Absterabs: December 2010

Saturday, December 25, 2010

another kardashian card

love kourtney's gown. and the mom's gown is the same one heidi klm wore when she was pregnant but it's so pretty!

love the outfit, hate the print

glee is getting SO inconsistent

coz my parents have the beatles on car radio loop

in honor of the really full moon a couple of days ago

cliff notes version for ny fashion

Law School Rant: dated September 18, 2008

unearthing some memories right here!

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so lately, i've been thinking a lot. (and you can tell because i rarely blog about my feelings and thoughts in a public website but there you go). what am i doing in law school?

it's a recurring question in my head? why am i in law school? the first reason i usually give is that i've wanted to be one since i was seven years old. pretty young, right? pretty ambitious... but right now, if i could do one thing, i would go back in time and smack my little seven year old face and tell her to set her dreams just a little bit lower and a little more reachable. plus a little more practical and imaginative. after all, seven year olds should be dreaming about wanting to be a princess or a fairy or the President of the world (at least before the image was tainted by 4'10" creepiness that is GMA), not dreaming about the four years after finally earning a legitimate college degree that she could finally use to earn a living and stop being dependent on her parents. my seven year old self shouldn't be dreaming that in 14 years, she'd be entering into 4 years of HELL that her parents have paid a huge amount for, where she can grow an ulcer because she's got 362 cases for one subject and 70 articles to memorize in one class.

if you haven't noticed, i'm currently scheduled in that law school funk that every law student supposedly goes through. because when i analyze what law school is, this is what i come up:
it's four years of hell, compounded by cases, provisions, Constitutions, professors, recits, exams, failures, ego-bruisings, major debt, caffeine addictions, ulcer growing, sleepless nights, endless worrying, helplessness, beating yourself up, wondering why you studied so hard and got this grade. then followed by graduation, then another endless five or six months of studying for the bar every waking moment, a month of feeling like your life and your dreams are on the line, then several months worrying you didn't achieve your dream, until you get the results.

did i get it right?

sometimes i don't understand the unreasonableness of people, why we would choose to study our brains out to the point that spelling becomes a momentous task, and choosing to pay an incredible amount of money to an institution to humiliate, badger and work us so much, instead of working and getting paid for work(!) that never has to follow us when we go home at night.

that tells me law students and lawyers are just a different brand of people.

i expected hard. maybe stupendously difficult. i didn't expect it to be so difficult, i'd start to question a 14 year old dream.

it's not that i want to quit. but so much studying has made me begin to forget what it is that made me want to be a lawyer. my reasons can't be that i've wanted to be one since i was seven. i could have had the same conviction for wanting to be a plumber. but it had to be law.

i'm going to be honest, i thought law would be absolutely perfect for me. and i think grade school, high school, college lulled me into thinking that if i enjoyed it, i would be good at it! i like law, i like speaking, i like people = being a good lawyer!

easy-peasy, right?
not.

as i write this, i begin to realize what law school is instilling in me. there's the solid, painful, ego-bruising truth that just because i thought i would be good at it, does not mean i am. it doesn't matter how talented you are, being good means you have to work at it.

boy, have i been working at it.

i was lucky enough to go to good schools, to always achieve my goals. i was lucky enough to have things at my disposal to get me where i wanted to be today. i was lucky enough to get into law school!

but luck ditched me the first day of intro to law. from here on out, it's not luck that's going to get me through the next five years. it's not luck that's going to breeze past dozens of cases a night, put 40 articles in my head verbatim, answer every question a professor throws at me. it's just plain ugly blood sweat tears hard work.

and after four months, i'll be the first to admit, that whatever hard work i thought i was capable of, it is the tip of iceberg of law school. maybe what i'm finding so difficult and so resistant to is the fact that the previous 20 years of my life, i've breezed on luck and minor skill, and i've done well enough to be above average (my ego has to show some life, after the bruising it's gotten) and now, with the amount of work i've put in, it's just not good enough and i might just be average.

who the fuck wants to be average?

but another thing i have to admit is the fact that i might just be only mediocre or average bothers me, not because i hate those words ("mediocre", crap), but because i'm worried of failing the people who i'm trying to help. the huge amount of work i have enrolled into to become a lawyer, feels like i'm just chipping at the Mt. Everest of the next few years. and even just feeling the amount of work i have to get through to the end, worries me that if i miss just one thing, it's a crucial thing to winning a case for someone who really needs it.

i had ideas & notions of what being a lawyer was aaaalllll about but i never thought about how much responsibility it would be. i don't care about the fuck-up lawyers & judges who give the profession a bad name. i don't even care about reputations or careers or money. a part of me doesn't even care about the client i could be failing. i care about how guilty i would feel knowing i went into something half-assed.

well, that answers why i won't quit last school. but i don't think i've answered why i want to be a lawyer. i have to think about it.