I haven't posted in awhile. That is the direct consequence of dedicating the last two weeks of my life to the bane of every 1L's existence: the Appellate Brief.
For those of you lucky enough to have avoided the insanity of law school, the Appellate Brief is the major spring semester writing assignment that every 1L must somehow survive. The process is filled with all-nighters (I'm at three so far), caffeine-induced shakes, and breakdowns in front of your TA because you're at twenty-two pages, and the minimum requirement is twenty-three (yes, yes. That was me). It's editing, more editing, editing your first edits, editing your second edits, on and on until the word "edit" becomes the only word in your vocabulary.
Then, just when you think you're done, you have to get it bound, and the assignment that you thought couldn't possibly get any more stressful all of a sudden hits a 10 on the Richter law school scale. The binding process itself is not stressful because someone else binds it for you. What's stressful is the handing over of 45% of your grade to someone else, and trusting them with it. I've felt more comfortable trusting people with my life.
During the Appellate Brief writing process, you find yourself giving the characters life. I found myself reprimanding my fictional client because of all the times for a junior high girl to keep her mouth shut, she chose the wrong one. I yelled at the fictional boy who skipped the day in kindergarten when they taught us "to keep our hands to ourselves." I found myself responding to the fictional statements of the fictional depositions.
This immersion into the Appellate Brief (which I think is what psychiatrists call "a psychotic break"...what do they know?) highlighted one very real truth. As law students, we live in a different reality. We live in a reality that when someone says the word "night," our first question is immediately, "Which night do you mean? Dusk? Eight p.m.? Midnight?" Our reality becomes filled with battery, negligence, fee simples, and the difference between strict scrutiny, intermediate scrutiny, and rational basis tests. Our literatutre consists of cases, depositions, affidavits, interrogatories, law review articles, etc. The highlight of our week(end) is when we can finish our Legal Research assignments in under three hours. When we pass a fender bender on the road, we start assessing the possible negligence claims.
Maybe I formed this alternate reality because it's all I know now. Maybe this reality always existed, and I'm just now realizing that I live in it. But one day, it will be worth it. The J.D. behind our names, finally getting to apply the knowledge we acquired during our three years of endless stress, and the first paycheck will make us glad we went through it. Ok, maybe not glad, but maybe we will be able to look back without cringing. Or maybe, just maybe, the new world I live in has made me so optimistic that I'm toeing the line between optimism and psychosis.
For me, it will all be worth it when I get to quote A Few Good Men in court.
Dream big, kids. Dream big.
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