Let's Go

-- By JenniferDayrit - 25 Apr 2018

I decided to become a lawyer some time around middle school. I am not sure what initially gave me the idea, but I vaguely remember it being essential to my plan to become president. I carried this plan with me until my sophomore year of college, when I began to have doubts. I declared my major in Film instead of Political Science because I loved the thought that I might be able to change hearts and minds through something I made. However, after much thought, I eventually decided on law school. Although I loved telling stories, I wanted to have a more direct role in changing people’s lives.

When I arrived to law school, I felt validated. I was in awe of my classmates and excited about the unlimited opportunities available to me. I was in the right place to learn how to make a difference. But as time went on, my excitement waned and my anxiety grew. I was deeply unhappy. But, why? Columbia had ensured that everything was settled. I secured a summer job, and by the end of August I would have secured a job for post-graduation through EIP. Yet, I obsessed over whether I made the right choice. For months, I agonized about what I should do.

It was not until our class discussed “mandatory” EIP meetings that I realized why I was so unhappy. I had incorporated the belief that I had to choose between a fulfilling career and one that erased my student debt. Being funneled into a job, without any deliberation about what I wanted, had made me resentful. I felt useless, trapped, and angry. Once I realized I did not have to choose, my perspective began to change. I took the opportunity to not only see all the options around me, but to really think about what my goals were and how I was going to achieve them. This reflection changed the way I see law school and how I envision my future. These are the lessons I’ve learned so far:

I want to change people’s lives for the better, directly. Ultimately, I came to law school to do this and it is why I have chosen to stay. My aunt works for minimum wage in a service job where her supervisors disrespect her and she has had customers spit on her. Being in law school is the first time I have felt like I could learn, in some small way, how to protect her. At Columbia, I continue to see and hear about injustices like this. Living and working in what can feel like an isolated bubble is uncomfortable, but it is also a reminder that I have the resources to learn how to “change considerably - and for the better - the living standards of hundreds of thousands of people.” Whatever I end up doing, I have to take advantage of that through my peers, professors, and courses, as well as opportunities that I make for myself. I must constantly reflect back on this to make sure that the steps I take are in pursuit of this goal and not in pursuit of empty or distracting status symbols.

My independence is important to me. When my dad asks me when I am coming back to live in Texas, I like to remind him that he moved 8,000 miles away from home to be with my mom. I always knew that I valued independence in my personal life, but now I know I need it in my career as well. The rigid structure and emphasis on hierarchy of a corporate law firm does not appeal to me. I prefer to be an environment that values experience, but also appreciates and encourages input from all of the team. After learning that I have the option to practice law independently, my goal is to one day be in a position where I can accept or deny clients at my discretion. I value that freedom and will do whatever I can to ensure that fear is not the primary driving force in my practice.

To ensure that I will be able to have an independent practice I know I need to look to mentors who have done this before. A significant portion of my next two years will be devoted to finding mentors who can instruct me on how they started their own independent practices. Knowing my own comfort levels, I think I would prefer to work on a small team before I move out on my own. Therefore, it will be important to connect with peers and reach out to practitioners who share my interests.

I want to work on data privacy and surveillance issues. Because of negative experiences with social media when it first became popular, I have tried to be mindful of my interactions with it. I also try to observe the way that others interact with technology. My interest grew into a desire to understand how the law interacts with technology, specifically concerning privacy and surveillance. As I started to track current issues, I became concerned that lawmakers rarely understand these issues and society only fleetingly cares. As someone who is passionate about this, I first want to work on actually “walking the walk” so to speak. I have allowed convenience to justify my own economic and personal input into devices. I want to break from my dependence on personal data input and learn about other options that do not sacrifice privacy. Second, I intend to learn as much as I can so that I can make a real impact. I intend to find courses and knowledgeable professors (outside the law school) so that I can begin to be someone who knows the law and knows technology. I will seek guidance from the attorneys at my internship who know the area so that I can work on a strategy for continuing growth. By focusing on these goals, I hope to become more knowledgeable and effective in my future practice.

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Very good start. You know that there are many students who experience this trajectory during the first year; you have animated from within one person's thoughts and feelings, but you have captured that of others in the process. This is how more than one life is changed at a time.

You have real plans. They could be more detailed, and they will be. But they embrace the essential of all strategy: they define objectives rather than assuming them. As you show in your reflections on the arc of growing up within your family, living life to achieve the objectives we actually have—not the ones we think we always have had—can require boldness and a willingness to accept displacement, with its accompanying loss of supposed certainty. So these plans too may change. But what is important is carrying them as far as you can.

Your last paragraph need some work. It reflects our conversations, and your subsequent serious thinking, all of which is good. But one had to be there to understand, because you let a couple of sentences represent the general drift of your thinking rather than clearly explaining it. You can improve on that with the same clarity and candor you bring to the rest of the draft.