It'll all be fine...

Dear friend,

I struggled quite a bit in my own graduate studies. I was depressed, lonely, consumed by doubt. People back home who loved me very much would often say things like:

  • “It’ll all be fine.”
  • “You’re smart. You’ll figure it out.”
  • “It can’t be that bad, can it? Look at the bright side.”
  • “You picked this path. You’re right where you want to be!”

Well intentioned? Check. Full of love and support? Check. Helpful? No check.

Those friends and family from home weren’t with me. They didn’t see the mania when I was in the office or the zombie mode at home. They didn’t know how much I’d give to turn back the clock and just never have shown up. To have picked a different path.

This led me to a particular principle in the blog:

  • Quitting is a good idea (especially on the road to rock bottom).

And so I want to declare, here and now, that if you quit I’ll still love and respect and support you. And I don’t see that pathway forward for you. You’ve had years of professional experience and took a shot to invest in yourself. The shot paid off, and now you get to study with some of the best students in the country. And that institution protects its reputation for having some of the best students in the country by executing in its selection process year after year after year.

I’ve lived the internal monologue of “The LSAT was wrong. They got my score mixed up with someone else in the database. I don’t belong here. These kids have all been trying to get here for 10 years and I only just started thinking about this a year ago. They have jobs lined up and family connections. They made it. I just got lucky.”

That thought pattern doesn’t pay, friend.

I’d encourage you to replace it with a different pattern:

  1. Ignorance is a beginning. That’s it. If you don’t know it, you get to go find it out.
  2. All you can control is the next 2.5 seconds. That’s your now, and that’s all you get. Rest when you’re resting. Work when you’re working. And love yourself all the time.
  3. Every problem you solve is going to create another one in its place. You’re stressed about a note? You solve that and crush it. You get a perfect score and impress your prof. Now you’re stressed about the internship, or the clerkship, or the first week on the job, or your first big trial, or your first big appearance in court… the list goes on and it won’t ever stop. You will always be stressed. You will always be under the gun. That’s the life you chose. You get to choose what you stress about. And you get to design your life so that the next thing you stress about is something you wanted in your life. I think there’s a lot of agency lurking there, and I hope you’ll see that too. What problem do you want to have?
  4. If you need help, ask.
  5. The grass is greener where you water it. Anxiety breeds anxiety. Joy breeds joy. Shine the light internally on the feelings you want to grow. They’ll respond. That’s just (emotional) physics.

I’m not you. I’m not there. I can’t, in good faith, guarantee you that everything will be fine. It might not be. It could all go horribly, horribly wrong. So give yourself 5 minutes and brainstorm the beginning of that path. Scribble down the warning signs. Then go bury them in your backyard and tell your significant other that if they ever detect weirdness to go dig it up. Go on with your day. Trust the people who love you to let you know if it’s all gone wrong. You just worry about the principles above. Do the work. Day in, day out.

I love you. I’m sending good vibes into your world. You are not alone.

Yours,
JT

P.S. – Here is a short list of resources that jumped to mind while I was drafting this letter. I hope they provide some bumpers as you progress through your journey:

  • The Tim Ferriss Show #687 with Justin Gary, a commercially successful game designer – Justin recounts a specific story about presenting to a room full of executives. He realizes midway through the meeting that these guys (and gals) have no clue what they’re doing. This frees him to keep going when he doesn’t know what to do next, because ignorance is a beginning and no one knows what they’re doing. In his company, he freely admits that he doesn’t know what he’s doing and that he’s being intentional about figuring out an effective next step forward.

  • Man’s Search For Meaning by Viktor Frankl – We each choose what matters most to us. This choice is scoped to a particular place and time. It’s okay, and expected, for “what matters most” to change over time.

  • Psycho-Cybernetics by Maxwell Martz – The mind is a goal-striving mechanism. If you can visualize the result (e.g. a really good LSAT score), the mind will help your body get you there even if you can’t explain the connection between desire and action.

  • Never Search Alone by Phyl Terry – Humans are social creatures and we can do more together than we can apart (like the fish that get netted in Finding Nemo). I’m reading this book to get my own job search organized. It may help you frame your exploration over the next couple of years.

  • 80000 Hours – I just found this site and it feels well-constructed. It may be worth a look as more connective tissue as you meet successful professionals from all walks of life.

  • Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert – Nobody is looking at you. They aren’t thinking about you. Each of us has our own goals, insecurities, obstacles, hopes, dreams, struggles. Chase what you want with abandon. And if you don’t know what you want, reference the two resources directly above.

  • “Dear John” by Intuition & Equalibrum – A rap song lasting 3:03 that puts all this stuff in words better than I can.