The road to hell

The latest edition of The Record, a biannual publication summarizing all of the achievements, personal and professional, of my law school’s alumni, arrived in my mailbox yesterday. In the first years following my graduation, I looked forward to its arrival and to my classmates’ news with real excitement. I wanted to stay abreast of who had married, procreated, or remained committed to doing the work for which we were all (theoretically) trained. Why? Partly it was curiosity; partly I wanted to know whose life resembled mine in its absence of spouse, offspring, or interest in pursuing our chosen profession. There is strength in numbers, after all, and knowing that I wasn’t alone in wanting to turn away from the clearest path would somehow help validate my choice—or rather, the choice I wanted to make.
It’s hard to remember now why I wanted to be a lawyer. When people—especially admissions counselors—asked me this question, I would respond with a spiel that became so hard-wired its true origins are now unknown to me. It went like this: during a mock trial exercise in my high school civics class, I became so inspired by the law while playing my assigned role of “lawyer” that I knew I had to pursue a career in the field. That story could be true. I honestly don’t remember anymore. What I do know is that what truly inspired me as I entered college and my goal of attending law school drew closer was the fat salary I could make as an associate at a large law firm. Seeking justice for the oppressed, or even seeking what I would later come to know as a “good outcome” for a corporate client, were motivations that had no place in my thought process. When my sister’s coworker, an idealistic young director of a youth center, commented upon hearing my plans that I could “do a lot of good as a lawyer-- Gandhi was a lawyer!” I responded with a smile on my face and a mental ho-hum. Doing good, I hate to admit, was not my goal.
Ironically, or maybe logically, attending law school changed all this. Many of my classmates were incredibly bright, inspired, and self-directed individuals. Everyone but me seemed to have walked in with their eyes wide open, and their anxiety over grades and inclination toward round-the-clock studying bewildered me. Wasn’t the idea just to graduate with grades good enough to secure a job at a good-enough firm? Apparently, there were hierarchies even among major firms in large cities, and those who secured jobs at the bluest of the blue-chip organizations could claim more professional success than the rest of us.
Other students strove to be lawyers of the Gandhi variety, and were committed to careers in public service. By the time I decided that a life of endless, pointless competition wasn’t for me, I was already well on my way to that path. After a summer internship at one of the good-enough firms in a large city, I walked away from my job offer. It was both frightening and completely exhilarating. Choosing a life that made sense to me and was motivated by something other than the dollar signs in my eyes was possible, and while I still didn’t know what I wanted, I did know what I didn’t want.
The latest Record tells me that one former crush (he once bought me a drink and very nearly asked me out, according to several expert girlfriend analyses) is engaged; another just returned from his honeymoon. Other friends are working at this or that firm, or have important sounding titles in government offices. What surprised me most (except for a momentary pang upon reading news of the aforementioned engagement) was how little all of it mattered to me. It all feels so foreign and distant from my present existence, almost like an alternate me was their classmate, and maybe that’s the case. We go to school to grow up as much as we go to learn from professors and textbooks. That’s the value I’m taking away from my law school experience. It was more than an expensive detour. I learned what I don’t want, which is priceless.