How My Community Prepared Me for Law School Erin Walker

When I was nine years old, my father proposed my first official, self-building challenge. I had fallen in love with a five-year-old pygmy goat named Jake while at the county fair in Cuyahoga County, Ohio. Jake and I were even on the evening news together when his owner allowed me to parade him around for visitors to admire. At the time, I was a new member of the Bedford Clovers 4-H Club. I had gone to the fair to show off my rabbit, which was easy to keep in our suburban neighborhood. At the end of fair week, however, all I could talk about was Jake, Jake, Jake. That was when my dad posed the challenge. He said, “If you can find out where and how to get them, then we will get you some pygmy goats.”

Of course, he never thought I could actually do it. I started by using the family computer to find the National Pygmy Goat Association. There I was able to find a list of breeders, and I wrote them a letter about how much I loved the goats and wanted one of my very own. I proceeded to use my father’s fax machine to fax the letter to the breeders. One woman, Penny Clark, faxed me back. She told me about a baby goat she was looking to sell for seventy-five dollars. I presented my dad with the information I had collected, and he was...