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Pollywog | | | Fixating on the future sometimes feels like breathing around here. In the very first week of school we were bombarded with future-talk -- faculty members talking about our career prospects at orientation panels, 2Ls and 3Ls sharing advice on how to get a summer job, and of course the ever-persistent bar exam prep companies catering to 1Ls specifically. As first semester wore on, of course, we continued this preoccupation, quite literally. What grades will I get? How will that affect my job prospects? What are my job prospects? How might my summer job set me up with a talking point for my firm interviews next fall? It's amazing we were able to quiet all that chatter enough to actually learn (some of) the material last term. | |
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< | Despite its pervasiveness, or perhaps because of it, I've found that fixating on the future is both unhealthy and unproductive. For me, it became unhealthy when I started comparing my current self to my "ideal" self. My self who is a bit more organized, a bit more diligent, a bit more "adult-like", whatever that means. The problem with such comparison is that you'll always come up short; you're current self is never quite good enough. Self-doubt fosters anxiety, and anxiety makes just about everything more difficult, and less enjoyable. Fixating on the future is unproductive, on its face, because every moment you spend fixating on and worrying about the future is a moment you could have spent engaging in the present. If you engage in the present you walk with your head high instead of staring down at the sidewalk, you listen when others speak instead of thinking about yourself, you allow yourself to observe things you so often overlook, to learn from every person you meet and every sentence you read. Isn't that what really matters? Observation, learning, understanding? The sooner we stop fixating on the future, the sooner we can do what we came here to do. | >
> | Despite its pervasiveness, or perhaps because of it, I've found that fixating on the future is both unhealthy and unproductive. For me, it became unhealthy when I started comparing my current self to my "ideal" self. My self who is a bit more organized, a bit more diligent, a bit more "adult-like," whatever that means. The problem with such comparison is that you'll always come up short; you're current self is never quite good enough. Self-doubt fosters anxiety, and anxiety makes just about everything more difficult, and less enjoyable. Fixating on the future is unproductive, on its face, because every moment you spend fixating on and worrying about the future is a moment you could have spent engaging in the present. If you engage in the present you walk with your head high instead of staring down at the sidewalk, you listen when others speak instead of thinking about yourself, you allow yourself to observe things you so often overlook, to learn from every person you meet and every sentence you read. Isn't that what really matters? Observation, learning, understanding? The sooner we stop fixating on the future, the sooner we can do what we came here to do. | | | | |
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< | My point is not that we should ignore the future altogether or fail to plan, only that we should try not to fixate, on the future. Similarly, we should try not to fixate on the past, for fixating on the past leads to the same problems as fixating on the future. We should process the past, and learn from it, but avoid regret and crippling disappointment. So as we float here in our pond of uncertainty, flailing yet flexing our new intellectual limbs, the key is that we not despair; the key is that we embrace our status as pollywogs and find peace in our eternal transition. | >
> | My point is not that we should ignore the future altogether or fail to plan, only that we should try not to fixate, on the future. Similarly, we should try not to fixate on the past, for fixating on the past leads to the same problems as fixating on the future. We should process the past, and learn from it, but avoid regret and crippling disappointment. Also, as we learn form the past and plan for the future while focusing on the present, we should acknowledge that our present state is always one of transition. We will always be pollywogs. There's no such thing as becoming a frog and reaching the finish line because learning and growing is a lifelong process. Peter C. Harvey, former attorney general of New Jersey and Columbia Law School alumnus, once noted, "You must always stay green and growing, because the moment you think you've made it, the moment you think you're ripe, you begin to spoil." So as we float here in our pond of uncertainty, flailing yet flexing our new intellectual limbs, the key is that we not despair; the key is that we embrace our status as pollywogs, continue to learn, continue to grow, and find peace in our eternal transition. | | | CMJ |
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