Who Do I Want to Be?

I have been thinking a lot lately about the kind of person I want to be.  As quickly as I am getting to know the people around me, they are morphing into “lawyers.”  I see people quickly changing around me and I sense changes in myself also.  While my confidence is growing in my ability to do this, the “fireball” (as my grandpa used to call me) inside of me has made several appearances in the last few weeks.  Many people may not know this about me but my family will tell you that I really get fired up about certain things, like “mother bear” fired up.  In law school, many see that as weakness.  Emotion is weakness.  And I have been mulling that over in my mind obsessively.  Last week, the best interest of a child was disregarded in a court of law and I became furious.  Furious!  I yelled at my friends because they were so busy telling me how the law works and why and policy and facts and everything else.  I told them that I am in all the same classes that they are so if they can’t take the moment to let me be truly angry with a broken aspect of the system, they need to stop talking to me.  I also became enraged when, in a mock client negotiation, the opposing team behaved very unethically rather than act professionally.

I am not saying there is anything wrong with my extraordinary and inspiring colleagues.  And I still believe in the judicial system.  The issue that has been surfacing is “who do I want to be?”  I am old enough and strong enough to know when my surroundings are attempting to mold me into something and only I will decide if I am going to become pliable to the shaping.  I love learning about the law.  I love learning how to find it, interpret it, work within the confines of it and I hope to one day be instrumental in furthering it.  However, I do not want to lose touch with who I am and why I am here.  I am not here to win.  I am not here for just the facts.  I am not here to separate myself from any emotional response.  I want to be the woman that cries for an unseen child.  I want to be the person who fights back against injustices.  I want to see the homeless man on the street and not just look the other way.  I want to believe a stranger’s story.  I want to keep the part of me that compelled me through the doors of SU Law in the first place.  I honestly believe I can be a good lawyer and an empathetic, passionate woman simultaneously.