Why do you want to be a lawyer?
I want to help make a difference in people's lives. As cliché as that may sound, it's what I genuinely want to do. I have grown up around service and I believe I have been called by a higher power to be a leader. A good leader positively impacts the lives of those around him, and for me, there is no better way to do that than through law school.
What did you do before going into law school?
Throughout high school, I did a whole lot of nothing. Coasted through most of it. During college, I worked the entire time I was there for the student newspaper at my alma mater, the UTB/TSC Collegian, starting out as a reporter and copy-editor and eventually moving up to Sports Editor. I also was on-call as a photographer, a videographer and web anchor.
I also briefly had my own radio show on internet radio during my last semester in college.
Non-media related, I was a court appointed special advocate for Cameron County and briefly tutored history at the university for a summer.
After college, I spent some time in Spain studying European law at the University of Granada before returning back to Texas to work as a paralegal for the South Texas Pro Bono Asylum Representation Project. Working there was an eye-opening experience that strengthened my resolve to be a lawyer, as I had to talk to and help out men and women who were seeking asylum in the United States and had no money to hire a good lawyer.
Why South Texas College of Law?
After November of 2009, when I had the chance to visit the school, STCoL went from "a school I heard about at a career fair on campus" to "oh my God I want to come here". My three top choice schools were South Texas, UH-Law Center and SMU-Dedman. All three were great schools, but South Texas was the only one with spring admission. When I visited the school and heard some of the professors talk about their jobs and their classes, I knew that it would be a great place to go to.
And it's in an awesome area and city, I mean since I first started thinking about law school, I knew I wanted to go to a place where I'd be able to drive by and see skyscrapers all over. Hell, I earned it
How did you come to call yourself "Eagleheart" ?
It's my favorite song. I started using Eagleheart first as my name on facebook because I needed something for people to be able to differentiate between my father and myself whenever they were adding us (we share the same name) and 'Esteban' and 'Eagleheart' both start with the same letter. Afterwards, I began using it a lot more, in blogs, in my radio show and eventually it got to the point where it became a great nickname to use.
The Valley is NOT Zion! ZION IS THE PROMISED LAND! Why do you call it Zion?
It's a little bit of a paradox since everyone knows that Brownsville is as far from the Promised Land as Phoenix is from Paris. A non-voting population, literacy rate in the dumps, administrators of dubious loyalties and ethics, and a deplorable lack of things to do on the weekends. Matamoros, for obvious reasons, isn't that much better.
But as the song goes, I find my heaven spewing from the mouth of hell.
I was born and raised here. I met my best friends here. I've run through the entire range of human emotion here in the land of the perpetual summer. No matter where I go in life, this will always be my Zion.
