Moving back home after law school has been an interesting experience so far. While finding myself under the same roof as my parents consistently for the first time in nine years and muddling my way through a new city that I've yet to accept as my home has given me volumes to comment on, it's the rediscovery of my past that has proven to be the most interesting. You see, when I left Detroit for law school, I moved a majority of my belongings - those I would have no need of at school - to my parents' place. Since May of last year, I have slowly been sifting through these items and, like an amnesiac peering into a forgotten past, I've found belongings I can't remember buying, or why I bought them, planners filled with important dates and phone numbers, none of which I can place, and stacks of notebooks filled with ideas for screenplays, games and the next great novel.
It was in one of these notebooks that I came across a page of scribbling that unleashed a wave of melancholy about me, washing me into a pool of disappointment. In my pre-law school years, and to some extent today, I had a tendency to write to-do lists for nearly everything. Simply organizing my tasks into an easily checked-off format seemed to provide both the necessary motivation, and feeling of accomplishment, that was necessary to get me off my duff. While most such lists laid out my action plan for the day, or perhaps the coming weekend or work week, some were a bit more ambitious. The page of scribbling that I stumbled upon, was a list of the latter type.
Written at the start of the winter semester of my junior year, this to-do list stretched to graduation and beyond. It promised a busy final year and a half of school, directing me to redouble my efforts as a beat reporter for the weekly rag that employed me, commit to covering news for the college radio station, take an advertising job with the school paper, pursue freelance activity at a variety of local publications and finally set about writing my own, much reflected upon, set of miniatures rules and screenplay. A lofty set of expectations indeed, but all easily accomplished by an ambitious student.
Unfortunately, I accomplished not a one. Within 7 months I would write my last article for the paper, deciding that I didn't enjoy having to cover the boring school board and city council meetings I was assigned to. After only two appearances, I chose to terminate my involvement with the radio station, finding the production deadlines to be too much of a hassle and thinking that my voice sounded terrible on the air. My freelance writing career never took off, mainly because I was too lazy too dig up stories on my own and partly because I was too intimidated to claim to an editor that I was competent enough to do the job. And my miniatures game and screenplay? Those are still nothing but notes in notebooks accompanying this action plan.
Striving to achieve while in law school and being surrounded by peers who were accomplished in undergrad had already made me reflect on my time at Oakland with some regret. Coming across this list compounded that emotion. In retrospect, I cannot understand how I allowed myself to be such an apathetic student and it makes me even more envious of the experiences that my peers had. Julie notes that I still have time to make good on some of these objectives, and I know that my law school involvement makes even the ambitious jealous, but I still cannot help but feel that I pissed away what should have been the most important and formative four years of my life. :(
No comments:
Post a Comment