Tuesday Questions: Missing the Memo Edition

I was supposed to dislike graduate school. Graduate School allegedly sucks all the joy out of learning and turns people into nothings who look at things through a microscopic lens. I was also supposed to find law school completely unpleasant and filled with ultra-competitive people who would cut each other to find the case first. Lastly, I am not supposed to like practicing law because law is a profession for people who don’t know what else to do in life and are completely unhelpful and productive members of society. We also all burn out and become substance abusers allegedly.

These are only a few sample essays or pieces of fictional narrative of many. Some are old but continue circulating around the Internet. And every single time, I missed the memo.

I really liked graduate and law school. Learning amuses me. I did not necessarily like every class I took in either or all my professors. There were certainly times when the administration did not know what to do with me because I was a “model student but problematic director” in the words of one higher-up. End of semester was always stressful with multiple finals and projects but it was never the absolute misery I’ve seen described in don’t go to graduate school arguments. What’s wrong with being able to spend your days talking about art, ideas, literature, law, philosophy with people? That sounds pretty cool to me.

I always felt like a lot of the stress people went through in graduate school and law school is stuff that they did to themselves. You don’t actually have to stay up for 24 hours when given a 24 hour final. It can probably be finished in 14-16 hours of solid work. All nighters are usually more of a sign of bad project management than anything else and also a strange sense of pride.

And while I am not always pleased and sometimes very stressed about how my law career is unfolding because of the law crisis/crunch, I still like the practice of law. The work is interesting and I do feel like I am being productive and helping people.

When have you missed the memo? What were things you were supposed to dislike and find unbearable but you found relatively stress-free and enjoyable?