Just call me the LAAAAW Doctah

I graduated day. It feels oddly disconnected to any of the actual milestones that are clearly happening around me. I guess it seems simultaneously tardy and too soon, since I finished classes about a month ago and the long haul journey doesn't culminate until this bar baby is well behind me and I have been sworn in already! That's the real goal, but it was entertaining. We mostly had no idea where we were supposed to go, what we were supposed to do, who all these other people in what is a pretty small graduating class were! I finally found the girl I spent much of FLS (the law school orientation) and part of my first year with and we bumbled through the pre-walking rituals without getting too lost (although I'm pretty sure we made it into about a hundred other-people's photos.

I walked conspicuously with jeans, sneakers, and bright fluffy Christmas socks, which I find smart because there were many heel-related near-fatalities on the risers. I may have ... just maybe... texted a little during the reading of the names, but i paid attention for most of the ceremony and our class president gave a great little speech. For the most part though, I never know how to respond when people tell us to remember what we wrote in our application essays and why we came to law school - like we all came with such noble goals that this will inspire us and re-ennervate our goals after the moral and ethical drumming that is the indoctrination of law. I wrote something about going into international law.

 I don't really know why exactly I came to law school, but I think it had more to do with it kind of being the more practical choice against a masters in history (dooming me to the academic world the rest of my life) or archiving (dooming me to an even poorer job market, the awkward dredges of the academic world and a lifetime of "sexy librarian" jokes). I mean really, I came to law school because I knew I could do well at it and that it would be the kind of job that would allow me to make decent money in a way that challenged me and possibly wouldn't leave me bouncing pay check to pay check. And these are good things to remember on gradution, but not exactly the lofty world-changing idealism that many of the speakers supposed. I do want to help "people," but people on an individual basis and only to the extent to which they are willing to help themselves. Anyways, that said, today we celebrate our accomplishments and tomorrow we... go back to feverishly studying for the BAR EXAM (I'll change the world in September)

Andrew, commenting on our impending two year anniversary (two what now?), asked me if I felt that I'd changed in the last few years. I immediately considered the relevant time period for that inquiry to be the last three, since moving to Seattle and law school and all that seem like a fairly convenient block of time to mull over in such a fashion and that impending graduation had been begging me to do so. My instinctive answer was no, which is funny since one could easily argue to the contrary - I don't dance much these days, I'm oddly a morning person, I'm far more anal and schedule driven, I am more conservative in dress and manner, not to mention little details like having been in a happy-stable two year relationship (outlasting my prior "longest" and directly preceding by about oh a year and a half or more) and i'm about thirty pounds thinner (if the lawyer thing doesn't work out, I am still going back to my plan of writing The Law School Diet - it's pretty simple: mostly you walk around a lot with heavy books, drink your body weight in coffee, pace around maniacally, and never have a fully stocked kitchen because you're too busy/stressed out to buy groceries and too poor to eat out - har har, I jest... sort of).

I guess I have always had a very fluid self-identity, believing that we all are a swarm of sundry traits that occasionally form constellations in adaptation to certain contexts and that some are more rigidly or flexibly willing to reconfigure. I'm on the flexible to Fight Club divergence end of things sometimes, which has certainly led some to consider me disingenuous, a characterization that I contest but understand. So I am still me (to the extent anyone can claim to be a self), even if certain aspects of me are more dominant in these contexts, I guess. I could say that these days I'm more comfortable with myself. Or maybe I'm more comfortable with this particular manifestation of self. I do wonder what comes next, on a personal level and which adaptive traits are permanent. Will I stay a morning person? Stay tuned, folks.

But all knocking aside, it is a chance to say... wow that was three pretty intense years of my life and I accomplished/survived a lot and had the privilege to have some of the greatest, warmest and brightest minds for my picking and mentoring. And of course am incredibly grateful for my friends, family and Mr. (W)right for having put up with my through these nutso stressful up and down three years (and prospectively this next month and a half)! So, what the hell, I'm proud of myself. Go me!

Also... tired. GO ME (TO SLEEP!)