A 1L perspective
Towards the end of the first week, I began to feel overwhelmed. It was after a week of non-stop activities: Legal Methods during the day, social gatherings in the evening, readings at night, mandatory meetings over the weekend. Standalone, every event was perfectly enjoyable. When I combined them, however, I got this sickening feeling that every moment of my waking life revolved around law school.
This feeling never truly went away. As September rolled in, the readings piled up, the events were replaced by clubs, and the weekend gatherings became assignments. Life and law school became an unholy chimera of stress and emptiness (with the eternal words of LJ Denning sprinkled on top). I remember thinking, “Old Peter Beswick signed away his coal business … did I sign away my life?”
I come from a STEM background. Engineering, to be precise. It was a grotesquely large program with over 2500 students at any given time. Every class was held in 400-student lecture halls filled to the brim. It was intensely impersonal: nobody stayed after class to ask questions; nobody joined engineering-related clubs; nobody went to speaker-events unless there was an explicit guarantee of free pizza.
In other words, it allowed for a fully compartmentalized life that gave me the option to pursue meaningful things beyond engineering. When my future career didn’t depend on my membership in clubs, I had the freedom to start businesses and run companies. When my life achievement wasn’t judged on the quality of summer employment, I had the opportunity to explore my interests while making ends meet. I was a technical writer for one summer, a web developer for another, and a start-up founder for yet another. Still, I found internship, I graduated, and I am just as employable as an engineer as anyone else.
Is it too much to want the same in law school?
Law school is for extroverts. Those who fit in are those who speak up in class, those who enjoy participating, and those who are itching to leave the house to do stuff. But what about everyone else? All of us introverts and ambiverts, the literal silent majority, what must we do to properly enjoy our three years here? This I do not know. I do know one thing, however: the answer isn’t to fill our every waking minute with law-school-related things. We need a healthy school-life balance. School here, life there, and a healthy semi-permeable membrane in between.
Go home, paint, sing, write for UV, do whatever it is that you do to feel like yourself again. Sell Shamwows door-to-door in the summer. Trade penny stocks at 9:30AM every weekday. Go ham at AYCE sushi. Life is more than what belongs on a resumé. Remember that you are studying law out of genuine interest. A job is nice, and it may even be the end goal, but if the result were to replace the journey, then everyone would be taking screenshots of Google street view.
I realized something in November, and thankfully it was not too late: not every club requires participation, not every job posting demands stress, and not every event implores attendance. I can choose to participate in things that spark my interest. I can choose to have free time.
Who I am is not “a law student.” I am an individual who happens to be studying law—and I want a life outside law school.