Vale of Tears: I had no business going to law school Forum

[Aunt Charlotte]

I had no business going to law school, being that I was only there only to make my dad proud of me for once in my life and not because I actually wanted to be there or even wanted to be a lawyer. Dad wanted me to be a lawyer and I forced myself to buy in and drink the Kool Aid, but no matter how much I tried to pretend, I was never more than ambivalent about the idea of being a lawyer or going to law school. I would look at my classmates, most of whom actually wanted to be there with utter confusion. I was especially befuddled by the ones who were super motivated to be lawyers, either to change the world or lock up bad guys or something like that. To me, being enthusiastic about being a lawyer seemed like being enthusiastic about a career in sanitation. People who seemed passionate about the law seemed utterly insane to me, and I was surrounded by these people in my classes. I was being taught by people who thought like that. It came to feel like there was something wrong with me for not feeling that way, since they could all see it, but I couldn’t.

I would zone out in classes frequently, finding much what I was learning to be dull and arcane and pointless. I did the bare minimum to maintain my scholarship and somehow graduated in the top third of my class despite spending most of my time outside of class jogging, reading non law books for pleasure or drinking myself half blind. I never even tried to join a journal or Law Review since it was just more work and I just wanted to leave law school with as little effort as possible. The externships were a mixed bag: I at least kind of liked a few of them, and I didn’t like most of them. Even the ones I liked were more due to getting along well with my supervisors than any real enjoyment of legal research. I was good at research and legal writing but I just didn’t like it. I screwed around as much as I could get away with, whiling my time away before I could go home.

I would tell my classmates that I wanted to start my own personal injury law firm because that was the only way I could become a multimillionaire as a lawyer. I knew subconsciously that I’d hate the profession and figured the only way I could tolerate was if I became obnoxiously wealthy doing it. I knew on some level that if I managed to pull this off, I’d probably be a rich lonely drunk with an impulse for self destruction, a Julian English of the 21st century careening headlong toward my inevitable demise. Realistically, I probably wouldn’t have made it this far. I would have drank and snorted my was out of the profession long before I’d have the chance to strike it rich.

I never had the nerve to quit though, as I was the Golden Boy of my family. Whenever my little brother would screw up, they would tell him to be “more like your brother.” My whole family seemed proud of me and were grooming me for their vision of success. I was to be a stolid, sober professional, the Man in the Gray Flannel Suit if you will. Get a good job, vote straight ticket Republican, marry a nice Catholic girl, and make a few nice Catholic babies with her and maybe join a country club. Never mind that I had actually always been a sensitive, literary type who loved theater, literature, film and opera. I’d had several discrete trysts with men (sometimes while presenting myself in women’s clothing) and went out frequently to gay bars en femme, doing all that in between half hearted attempts at dating the nice girls my family set me up with. In other words, I was living a double life, and trying to be the “man” my family wanted me to be was slowly killing me. I had started drinking heavily and even started experimenting with Xanax and cocaine. I have since dried out as a result of having to live at home during the pandemic, but I also bristled at the strictures of living with my parents. I hated that I couldn’t sneak out of the house en femme without risking being caught. I hated being dragged to church every Sunday, something I hadn’t done while living on my own as I am a nonbeliever. I hated my father’s domineering nature and my mother’s cloying emotional manipulation and her religious fanaticism that came to border on mania. On the surface, everything was Hunky Dory, but the reality was that I was coming completely unglued.

I had always maintained excellent grades and had gotten generous scholarships to both college and law school and I was loath to disappoint my family, especially since I knew they’d be immensely disappointed if they found out that I actually had a fervent desire to live my life as a woman and had desired this since childhood. They’d be disappointed if they knew how many men I’d been to bed with, or if they knew about the drinking and the drugs. I had always been the rather “sensitive” eldest son and namesake of an old school man’s man and spent all of my life trying to please him, typically to no avail. Outside of academics, I was a total disappointment to him, and I guess that’s why I threw myself into school so hard.

From the age of sixteen, my father told me point blank that I was either going to be an engineer, a doctor or a lawyer. I was never good at calculus and I can’t stand the sight of viscera, so by the time I entered college I was told that I was going to be lawyer and that I was to start law school immediately after graduating college. But failing the bar felt like I was finally liberated from that expectation, that I wasn’t going to be trapped in a career I wanted no part of.

But failing the bar shortly after coming out to my family two years ago was liberating. I had only failed by two points and probably would have passed had I not been having a nervous breakdown concerning the prospect of my family rejecting me (an eventuality that came to pass). I was working as a judicial law clerk at the time I got the results and the other clerks all seemed surprised at how nonplussed I was about failing the bar. I didn’t want to show it, but I was actually happy that I had failed. In fact, earlier today, I tore up my law school diploma (which has spent two years moldering in a junk drawer) and threw it in the garbage. It felt as though a lead anvil was lifted from my chest. I started laughing almost maniacally and broke into a Cheshire Cat grin. It may have been a moment of borderline insanity, but I’ll goddamned if it was cathartic as hell.

I’m not necessarily ashamed of having gone to law school, but I’m not proud of it either. In retrospect, it feels like an act of capitulation to familial expectations at the expense of my own happiness. On some level, it’s a time in my life that I’d rather forget, but know deep down that I’ll never truly be able to. And perhaps that’s for the best. I made some good friends in law school, almost all of whom stuck with me, unlike my family. One of my professors is still a mentor to me even after I told him of my desire to do something else with my life. And it was an experience that has shaped me to some extent.

Now, I’m at a point in my life where my life is my own, but I still have to figure out what exactly I’ll do for a living. It’ll probably be something adjacent to the law to start, but I’m hoping to gradually transition further and further away from the legal field the deeper I get into my career. I’ve interviewed for such a job about five weeks ago and it pays pretty well. I haven’t heard back yet one way or the other, but it has become a ritual for me to check my email hourly if not even more frequently for the good or bad news.

That being said, I should have never done it. If I were to do it over I absolutely wouldn’t. I should have gotten the nerve to tell my parents to go to hell several years before I actually did and taken control of my own life sooner. But I guess it’s better late than never.

[Anonymous User]

School rank?

[Aunt Charlotte]

Goddamned if I know. I went to Rutgers Law School, nothing too fancy. But I’d feel the same way if I went to Harvard or Yale.

[Anonymous User]

Dang these ChatGPT prompts getting wild

[Aunt Charlotte]

Ha! I like your sense of humor.

[crazywafflez]

Glad you found your way! I hope all goes well for you. It is never too late to go down your own path.

[emc91]

I ain’t reading all that. I’m happy for you tho. Or sorry that happened.