One L

Between bouts of atrocious sweating in the Arizona heat, I’ve made time to begin One L by Scott Turow. The book is a combination of journal entries and post-1L musings about Turow’s first year at HLS in 1975. [Aside: Holy crap, only thirty years ago and the starting salary for a Harvard grad was $22,000?] He wrote the book immediately after his 1L year, so it isn’t much tempered by time, and most of the anecdotes he tells and feelings he expresses seem to require responses like, “OMG, I can’t go to law school. That’s just too much.”

As I read, I get the sense that I am supposed to change my mind about law school because of this book. That it is a sort of deterrent for undergrads like myself who foolishly wander in the general vicinity of the law profession and then get sucked into the whirling vortex that it is. And, frankly, there is nothing that is not scary about the things Turow describes in the book. Nothing. I am one year (and likely two) away from beginning law school, and the mere anticipation of the soul-crushing stress is already causing little pinpricks of anxiety. I suppose the book has heightened that anxiety (hopefully only for a short while), but I infinitely prefer anxiety over doubt. I prefer anxiety over doubt because my anxiety is caused by the thought of facing the inevitable; doubt would mean that I am considering the inevitable to be quite evitable.

On the other hand, I could start throwing myself at the bevy of graduate school exams and see where I stick. Ruling out medicine due to my debilitating fear of needles and general gore, I could try my hand at B-school and a PhD program. Of course, I’d rather not spend eight years writing an encyclopedia of knowledge on a narrow subject that no one will ever read, only to then strike out in the academic market (what is left of it) before throwing in the towel and going to law school because my previous education overqualifies me for absolutely everything besides academia, which, as mentioned previously, was an epic game over.

And that scenario frightens me more than Scott Turow and his 1975 1L year ever could.

Bring it, law school.