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.

i don't see the point in...

government officials putting up those signs that say the bridge/road/clinic/building/blah was put up by pres./cong./coun./mayor. trapo. first of all, wasn't that your job? i don't go around putting post-its all over my work saying i did it. it was what i was paid to do. second of all, my money put that up, you asshole.

imma rant in this hot, frustrating day

pet peeves:

1. people asking other people to tell me what to do. thereby making me feel stupid when i'm asked to do something i have no idea about. give me a heads-up please! i can do it but I'd like it if you asked me straight.

2. able-bodied guys who are wide awake and do not offer their seats to women, children or the elderly. way to be gentlemanly. and yeah, i gave up my seat. did you?

3. people not saying thank you for favors. especially work favors. especially work favors not within your job description.

meow, catfight!

tell me if i´m right or wrong

i don´t usually write things in this blog outside of occasional rants. this is usually a funtime, brainless past time for me. but right now, i have this problem that confuses me so much, not because i want to get my way but because i just don´t understand the other point of view and how it could apply in this particular century, or to people in my generation and younger.

see, i want to visit baptiste in france. france is the city of lights, of rich food, romance in every corner, sophistication, history, politics, philosophy, style. of fashion, of art, of language. where every street looks as if it was meant to be in a movie, where cobblestones look normal and cement absurd. where bread is bliss and every other bite outside france seems tasteless. where everything should be in sepia because it´s france.

the last time i went to europe was a tour in italy. the tour part sucked, but italy was magic. it was different standing in the coliseum where gladiators fought and drew blood, where democracy was started, where plumbing was discovered. every breath felt like i was filling my head with even more things that made me more open-minded.

for me, france will be like that. i wouldn´t want to close my eyes to sleep for fear of missing something.

but for my parents, the part that baptiste is in france is enough to turn the idea sour.
for them, i´m not just going to france. i´m pursuing a boy halfway and major amount of money (at my expense, by the way) across the world. i´m not just violating the maria clara lifestyle for other people, i´m, i don´t know, murdering or raping and stepping on her bloody carcass. when i go to france, i´m going to show all cards of my hand and display how much i really love baptiste. screw my years of law school, i´m going to get knocked-up and derail my life. even my father, who i thought was okay with the idea, thinks that baptiste should be visiting me and not the other way around.

to my way of thinking, he just did. he went here to the philippines for a year and lived here. for me, that was his visit, he spent a huge amount of money already. i probably won´t spend that much nor will i stay that long, but i think it should be my term.

for me, the visit won´t just be to see baptiste. sure, i love him a lot and it´s been a year since i´ve seen him. his family is lovely and i would like to see them again. i have really close friends studying in paris that i really miss and i would like to see them again, particularly the ones who decide to spend their lives there.

but what are the chances i get to go to france? if i go, i´ll be staying with his family. there´s a place to stay and to eat that´s free. that frees up a major part of the cost. if i wait to go with my family, well, i really doubt that´s going to happen. we´re all getting older and it´s getting harder getting us together. not to mention the cost! five people, plus a place to stay and to eat? if i wait for a time to go when i´m done with law school, that´s also kind of difficult to manage. i thought about putting this off til next summer and i realized that i had an internship for the next two years. then for senior year, i´m going to study my ass off for the bar. and then work and my focus is just going to be on earning for my life, for a house, for the future.

i want to visit for so many reasons, beyond seeing baptiste. i think about life as a 21 year old here and compare it to someone from europe. a 21 year old from there is lightyears ahead of me in terms of maturity. i don´t want to be as cynical as they are or as old, but i would like to have their open-mindedness. my european friends are the ones who seem like the world is completely open to them and you just have to find the opportunities. in the philippines, i feel like i´m choking from the rat race of getting to college, getting to grad school, getting a career. they tend to backpack between school levels and no one thinks they´re pissing their lives away. if i even think of taking a year off school to travel, people think i´m a bum. but i´m stuck coz i can´t see taking a year off to travel after law school, without losing my momentum, and i feel like my only chance to be adventurous is now.

the thing is, i was raised with philippine values but a liberal outlook and right now, it´s giving me a bitch of an identity crisis. i was lucky enough to travel a lot with my family which makes me more open-minded than a lot of people, quite honestly. but it´s precisely all that travel that makes me more liberal than other people here. chances like the one i have now feel like the ones i should take, and then i feel the drag of impropriety.

if i were visiting a friend, i think things would be different. the concern would be safety and everything, not impropriety. frankly, it´s frustrating that i really cannot see what is wrong with visiting baptiste in france. we´ll be staying with his parents,if supervision is needed. and i should think 21 yrs of trying to be good, of trying to do be more than good, is enough of a resume for them to trust that i am not going there to get knocked up or to chase some boy. i think my self-worth and my self-esteem is healthier than that.

and it is the 21st century. i think it is fine for a girl to visit her boyfriend. i think it´s fine for the girl to ask a guy out on a date, to propose, to become the breadwinner, to have a household with a househusband. i am not a feminist, per se. but i think things should be equal. i think that there are so many double standards left, and I do believe in some of them. but i don´t think taking the opportunity to visit someone i love AND his family in a country i´ve never been to and always wanted to visit is a double standard.

and i don´t think i´m the only one. i´m not the first to do this, not even one of the first. i have so many friends and non-friends (girls, mind you) who have done this, visited a boyfriend in another country.

am i right? or am i completely not seeing what´s wrong with the situation? tell me.