The Sense of Impending Anything

Have I told you my new favorite joke?

Most don’t find it funny.

Frankly, I love it.

I crack myself every time I tell it. That’s probably because I’ve never been much of a joke teller and this one qualifies more as a witty rejoin than full on joke.

Anyway, goes something like this…

Someone: Wow! Entering your last year of law school. That must be a great feeling.

Me: Definitely.

Someone: Must be nice to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Me: It is. I just can’t tell whether it’s daylight or a train. Either way, it’ll all be over soon.

Someone: *Stares quizzically* (Unless they’re a lawyer or law student. In that case, I get a chuckle.)

Me: **Laughing uproariously** (mostly on the inside)

Some gallows humor never hurt anyone I suppose.

I think it’s the sense of impending… what exactly? doom? elation? freedom? crushing debt payments?…. what?….

It’s this sense of impending anything (and everything) that’s exhilarating and frightening at the same time.

Thousands of law students in classes past entered this last year with that future, at least in the short-term sense, determined. A job offer in hand, ready to be bored to death during their last year of school. The last few years have changed that, particularly at second tier schools like ours where even summer gigs have been hard to come by.

For my part, my summer has given me much more hope that the daylight I’ll at some point emerge into will in fact be what I’d hoped – a hard won, rewarding career.

Still, I’ll never let go of the truth to my joke that this economy and any long-term changes it has yielded may not make it easy or possible to emerge unscathed into a job that is relatively well-paid and stable as many of our predecessors have done.

Sure, that weighs on me, but not nearly as heavily as some assume when I tell the joke or talk about school or law or whatever.

It is after all really just a joke.

And I am after all generally optimistic about my last year in school and what comes next.