and helped demystify my conceptions of the law school experience. A few weeks after I flew back to LSU, I received a phone call from an Admissions student worker. She asked me how my law school application experience was and consoled me that it would all soon be over. She answered a lot of my questions about Southwestern and the Entertainment Law field; her genuine student input was an encouraging and persuasive factor in my deciding to attend Southwestern. A few months after sending in my application, I not only received an acceptance letter, but also an award letter granting me a John Schumacher Minority Leadership scholarship.
Following my graduation from LSU, I took my first trip to Vietnam to discover my roots. After a month of living in the south of Vietnam, I left realizing the opposite of what I came there to discover. Instead of discovering what it meant to be Vietnamese, I began to appreciate what it meant to be American.
After my trip, I moved to California and stayed with my aunt and uncle in West Covina. After a month of apartment hunting, I found a humble, simple, yet cozy and most importantly, inexpensive room in the home of a nice 75 year-old Culver City woman. I found this room rental through Southwestern's Admissions department, which sent me regular notices of housing openings.
Finding the right law school, going through the application process, and moving can be overwhelming at times, but my contacts with the Southwestern Admissions Office helped me make my transition to Los Angeles smooth.
