I have always spent the night before the first day of school lying in bed, anxious about what is to come. It doesn’t seem to matter if I am staying in the same place and simply going into the next grade, or if it’s a huge life change like high school to college, the night before the first day for me is a very anxious affair.
So inevitably, the night before starting law school will follow the same pattern. I have spoken extensively about success and failure and trying again in previous posts. But the truth is, no matter how many times I say it, starting law school doesn’t feel real.
Doubt creeps in and imposter syndrome takes hold before I can even gather my logic to counteract the emotion.
Objectively, if we fight hard, if we work and do and create. If we keep going. There is no reason why what is offered to us isn’t deserved. So when I ask myself again why it is I feel a sense of doom and like an imposter when starting law school I think it’s because it’s so hard for me to believe.
I don’t really have a romantic story about how I got to law. I didn’t imagine myself as a lawyer as a child. It hasn’t been my life’s dream to go to law school. In fact, for me, going to law school was borne out of the desire to approach a career in advocacy from the strongest background possible. But law school itself was a crazy joke of an idea that was sort of discussed last year as a contender against other options.
There are those that always know what it is that they want to do. Those who are born with an innate sense of direction. But they are few and far between. Because most of us stress and stumble and contemplate over and over again about what to do and who to be.
And it can be very stressful when you’re trying to figure it out, especially when the future calls and you don’t know what to say when you pick up.
But there is also freedom in embracing not knowing.
I do know now, I know that I want to be an advocate. I also know I want to be a writer, a mother, a friend, a human being.
You are not an imposter because you are doing something that you just discovered you love. And you are not imposter if you are doing something you aren’t sure you even like. It’s your path, and if you’re doing it then you belong there.
The struggle to believe that you are deserving of the good in the life you are living is rooted in poor self esteem.
When I start school in a few weeks and I spend the night before anxious with first day of school jitters, I will challenge myself to remember that while law school may feel wild to me, it is what I have chosen and I am good enough to be doing it.
Life is full of metaphors about paths. The road less travelled or the straight and narrow. The high road and the fork in the road. So many phrases to express the same thing. But the truth is that life is not a path. It is a wide open expanse. Full of anything and everything. Some people need a path and others don’t. Some know where they are walking and others don’t. And both are good.
But whatever it is that you’ve decided on, challenge yourself to remember that you deserve it.
—Liora
Liora Resnick 