I have a friend; let’s call her “Courtney”. Courtney, like many of you, is a law student. Also like many of you, she hates law school with a passion. Courtney works for a fancy law firm this summer, which she hates. And Courtney has no desire to practice law.
I figured that Courtney got into her predicament the usual way: she was utterly clueless before entering law school, and by the time she realized her true feelings, she was stuck. Assuming this was her story, I made a remark about it to her, which she quickly corrected.
“Oh, no, I knew it would be like this,” she told me curtly. “When I was in college I had friends who were in law school, and they told me all about how much they hated it.” I was about to interject, when she continued. “Then after I graduated, I worked as a paralegal at a giant law firm for a year. It was miserable; the people were terrible, some were really evil. I was a naïve 22 year old when I started. I know this sounds weird, but working at the firm, I lost my youthful innocence.” I was about to make a virgin joke, but she kept going. “All my friends who were in law school when I was in college had graduated and moved on to big firm jobs of their own, and they hated it too. Plus, I started researching law school on my own, and discovered that most people I talked to, perfect strangers who were recent grads or current students all told me not to do it. I knew exactly what it was going to be like, and that I would hate it.
When she paused to take a sip of water, I got a word in. “Wait…so if all these people gave you such a bad impression of it, and you knew you’d hate it, may I ask why you even bothered to begin with?”
I assumed that this profound question would give her pause, and make her ponder her decision. I was wrong. “It was my goal,” she said earnestly as she took a bite of taco salad.
There's a real over-importance placed on ambition. Sometimes it's not always the best quality. Wouldn't the world have been better off with a lazy Hitler? He would've turned in and taken a nap halfway through Poland. He’d awake later and forget all about Europe, and decide to learn how to play the guitar.
