Law school is pretty plainly the kind of thing that can swallow you whole, and that fact has led me to think a lot about a kind of intellectual self-care lately. I guess what I mean by that is that over the last few weeks, I’ve been feeling sort of protective of my interdisciplinary self.
I’ve always felt anxiety around the pressure to specialize, and it’s like being pinned against a wall every time someone at the faculty drops a “so, why are you here?” (which, by the way, is quite frequently). I find myself swinging back and forth between some crushing invisible deadline to just pick the thing to do and, conversely, a really deep, honest desire to just take it all in, to refuse to choose.
I think surviving this experience over the next few years* will mean playing an awful lot of psychological defense, and really working to avoid taking this superficial world of career fairs and crappy, firm-sponsored beer too seriously. All this to say, friends, that if you want to wander around an art gallery or go on a psychedelic camping trip or make some bread from scratch or bike across a continent, there’s no time like the present.
*(and by surviving, I mean being able to come out as a whole person, at least as whole as I went in)
from False Knees.
lexgill.com 