I Dropped Out of Law School and I Felt Like a Failure

Is this something I wanted? Yes!

So why did I feel so shitty about it?

I have always been the type of person who did well in academics. I graduated with a high gpa in high school, a high gpa in college, and became valedictorian in my Master's program. This is not me bragging, this is just me painting a picture of someone who usually succeeds at anything related to academics.

Law school though.....that's a different story.

YOU CAN ONLY BE A LAWYER, DOCTOR, OR AN ENGINEER

Remember when I said that my family only values prestigious careers like being a lawyer or doctor, well it's no joke. Being the daughter of a Haitian immigrant means this is expected of you even before you are born.

You see, as a child it was drilled into my head how my mother came here with nothing and made something for herself. Oh yeah! She's a nurse and she is self-made and boy has she had a lucrative career. Are you feeling the pressure now? Try living in it.

What my mother didn't know was that she was giving birth to a creative genius. Just kidding, but it does have a nice ring to it. I love to write and film and even paint. I basically like anything that allows me to use my creative mind. This didn't go along with my already planned out life.

So while the kids in elementary and middle school had dreams of being a lawyer or a doctor at a young age, I had dreams of being an author or a film director. I didn't know my exact career path, but I knew it had to be something that allowed me to create.

THE COLLEGE TRAP

When I was 17, I had no idea what I wanted to be, but applications had to start being submitted to colleges and I had to make a decision on a major. I wasn't sure on what I wanted to major in, so my mother suggested I pick a science major. Feeling the pressure and wanting to make her proud, I went with it. I picked biology as my first major.

I was miserable to say the least. Now just offering a bit of clarification here...I actually love science. I think that God was being so creative when he made the human body and I dig that. Unfortunately, I couldn't see myself cutting open people's bodies or telling kids to say, "Aghhh" as I examined their mouths.

My complete uninterest in this major caused me to switch my major to Journalism. It did take some convincing on my end for my mother to let me do this. I kind of threw in science somewhere in my convincing argument stating how I could write about science even if I wasn't going to be in the field.

It worked!

I entered into the world of journalism feeling like a FREE woman. I felt so liberated and so excited that I would not only get to write on whatever I liked, but I was going to be creating short films. They threw in some photography too and I was in heaven.

IT CAME CRASHING DOWN

THEN came the big news. My mother was talking to a friend who suggested I go to law school since apparently a lot of Journalism majors do. I still haven't forgiven that friend and feel like she should have minded her own damn business, but I digress.

It was like my mother recevied this confirmation from God himself because she ran with it. She thought this was all the confimation she needed. Since medical school didn't work out and I didn't even acknowledge engineering, she was down two and had one more to go. Law school was the answer. She felt that it would open so many doors for me. At first, I did reject the idea and rejected it all the way up until I graduated school. Unfortunately, she wore me down.

NOT SO PREPPY

We even moved to a new city where two law schools were located. It wasn't funny back then, but now I laugh. I even applaud her persistence. I went to my local library and rented out LSAT prep books. I would sit down and start studying, but then my mind would wander to something else. This gibberish was so boring and I had absolutely no interest in learning it.

She even signed me up for an LSAT prep course and to make matters worse, it was an expensive course. Talk about laying on the guilt. When it was time for me to take the LSAT, I figured that if I didn't do well, it wasn't meant to be. At this time, I had applied to three law schools. Sadly, I got into all of them.

When my LSAT results came back, you will be surprised to know that I passed with the exact score I needed to get into law school. I was even awarded a scholarship. Fume was coming out my ears at this point while my mom was doing her praise dance. Her dreams were finally coming true. She could finally tell our family and her friends that her daughter was in law school.

All I kept thinking is why is this happening to me. God knows that I dreaded going to law school and yet all these things were happening so easily. I barely studied, yet I passed. My personal statement was half-assed, yet I got accepted. Was this a prank?

LAW SCHOOL

Well, I dropped out after my first year of law school. It was a shit-show. I hated the curriculum, I hated that they practiced the socratic method (calling you out, in class, at random to answer questions), I hated that I had to study brief after flipping brief. I became depressed and I felt like I was living someone else's life.

After class, one day, I went into the academic office and dropped out of the program. Most people in my situation would have probably felt relieved, but all I felt was guilt. This wasn't what I wanted to do, but I felt like I had failed. I felt like I had failed myself, my almost perfect academic record, and my mother. Oh yeah! I also had to work up the courage to tell my mother the crime (at least in her eyes) that I had committed. How was I going to do that?

THE REVEAL

Well I did it and it came with a long lecture and a million "why's." She was disappointed, to say the least, which didn't help my guilt. After months of feeling down and feeling like I would never make her proud again, I started to feel better.

I had done something that a lot of people aren't brave enough to do. Some people have stuck it out, taken the bar, and have become lawyers with a corner office. Now they work 80-hour weeks with case files up to the ceiling. They are filled with so much stress and some have even resorted to drinking...heavily. How do I know? I talk to them about it. Hell, I probably would have resorted to drinking myself. Now this is not the case for a lot of my friends, but it was the case for me and is the case for so many people out there.

THE TAKEAWAY

I took back my life and I am so happy I did. Today, I am a professional blogger and I get to write whatever I want, whenever I want. I am in my own lane and I feel so liberated. As for my mom, she stopped crying about the law school thing a couple years ago. She has finally put it past her. Like I previously said, she birthed a creative genius and she's just going to have to live with that.