Two Thirds There

"We'll hate what we've lost... but we'll love what we find."

Midway into my law school career I wrote "Halfway There." Only fitting now having completed my 2L year, I'd write reflecting on being 2/3 of the way to that shiny JD. I'd like to say I learned a lot since being halfway there, but I'm not sure there would be much truth to that statement. I'd like to say I went through much personal growth, but I'm not really sure I did. In all reality being halfway there was after all only one semester ago, at the midpoint of my 2L year.

What I can say though is, one more semester completed and one more year checked off, I'm two thirds there with just one year left of law school. I said in "Halfway There" that it was scary, sad, relieving, and exciting. And it still is. None of that has changed. So what has changed? Honestly, I'm not sure much has changed at all.

A few weeks ago Caroline (first introduced here) made a remark that really resounded with me. She said, "the older we get the less people we take with us to the next stages of our lives." And that's so true. When I graduated high school, I thought my high school friends, those people I had grown up with in the same hometown for the entirety of my childhood, would be the end all be all. I now only keep in touch with a very select number of my friends from high school. When I graduated college, I thought these girls who had become my sisters through sorority ritual and my family through living together for the entirety of four years, would be the end all be all. And they still are, to a certain degree. We're in different places doing different things, and our numbers have dwindled down to a smaller, stronger core, but when we're back together it's just the same as it was back then three years ago when we crossed the stage and got our diplomas.

So what happens in one year when I graduate law school? These are people I in essence grew up with through the trial and error process that is law school, lived in the library with during finals time, and became my family by our shared experiences. You see, there are your childhood friends that were there from the beginning and your college friends that were there in that time of your life when your friends were your home. But for me, I discovered that while my law school friends did become my family away from home, they were also something more. They are the ones I share a commonality of experiences not solely contained in reminiscing what we remember (or don't remember) from last week's bar review, bonding over late night heart to hearts on a Tuesday, or eating basically every meal together in the law school's cafe. They are the ones I share a solidarity with that I couldn't have shared with anyone else: we're all in this law school thing together and we'll all come out of it somehow, someway together.

You see, the older we get, the more we are able to change, but also the more rooted we get in our ways. I'm sure after graduation, during that next stage in my life, wherever it may be and whatever it might be that I will be doing, I'll have a group of people that will be my next "end all be all," my coworkers and group of friends who are living in my city. It's somewhat of a vicious cycle, and that's life. But something else also true that this year has undoubtedly showed me resonates in the latter part of Caroline's intuition: "but good for those people that share being a part of their lives with their friends because that will create a lifelong bond."

I don't know where I will be in one year, but I do know who those people are that I will have a lifelong bond. From the girls in my hometown, to my college roommates, to my law school friends, it does get harder and harder with each passing stage to hold on to those people we once called family. But, what is telling is who was there, who wasn't there, and most importantly who we needed who was there. And that is all you really need to show you who will be there. So, if there's anything I learned, or caused me to go through personal growth, or that changed now 2/3 there, just a little wiser and one step closer to being fully there, that's just it. It doesn't take making any mistakes or following particular advice, it's just life. And it's a little scary, sad, and relieving to realize, but mostly, it's exciting.

All photos taken with iPhone 4