Woo hoo!! I managed to survive my first essay quiz on Monday, a 10-page paper office memorandum on dog-bite/landlord liability cases on Tuesday, a 24hr migraine on Wednesday that resulted in no studying for the CivPro quiz on Thursday. Thankfully I will have a little time to recharge over the weekend before finding out the results of all three. Law school is nerve-wracking. You have NO IDEA if you're doing well or if you totally suck. Most of the time, you think you suck and then you get back the results and oftentimes you're right!
I've come to realize that you just have to surrender to the process and keep moving. One grade, whether good or bad, that only counts 7-10% of your grade is miniscule in the big picture (your final grade). We're all tasked with learning the language of law and we're all struggling to grasp the basic principles that serve as building blocks. Above all, we're learning to live with uncertainty. Uncertainty rules the day now and in the future during our legal careers. We can never be certain if a case will be won or lost but we have do everything that we can to argue every possibility and be prepared for every possibility in the alternative. It's all part of the journey.
Over and over again, I remind myself that the journey is a "rite of passage." Websters' defines rite of passage as "a ritual or ceremony signifying an event in a person's life indicative of a transition from one stage to another, as from adolescence to adulthood."
Every lawyer has to go through it. It's not meant for everyone. It's hard as hell. Without a doubt, it is the most difficult thing I've ever done. I've been successful at everything I've ever taken on. I was one of the top marketing students in undergrad. I was successful as a marketing director for a nationwide service company. I rose through the ranks quickly especially considering I was much younger than my colleagues in management. I was a competitive athlete at age 30 and placed at every 5k, triathlon, or mountain bike competition that I entered. The older I got, the better I became. I believed in myself. I knew I would do well because I had always done well. I was always willing to work harder than anyone else.
Law school changed all of that. Now, I have no idea if I will succeed. My work ethic? Everyone works hard. Everyone. And everyone is smart. No, brilliant. I'm both proud and intimidated at the same time. It's crazy. I do know that if I make it to the end, the day I graduate will be the proudest moment of my life because I will have struggled every step of the way. I would have ridden this rollercoaster and enjoyed the rush of standing in a long line to take that ride and riding with my eyes wide open and screaming with my hands in the air.
