| On the eve of the last night of my internship, looking at this paper, I realized that the distraction technique of the tangential story wasn’t necessary and the fears that I had attempted to articulate, although ones I had genuinely identified at the time that I wrote the paper, are not valid any longer. I am not afraid that I won’t learn the skills necessary to be a good lawyer; at most I am afraid that I won’t be self-motivated enough to pursue the opportunities to become the lawyer I want to be amidst the constant institutional indoctrination of what is “right” or what you are “supposed to do/be/pursue”.
Perhaps law is a weak form of social control, but the lawyer who navigates the legal system, can be very powerful. Being back in a workplace with a lawyer who is also a teacher and who enjoys his job and is good at his job and who wields his law license powerfully, reinvigorated me and I wanted to set down in writing some of the lessons I learned and conversations I had with him as a reminder for when I feel the way I did when I wrote about jilted fiancés and the power of table manners. |