Hello 7sagers,

I'm asking for thoughtful comments/advice on my personal situation. This is causing me tons of anxiety and I haven't been able to study these days and I need to study, like really really need to. Any thoughtful comments are appreciated :)

I am 100% confident in my decision to attend law school. This means so much to me. I will be filling out the part of the application where it asks if you have some factor which warrants special consideration. I really don't want to fill this out but I have no choice since my gpa is poor and I have no stand-out academic, or any, achievements.

A brief description of my situation:

I've had poor health compared to my peers for as long as I could remember. I just got a proper diagnoses and started treatment less than a year ago. My condition is "serious" but controllable. To elaborate, it causes many uncomfortable and embarrassing symptoms (but they should improve :) and I have to follow a strict diet but I can otherwise live a "normal" life. I've also gone through very poor mental health because my symptoms are embarrassing and I was bullied most of my school years. I also had a facial dis figuration for a few years and unfortunately, that led to abuse from family members on top of being bullied at school.

My poor mental health and fatigue (symptom of my medical condition) made getting through university very difficult. Although my gpa is bad, I am proud of it - more so than I would be if I hadn't gone through that (referential phrasing :) and had a 4.0 gpa.

I'm Canadian and will be applying in Canada. I'm concerned this information could harm my application more than it could help. My thinking is, after all, a school should MUCH prefer a healthy applicant with good numbers, over me ("unhealthy" with mediocre numbers). In fact, I doubt if they give "special consideration" at all because they place so much value on good numbers (as they should). I'm also concerned they will doubt my ability to finish law school, and then, doubt my ability to be a lawyer...am I being silly? Although I haven't had a panic attack in a few years, I am having mini ones just with the thought of having to write this, not to mention the personal statement.

If you have a brilliant idea about how I can write a good personal statement, please share. Obviously, I need to write about my situation because this has been my life. I just started thinking of how to write it in my head and stopped because...the facts alone sound like a sob story! I don't want my personal statement to sound like a sob story. I'm especially anxious because I'm not a great writer to begin with.

If anyone can provide some insight on the validity of my concerns, I would be grateful. If anyone is in a similar situation, maybe we can help each other out?

- sora