Today was better

Thanks in no small part to your supportive comments -- so thank you, everyone! I appreciate it.

But also, I arrived at school this morning to find that everyone else was freaking out about how yesterday afternoon had gone, too -- I ran into any number of people saying, "You know, Monday was great, and Tuesday morning, and then Tuesday afternoon everything fell apart." And when we walked into class the teacher for the day said, "So, we faculty hear that you were all pretty freaked yesterday afternoon." So we spent a half hour or so walking through the stuff we'd all freaked out about from the day before, which was HUGELY helpful.

Plus, one of my teachers complimented me (outside of class) on how I was doing, so I guess I wasn't quite as incompetent as I felt!

So it was a much better day, although we had a ton of snow roll in around lunchtime and it took me two hours to get home, and I should have spent the evening prepping for tomorrow, but I haven't. Ah well.

And on something sort of related: cc prof asked, "Why litigation?" First, I don't think I ever said I didn't want to do litigation; I said it wasn't necessarily what I wanted to do. (What I said I didn't want to do was work for a big firm.) It's not like I knew very much about either litigation or transactional work before going to law school, so I didn't want to go in with any assumptions. (Especially because so many people go to law school because they think Law & Order makes it look cool, and I wanted to distance myself from that!) But as I learned more, I decided litigation sounded more interesting than transactional law. I really like the way it requires you to come up with a convincing story and figure out the best way to get someone to believe that story (whether you're talking about facts to the jury or law to the judge) -- crafting a narrative is really fascinating. I really like thinking about word choice, for instance -- what impact does it have to call someone "the plaintiff" vs. "Mr. Smith" vs. "the bereaved husband" or the like? (that last option's a little heavy-handed, but you get the idea.)

There's probably a LOT of room for playing around with word choice in transactional law as well, at least sometimes, but going the transactional route seemed to have more potential for ending up stuck in a room doing the same kind of thing over and over. (Construction contract. Another construction contract. Yet another construction contract...) I don't at the moment have an area of law that fascinates me so much that I'd enjoy that; I like the overall process, the way the system works, but I'm less attached to what exact content that system's dealing with.

And if I'm being absolutely completely utterly honest? Here's my deepest darkest secret: I think it would be quite marvelous, someday, to be a judge. (I'm not aiming high, people; the dinkiest local position would be fine with me.) And I can't imagine anyone's going to end up on the bench who doesn't have a lot of litigation experience.

And here's the final thing: I think I've spent an awful lot of my life waiting for others to tell me what I'm good at and what I should do with myself. I tend to feel that for whatever reason, it's not up to me to decide something is interesting and therefore I will pursue it; I wait for some kind of sign from the universe, something external that will tell me this --THIS! is what you should do for the rest of your life!! It's finally dawned on me, though, that the other (more sensible) way to do this is actually to decide for YOURSELF what is interesting and actually to try to make THAT happen, rather than sitting back to see what the universe will dump in your lap.

So I decided: I want to work as a litigator. Not necessarily because I'm great at it or anyone else thinks I should. Just because *I* want to.

(The kicker, of course, is that I declare interest in being a litigator and everyone's like, Oh, sure, that's cool. If I said I wanted to do transactional, they'd say the same thing. Because no one else is expecting me to wait for a sign from the universe. That's just me.)

So that's where I am at the moment.

Having said this, I'm now probably destined to write construction contracts for the rest of my life...

Comments

[Kelly Woestman]

You'd be a great judge and "local" can often have the most impact - especially in family court. You go, girl! ;-)

[Seeking Solace]

You would be a great Judge!!! I wouldn't mess with you!!!

[Susan]

Glad to see things are looking up a bit today--getting pushed out of your comfort zone is probably a good thing in the long run but the unfamiliar doesn't always feel good in the moment.

[museyme]

Glad things are better!

[sarah]

At least you didn't curl up and go fetal...

[arbitrista]

There is a bright side to this experience. It's enormously satisfying when you've been going through the difficult parts of learning new skills and then reach the day when you realize that you've done it!