I left 2018 with a lot of conflicting opinions about my law school and my potential for success. Deep down, I started the fall term feeling wanted and special, though nervous. But I ended those classes feeling inadequate, pessimistic, and neglected.
Yet it was the feelings that were in between these two points of time as well as during exam preparation that I remember the most. I worried a ton. My academic performance. Whether my professors liked me. Student groups. My health. My family. The goals and crises raced through my head.
Although I needed to reflect on forgotten lessons after completing exams, I was still the most optimistic I had been since before law school. A growing tension had been released. The first run at law school felt over. There seemed to be less impetus to worry. I had taken some losses. But I had remembered the lessons and would not face many new issues, right?
Wrong. Every worry does not magically go away because you have finished one term. Though I feel more confident in myself to be a better student and person this year, the new expectations for myself have only produced an evolved set of worries. And here are three…
Summer 2019
Well, so much for a real break. I spent a large amount of my free time preparing applications to various summer positions. In fact, I had even sent some applications out before my final exams. I thought this was the one place in law school where I would wind up quickly on top of things.
Wrong. I am still without a job. The rejection by some places stings but the silence from every other employer slowly burns you from the inside. Some of my friends had jobs before I started applying. Others started weeks after I did yet now have jobs.
And no, you will not make me feel better by emailing me that most students still do not have a job but will surely get one. The worry is not about “if” but more about “when.” Of course, applying as soon as possible is ideal, but when your first wave has gone cold, there comes a rush of conflicting advice about which positions are still worth applying for and how competitive these positions really are. This advice not only contradicts itself but is also proven wrong altogether by the very actions of my fortunate colleagues who now know where they will be this summer. Congrats to them.
Fall grades
I finished my last exam thinking that I would let the pain of learning Fall material wash off my brain. I was happy to think about never having to think about these courses in 2019. And that these grades would be forgotten by the time I started my new classes.
Wrong again. I did not even bother to check whether my professors were partying with AALS in New Orleans, but they might as well have been. Fall courses usurp the month of January from your actual responsibilities. Everyone keeps wondering when the grades will come. And when they come, a new flurry of questions and comments arise.
Those who do well cannot help but let it be known at some point. Some let it slowly seep out into the community. Others toxically assault the student body with an extreme glee that their insecurities previously displayed openly in the classroom have now been ostensibly validated by a few professors. And those who do not do as well end up being the only ones genuinely supporting the others. But many of them still inject the community with their own brand of toxicity by challenging of the authenticity and deservingness of others’ achievements.
But the worst part is that most of us, including myself, stay in a private silence. If we are in between the best and worst, the most one will hear us say is “how good is good?” If we are on either end of the spectrum, we say nearly nothing at all. The solitude pains me at least. We poured our hearts into something to the point where we feel too vulnerable to open up to the friends we have grown to love. And if your family is like mine, they will either not understand what you are going through or would sound supportive no matter what you say. That somehow makes you feel worse.
New Classes
But even as these new worries came screeching into reality, I still found myself saying,, “But wait Earl, at least you have a new set of courses to reset with.” And indeed, with a little bit more autonomy and a less stringent schedule, it was easy for me to think that jobs and past grades could not shape how I feel about my new classes.
Very wrong. How do I look for a job while balancing the demands of my new classes? How do I learn from my past mistakes in these new classes without reliving the pain of my past?
Even without this debilitating, involuntary reminiscence, new classes have still brought new worries. I thought I had seen a wide enough range of personalities with my first set of professors. But each of them has already thrown me off balance. The training wheels have also been taken off and it feels people have gone from “nothing matters” to “everything mattered, too late.”
In short, this entire law school experience feels like a set up. Already, the first term has been far from the worst. I hope I do end up having the grit to overcome all these law school worries. But I am done thinking I will ever stop worrying at all. Come to think of it, worrying is how I got into law school.
Earl Grey (not his real name) is currently a 1L at a T14 law school. You can reach him by email at HotTeaForEveryone@gmail.com.
Tales From An Unsuspecting T14 1L: New Year, New Worries curated from Above the Law
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