like a fish needs a bicycle...

saturday evening post

this week has been the worst since i started law school. the weekend isn't much better. but i'm taking time out on a saturday night and forcing myself to write -- for therapeutic and documentary purposes. there is much to say.

my brother-in-law, josh, juggles knives. it's amazing to watch. the harmonization of his body parts -- concentrating eyes, calmly moving hands, shuffling feet -- belies the practice, effort, and danger that are such necessary elements of the performance.

when i started law school a little over 2 months ago, i thought that i, too, was a good juggler -- at least in the figurative sense. i could coordinate my life movements to make many things happen the way i wanted to. i had the focus and the desire to do it. and i had always highly valued my multitasking abilities, constantly pushing myself to see how much more i could do at a time, how much more i could achieve. though i never did it with the level of discipline, diligence, and expertise i would've liked -- and i was continuously striving to improve -- it seemed to a lot of people that i was pretty good at juggling life.

and perhaps i was. but "life" now means something different than it did before. it's not just that i'm busy. i've been very busy before. but there is something qualitatively different here.

i just keep getting handed more balls to juggle. my time committment to school itself is outrageous -- 18 hours of class a week (complete with nervewracking socratic grilling in class), a minimum of 50-70 pages of heavy text reading a night, projects and memos and briefs (all with oppressive deadlines), and as of these last 2 weeks, incessant mandatory meetings about finding a job next summer (and all that that entails, from resumes to career fairs).

and of course, we're constantly reminded that extracurricular activities are essential to resume-building, that we should be looking into 15-hour per week term-time internships for next semester, and that we should apply for scholarships and fellowships left and right.

we're picking our classes for next semester this week, and we're supposed to be starting to think about clinics and journals for next year. and we're constantly reminded to go to all the fascinating lectures and talks on campus in our "free time." oh, and of course, finals are coming.

i've never been in such a pressurized, stressful environment. i've never received so much electronic communication (all of it important and time-sensitive) in my life. i've never been told so many supposedly vital things by so many supposedly important people in my life.

i feel like i've overstepped myself here. my juggling skills are apparently not impressive enough to keep up with this. or maybe not yet.
everyone else seems to think i can do this. no one doubts my juggling abilities. to be fair, i know i can do this, too. i know my juggling skills are improving.

but this past week in particular, i've been thinking a lot about just making it through. in addition to worrying about my personal school-related burdens, i found out that a boy in my section withdrew from law school this week. it really shocked everyone. he was a great guy, very intelligent, got along with everyone, did well in class, and was really involved in the mediation organization on campus, which he loved. he seemed to have all the makings of a great lawyer. but he decided not to stick with it. he seems happy about his decision, but no one really knows why he decided to leave. until finding out about him this week, i hadn't even considered the thought that i might not make it through. i'd just assumed that what won't kill me will make me stronger, and i'll come out of it alive and well -- eventually.

really, i'm determined to make it through. and to get the most out of it while i'm here. and, most importantly, to make it all worthwhile once i'm done. i plan on doing that last one by using my education to serve others. doing anything else would mean i'd wasted the 3 most intense years of my life. this week i went to a meeting with the public interest law center about summer job opportunities. the cover of the information binder we were given had a quotation on it that set up camp in my thoughts rather quickly: "do more with your law degree than rearrange the assets of the upper class." wow.

i've had some really enlightening conversations lately -- with others and with myself.

last week, one of my project partners and i were talking about our career paths. i told him i wanted to do public interest work. he told me he has no problem admitting that he's becoming a lawyer for the lifestyle, that he plans on going corporate and making lots of money, and that he doesn't want to help people who are too ignorant to know they need help and thus don't even want it. i wondered as he was talking how much of this was determined by the fact that he's a white male, and hence of the demographic most prevalent in law, but especially in corporate law.

anyway, the example he gave of his was from where he grew up... he described seeing (white) people living in trailer parks, below the poverty line, with no health insurance... who then vote for bush, based solely on the fact that they're scared of having a gay person move in next door to them. they don't even realize that they're depriving themselves of health and economic livelihood they might otherwise have if they weren't so narrow-minded.

interesting point. and i appreciated his honesty about his goals. we had an exchange about what we as individuals believe we're supposed to be doing with our lives, about how there are so many people in america and in the world who are in desperate need of help and who are aware of it and who will gratefully accept it. those are the people i want to help. but even getting to a place where i can help them is not easy.

this truth was highlighted by a conversation i had this week with one of the international law professors on campus. she's very cool. she told me about how competitive the field of international human rights is and about how difficult it is to get your foot in the door. i expressed frustration at the exclusivity and prestige-oriented nature of a field which should be so fundamentally animated by selfless service. what can i say, my bahai views seep out of every seam... in any case, she was realistic, but encouraging. she reminded me of one of my own goals in life: detachment. her message to me was that i'll get to where i want to be in order to serve -- eventually. but i should get used to the idea that my path there might not be a direct one. wow.

since that conversation, i'm realizing how many pre-conceived notions i had about my career path, how i wasn't even conscious of many of them, and how i'm gonna have to dispense with most of them. yes, i have to play the game to get where i need to be. hopefully from there, i'll help dismantle the game from the inside out. in the meantime, learning that each opportunity is unique and valuable and not a waste of time... that's my goal. i have to enjoy the journey, even if it's on a completely different route than i was expecting. again, not easy. especially given that i'm a control freak.

in the midst of all this realization, i had an interesting conversation with myself. it happened during the 1L oral advocacy competition the other night -- interesting exercise, good practice. i was counsel for the plaintiff, and i delivered a 10 minute closing argument. when i sat down, the counsel for the defense went up to give his closing. he and i had talked outside before going in to the room, and he seemed very nice. in role, though, he was quite different. as defense counsel, he was loud, belligerent, fast-talking, accusatory, altogether unpleasant. i kept my game face on, for the most part, and the judges watched him straight-faced also... but the whole time he was talking, i was having this uncomfortable internal dialogue.

"oh my God, is this the white male paradigm i'm going to be dealing in for the rest of my legal career?" "do i just seem like the nice woman of color sitting over here getting mowed down by the good ol' boy?" "my argument was calm, reasoned, and played on the jury's sympathies. but will his work better? will they think he's an assertive man with a strong argument? if i as a woman behaved like he's behaving now, would people just think i'm a bitch?" "i don't want to spend my life attacking people." i was really starting to get scared.

and then he sat down. and then as we were each getting our feedback and constructive criticisms, the judges all told him that he was hostile and overwhelming and that a jury wouldn't respond well to that at all. the relief washed over me. i was so glad to see that that display, while perhaps not unheard of in the legal profession, is not effective and is probably far from the norm. maybe i still can carve out a space for myself where i feel like my career doesn't consist of feeding on others. yes, i'll have to advocate. but i was really hoping to do it in a civilized fashion. looks like that's still gonna work. thank God.

finally, my relief about my career path was confirmed by a really fabulous conversation with a woman in the public interest law center yesterday. she gave me some insights on not letting law school segment my being. she reminded me to always remember to be an integrated person, rather than a floating head in the world of academia, whose scholarship and work is divorced from the rest of her life. she was telling me about a law and religion panel she went to, where practicioners were talking about how their faiths affect the work they do, the cases they take, the way they structure their professional schedules. they were whole people--with religions, families, lives outside of the ivory towers. this was good to hear. especially since law school is where you learn to segment yourself, to detach your legal intellect from the rest of your being so it can float in academia.

hence, it's good to keep the focus. and that means most to me when it comes to my faith. she said that my commitment to the bahai faith and to service, which is very evident on my resume, is something i should embrace when presenting myself to people -- fellowship committees, employers, whoever. i explained to her that growing up in the bible belt, i'm not used to presenting myself as a bahai and having it be well-received.

but, as we discussed, things are different now. i'm an adult, i'm in the professional world where it's at least illegal (if not uncommon) to discriminate, and i'm also not in the south anymore. people want to hear about my passion. and the bahai faith is what i'm most passionate about -- it's what makes me passionate about everything else. i was amazed by how well she understood that and how she articulated it to me better than i could've articulated it to her. and that's because she's a person of faith too. and a woman of color. she's a black catholic woman who's done much service in her life. she knew exactly where i was coming from and exactly where i was going. so refreshing. so comforting to realize that i can present myself as i am and talk about what i know best and what i care most about--and know that that's powerful.

so many conversations recently. they're all tied together, i think. and they're all still in progress. and they all seem very important in my development right now. which is probably why this is perhaps the longest post i've ever made. but i guess it was needed. i'm learning to juggle better, i'm learning to be ok with seeing the balls drop to the floor sometimes. i'm also starting to entertain the notion of being ok with myself even when i'm not juggling. we'll see how that goes.

Posted by naseem at November 5, 2005 05:50 PM