Law School: Lamentations and Lessons

Hey! It’s been a year; I know. We’ve got some serious catching up to do. My first year of law school consumed, vomited me out, and changed me. It was easily the hardest year of my life, which is saying a lot because I have not had an easy life. This is what I learned about myself.

At the beginning of the year, instead of creating goals for the new year, I listed values I wanted to uphold on my vision board. On January 1, 2026, the Ancestors said, “Let’s go!” One of the values I wrote was balancing Humility and Self-Love. I learned about myself that my self-worth is rooted in exceptionalism – I am only valuable if I am the best at something. Perfect. Upholding this meant exhausting myself to attain perfection. I couldn’t just enjoy doing yoga, I had to become certified as a yoga instructor. This “exceptionalism issue” also took away things that I loved. For example, painting became terrifying because I embarked on a new style, one not as easily palatable or understood. I feared painting because of how others might respond to my work, particularly that they would think I was not a skilled painter instead of the reality that I was intentionally painting in a way that was as far away from realism without reaching abstraction. Most destructively, is that when I did not display perfection, was not chosen, did not obtain the best outcome of a goal, I began to feel worthless, depressed, and unable to see or believe in my intrinsic value.

On the other hand, this issue of my worth being rooted in exceptionalism provided some gifts. Whenever I was presented with a shadow side of myself or was presented with criticism, I never brushed it off as them being jealous or misinformed or a hater. That felt like too easy a cop out or excuse not to look in the mirror and change. I really considered and worked on all those parts of myself because I wanted to become the best version of myself. I still do. But now, I’m learning who I am and when to disregard when certain people criticize me or when certain activities make me feel depleted. Not everyone’s opinion of me is worth working on or taking seriously. Feeling depleted is not always just me being an introvert, but a sign that I should not engage in that activity.  

Enter: Law school. Never have I felt so low and constantly not enough, no matter what I did. Law school is not like other educational systems in many ways that I will not go into now, mostly because I don’t feel like it (Lol- it’s too much and too complicated to explain). At 30 years old, I’m the oldest in my cohort of 22-year-olds who, for the most part, have never had real work (or life) experience; their parents were lawyers, and/or are rich and white. Further, as a law student focused on public interest (as opposed to big law, making lots of money at a firm), I was a marginalized minority, both by the institution that provided no support to students who were not interested in making money, and by the student body. Even within public interest law, I was a minority as one of the -2 students interested in human rights law (most are interested in labor and employment law). Building community has been impossible, loneliness suffocating, and no one outside of law school understood the world of the inside without me having to expend energy I didn’t have to explain it.

Academically, I performed so low, at times I thought everything I had ever accomplished was somehow luck or I was a fraud, and now it was revealed that I was actually dumb and incapable of succeeding. This sounds dramatic and crazy, but it’s truly how I felt. For the first time in my life, I was not exceptional, so I was worthless.

Now that the first year is over, I have had some time to process those emotions through the lens of Saturn Return and my value of humility and self-love that my ancestors are giving me to learn (the hard way!). First, I had to express gratitude for the opportunity to come closer to my higher self by learning to live in alignment with my values. Growth is always something that I’m grateful for, regardless of how it is achieved. Second, in auditing my life, I realize that I have many gifts and am intelligent. However, those skills that I possess are not activated as much in law school, and that is ok. It’s ok because law school does not mirror the work or career of a lawyer (unintuitive but law school is a capitalist, unnecessarily competitive hazing period for the sake of tradition). It’s also ok because it doesn’t mean that I’m not smart. We all have skills and intelligence in different areas, and I no longer feel like I need to be skilled in every area. One, because it’s not possible, and two, because knowing where to expend energy applying my skills and where not to is helpful information.

This is not to say that I don’t think I’m learning the law. I have learned an incredible amount and feel like I am thinking in different ways. Actually, learning the law is my favorite part of law school. Unfortunately, law school grades are not so much about how much you know, but more about how much privilege you have, have much of your health and well-being you are willing to sacrifice in order to be better than others in comparison, and a smidge of how well you’ve mastered the material.

Side note: I have been working to move away from my value being rooted in my accomplishments since about a year before law school started. I have been building a belief in my intrinsic value. Law school set me back, and then balanced me out a bit. What I mean by that is I clung to my accomplishments being equivalent to my worth because law school made me feel like nothing and I needed something to hold on to. Then, I evened out by realizing that it’s not black and white because my accomplishments do say something about who I am and my value that I would choose and work hard to accomplish the things I have.

So what law school has taught me is

·      How to sit with myself when I feel extreme discomfort

·      That I am intelligent in many ways, within and outside of law school and that is not displayed in my grades

·      I am an artist (not having time to create has been nothing less than painful during this past year)

·      After getting my Master’s in Social Work and becoming licensed, it was hard for me to judge people, but now I REALLY do not judge people and try to see people’s light, even when they fuck up or irritate me (I learned to give others grace only once I learned to give it to myself)

·      I am capable of taking care of myself, even when it’s hard

·      My respect and adoration for my mom can surprisingly grow, even still

·      I still deserve love and grace even when I fail, make mistakes, or are not being the best version of myself

·      I’m not a quitter (I once thought I was)

·      Supporting others ≠ my downfall. There is no scarcity. Competition is not advancement, despite what law school instills.

·      I must choose myself and that looks differently at different times.

In curiosity,

Meghan