Sunday, October 26th, 2014
Ontario Law Student, Class of 2014
Isolation.
All my life I have known loneliness, difference, fringes. But, law school carves new wounds in my worn skin. As a half-black, half-white woman, I know too well how to survive as an outsider. Quick. Hide my sexual attraction to women. Hide my hatred of fact patterns. Hide the violence and poverty in my youth. Quicker. Hide my mounting $100 000 debt-load. Hide my inept hold of SCC decisions. No one can know. If they find out, they’ll throw me out of Osgoode. If they find out, I’ll go back to high heels & push-up bras, 14 hour days, and tips tips tips. If they find out, they’ll balk at my stupidness and the stitches coming open on my scars. No can know.
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Sunday, October 26th, 2014
Ontario Law Student, Class of 2016
I did it! I got into law school. Wait, how am I going to tell my wife and kids?
As anxious as I was about getting into law school, it was explaining my decision that was the hard part. Just as I was reaching, what could have been, a stable point in my professional and personal life I risked it all on law.
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Sunday, October 26th, 2014
Ontario Law Student, Class of 2014
In many ways law school has been beneficial for me; in terms of the education I’ve received, the career opportunities I’ve been able to take advantage of, and some very wonderful and like-minded people I’ve met. However, in other significant ways law school has changed me from a person who was relatively healthy to a person who is unwell.
During my time in law school, I have developed increased stress and anxiety around my grades, my career, my finances, etc. The structure of law school is one that fosters competition, exclusivity, and contentious behaviours among students and sometimes even professors. It takes students who are all accomplished in their own right and accustomed to over-achieving, and puts them in classes where only a handful of them will get A’s. It subjects students to the pressures of OCIs with few alternatives (and the alternatives that are presented are made to feel second-rate). It advertises the names of prominent downtown law firms on its walls, classrooms, and even on the back of t-shirts that first-years are told to put on the minute they arrive, all of which serve as a daily reminder that those careers are our goals and anything less is a failure.
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