Random Law School Update 16

Location: Washington, DC

My gratitude to all of you for your kind emails and interest in continuing to receive updates. I was really inspired by the amount of supportive responses. I have always been very self-critical and self-conscious of my writing, but this particular project means more to me than my insecurities. Each day validates the pricelessness of the human connections within my life and the incredible importance of keeping those connections as close to me as possible, which takes an additional effort in the absence of physical proximity. I believe that the best human relationships grow out of an attempt to understand another person and to help them to understand me so that, through each other, we come to understand ourselves and our existance better. This email, and your replies, are part of that process.

I have a theory that my outside reality is a product of my internal imagination. I have another theory that a physical reality exists independent of myself but that my mind retains significant power over it, or at least over my position with respect to it.

My life, as I imagine everyone's, is comprised of an infinite set of what appear to be causal interactions and if-then conditionals. An event leads to a choice which leads to a decision which creates an event that leads to more choice. And we follow these paths that exist only in the present and past, such that we dont really follow paths at all. Rather, we create paths through our reality using the tools we were endowed with or acquired along the way.

Every so often, my world is shattered. Even my most realistic expectations are disappointed, circumstance trumps communication, and I am forced to enter negotiations between my inner and outer realities. Such that, perhaps the two aren't the same at all. But then, it turns out that these world shattering explosions are really fireworks in disguise, and they illuminate the next step which satisfies my present and inspires my future. And somehow, between all the explosions and fireworks, my life continues in the exact direction that I would have had it go in had I been empowered to dictate my path from the beginning. And I again start to wonder whether I dreamed up this reality of mine after all.

This is all to say that, it has been a really exciting semester. In (future) retrospect I suspect that it may be one of the most exciting semesters of my life. Though, in present perspective it is hard to get past the fact that at any given moment I should be spending more time diligently studying for exams and maybe less time indulging in the glorious peaks and vallies of being in my 20s. Then again, I would make an argument, inspired by my tax class, that the time-value-of-youth likely exceeds the opportunity cost of a few hours of missed study time. I suspect that the lessons to be learned from youth will carry at least as much weight for my future as those from my classes. And so I indulge.

Love,

Melissa