United Nations and Human Rights

When I was in high school, I was inspired by two people to become a lawyer: my Grandpa and Ally McBeal. I wanted to understand why the world worked the way it did, and in the earnest way only a teenager can, figure out how to make it better. By college, I had decided to become the President of the United Nations General Assembly. I had absolutely no clue how one went about doing that.

Alas, life went in a very different direction. I married young, had children, and spent most of my twenties and thirties building my life around my family. But I never stopped wanting to learn. So I did law school online. I hated the isolation of online law school, but it allowed me to keep studying through what can only be described as pregnancy hell when a traditional law school simply wasn't realistic for me. (That's a whole other post.)

I was so grateful to attend legal study abroad programs. It was the first time I was able to articulate my thoughts and speak them out loud to others. In 2010, I took my daughter to Salzburg, Austria for an International Fundamental Human Rights class taught by the (then) United States Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy.

Then in 2014, I studied Education as a Human Right, International Human Rights Law, and Human Rights in Islam at the Irish Center for Human Rights in Galway, Ireland. Both my children came with me.

Looking back, I realized I used to overpluck my eyebrows and I should NOT cut the bangs I've been considering. And I also realized my children didn't keep me from seeing the world, they became part of how I saw it. They happily wandered unfamiliar cities with me, and they grew up watching their mother remain interested in things that had nothing to do with being their mother.

I never did work for the United Nations (although who knows, there's still time). But I was able to tour it recently with that little girl I took with me on these adventures. She is now studying international affairs herself, and our conversations have become one of my favorite parts of knowing her. I get to live vicariously through her classes, debate about the world with her, and discover that neither of us has quite figured out how to fix it yet.

We're still working on it.