I'm feeling hopelessly shitty right now. Something bad just happened recently; i don't want to say what it is, because otherwise i think i'll want to say more things about it and i don't have the time for much elaboration. Anyway it was good to meet my close relatives again, despite the depressing situation.
Now, it's back to my interrupted study break, where i've lost like five days' worth of studying time because i wasn't selfish or hardworking enough to cram my studying time into the whole proceeding. I seem to have lost a lot of motivation to study as well, because somewhere in that interruption i seem to have lost contact with the law and forgotten half the things about goddamn personal property that i used to know. Just thinking of the possibility that i'll flunk my exams, or at least the certainty that i won't do as well as i could have with a few more days and with my studying mode still intact makes me even more depressed. I'm on the verge of tears again. Sigh.
I wonder why it seems like i'd be a failure if i don't end up getting 2nd upper. It's like for every person who thinks that just getting into law school is great, there's someone who didn't have problems making it in law school or in society telling me that a 2nd upper is the bare minimum. (Heck, it IS the bare minimum in order to enter the legal service - a.k.a. civil service.)
Every time i get asked about how law school is (which seems to be the number one topic when someone tries to make some conversation with me), i just want to say how hard i think it is, how take-home papers are killing my sleep time, and how i'm just so lost when it comes to preparing for exams. I want to tell them how i wish studying was like triple science memorisation and TYS practicing again (where i can get the right answers at the back page without having to bug the professor repeatedly via email and risk asking "stupid" questions), how the competition in school is driving me crazy, and how i just don't see myself catching up to students in school who seem to read and make notes so much faster than i do.
So i lie instead, and tell them how i'm just doing OK, and how law school is "tough" but "i think i'll do alright" or something like that. Which just makes things worse, because inevitably i'm not going to hit 2nd upper, i don't know what kind of law firm i'll end up in, and this whole house of cards is just going to come crashing down on me.
But there're so many things that i just can't tell people. I can't tell them that all i want is a mid-level salary, because it won't be deserving of the house i live in and the life i've led and should give to my future wife and children. I can't tell them that, after a law degree, i might want to start anew with a new faculty or (since i'm such a bad student) perhaps joining some company in a minor role (not a law-related one) and working my way up like i know i can. I can't tell them that i'd like to make music, draw manga, or even do theatre. I can't tell them that i'd like to find out what i'd actually enjoy doing in life and make that my occupation. I can't tell them that i value a job with working hours STRICTLY from 9 to 6 much higher than a legal job with twice the pay.
I'm just a victim of my own pride, their expectations, and my own ambition. If i don't end up at a big firm, or at least a well-known one or one that i joined out of choice and not out of desperation, people that i care about (i.e. all those other goddamn lawyers) won't see me as a first-rate lawyer or a first-rate person. If i end up not doing law, i'd be seen as a 3rd-rate member of society, and worse still, a liability to my parents who wasted all that money and effort taking care of me and paying my tuition fees. And since i cannot tolerate being worse than mediocre in my occupational field, i somehow cannot tolerate not being considered a "first-rate person" in the law fraternity. So i must get my 2nd upper, because somehow one goes with the other. But i know i'll most likely not get it, because every other law student is aiming for that top half as well, and somehow most of them seem much more studious and much more articulate than i'll ever be.
And so i must risk being a 3rd-rate person and consider another occupation...and then i don't know what to do. Because most people that i know just cannot contemplate a respectable occupation that is not law-related that i can sign up for while toting around a 2nd lower law degree. Maybe i should take up some guitar/piano classes or go back to practicing my manga-drawing again. Argh...the problem is that an occupation in such a field is so uncertain - it'll be the biggest risk that i've ever taken in my entire life.
This may seem like a very trivial difficulty to some; hey, i'm going to get a job for sure that'll pay at least a couple thousand and i don't have to worry about food and water and a place to sleep...what's the worry? But i can assure you that, while the pressure may be of a different kind, it certainly is there. It's the pressure that comes with the fear of losing what i already have and being unable to reciprocate for what i've received.
And even as i moan about all this nonsense and think about a better way to phrase this huge jumbled pile of crap, more of my study time is evaporating into thin air. I feel so dead.
