Juris Doctor

Originally written May 3, 2006

In eight hours from now, I will be sitting in my final law school class. The fourteen hundred page Evidence text book, written by my professor, cracked open in front of me. My second 5-subject notebook of the semester opened near the end of subject section for this class. 133 pages of handwritten class notes over the course of the semester. A 25 page outline that somehow condenses those class notes. My last pen that's still working from the beginning of the semester. My backpack hanging over the back of the empty chair to the left of me.

My feet propped up on top of the desk. My arms folded behind my head. Sunglasses on. And a smile stretching to the far ends of the room...I am going to be a lawyer, and in just a few hours, I will have made it, beaten law school for everything it was worth.

You have to understand what it took to get from there to here. All those classes not knowing whether I had even the most basic concepts down. Those nights that first month, waking up in a cold sweat, throwing up blood. I would shake not from the caffeine rush but nerves by the likes of which I had never known. I was scared of failing, scared of falling behind even more, scared of not living up to what I should have been, what I always knew I had to be.

I just made it through three years of the most difficult and life changing experience I wouldn't wish upon anyone. The stress, the competition, the high school level drama everywhere, this just isn't for everyone, this isn't a fifth year of college for political science majors trying to escape. But nothing I would have done with my past three years would have been as rewarding or beneficial for my career and my life. As hard as this has been, its been worth it, every day competing and working for this moment has been a blessing.

I want it all. I won't rest until its mine. Like I told you that day last summer, it doesn't end here, it will never end. We don't settle, we don't accept the natural order of things. I promised you it wouldn't end...and I'm taking our plans global.

Law school was nothing like I expected it would be all those years ago. My life is nothing like I had planned, every aspect of it has been changed forever.

And I wouldn't have had it any other way.