As I prepared to begin law school this fall, my dad -- an attorney -- had a lot of advice for me.
"I want you to be ready," he said. "This will be nothing like college. You will have more work than you've ever had in your life."
At the time, I scoffed at him, intimating that he hadn't worked as hard as me during his college years, that I'd already learned to manage a huge workload, that I'd be fine. When he continued to press me, I resisted a strong urge to roll my eyes.
"Dad, it'll be fine," I groaned. "Don't make more out of it than it is."
Three months later, I find myself sitting in my study carrel at school, surrounded by books, highlighters and an endless to-do list. I've posted pictures of friends and family in my carrel because, otherwise, I would never see their faces. I have developed a dull pain in my left hand from endless typing, and I'm pretty sure my caffeine addiction is keeping Coca-Cola in business.
When will I ever learn to listen to my parents?
With exams a month away, tension in school among first-year students is beginning to build.
For instance, last week, we had a paper due that was worth 60 percent of our Legal Writing and Research course grade. I'd been diligent about working on mine, spending at least a little time on it nearly every day for three weeks. But during the last days before it was due, I started to get a little freaked out. Some of my classmates were skipping entire days of school to work on the paper; others were taking "stressed out" to a new level, bringing themselves to tears worrying about their work.
Although I tried to remain calm and remind myself that I'd done a lot of hard work, I couldn't help looking at some of the people around me and thinking frantically, unreasonably, why are they flipping out this much⢠Am I not stressing enough⢠Should I be more worriedâ¢
It was hard not to let my classmates' stress levels amplify my own. And the worst part was, I had no one to talk to about my worries -- every friend here is a law student as well, and every single one of them was at least as stressed out as me, if not more so. Trying to chat with anyone about work seemed tantamount to playing a game of who-is-more-freaked-out. What happens when your entire support network also needs support?
I called my dad, intending to tell him that he had been right, hoping for a sympathetic ear and a forum to vent. Before I began my tirade, though, I remembered my manners and politely asked how he was doing. Dad launched into a narrative about meetings and business trips, and as he spoke I realized that he, too, felt pressure from work and daily life.
But his tone sounded upbeat, and I realized that he had simply learned to deal with it. My dad had, at one point in his life, been in my shoes -- and he had made it through. Perhaps, I thought, part of adult life was understanding that stress will inevitably be present. Maybe the difference between my dad and me was that he had learned how to manage it.
So this time, rather than stubbornly insisting that I could figure things out on my own, I asked my father how he had dealt with stress as a law student.
And as he started to answer, I made sure to listen.
Megan Bode, 22, of Upper St. Clair, is a first-year law student at Wake Forest University.
