Incoming 1L Writes Columnist About Fear of Never Having Fun Again
A panicked woman about to enter law school writes an advice columnist about her fears—of loneliness, a life of drudgery, missed opportunities and huge student loans.
The woman tells Salon columnist Cary Tennis that she really wants to be a writer, but she has also always dreamed of becoming a lawyer like her father. Now she worries that her priorities and her father’s priorities are different. “He graduated from a state law school and has practiced in his home state ever since,” she writes. “I am a mover; I yearn to go; I don’t want to stay in one place and work myself to the bone.”
The incoming 1L then identifies her major fear: “I am afraid that I’m going to be alone,” she says. “I am finally living in a city that makes me happy and working at a job that I enjoy. I am surrounded by friends who love me. I feel like an individual for the first time in my life. But my lifestyle is the night lifestyle, and if I go to law school, I’m going to have to give that up, at least in part. I’m afraid that I’ll never see my friends, that my boyfriend is going to leave me, that I’m never going to have fun again. When I think about being a lawyer, I panic.”
The conflicted advice seeker also explains that she has $100,000 in debt from her undergraduate education and little clue how she will repay the money, since all of her work experience is in the service industry.
Columnist Cary Tennis doesn’t think the woman should give up on law school—at least not yet. Tennis encourages the woman to envision her ideal career as a lawyer, and to put together a law school “survival kit” that includes such things as bubble bath, a photo of someone who inspires her and family mementos.
Imagine a happy life as a lawyer, Tennis advises. Think about where you will be living, what kind of law you will be practicing, and what kind of clients you will be seeing. “It may sound a little unscientific, this invitation to imagine your life, but the reason for doing it is to stimulate your emotional connection to the idea of law school and to give you something to look forward to, something that makes it worth it.”
“Remember: You can always quit,” Tennis adds. “And it’s not like law is a dead-end career. You can still be a writer, or be president, or hang out with your boyfriend, and you don’t have to give up your life. You don’t have to become someone you aren’t. You just have to get through law school.”
