The Great Change: Turning Cathy into a Lawyer

I've been working on these posts for a couple of weeks now, trying to figure out how to articulate what's on my mind. It's hard because there's a hesitance to post anything that might be tinged with negativity, especially these days as I start looking for a job and expect possible employers to wander by. But I am committed to telling this story of what it is like to be in law school honestly, and that requires talking about the downs as much as it requires talking about the ups. To the extent that this blog serves as a chronicle of the law school experience in a way that can possibly provide a benefit to anyone else (and I have reason to believe it already has) it needs to be complete. Or at least not artificially peppy simply because the bad things aren't discussed. Besides, the ups are contingent on getting past the downs - without talking about the low points it's hard to really get a sense of the accomplishments.

Anyway, what I've been meaning to talk about is how surprisingly "blah" I've been feeling for a couple of weeks, ever since the semester effectively ended. I first noticed it a few days later in Memphis where I was supposedly taking this celebratory trip. "Shouldn't I be really happy right now?" I thought. Then why wasn't I?

The feeling carried through graduation. Apart from the portion of the ceremony where I walked across the stage to get my degree without falling on my face, I found the whole thing disappointing. Part of this, I decided, was because I felt like I was finishing without distinction: no awards, no cum laude by my name, and I didn't even get to make the student speech (something I'd really wanted to do with my polished rhetorical skills). I was suddenly awash with a sensation that I must have gone astray at some point. I went to law school to make something out of myself, not to be another indistinct face in the crowd. But that's how I felt. So what had gone wrong?

Well, nothing. I mean, nothing bad. I didn't fail at law school. Nor did I get through by merely the skin of my teeth. I did have lots of accomplishments, just not of the kind that easily translated into particular distinctions at graduation. The awards were won by people who far and away deserved those particular recognitions, and as far as the speech was concerned I did prepare a decent one that made it to the final round of judging before another worthy speech was chosen. I begrudge no one for any of this, not even myself.

There is, of course, the grade thing. Ignorance was indeed bliss, because at graduation I realized that though I may not know my GPA, I inadvertently inferred from all the cum laudes that apparently I wasn't in the top third of the class. Do I care? Well, I care to the extent that I'm forced to care by people for whom grades are taken as great proxies of worth. I think that's silly, but silly or not that's what some people do and as a result certain doors to future opportunities may be open or closed to me based on them. So I care not because they should matter, but because they apparently do matter.

But what I really care about with respect to my grades, something I hadn't thought about in a while, is why I couldn't manage to make the top third. Well, it doesn't all bother me. For instance there were certain things I couldn't control, like the vagarities of grading and the fact that, to the extent grades and rank are relative, I went to school with lots and lots of smart and talented people. So while I might have objectively kicked ass, if my classmates kicked more ass they'd get better grades on the curve and a higher rank. OK, that's all fine. Then there were things I could have controlled yet didn't necessarily, like taking better notes or focusing more on fewer courses. I could kick myself a little, but I chose breadth over depth and I'm willing to live with the results of my decisions on how to spend my energies.

What bothered me at graduation, though, and what I hadn't thought about in a while, was the effect that my first year roommate had on my overall GPA. Let's not kid ourselves: I wouldn't have gotten straight A's. And I'm all for taking responsibility for the things I could control. But first year put me in a hole that I was never able to work my way out of, and through absolutely no fault of my own.

I worked incredibly hard. I acted responsibly (no drinking or late night cavorting, etc.). I read, I studied, I did all the things you're supposed to do. But over the course of the year I was worn down to a nub. I couldn't control when I slept, because the roommate would wake me up at all hours. I couldn't control what I ate, because the kitchen became too disgusting to cook in so I could only eat pre-packaged food. I couldn't control when I relaxed, because even ensconced in my room I could not get away from her noise or cigarette smoke. Law school is plenty intense, and I was totally up for that. But everyone knows you need some refuge from it, yet I had none. Not only was my home no place to recharge, but it ended up a place to fester in impotent distress as I endured not only the impact of her behavior but the daily "fuck you" slap in the face her refusal to do anything about it entailed.

I did what I could and tried to ride it out. And after the year was up I tried to keep pressing forward and not looking back. But at graduation, as I felt all my work had come to naught, I couldn't help but look back at it and wonder what I could have achieved in law school if I'd not been so hobbled my first year. I'm really not exaggerating its impact (as it foreclosed various 2L job possibilities and did a nasty number on my self-esteem), nor am I exaggerating how horrible or sapping the situation was. Just thinking about that year makes me want to cry. And throw up. It was one of the worst years of my life. In fact it's amazing I did as well as I did. But, you know, when one of the members of my study group was cum laude, and the other was magna cum laude, and you couple that with the fact that I was neither an idiot nor lazy, it helps support the theory that there was something particular to my situation that year that prevented me from succeeding to my fullest capacity, and that's what's most upsetting about it. It doesn't really matter what the actual grades are, or whether I missed the top third by two people or two hundred. Because of her I never really got to find out just what I could do.

But what's done is done, and I think that's the real reason why I feel bad in general: law school is done. Over. No more. No more semesters, no more opportunities to achieve. Not just in terms of GPA, but in terms of any of the opportunities law school has to offer. I may not be thrilled by the statistical distillation of my time there, but I loved being there. And so, yeah, I was relieved to have the semester end, but there's no relief in having the whole thing end. It was the definition of my life for three years: I was a law student. Every day I got to learn the law. It was a decadent existence, and I'll miss that. But more importantly, it forces me to face a question I currently feel unprepared to answer: now what?

Part II: The Donut

Edit 5/31: Law school is a process, and every day is a new day, with new ways to think about things. This particular post is fairly sour, having been written at a time when I felt fairly sour. Knowing that I would probably feel differently later I still opted to post it because it did capture a truth of the time, both about the way I was feeling generally and the specific subject of my gripes, and I felt that was important to include in my story. I stand by that decision, but I offer the following caveat to readers who might be tempted to overread this as a definitive portrait of me. It's not; it's a snapshot. And only a partial one at that. Please then do read the other connected posts and the comment below for a more complete (though still necessarily limited) view.