My Friends,

In the midst of finals, where I used to be much more frantic, I dwell on what is different. This is the fourth round of exams. Classes are certainly no easier. No stress has abated. And, in the fashion of Prof. Con Law, I ask, “What’s changed?” The now rhetorical answer to that question is: “We did.”

It may seem as though the work pattern of 2Ls has lapsed into a pace akin to molasses. I know that I am far more, shall we say, creative in the use of my time these days. Where once I would arrive at the school prior to seven o’clock on the weekdays regardless of when class began, I now aim for a 10 to 15-minute buffer before my first class. I immediately escape the confines of the building as soon as practically possible.

I still do all the required reading. I prepare for classes. I try to remember when I last wrote out a brief for a case. I study for finals just the same, but I don’t exhaust myself like I used to. I treat thoughts of poetry and dreams more tenderly. I don’t box out everything unrelated to law as though it were extraneous. 

My work ethic I feel is unchanged. I have more fun in the mean time, though. I love what I do when I do it. It can be rough–and it often is. Sometimes the work is rewarding as it is this evening when I begin to see how the intricate parts of a field of law work like tiny cogs and gears to promote efficiency of law and economics. At other moments, the law can be underwhelming or overwhelming, even both. I have an immense respect for constitutional law, and I fear the day of reckoning when I must fumble with its many tests, tiers, classifications, and (Yes, Peter) even the penumbras and emanations.

In this quarter, I’ve moved back to bathing in music and considering the art of my life and others. I am more prone to contemplation. Many things have changed in such a short time (though it has been a year) as I advance on the anniversary of my matriculation at BLS. It has already been one full year since I moved to Waco to start a new epoch.

I feel as though I have come full circle. I pray that I do again. As I remember the first of loves, I can only remember that this weathering life has a cleansing and refining part to it. As I sit down to take my constitutional law exam, I will indeed say the Lord’s Prayer and contemplate Psalm 23. Prof. Con Law may say it at least partly in jest, but I take it as seriously as it warrants. 

It is my faith that defines me. It is the art and love of life through which I see things most clearly. It is in the law that I find the greatest part of unknowing. For these things, I am most grateful.