The Spewing Forth Effect

I have heard many former law students say that the first year was the worst. That there is a tendency in fact to want to quit after the first year. I will call this the spewing forth effect. Probably just because that puts the best picture in my head of what I feel like regarding law school.

Here is the thing. This spew forth effect has hit me earlier than most it would appear. Contemplating going through last semester again, for this semester, and then for four more semesters brings on perhaps the greatest desire to vomit that I have ever felt. Except it isn't even like a body vomit, it is like an entire desire to relocate to a small island in the middle of nowhere, change my name, hope to find some kind of respite or just die type of vomit feeling.

But the strangest part of it is that I wouldn't say law school is hard. It isn't that the academics are soooooo challenging. It isn't even that the workload is SOOOOOO intense. I guess it's just the endless mind game. Knowing that you need to keep coming day after day in the hopes that one day you can pay off your student loans. At this point, I think that is really the take home message that I have received. There is no magic in law school, at least not yet.

I guess it feels sort of like Christmas morning without Santa or the Baby Jesus or presents or family or cookies or carrots for the reindeer. There is no feeling of hope in law school. Save one exception. There was one single professor...one glimmer of faint aspiration, last semester. His name was Lincoln Davies, and I am only realizing right now that he probably saved my law school life.

Your whole life you grow up to be something, something great. Something inspirational. Something that really makes a difference. Kids at young ages want to be firemen or doctors or movie stars, and I suppose I believe this is because they can see, young as they are, that these professions have influence.

Law. You would think, also has influence. In fact, I think that it just might, if you can get through the law school part of law. Lincoln Davies' closing lecture, finally touched on this. It said that he had once doen something for someone because of law that meant something, and that each of us could do the same. WHY IS THIS NOT THE MESSAGE OF EVERY CLASS EVER TAUGHT IN LAW SCHOOL?

Instead, we have endless mandatory meetings and classes that teach us how to get a job, any job, some job, so that we can pay off loans. So that we can afford the debt we have incurred to just try and be this profession. Too often, we are told not to "jump off the roof," not to "kill ourselves." Well, awesome. Thank you for that, but maybe, just maybe, this wouldn't be such an attractive prospect for so many if more teachers talked about how law can do good. Can change lives. Can change our lives. And not just the money part of our lives, but the actual living part. The part where you interact with other people. Maybe if law, as it is taught in law school, encompassed some kind of nobility beyond just making money, MAYBE the profession would become something magical. Something to aspire to. Something that inspires positive action rather than cynicism.

I know Atticus Finch was a fictional character, so I suppose you could say shame on me for wanting to become a lawyer because of him...but I would rather spend my next five semesters envisioning a future like his than setting my course to fulfill a loan repayment plan.

Truly great people result from lives led in the pursuit of dreams becoming realities not realities becoming their dreams. There is more substance in me striving for a seemingly unattainable goal than settling for the pragmatic purposeless pittance paying prospect presently purported as the substance of success in my area of academic study. I hope to never stop trying to push my contribution in the world from mundane to meaningful. Ideally, this will mean paying back loans while helping people.

Either way, I will best law school. It will have to quit me before I quit it. I think we all know law school needs me ... and it would appear after repeated answers to prayers that I need it.

So begins the present rivalry of my life. For now, Bekah 0: Law School 0, I'll keep you posted...