Welcome to Law School 2L: Between the Beginning and the End

In the past few weeks, I have been reminded of where I have been and where I am going. I vicariously experienced two milestones and in so doing, reminded myself of just how remarkable it is to learn the law.

For some of us, each new semester of law school is just another link added to a long chain of school semesters, breaks and summers stretching back to childhood. Those who did not come straight from college may have spent the first year acclimating, but by now these two years have given us time to settle back into that academic routine. For me, at least, the pattern, that predictable swing from summer job to new classrooms to fall job interviews to exams to holiday break to new classrooms to spring job interviews to spring break to exams to summer job, has lulled me into a pleasant complacency. This is normal, this is my everyday, this is what I do. What else would I do?

I do not mean that I am ungrateful for the opportunity to attend law school; I do not mean that I have gotten apathetic about my studies; I do not mean that I have any less respect for the legal profession. I only mean that it is easy here, midstream, as we motor steadily but uneventfully toward the opposite shore, to let the heady exhilaration of the beginning fade and to not yet anticipate the glories of the end. It is easy for the quotidian to make the entire experience seem rote.

I saw the end first. I went to the graduation ceremony and attendant receptions and festivities for the Class of 2003 as a guest, supporting and congratulating my friends. But as I stood there in the dappled sunlight of the quad, the red and black and purple robes arrayed before us in brilliant phalanx, the pride, joy and wonderment of thousands of families and friends unified in a roar of applause, I was proud of myself, too. I saw, in the gladsome faces around me, what an accomplishment the completion of these three years is, what a culmination of hard work, what proof of our intelligence, aptitude, diligence and motivation , what dreams coming true.

I saw the beginning last week. The LSAT was administered at my law school, and as I walked up the steps of the building I was surrounded by anxious, stricken faces and bodies hunched over well-thumbed workbooks. Even as I walked calmly amidst their stress, I was empathetic. I remembered the chilly Chicago morning that I missed the homecoming football game to spend hours distilling months of test prep into perfect little Scantron bubbles. The law school sweatshirt I wore as I walked among the test-takers showed I, too, had been tried and I had earned the chance to continue.

Later that day, I spoke with an incoming student about my school and law school in general. I speak to a lot of incoming and prospective students, and every conversation takes me back to what I felt in their position: the excitement, the anxiety, the awe of those who had already made it. As I told him about the realities of being a One L, I was reminded of how much Id learned on such a steep learning curve, of how much my thinking has changed and my skill set has grown. But most importantly, as I told him about my life as a law student now, a little past the halfway mark, spending my summer working on fresh, dynamic, undecided cases and legal debates, beginning to exert my burgeoning influence on the legal world, I was proud of myself. Not proud of the glories of the past or those to come, but proud of myself now, in the singular achievement of today.

Annika K Martin is a second-year law student at the University of Southern California Law School in Los Angeles, CA. She earned her undergraduate degree from Northwestern University. She likes Swedish furniture, German cars, French films and Indian food.