No one said law school was easy, but its reaching the point of me saying everyday 'kill me now' which was I ended up doing a few months before I left the working world. This isn't a whimsical, fly by the moment thing. Rather its the product of cumulative experiences from one semester to another.
I look back to one conversation I had with one of my favorite professors in law school. He described first years as the bright eyed, hopeful individuals who think that law school life is as shiny and bright as it is seen on TV. Years of Boston Legal, Estrada Impeachment Trial, and the Corona Impeachment Trial glamorized the profession to the level of Gossip Girl sensationalizing high school life. Then come their second year where they get the grades from the year before and see that life is not what it seems, become disappointed, see their numbers diminishing, and the general feeling of loss after seeing the class number literally halved. I'm on my third year now, some would say almost at the final stretch, so close, so close to reaching my goal or dooming my fate, asking myself once again do I really want to do this?
Political Science was marketed as the best undergraduate degree course back then. If you took it there's no other career track other than becoming a lawyer, otherwise you'd be stuck as a teacher, a researcher or a bank person, forever enduring the questions of why didn't you go to law school, questions which I endured when I was out there working. On one side half of the people I know in law school had PolSci degrees, but I think its more useful in practice if you had Accounting instead. At least you have the work cut out for you on subjects like Obligations and Contracts, Credit Transactions, and Corporation Law.
I am getting sidetracked.
Ah yes, the great halls of Malcolm Hall always looked pristine, imposing and tad bit intimidating before. Now sometimes I think of it as saddening. I wanted to call it home when I first entered but right now there are periods of revulsion. One professor refused to give me a grade because I cited another in our final paper and he found it insulting (due to a personal political feud). In the next year that professor made a guy kneel so that he would pass in the same subject that he refused to give me a grade in. Now he is a shoo in to be an Associate Justice in the Supreme Court. Now I wonder what it would take to win a case.
The year after that I found myself as an irregular student, going into fourth year and third classes, where the professors expect me to know the answers to subjects I have never taken before. Third year, still the odd man out especially with the re-blocking of the system. I feel like being the ultimate politician because I'm sure I've known entire batches by now. I'm happy to survive on a day to day existence.
Maybe I am suffering from the Facebook effect...
Every post on newsfeed shows all my friends getting married, spending summer in Paris, US, backpacking all over the ASEAN Countries, and here I am, here, getting by trying to keep my dignity intact against everyday onslaught of recitations, lack of sleep, and the generally different temperament of people in law school.
But at the end of the day even if Mom offered to ship me out of the country and not look back, i'm not quitting this until its finished. I don't want to wake up when I'm forty and realize how much I regret not finishing. Thanks love for reminding me that.
