Monthly Archives: May 2020

On unexpected endings

Congrats to the Iowa Law Class of 2020!

Congrats to the Iowa Law Class of 2020!

I’ve been thinking about endings lately. Or maybe “dwelling” is more apt. It makes sense, given that I graduate from law school in nine days. Only the endings I’m dwelling on seem to multiply and linger, if you will, as new losses emerge daily.

I cry on my drive from Newton to Iowa City nearly every time, remembering that my three best law school friends—the people who made my beloved college town a home—aren’t there anymore.

I cried as I cleaned out my carrel, the unlit law library shielding my tears from view (as if there was anyone else around to see them). Staring into the dull, reflective plastic of my carrel lockbox for one last selfie, I saw a different person, three years later: one who got good grades and bad ones (looking at you, Trusts & Estates), one who wrote a whole Supreme Court opinion, one who had gotten into and (almost) graduated from a university she’d loved her whole life, one who found her calling as a future public defender.

The books from my carrel are still in my trunk, strewn about. I haven’t summoned the strength to bring them up the stairs into my apartment. Somehow, I think putting them in a neat stack would only do a disservice to this chaos in which I end my law school career and earn my J.D.

My beloved carrel blanket lays over some of them as if trying to shield me from some of the heartbreak of this ending, the way it all happened. Continue reading