I've always kind of suspected law wasn't really up my alley. Law students are expected to be motivated, good problem solvers, diligent, and pay attention to detail. I'm lazy, haphazard, disorganised and careless. While I enjoy the German part of my degree (language and cultural history), my legal modules force me to question my intelligence, my sanity, my ability to care and even my ability to spell - when you read the word "manslaughter" eleven times across two pages, it just starts to look really, really wrong and unwordlike. I don't want to be a barrister or a solicitor. For one thing, I would leave all the necessary preparation until the last minute and then everybody would go to prison or lose custody of their children or whatever, and for another, I don't want to have to work hard at something I absolutely do not enjoy. Call me lazy, but law is difficult and involves having a working knowledge of Latin and makes me want to lie down thinking about it. I know the reality of the future is paying bills and putting food on the table and all this stuff about "following your dreams" and "being true to yourself and your interests" and "doing what you love" doesn't really matter when you're forty and have a mortgage to pay off but come on. I'm sure I'll figure out how to pay for things somehow.
I didn't sign up for a law degree as an aspiring Clarence Darrow only to have my expectations of what it would all entail unfulfilled and my hopes dashed and my dreams crushed. I'm not sure what I was thinking, really. The German aspect appealed to me the most and the university's prospectus was terribly misleading in that it made the German legal systems module sound interesting. My strengths have always been language and expression so I thought a full grounding in law, German law, German history and German language was a pretty decent fit. I suppose I also had romanticised notions of arguing passionately in favour of this, that and the other and speaking out fervently against X, Y and Z but you do very little arguing of your own in a law degree really. You just need to learn about what about other people argued and then argue for or against their arguments. There are very few morals involved; it's all a giant storm in a teacup over minute details and technicalities.
As I sat in the law library this evening, six things came to my attention that hammered home the reality of the situation - that I am not cut out for the hard graft and effort required for a Trinity law degree. As my peers hunched over desks around me, diligently poring over fat legal textbooks and online legal databases, I sat chewing a pen I got for free in Supermacs and wondered whether I could get away with faking tonsillitis if I simply refused to speak for a few days and consequently would not have to attend my land law seminar. For starters, everybody else was typing away on neat little netbooks or MacBooks or iPads, while I lugged out my worse-for-the-wear, dinted and crumb-covered 17" laptop complete with plug-in USB keyboard because I spilled tea all over the original one back in February and it no longer works. Secondly, I had no notepaper with me, never mind the fancy yellow legal notepaper, because the bag in which my notepad fits didn't go with my outfit this morning so I chose to take a smaller one to college with me instead and leave my notepad behind. Thirdly, I was not neatly dressed and wearing trendy high-heeled ankle boots. This is foreshadowing; I will never be able to wear a trouser suit and look elegant and not spill something all down the front of it. Fourthly, I had to look the most basic of terminology up in an online legal dictionary and the most basic of legal concepts up on Wikipedia. Granted, land law is a difficult twat of a subject but that's no excuse for not knowing what "conveyance" meant. Fifth of all, I hadn't set foot in the library since May, despite it being November and the seventh week of lectures, and didn't know the "showing your student ID to the security guard who grunts or nods in acceptance" system of entering the library had been replaced by one involving swiping your card against an electronic reader thus I rammed into the very solid barrier and made myself look like a right cretin. Finally, my laptop's screensaver is a photo of Alicia Florrick from "The Good Wife" with my face poorly photoshopped onto her shoulders, which was a going away gift from my pal Maria. It's supposed to be ironic because she's wearing a trouser suit and I was going to Germany to work in an office and despise trouser suits, as hinted at above. I'm also drunk in the photo and have lipstick on my face. Juxtaposition at its very best.
I keep waiting for the day I will have an epiphany or a "Eureka!" moment and discover a legal module or aspect of a legal module that will make me love law and want to sit down and read cases and legislation and actually enjoy it or maybe even just tolerate it, but this possibility becomes more and more remote with each passing lecture and mind-numbingly tedious legal concept. At least I have German, I console myself. At least I have German.
