I have been in the depths of preparation for law school finals for the past three weeks, but I am now officially finished with my 1L year. Just even saying that is so crazy for me. Less than a year ago, I was moving states and beginning a new journey into the world that I had always dreamed of. Now it’s a world I would proudly say I have a solid handle on.
My second-semester classes were by far my favorite of the first year. Getting to learn constitutional law from a true in-depth understanding has been so thrilling and incredibly rewarding. I have been a history lover all my life, and that felt like the true culmination of all my years of learning about our nation’s history.
But more than anything, my criminal law course was beyond impactful in a way that I cannot even begin to describe. I have been fascinated by our criminal law system since before I can even remember. As a girl, I grew up in rooms filled with my family speaking about our personal history with criminal justice. Before I was born, my great-grandparents were murdered by a serial killer who took almost 13 years to be found. This was the foundation upon which I was raised to understand our system, and it was often from a dark perspective.
However, as I grew older, I decided to reclaim that story for myself and to dedicate myself to educating myself on the criminal justice system. I spent many years immersing myself in stories of people impacted by the many flaws in our system, and decided it was a field I had to enter someday. Now that I am in law school and receiving a firsthand understanding of our criminal justice system, I see things from an even broader lens, and I cannot wait to hopefully use my knowledge and skills as an attorney to fulfill that dream of giving back.
My criminal law professor opened every single class this semester with a quote. Here are a few of my favorites.
“With only the slightest shift in the balance of my character, I think there is no crime I could not commit.” – J.W. Von Goethe
“It is unreasonable to define the reasonable.” – R. Pound
“Lines should not be drawn simply for the sake of drawing lines.” – Justice Frankfurter
“The law itself is on trial in every case, as well as the cause before it.” – C. Darrow
“Passion and reason intersect in the law.” – G. Fletcher
“When life itself seems lunatic, who knows where insanity lies?” – Cervantes
Every day I was met with a new question: what do I do with these thoughts and this knowledge? I think the answer lies in the practice of law itself. The law is never perfectly clear; in many ways, the law is on trial in every single case. It is daunting to attempt to consolidate all of criminal law into one class, and there is still so much more left to learn. But I am so grateful that I now have the ability to truly understand our system in a deeper way.
As I sat down to take my final exam, I was struck by how many of the pieces finally began to fall into place, while at the same time realizing how many of those pieces still do not seem to properly fit together. That tension is what makes the study of law so fascinating. It is also what reminds me that the law is not static. It is constantly evolving, constantly being questioned, and constantly asking us to think harder about justice, fairness, and humanity. Those are the questions we must continue to answer, and those are the problems we must continue trying to fix.
Finally, to close out my first year of law school, here is my favorite quote from the semester and perhaps my new favorite quote of all time.
“The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it.” – Michelangelo
Aim high. It is worth the end result.
