Each of these sentences could be tightened. You don't need 200 words to say what's here. "Though I grew up before law school playing the conventional 'excellent student' role, I and the people I grew up with also developed ourselves as individuals, diversely. Yet it seems to me to have been less true of my colleagues and me this year, as law students." Probably that's not quite right, or quite complete, but 47 words is slightly tighter than 201.

Another 161 words. I leave it to you whether it couldn't be rendered sufficiently in 85. Taken together, those sets of edits would give us almost 225 words of space in which to develop the essay's ideas more fully.

But how did "a theoretically critical attitude towards this system" come to be the same as, or even closely related to, the diverse self-development you were discussing above? Duncan may be right that it would be hard for a single first-year student to figure out what's wrong with law school, but it's evident from your account that it's not hard for an undergraduate to be an attentive, independent self-developer. So what's happening might better be construed as an inhibition of a previously strong capability, rather than an incapacity. As I said last time, this seems to be more "Freud" than "Marx" or "Gramsci."

Another reason that Kennedy gives for why students conform to the hierarchy is that law school teaches its students that they’re lazy. He’s right in some ways. The administration doesn’t tell us that in a bad way, as if we’re good for nothing, but tries to give us reasons to relax so students don’t have emotional or mental breakdowns. But by telling us to trust that our first-year professors always know what they’re doing, that the legal methods we learn will be helpful, the law school debilitates us from thinking critically about what and how we’re learning.

This seems a little confusing to me. I don't think it can be the case that "the administration" tells you what to think about law school, in any significant way. Even a very articulate, eloquent, deeply engaged dean (a figure you've never seen in your life) could hardly be more than a peripheral presence in your actual law school day, while the bureaucrats who actually make the law school function as an organization are pervasively and unfairly ignored and condescended to be pretty much everyone else in the place, students included. In other higher education institutions, too, you were told that the teachers were good and the subjects taught were valuable, after all. This doesn't seem to me to account well for any difference in psychological orientation.

One reason that students don’t challenge that hierarchy however is because the superstructure is difficult to change in three years. When you enter school, despite all the time and debt, you’re processedquickly, from first semester classes to journals and internships to graduation and a job. Given the speed and quantity of the work, there’s little incentive to criticize lecture style or ask career services to tailor their events to more diverse interests. There’s little incentive to change any part of law school when you’re encouraged to leave from day one. But this reason doesn’t make sense for the socialization among students themselves. Most law students being young adults, one would think that they would more carefully scrutinize their choices about health, friendship, and intellectual development. Actually, considering most students are in their twenties, that’s probably not true. That said, we made a conscious, independent choice to come to law school, and that independence doesn’t need to go away once you’re actually here. Maintaining friendships outside of social networking sites, experiencing culture, and committing time to others are valuable goals that don’t need to be paused for three years.

Which means that at the end of these ~500 words we haven't yet found why the phenomena you observe occur. Perhaps, as I suggested last time, it would be helpful to look in another direction.