Why do you want to study law? Please answer within 3,000 characters.

When I first stepped into ___, I thought my life would be set as I committed my career to the finance industry. I was enamored of the intellectual challenge as I navigated through complex varieties of investment products, and resolved day-to-day portfolio analysis and operational framework issues for both ____ itself and its underlying investments. What I did not anticipate, was the wave of discriminatory employment practices based on gender, race and nationality that I witnessed and at times experienced myself from management at ____.

Most notably, in September 2022 I was hit by a truck in the middle of the street during work, and that’s where the nightmare began. I applied for paid sick leave like any other colleague would have, after having been sent home by paramedics, and my manager denied me sick leave despite having witnessed me falling to the ground. I experienced concussion and was too dizzy to work, but my leave request meant nothing but “less than ideally productive” to my manager.

When I fell to the ground, in my own house, again, while attempting to check my work email under my manager’s instruction, it became my last straw.

I knew this can’t be right.

My instinct was to get back up and continue to work. But after that fleeting thought, it occurred to me that no one, ever, tried to educate me on my rights in the workplace.

What DO I do when my manager clearly violates the law? Where DO I look when I can’t get help from an attorney, as average citizens like me, wouldn’t’t have one standing by at hand?

At the time, I had no answers to any of these questions. But I am certainly aware, that every minute someone in a common workplace is as ignorant as I was, every second an employer is able to get away with labor code violations and profit from our lack of such, much needed knowledge, we will be losing lives, we will be losing dignity, and we will be losing hope of our future when we teach our next generations on how to survive, how to physically survive, in a modern workplace.