I met Sam during the early part of 1L. She was sitting in the Rowell Room knitting – this was a constant, throughout my year knowing her she was always knitting. I don’t know how to describe Samantha. I could use an endless list of adjectives – she was sweet, fun, brilliant, unique, exciting – and they’d all be true, but they also sting my ears as empty, hollow. Words without context, mere platitudes. They don’t describe who she was. They don’t tell you that she had spent years in Hollywood, chasing her dream of acting before coming back to Toronto and enrolling in law school. That she wanted to become an entertainment lawyer. That she wanted to do the JD/MBA, but because she had gone through such a unique path before arriving at law, she didn’t have the prerequisite four-year degree for Rotman.
A short illustration. In the middle of 1L, I got dumped hard by my girlfriend at the time. For a few months, I was a complete mess, an utter human wreck. And I remember, out of the blue, bumping into Sam in the hallway. She asked me how I was, and I gave her a rehearsed fine. She gave me a cockeyed look and I ended up pouring my heart out. I repeated this performance over the next few months on Skype with her and she always listened. Because that was who Sam was – a wonderful girl who you could open up to without fear of being judged, and who genuinely cared.
When I went into my second year, the MBA program took its toll and we drifted. I wish we hadn’t. I don’t know what she was going through over the last few weeks. I wish I did. My prayers go out to her and her family, because in a word, Samantha was wonderful.
