Comments on: Are Law Students Emotional Wrecks?

By: Ian

Ian — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 21:57:20 +0000

Great post. I got this from a friend in e-mail, too.

The hazards of law schools are something people do to themselves. Most law students have a horrible fear of failure; at the best law schools, you will find a huge number of students who got straight A grades in high school, went to fantastic, world-renowned universities, and came into law school with all engines blazing. Especially the youngest among them may, in fact, never have failed at anything in their entire lives. These are bright kids who have been told by their parents their entire lives that they… are… destined… TO LEAD!

Coincidentally, this is also the first time many law students encounter a mandatory curve. The combination is a semester-long Sword of Damocles.

I’ve enjoyed law school more than most. Whether this has anything to do with the fact that paragraph #2 doesn’t describe me (like, at all), I’ll never really know. But I suspect having rogered one’s own life many times before law school enables a certain calm about the process. When missing a brass ring is no longer the worst thing you can imagine, none of this is as scary.

By: bmc90

bmc90 — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 17:42:39 +0000

Bread and Jill, I think you are just in a very different job market geographically from the state where I graduated re public interest jobs. There are a fairly discrete number of law schools in a very large state with a lot of public interest needs. If that’s what you want someday, practicing with a private firm might make you a more attractive candidate. Fact is, a lot of positions like public defender have a high burn rate so there are always openings.

By: Laurel

Laurel — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 09:33:06 +0000

Congrats, Dr. Confused!

Thanks for the recommendations, Linnaeus.

By: Linnaeus

Linnaeus — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 01:43:20 +0000

Laurel (and anyone else who’s interested):

Here’s a couple for starters:

Barbara E. Lovitts, Leaving the Ivory Tower. Lovitts herself entered and dropped out of two graduate programs before earning a Ph.D. at her third school. This book was her dissertation. It’s a really good exploration of why graduate students leave Ph.D. programs, why they stay, how they cope, etc. Even if you have no plans to leave, Lovitts’ insights are informative and comforting. Let’s just say she has quite a few words for graduate programs.

Susan Basalla and Maggie Debelius, “So What Are You Going To Do With That?” Finding Careers Outside Academia, rev. ed. I just got this; it’s a short, quick read, but there’s lots of good suggestions on how to reinvent yourself if you’ve pretty much determined – like me – that you don’t want to go into academia.

There’s also Margaret Newhouse’s Outside The Ivory Tower. I haven’t read it yet, but Basalla and Debelius say it’s helpful and worth a read.

By: Betsy

Betsy — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 01:34:22 +0000

Congrats, Dr. Confused! You got the big poofy dress! I swear that the prospect of getting one of those (someday) is all that keeps me going sometimes.

By: inkybrain

inkybrain — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 01:28:17 +0000

Let me agree with everyone who says grad school can be pretty hellish. One of the most infuriating things for me is that we’re supposedly doing what we want to do, but the process of grad school itself makes it so damn hard to do just that.

By: Dr. Confused

Dr. Confused — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 22:37:35 +0000

Laurel,

I made it out. Just last week. A few breakdowns, a couple near-suicides, but now they call me Dr.

By: Betsy

Betsy — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 22:19:49 +0000

Wow, Laurel, if you’ve got your dissertation 2/3 written before you’re even done with your comps, I don’t think you’ll have too much to worry about, ultimately. :-) That’s very impressive (though I’m recognizing that your department is probably on a different schedule than mine – we had our quals at the end of our 2nd year, well before anyone had begun teaching or presented a diss. prospectus). But even so, that’s pretty fantastic.

By: Sago Boulevard :: Law Students Are Emotional Wrecks :: June :: 2007

Sago Boulevard :: Law Students Are Emotional Wrecks :: June :: 2007 — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 21:10:38 +0000

[...] udents Are Emotional Wrecks

From the Wall Street Journal’s Law Blog (via Jill): “The emotional distress of law students appears to [...]

By: Bolo

Bolo — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 20:30:44 +0000

Very interesting to read about people’s experiences here. I’ve got kind of the opposite problem right now. I’m currently working as an engineer for a large corporation but am really, really disatisfied with the corporate culture and what the company actually does. Plus, they don’t seem to really know what to do with me–I have little to do and, coming from a pressure-cooker undergraduate program, that screws with my head. I don’t necessarily like stress, but I’m accustomed to a certain level and type of work that I’m just not getting anymore. And that generates its own nervousness and stress (I’m about to start seeing a therapist for depression).

So I’m going back to school! I’m applying to grad school to get a Master’s in a different (but still engineering-related) field. I honestly can’t wait to start–if I get in, that is. We’ll see how I feel in another year or so…