One way to make this essay better would be to structure it more tightly. A cleaner outline, down to the paragraph level, would help you to see what the sequence of ideas should be, and to keep the next draft from rambling.

Another route to improvement would be to reconsider, rather than repeating, the sign "success." The actual through line of the draft is a contrast between "success" and "happiness," which is neither made explicit nor itself subjected to any extended inquiry. Money and status are contrasted with time outdoors, pets and family, I (in the character of "Professor Eben," which at least has the advantage of not being my name) am rendered as some sort of greeting-card philosopher, because not a word is said about lawyering (the subject of this course), what it might mean to be a lawyer, what success in work might be if it is not a matter of titles and dollars, how we might go about thinking for ourselves about those issues or what creativity (the other actual subject of this course) might mean in the discussion.

It is quite obvious, I am sure, that law school is not, cannot be, and won't be "all-consuming." While I was in law school I was also reading, writing and talking my way through a PhD in History, and simultaneously earning my living at a skilled trade, making software. I shopped and cooked for myself, my brothers and my friends, cleaned my house, plsyed poker one night a week, read fiction, saw movies, listened to music. In the last year I held a full-time job at Cravath, was mostly in California, and started my doctoral dissertation. You and the people around you are equally busy, but you spend way more of your time scrolling a smartassphone through what amounts to a universe of gossip, and attending "mandatory" law school meetings that I would never have been caught dead in. Whoever said you don't have time for a walk, no matter their profession, is a moron.

What you need is to devote some of that time to figuring out what kind of lawyer you want to be, Imagining the work you want to do and how you want to do it Figuring out how that work should fit into your life and why doing that work will fulfill your material, intellectual, moral, social and political needs is difficult. A great professional education not only equips you to formulate initial answers to those questions, but prepares you to reconsider and reframe your choices throughout a long career. That, the ability to work at what fulfills you, and to grow with your experience, is success.

Let's try a draft in which, in a tight and orderly sequence, you explain your current thinking about what you want to do, where and with whom, to make the kind of practice you think you want. Whatever you say now, and whatever practice you wind up having later, coming back to reread that essay in future will be fascinating and valuable to you. I look forward to reading that next draft.