Strength of Will

It is better to be hated for what you are than loved for what you are not. - Andre Gide

For once the weather is nice - sunny, warm with only the slightest of breezes. The weather looks like how I should feel. It's spring, I'm in law school - for better or for worse - and I'm alive. I lack for almost nothing except for those things that would just be nice but aren't exactly crucial to my life. It'd be nice not to have to worry about financial obligations, not to have to worry about the trivial, banal little things that take up too much time away from what really matters and bring along with them too much stress. It would be nice to be carefree and full of innocent happiness just as all of us were at one point or another during all childhoods - when the most stressful thing was trying to convince your parents, grandparents or nannies that you just had to play in the mud puddle or play for hours and hours in the playground. Or that you would suffer irreparable  emotional damage if you didn't get that lemon ice or that newest game... or book or movie ... or whatever it was that was popular at that moment.

One of my closest friends pointed out recently that he knew he'd miss college and his friends, but he never expected to miss the professors or the academia or the feel of it. This year has turned out well so far - for the most part. Pieces of myself are still missing - parts that I've lost along the way - and parts that I have or that I rediscovered - law school seems determined to take away. That's the most difficult thing about law school I think. It's the constant reevaluation of those priorities or principles that you never even really knew you held. Those ideals that come screaming out of your subconscious with a vengeance - and make you react without completely understanding why or how. It's engaging, it's fun, it's intriguing but it's also draining and simply overwhelming because you have to accept or at least learn and understand and appreciate positions that you may find completely repulsive or ridiculous or completely illogical. Criminal law class in particular does that - people's opinions have shocked and astounded me to the point where I want to run far, far away but fight back and try and make them see why their opinion is flawed - if anything on a moral level. I think people do law school because they care - they care too much about something and they want to make their care count for something - have some sort of impact, somehow. Even if, the process, the journey feels more like Sisyphus' punishment than any sort of other journey that will get you to that other place you want to go. On most days, it feels as though you're leaving Point A to get to Point B but wind up at Point C - from where you can only go to Point A. Strength of will is crucial. Either you got it or you don't.

Law school is a funny thing. It can be the best thing ever