The Ideal Leading me to Study Law The war in the former Yugoslavia is an intensely personal matter for me. I had, for some time, been more aware of the strife in Croatia than many of my peers. My family is originally from Zagreb. As the war progressed, my parents worried about relatives and friends whom they could no longer reach. My father gave up his medical practice in the summer of 1991 to volunteer his medical skills in Zagreb. Throughout this time, I struggled between my sense of responsibility to my relatives and "homeland" and my comfortable life as an American college student. Concentrating on classes and career plans became less important as the war progressed. As I read my father's letters during my senior year detailing the horrible conditions in Croatia, my grades went into a shameful decline. But my heart was nowhere near a textbook; it was at my father's side helping the victims of this international travesty. I didn't even look for a "career option" in the United States.
