This does what a first draft should do: it gets your thinking on the page. The draft both describes the problem and enacts it.

The emotional and intellectual center of the writing is your panel experience, which both documents the collapse of your confidence and perhaps illuminates some of the causes. As you write, one response to discovering that your approach to law school admission was atypical of those also speaking would have been "Okay, that's your way; I did it my way." Another is to wonder, if you didn't do it the other way, whether you belong at all. That this was the actual outcome alerts us to the importance of the "not belonging" feeling at the center of the syndrome from which you've been suffering.

"Not belonging" sensations are a rather common response to the way law school withholds reinforcement and regresses peoples' adult selves in the direction of high school. But for some students, separated by class background, personal history, and other factors from the population around them, the conviction that they are ineradicably other can take very destructive hold. Your writing also reminds us that previous experiences that led to doubts about safety or belonging at earlier stages of educational life can cause the present sense to redouble. Hence the significant designation, "present-day me."

But the draft also recapitulates the experience you see as the low point: it shows up wanting to be told how to get better. You feel for yourself that being told how to get better isn't how to get better. Regeneration lies in planning and executing it for oneself, which is what your not-present-day selves have done so many other times.

Another draft that draws upon Frank Putnam's summary of personality-state theory might be productive for you. "Present-day me" isn't a new and puzzlingly disabled identity standing alone: it's a personality state, resulting from dissociations produced by law school. It hasn't destroyed any other of your states, and doesn't need to be destroyed itself. What is needed is merger, communication between and incorporation of this and other states, to produce growth through the phenomenon we call "change." This is how we change, through the recognition and merger of separate personality states into new and larger versions of ourselves. The current draft stands opposed to "present-day me," not hostile to her but afraid of the consequences and meaning of her existence. The same materials, differently filtered through another kind of writing, can show the clearer and yet not radically distorted view of yourself—including but not limited to the silencing you've experienced in law school—that is the regenerated image you look for in your dream.

For Present-Day-Me

Today, I hit a low point. I walked into a professor’s office without the slightest idea what I wanted to ask. I just wanted to be told what to do. How to write this essay. Needless to say, I’m disappointed in myself. I’m not this person.

I’d like to say that “1L made me quiet,” but that would be a cop out. Yes, it has been a difficult year, but so have the rest of my 22 years, and those turned out just fine. I’ve been in high-stakes situations before and thrived. Law school is far from the hardest thing I’ve ever done, but I’ve been doubting myself in ways I never have before.

I will be a great lawyer. That, I’m sure of. But present-day-me isn’t. Present-day-me is scared and uncomfortable and out of place and it’s clouding my judgment. The rest of law school has to be about building myself back up, regaining the confidence I had that brought me here.

A few weeks ago, I was on the For People of Color Conference student panel sharing my experiences regarding the law school application process. Listening to the other panelists, I realized I had done everything completely wrong. Studying for the LSAT, picking my schools, writing my diversity statement—all of it. Wrong. I had never felt more inadequate. What was I even doing there, sitting on this panel, giving people advice? A year ago, I would’ve said, “who cares? It worked. I did it my way, and it worked. I must’ve done something right.” But that day, all I could think about was how wrong I was—how someone in the admissions office must’ve made a mistake.

I’ve been feeling that way for a long time. I’ve spent the whole year feeling intimidated, afraid of rambling or letting loose a half-baked thought. Every time I found the right words to say what I wanted to say, the class had moved on. I had missed my chance. Again. It didn’t matter that I knew the answer, that I’d read the case, that it wasn’t a trick question. I still froze. I told myself it was because I didn’t have the luxury of rambling or getting off-topic or being wrong; I couldn’t afford those kinds of mistakes because they might alert someone that I’m not supposed to be here. But really, I’m the only one questioning whether I should be here.

It’s not that I fear I’ve made the wrong choice by coming here. I haven’t. I came to law school because I wanted to do something. Up until then, I thought I’d become an academic. I love conducting research and investigating the issues that truly matter to me. I kept trying to use that research to change institutions. I thought I could say, “Here’s the evidence. Things have to change, and this is why.” Mainly, I was trying to reform the school’s Title IX system—the way they process and investigate complaints and the way they publicize and administer resources for victims. But changing institutions isn’t about the facts; it’s about power dynamics and who has the bigger sword. Me and my research just weren’t going to cut it. I needed a bigger sword.

At least, that’s the part I wrote about in my admissions essay. And that part is 100% true. However, I left out the fact that, like some of my classmates, my own experiences with the legal system played a large role in prompting me to come to law school. My mistake was not taking the time to consider what it would feel like to come face to face with that system and with my own history again, and again, and again, albeit in a different context. In fact, I actively tried not to consider what it might feel like.

I jumped into law school head-first and started volunteering with survivors of domestic and sexual violence. As much as I hate to admit it, it took a huge toll on me—playing by the rules of the same system that chewed me up and spat me out and made me feel smaller than I ever thought possible. That told me I am not the “right” kind of victim. Here I am, trying to convince myself and all these other survivors that we have to use the system in order to change it, knowing full well that it never worked for me. How can I, with a straight face, tell them it’ll work this time?

I keep having this dream: I wake up in the middle of night and stumble to the bathroom in the dark and out of the corner of my eye, I see my reflection in the mirror. At first, the reflection scares me. Then, I think to myself, I just need to let my eyes adjust to the darkness. But the blob in the mirror never gets any clearer and I realize—that’s just what I look like now.

That’s what the legal system has made me feel in my own personal life. That’s what law school reminds me of. Feeling small. Lost. Faceless. Present-day-me had forgotten that coming to law school was a power play. Sure, I might’ve lost a fight or two, but I’m not out of plays. Far from it.

I’ve been questioning whether I should be here because this year has made me unsure if I can be here—if I can face the “why’s” of the way our legal system (doesn’t) works and still be okay. But when I think about the question, “will you be returning in the fall?” no doesn’t even seem like an option.

So, I guess I’ve answered my own question.

Untitled

"1L is the hardest."

-- By CeciliaPlaza - 14 Apr 2018

1L year has forced me to get to know myself—something I have long been afraid to do.

I started small: I learned that I can schmooze with the best of them and that I fit into this world better than I expected to. I’ve found that I hate schmoozing and don’t want to fit into this world as much as I expected to. But somewhere along the way, and somewhat against my will, I discovered something that actually matters.

Getting Out

My entire life has been about “getting out.”

I wasn’t going to get pregnant and married during or right after high school. I wasn’t going to go to aim for community college believing I should feel lucky I made it that far. I wasn’t going to let the abuses, the indignities, the unfairness of my circumstances dictate what I could and could not do. I wasn’t about to accept so low a bar.

But stubbornness is not enough to make it “out” of those traps. My parents always supported my hopes and dreams, but they were honest. Dreams are expensive. I either needed to think bigger or dream smaller. So, I sought out the resources. As soon as I was legally old enough, I started working, and saving. I found people who would invest in me. And I got “out.”

I never thought to ask myself where I wanted to go once I was “out”—and no one ever asked me. No one ever asked me anything.

They told me.

Told me what I needed to do and how I needed to do it. Told me that if I was going to be anything, I needed to be the best, because everyone else already had a head start.

The "best" at what?

First, I thought that meant academics, so I worked hard and earned myself the scholarships I needed to get to a fancy college with a good reputation.

Once I got there, academics was no longer felt like enough. So, I got research grants, volunteered, led school organizations, fundraised for local women’s shelters, served on student government, worked as a residential advisor, worked a minimum-wage job… I lived four years of my life just short of my breaking point, trying to convince the people around me—and more so, myself—that I belonged, that I could keep up, that I could be the “best.”

And it killed me that everyone at home was so proud. They didn’t know that all this time I had just been a big fish in a little, poorly resourced pond. Now, here, in this world, I was a plankter.

Getting In

Then, I got into Columbia-a reach school among my reach schools. Ironically, coming to law school, where I feel more out of place than I have ever felt, is the closest I've come to understanding myself. I don’t think myself a plankter anymore.

The "best" in context

1L year has put “best” in context for me. Being the “best” lawyer I can possibly be is about having a mission, a purpose beyond escaping something and proving people wrong. It means leaving this world just a little bit better than it was when I entered it—leaving a net-positive impact.

Every stage of my life has shown me just how ugly, how cruel, how depraved people can be, and how many forms injustice can take. I am tired. I am hurt. I am aggrieved. But I have been looking for reprieve in the wrong places. Until now, I did not know that I could be that reprieve, however small.

1L year has been about choices. I have choices now, and whatever I choose to do, I will make that choice because I believe in its potential for net-positivity. For light. For reprieve.

I choose to be the kind of lawyer who brings others up with me despite the intense individualistic culture we’re drowning in (because what a sad life it would be to get wherever it is you’re going and find yourself alone).

I choose not to be the center of my own world.

I choose, for the first time, to walk towards something.

How?

I came to law school with plans, with an end-goal, but my newly discovered vision for myself—a net-positive me—requires living in real time. As much as it pains me, a risk-averse control freak who has always had an escape plan, being the “best” kind of lawyer requires not having a 30-year plan. It means being okay with not knowing.

I can become the kind of lawyer I hope to be only by not planning. Not the way I used to, at least. I have outgrown every plan for my life that I ever made. It is time to make room for opportunities, for the kinds of choices I say I want to make. I have been pigeon-holing myself.

I just need to have faith that I will end up where I need to be, and where I am needed. My only “plan,” per se, is to trust myself to make choices driven by purpose rather than fear. I already have everything I need.

I have passion. Grit bordering on stubbornness that so often comes back to bite me but is also the reason I haven’t given up in the face of so many reasons to do so. Love. Practical skills and the intelligence to use them appropriately. A story that lights a fire in me. A tiny spark of naiveté that I recognize as one of my greatest weaknesses, but that keeps me hopeful.

I have direction. I have a reason.

The kind of lawyer I hope to be is going to find my own way of doing something good—because God knows, something good must come of this. And if I’m as stubborn as I think I am, something good will.

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