A New Chapter

And who’s going to blame me for being confused anyway? Dammit, I had it all figured out like a year ago and now I’m not sure about anything. Is this a part of growing up? Celebrate because you swear you have finally figured it out, only to stand on the sidelines and watch your theories crash and sink against the jagged rocks of reality.

The sea analogy is perfect because I feel like I have been drifting out at sea for a year now, going nowhere in particular, waiting to see land, waiting to be rescued. Since exams other law students have come out of hiding to admit that their soul was crushed too by the reality of what we’ve gotten ourselves into. I’m convinced that the practice of law is much like law school in that both will leave no time to be a human being. Unless one stands up for themselves, they’ll just be worked into the ground.

I have worked my entire post high school career to make sure that I didn’t fall into any of life’s traps- premarital pregnancy, pyramid schemes, get arrested for something stupid, become a communications major, etc, etc. I, like everyone else, have failed a couple of times, but nothing that I couldn’t recover from. But they finally got me. Law School. People can sing praises to the rooftops about how great it is to think like a lawyer, etc. But I know from experience that at the end of the day it just puts you in debt and sucks your life away as you try to pay off that debt. I don’t care—I said it.

But it’s okay. It’s better to know the problem now so I can begin to fix it. I’m not going to practice law forever, and starting now, I am already planning my great escape. I figure as long as I stick close enough to business, when the time comes, I can transition to business with a quick MBA degree and some solid networking. That’s the plan.

Outside of the topic of law school, your protagonist has become a shell of his former self. I’m not about anything anymore. I don’t have any aspirations or goals. I feel incapable of finishing what I’ve started. And I feel like I’m going to end up living the rest of my life without becoming the amazing person I used to burn with passion and anticipation to become. I don’t know where these feelings of inadequacy and hopelessness came from. As you can see I’ve tried to fight them off, but they keep coming back.

I think a lot of my unhappiness comes from the fact that I am highly aware of my own mortality. Sometimes I feel like I’m going to die of old age next weekend. I mean time flies and I’m getting impatient. I’m already 24 and I haven’t even accomplished 4 major goals in life. Don’t even get me started on working through a serious relationship. I am watching the best years of my life fly by while I’m alone and I can’t seem to do anything about it.

That’s why I get frustrated in class, I really do feel like I’m literally wasting my time. If they would just tell us what we need to know, I could use all that extra time that would have otherwise gone to listening to my classmates get interrogated about the facts on something useful and lasting. No one understands though, they probably just think I’m lazy and have no work ethic. Please, I’m so above that right now.

I need to calm down and go back to the basics: Who am I? What do I wish to accomplish? What is my idea of a successful life? What activities would make me proud of myself? Am I strong enough to have faith in my abilities? Am I patient enough to see it through? What am I about??

Time is running out, I know it is. And I don’t want to be wallowing in the purgatory of character development until the end of my life. Law school and work are a perfect poison to induce my most feared tragedy as they are great at distracting you from, you. Working day and night, always stressed out, always a deadline, always competing with your classmates and co-workers is a great way to burn years of your life away without ever once stopping to say, “wow, this is my life. This is how I’m spending my only life.” Trust me when I say no one will even hint at the problem because a) people are selfish and they don’t care about you or how your spending your life and b) you’re just there to make money for them anyway. So again, unless we get off the treadmill, we will never be able to work on the serious business of life as the treadmill is not going to stop by itself.

I’m tired of looking in the mirror and seeing a shell of my former self. I need to get back to work. It’s not too late to rebuild myself stronger and eventually surpass myself when I was in my prime last year. I can do it. I’m not going to get manipulated and bullied around by law school and law firms while they hold a carrot in front of my face to keep me running and jumping through hoops. They can keep their honors, and their awards, and their pluses, and their prestige clubs, and every other tool they use to get us to work harder for them. One of the first premises I built my life on after entering college was that I would never be a statistic. Despite all that I was told and warned against in college I held onto that, never being discouraged. But for some reason once I got here that resolve was shattered and I finally gave into the mindset that I was no different than anyone else and that I would suffer the same fate as the majority of people in my situation. I allowed myself to think that I was the one who was wrong and that it was entirely unreasonable for me to believe I would learn all of these languages, live a comfortable life style, excel at various hobbies, travel, and spend time with my family and friends. I came here and started to believe that those were all dreams which only served as evidence of my immaturity. Law school educated me on life in the real world: work until you die. Forget about all the things you ever thought you would do. Forget about the person you thought you would become.

Now we’re getting to the heart of it. I am the way I am now, because I allowed law school and the other legal institutions to brainwash me. Although they succeeded in convincing my mind of that fate, they couldn’t convince my spirit and the result was such a severe dissonance that I could never fully accept the story they fed me. And now I have officially rejected it one year later. I’m going to go back to what I was doing before I got here and this time I’m pissed that I fell off the path for so long, so easily. I will work with twice the resolve to build the life that I have always envisioned for myself.

After a year of complaining and helplessness it’s refreshing to finally feel the warmth of renewed resolve well up in my chest. It’s satisfying to feel a familiar confidence return to me. And most of all its encouraging to feel the hope that anything I so desire is possible if I decide it is.

This is the start of a new chapter.

This is where I get serious.