even before fall break i’d begun to wonder if i might have slightly overcommitted myself this semester. one extra clinic on saturdays and one day on duty at the family court plus follow-up assignments, that doesn’t sound like much extra work does it? somehow though, given the emotional context of the work and having to be on your toes all the time, all the bus and train changing getting myself to clinics and courthouses (i think longingly of the convenience of hopping into cabs whenever i liked when i still had a job); together with dashing off to france mid-semester and adding jetlag to the mix; and doing an intensive module so that i was in school till 9pm half the sem, (no more; i know better next semester); and of course being a nosey parker and popping back to my summer firm to follow the learned fcm’s trials… i find myself far more tired than i expected, and also, to my rising alarm, way more behind than i normally would be this late in the semester.

and somehow, that all translates only into a kind of general lethargy lightly suffused with low-level panic, sufficiently pressing on the conscience that i’ve cut my social life to a bare minimum but which does not spur one to intense concentration and productivity at all. people ask me to join them for all sorts of things and i say i’d better take a rain check on that. i see events on facebook all the time for which i click “maybe” or even sometimes “going”, and then when the time comes i think no i can’t i’ve got to tend to my real obligations. i’ve stopped dating completely since august, telling myself the last thing i need is inner turbulence from bad relationships and distracting highs from the good ones. apart from going to dinners more often with the usual suspects (what a relief, to go to dinner with people who have known you forever and so well, that you can share easy, companionable silences together and not explain yourself) this has been a self-imposed dry season.

but at the same time i’m tired of school, tired of its seasonal rhythms, tired of the seminar-paper-exam format. this is of course very strange: most of my life i’ve been a very research-focussed person, and i love learning, and have thought of higher-ed as my natural habitat so that when i left the only thing i seriously considered as a career was university administration. but then, this is professional school, not graduate school. and i’ve interned and volunteered enough to realise it’s learning on the job i need now. i’ve been in school for two years now, i’ve at least ice-skated over the the substantive fundamentals in all the core areas: contract, property, tort, criminal, trust, equity, company, constitutional and administrative law: without the practical none of that is of any use, and clinicals are not what i want anymore, but a real chance to learn. apprenticeship, not education, might be what i need instead.