Anxiety has killed many a career
Hello world!
Nice to emerge from insanity-land once in a while. The past few months -- well, pretty much from mid-March until November 14 -- have been really, really bizarre, in that I feel I've been running in a nonstop hamster wheel. Now that it's almost final exam time, I can actually breathe a little bit. Which is ironic, because it should be the opposite way around. But basically my responsibilities between now and then consist of wrapping up my internship (and writing a journal and meeting with my advisor one last time -- naturally the same advisor who messed up my law review note last spring, so I'm kind of dragging my feet about the process), and studying for two exams on December 12 and 20. And finding an internship for next semester and/or a job. (A what? Yeah, I haven't been really searching much. It's probably bad how not concerned I am about getting one of those immediately--maybe because I'm of the mentality that jobs open when there's a need for one, and unless you do Big Law or government, few employers generally do their hiring more than a few weeks in advance... particularly for a first-year associate who hasn't passed the bar yet. More about that later.)
So yes, I'm somewhat light on work in a literal sense, but I'm kind of dragging my feet about studying for my first final since I have so much time. But I'm really feeling the burnout, I guess, so that concerns me, whether I'll have the energy. I handed in my Note for Law Review on November 14, and I was pretty disappointed with the way it came out, but then I'm only looking to pass, not to publish, because it's ruined my life for this long, hanging over my head like that. And when it was done, I didn't feel the relief of getting it out of the way; I just wanted to cry because it had consumed my life for so long (more psychologically than anything), and you'd think you'd have something great to show for it. But there was really nothing rewarding about it at all. All I learned from the experience--and I'm barely being hyperbolic here--was that absolutely never, ever, ever wanted to be a law professor. Which I more or less knew already.
I talked to my dad a few days later and he asked me, "What is a Note anyway?" And I explained to him that it was a 25-page* scholarly paper that explores a broad legal issue and proposes a novel solution. With footnotes for every other sentence. And your approach to it can't have been published already. In short, everything I absolutely hate.
*The specified length was 22-25 pages, but many people wrote more. Mine was 26 1/4 pages, which is fittingly the equivalent of running a marathon in miles. One guy wrote 68 pages. How does any student read a 68-page paper on legal theory, much less write it?
"Was it really that bad for you?" he asked. Because I guess from the perspective of anyone with more than a bachelor's, 25 pages really doesn't really seem that bad. (I mean, that's like a term paper for a class, right?)
Yes, it was that bad. Though in hindsight, I keep thinking that maybe I was overreacting or handling it all wrong. I mean, a lot of my classmates described it as miserable and torturous, as well, but I just wonder if what's considered bad for them was different than what was bad for me. I'm kind of horrified to think that for about seven months, I couldn't do anything without thinking I should be working on my Note, thinking about it, researching it, writing about it. That it kind of wrecked my summer (because I didn't even have a topic until the end of it), and then I was thrown straight back into it once the semester started, rather than easing into classes. Do other people really sit around worrying as much as I do, or are successful people better segmenters? I remember reading something in Time magazine about 15 or so years ago about the supposed "EQ" ("emotional quotient") that was more important than one's IQ. I think it boiled down to basically a more complicated discussion of Type A and Type B personalities, but the theory was that how you deal with pressure is what determines whether you're a success or a failure... that looking at Presidents, for instance, people like FDR and Bill Clinton had really high EQs, and Richard Nixon obviously didn't. And I'm sort of realizing--well, in general, but definitely the past two-plus years with my nose to the grindstone--I just don't deal well with stress. There's always something hanging over my head, something "OMGIhavetogetthisdone, butIcan'tdoit, butImustdoit, andnowthere'snotenoughtimebecauseIprocrastinated, andwhyisittakingsolong, andnowit'shorribleandIdidn'tgiveiteverythingIhad." I feel like it makes me such a downer to be around all the time, and I always vow I'll do less complaining and thinking more positively, and then something else comes up that makes the latter completely impossible. [I guess my apartment situation this semester might've had something to do with it, but it probably only exasperated the anxiety, rather than caused much of it.]
I feel like it's going to be that way about the job search, too. Right now I'm just not worrying, but come Bar time, if I don't have anything, I'm probably going to start panicking about how I'll never find anything--which I know is not true, but it's going to seem that way. I just wish, what I tell myself now in early December, that I'm worth it, that it's never going to be too late to do something, that I'm not going to be saying, "I should've done this back then," or "if only I'd done that, then..." -- that I'll be able to remember that's the truth if (and when?) things get bad. Knowing my history, I just don't know if I will; it's like I feel predestined to go through this sort of panicky phase of things getting bad, things getting worse, things getting near-despair, before something good happens. I just want to be able to say I got through things, their ups and downs, did what I had to do, and came out on the other end without another two dozen gray hairs.**
**As an aside, I'm finding way too many of those lil' buggers for someone closer to 29 than to 30. I've definitely got a whole lot more lines on my face than I did in the summer of 2009.
Is that too much to ask?
Nice to emerge from insanity-land once in a while. The past few months -- well, pretty much from mid-March until November 14 -- have been really, really bizarre, in that I feel I've been running in a nonstop hamster wheel. Now that it's almost final exam time, I can actually breathe a little bit. Which is ironic, because it should be the opposite way around. But basically my responsibilities between now and then consist of wrapping up my internship (and writing a journal and meeting with my advisor one last time -- naturally the same advisor who messed up my law review note last spring, so I'm kind of dragging my feet about the process), and studying for two exams on December 12 and 20. And finding an internship for next semester and/or a job. (A what? Yeah, I haven't been really searching much. It's probably bad how not concerned I am about getting one of those immediately--maybe because I'm of the mentality that jobs open when there's a need for one, and unless you do Big Law or government, few employers generally do their hiring more than a few weeks in advance... particularly for a first-year associate who hasn't passed the bar yet. More about that later.)
So yes, I'm somewhat light on work in a literal sense, but I'm kind of dragging my feet about studying for my first final since I have so much time. But I'm really feeling the burnout, I guess, so that concerns me, whether I'll have the energy. I handed in my Note for Law Review on November 14, and I was pretty disappointed with the way it came out, but then I'm only looking to pass, not to publish, because it's ruined my life for this long, hanging over my head like that. And when it was done, I didn't feel the relief of getting it out of the way; I just wanted to cry because it had consumed my life for so long (more psychologically than anything), and you'd think you'd have something great to show for it. But there was really nothing rewarding about it at all. All I learned from the experience--and I'm barely being hyperbolic here--was that absolutely never, ever, ever wanted to be a law professor. Which I more or less knew already.
I talked to my dad a few days later and he asked me, "What is a Note anyway?" And I explained to him that it was a 25-page* scholarly paper that explores a broad legal issue and proposes a novel solution. With footnotes for every other sentence. And your approach to it can't have been published already. In short, everything I absolutely hate.
*The specified length was 22-25 pages, but many people wrote more. Mine was 26 1/4 pages, which is fittingly the equivalent of running a marathon in miles. One guy wrote 68 pages. How does any student read a 68-page paper on legal theory, much less write it?
"Was it really that bad for you?" he asked. Because I guess from the perspective of anyone with more than a bachelor's, 25 pages really doesn't really seem that bad. (I mean, that's like a term paper for a class, right?)
Yes, it was that bad. Though in hindsight, I keep thinking that maybe I was overreacting or handling it all wrong. I mean, a lot of my classmates described it as miserable and torturous, as well, but I just wonder if what's considered bad for them was different than what was bad for me. I'm kind of horrified to think that for about seven months, I couldn't do anything without thinking I should be working on my Note, thinking about it, researching it, writing about it. That it kind of wrecked my summer (because I didn't even have a topic until the end of it), and then I was thrown straight back into it once the semester started, rather than easing into classes. Do other people really sit around worrying as much as I do, or are successful people better segmenters? I remember reading something in Time magazine about 15 or so years ago about the supposed "EQ" ("emotional quotient") that was more important than one's IQ. I think it boiled down to basically a more complicated discussion of Type A and Type B personalities, but the theory was that how you deal with pressure is what determines whether you're a success or a failure... that looking at Presidents, for instance, people like FDR and Bill Clinton had really high EQs, and Richard Nixon obviously didn't. And I'm sort of realizing--well, in general, but definitely the past two-plus years with my nose to the grindstone--I just don't deal well with stress. There's always something hanging over my head, something "OMGIhavetogetthisdone, butIcan'tdoit, butImustdoit, andnowthere'snotenoughtimebecauseIprocrastinated, andwhyisittakingsolong, andnowit'shorribleandIdidn'tgiveiteverythingIhad." I feel like it makes me such a downer to be around all the time, and I always vow I'll do less complaining and thinking more positively, and then something else comes up that makes the latter completely impossible. [I guess my apartment situation this semester might've had something to do with it, but it probably only exasperated the anxiety, rather than caused much of it.]
I feel like it's going to be that way about the job search, too. Right now I'm just not worrying, but come Bar time, if I don't have anything, I'm probably going to start panicking about how I'll never find anything--which I know is not true, but it's going to seem that way. I just wish, what I tell myself now in early December, that I'm worth it, that it's never going to be too late to do something, that I'm not going to be saying, "I should've done this back then," or "if only I'd done that, then..." -- that I'll be able to remember that's the truth if (and when?) things get bad. Knowing my history, I just don't know if I will; it's like I feel predestined to go through this sort of panicky phase of things getting bad, things getting worse, things getting near-despair, before something good happens. I just want to be able to say I got through things, their ups and downs, did what I had to do, and came out on the other end without another two dozen gray hairs.**
**As an aside, I'm finding way too many of those lil' buggers for someone closer to 29 than to 30. I've definitely got a whole lot more lines on my face than I did in the summer of 2009.
Is that too much to ask?