I went to law school, hated virtually every minute of it, dropped out, dropped back in, and bitched and moaned like a toddler. But law school ultimately allowed me to do precisely the job I always most wanted to do: be a writer. I could not do what I do today -- cover the courts and the law -- unless I had gone to law school.
The huge irony is that if I had known back in law school how happy I would be 8 years later, I'd have had the time of my life! I would have loved my classes, taken more interesting ones, never gone to an event I hated, done even more clinical work, learned to salsa dance, and made better friends. It would have been like undergrad, but in better shoes. The reason I got stuck was because I let myself feel stuck, thinking that unless I treated law school the way everyone else treated it -- as a dark tunnel to the world of corporate law -- I was doomed.
The best thing about law school is that it really will blow open a thousand career doors for you. But you need to see them. You need to tap your way along the dark tunnel -- feeling for soft spots, and listening for folks on the other side to tap back. You need to be true to your heart; true to why you went in the first place. And you need to do whatever it takes to fight the fear and the sucking noise that will otherwise pull you into a life you may not want.
Wednesday, March 17, 2004
More Law School Talk
A symposium entitled Being and Becoming a Law Student found here. A worthwhile read for anyone who can find the time or is willing to procrastinate with even more reading. Here's a sampling:
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