I return from yet another posting sabbatical. It’s been a difficult jar into the new quarter so far. It’s the season where I leave books up at the school only to find out when I arrive home. I plan my life around trying not read anything too early. 

What makes things especially difficult is that people are still on edge from the exam period that really is a recent fright. My friend, the Pope, is suffering from lack of sleep and he hasn’t been quite the Magnificent Vista lately (sorry). Others are a smile away from snapping. It really is abuse to turn around so quickly–especially when there is a lack of finality to finishing exams. You know that it will be weeks away (sometimes months) from seeing the assignment of a grade to your painful toil.

The weave of law school makes it quite hard to find validation in any of your work. And, with very few exceptions, it’s too difficult to relax; it costs too much. I’m not complaining or belly-aching. I’m thinking critically about the process that it takes to receive a JD.

It makes sense to have rigorous curriculum for law students–to quote an undergraduate professor: “You don’t want stupid lawyers running around out there.” It’s a critical balancing test, which I think law schools generally fail.  We fail in favor of tearing apart a sense of a quality, well-balanced life. We tear it apart before we even have a chance at understanding what that means. 

As I evaluate myself and my performance in law school, I remember this. I remember that not only did I choose a profession in which depression runs high and long hours are perceived to be the norm. But, I also make a conscious choice to reject those perceived norms. I am not a work horse. I am not a drone. I need to evaluate myself critically–but only against my values and my goals. If I allow the values and goals of others to shape me, I will surely be unhappy.

We learn so many good and great things. It is exciting to devour the law most days. Sure, I take the benefit with the detriment. Life itself is not all bright, but I cannot become consumed with this helplessness, with this inadequacy. Sure, I can be both helpless and inadequate–but it is never without promise of remedy.

I think we forget that we, too, are humans. We forget that the law is a tool that affects people, that affects us, even, as people. Law students are incredibly self-absorbed. We work and we work and we work. Why shouldn’t we? Why shouldn’t everyone work like us? It really begs the question. It becomes difficult to see if we chose the law or if it chose us. We are none the better either way.

When I see the men at Whataburger wearing work boots I don’t think about the difference in privileges and perspectives so much. I think about the driving force that almost all men have in common, which is an idea of provision for oneself and for one’s family. There is satisfaction in being able to provide, in shouldering that burden. But, as with any burden, it can be overbearing if only we allow it. It’s not as easy as I make it out to be here, certainly, but it often isn’t as difficult as we may claim it is. 

Satisfaction is quite reachable, but it isn’t without its obstacles, which in fact can be their own sort of pleasures once overcome.