I’ve never quite belonged in law school. I was told when I started the application process – and many times since – that I’m a ‘non-traditional’ student, which seemed mainly to mean that I was older than everybody else. I didn’t mind; I am older than everybody else. But before law school I never thought of myself as non-traditional. Or old, for that matter. Now it feels like I’m inescapably both, whether I like it or not.
Law school is hard enough without being told you don’t ‘really’ fit in – and that’s ultimately what being ‘non-traditional’ means. You don’t fit in. And in truth, I don’t. For one thing, people call me by my first name here all the time. Outside of a doctor’s office or Starbucks, I haven’t heard my first name this much in twenty years. It was always “Professor Deere,” or “Dr. Deere,” or just…Deere. Which is what I was before all this first-name calling business.
And that’s another thing. I’m not ‘really’ a student at all. I’m just a professor wearing an ill-fitting ‘student’ suit. I have no idea what it means to be a law student, and I never got the chance to find out before life beat the stuffing out of me and took my shoes. Just to give you some idea, there’s an actual stress test. It’s called the Holmes-Rahe Life Stress Inventory. It assigns point values to different life events based on how stressful they are. So, you’ve got divorce (73 points), but you’ve also got moving into a new place (20 points). You go down the list of stressful life events, checking off all the ones you experienced over the last year. Then you just add up the points. Based on their statistical modeling, 150 or lower means you’re pretty much like everybody else. Stressed, but not more than average. On the other hand, 300 means there’s a very high likelihood you’re about to have a complete medical breakdown. In other words, the human body just isn’t built for 300 points of stress. It’s too much.
My score is 576.
And all of that stuff you’re supposed to do in law school? Panels, networking, law review, clubs? I didn’t do any of that. Oh, I tried a little. But in the end, I couldn’t. Good ole 576, amirite? I was always dealing with something else. Or working. I was doing that, too, in addition to law school. The point is, I didn’t do a single thing in law school the ‘traditional’ way. Not one single thing. And I cannot tell you how happy I am about that.
Because for all the things I didn’t do in law school, there was one thing I did do, every single day. I asked myself why I wanted to be a lawyer. And I don’t mean in the contemplative, interview-question kind of way. No, I mean the existential, “this is literally killing me” kind of way. I still had a job and a career. I still had a pension. I could have quit law school in a hot minute. I wouldn’t have to hear my first name again. I wouldn’t have to wear my off-the-rack student suit. I could just go back to being a professor. Publish my stupid textbook. Be done with being ‘non-traditional’ and ‘old.’
But that existential question, that bone-deep, brass tacks ‘why?’ – why are you doing this? Why not quit? Why hold on? It was a gift. It forced a high-stakes confrontation with what I really wanted out of law school, and out of law. It silenced the chatter of what I should be doing. It blocked out regret, disappointment, and frustration that law school wasn’t going the way I had hoped or planned. And it demanded that I answer, so I did.
Time.
That is my answer. My existential ‘why.’ Time. That might not seem like much to you, but to me it’s everything. In the Fall of my 1L, I went to a career panel. Just the one, and then I vowed never to go back. Because that panel wasn’t meant for me. It was meant for you. The lawyers talked about your ‘first ten years,’ and your ‘mid-career’ choices. Decades were thrown around like they were nothing. “Don’t worry!” they told you. “You’ve got plenty of time to figure out what you really want to do.” And they were right; you do. But I don’t.
The next third of your life is roughly 25 years. The next third of mine is roughly 10. So when an interviewer asks me where I see myself in ten years, it hits different. When I ask myself that question, it hits different. When I chose to go to law school, I knew what I was doing. I knew what I was giving up, and I knew that I was committing my most precious future – the last third of my life – to being a lawyer. It was never anything less than all-or-nothing. 576 or bust. That was the deal.
At the end of my internship this summer, my supervising partner asked me what I wanted out of my law practice. Out of my future as a lawyer. I didn’t have to think about it. I’d been finding that answer for two very long, very tough years. I want to know, I said, just how good a lawyer I can be. I want to know what my very best looks like.
Because it’s all or nothing, I didn’t say. Because I don’t have time for anything less, I didn’t say. And because, I didn’t say, I owe it to myself to see what I can make of this future that has cost me so very much.
But that’s mine. My existential why. Go get your own. And forget about being a ‘traditional’ student. Most especially so if you’re a 1L. The law is wide, and the law is deep. It has room for a whole bunch of shiny new ‘why’s and ‘how’s. And you have a whole lot of time.
Michael Deere is a third-year student at BC Law. Contact him at deerm@bc.edu.
BC Law: Impact 