"Law School Does Not Define You"

My torts professor last fall would always remind us of this on Friday afternoons, along with weekend homework to call our friends and loved ones. It bothered me, mostly because of the assumption that there was any possibility I would let law school define me or fail to call those people, and because I felt patronized by someone who was supposed to be teaching me the difference between assault and battery; "I didn't sign up for Stuart Smiley Life Lessons!" I would write in my notes.

I've been thinking about it a lot lately, though. I came to law school with some very concrete views about what was important to me. First, I need to be happy. I need to be a regular person and enjoy my life as it happens; I refuse to "put off" being happy for three years, in the hopes that it will bring some big payoff in the end. I could get hit by a bus tomorrow, and if I do, I don't want to have spent the last 1, 2 or 3 years of my life closeted away, pale as a sheet of paper, because I haven't seen the sun since my first day of Contracts. It's just.not.worth it. Being happy, for me, includes spending a lot of time enjoying things like hot coffee, newspapers, fiction, trees, birds, running around in very very slow attempts at exercise, listening to loud country music, dancing, singing off-key, playing with my cat, attempting to cook, doodling in the edges of my notebooks, getting really mad about politics, and so on. I need those things. I could live without them, but I don't want to. And I don't have to. I can put them off for a few weeks at finals time, but there's no point to life, FOR ME, if everything you do is just payment for something that may never happen.

Second, I don't think who I am has anything to do with how well I do at certain, very limited tests (such as, law school exams). It may be easier for me to say, since I DID do well on them, but had I failed at law school, I don't think I would give up on myself. I would still be the same person, with the same qualities, good and bad, that make me who I am. I would not judge my friends to be better or more worthy if they got good grades, nor would I think they were lacking or deficient in any way if they didn't happen to do as well on those exams. The thing is, in the grand scheme of things, law school is a blip. There are so many more important things in the world, and even in my life, than law school. Like my family, my friends, my sanity, and a whole list of other things for which, if necessary, I'd leave tomorrow and not look back. Don't get me wrong, I truly am enjoying this, but it's not the be all end all of my life, and so even though I was ecstatic about my grades, after an hour of screaming and dancing in my studio, I went back to being who I was - me. I still never think I will succeed at things until I do, I still want to have basically everything and get very frustrated with my biological timeline and its limitations. I still want to help people and pay back all of the good things that have happened to me in my life, and have a whole gaggle of children and puppies and bake cakes and be a super power career woman and possibly be elected to a legislature somewhere and maybe write a book or two. That's right. And I would STILL be that person if I had gotten B's. Or C's. Or if I had failed! I would be really intensely upset, but I'd still be ME.

So, I'm kind of glad my professor decided to point out this danger, because as I go through this lovely, ridiculous, intense process, gain and lose friends, and agonize over the future, I know she wasn't talking to me, and I intend to keep it that way.

I'm going to go eat a cannoli now.