Meiling An

My name is Meiling An, and I graduated from University of Minnesota Law School for Master of Law (LL.M.), which is my second law degree on May 14th, 2016. My long term goal is improving the public interest legal system in China. I am from China, but my ethnicity is Korean, which means my grandparents moved from Korean Peninsula to China when they were young in 1940s. I grew up in Korean Chinese community until I went into college for my undergraduate first law degree. Therefore, before I went into Peking University Law School in Beijing, all of my education was in Korean, and ever since I moved to Beijing, all of my law education was in Chinese. It was a very challenging experience, because a) Peking University Law School is TOP 1 law school in China, b) I was treated as the same as native- Chinese speaking students even though Chinese was NOT my first language. This experience was extremely valuable for me when I was in U of M law school to study law in my THIRD language, because I was so used to study in non-native language that I know what to focus on, and how to deal with the large amount of information and stress. I chose the most challenging law school course, constitutional law 2, which is for second, third year law students the very first semester, and then, the next semester, besides working on five law courses at law school, I started to learn my fourth language French, and at the same time, after 6 rounds of interviews and writing assessments, I have got a job from Washington DC environmental law consultant firm. Friends, classmates and families are usually asking me why I am working so hard to do everything, my answer is, my unique experiences forced me to face extra challenges at first, and now, I am just so used to challenge myself and enjoy the sense of achievement every time I accomplish anything. My long term goal is improving the law in China, but I still have so many well-scheduled short term goals so far and I am looking forward to seeing my improvements for the next five years in the US.