I watched this video yesterday and thought some of you might also find it relevant to our discussions in class about "splitting" specifically and our career goals more generally. The video is a TEDTalk featuring Larry Smith, an economics professor at the University of Waterloo. The goal of his talk is to explain to people who think they are going to have a great career why they are going to utterly fail at doing so (he says that people looking for "good" careers are also going to fail, but that is because good careers have, in large part, disappeared - all that's left are great careers and careers that are "high work load, high stress, blood sucking, soul destroying").

According to Smith, the way to have a great career is to pinpoint our passion from among our interests and pursue it. The reason we are going to fail at achieving great careers is that we constantly make excuses for not pursuing our passions: great careers are just a matter of luck; geniuses pursue great careers but I am not a genius; people who pursue their passions are strange, obsessive, and weird and I am not those things - I am nice and normal person and nice and normal people don't have passion; I value human relationships more than career accomplishments; if I pursue my passion I won't make a lot of money. If we perpetually use our fears as a shield, he says, we will never achieve great careers. Instead, we will wake up one day in what Tharaud describes as a "what-is-life-really-about? stupor" and have to explain to our children, who have come to us to discuss their own passions, that "I had a dream once too, kid, but I was afraid to pursue it." By that point, it's too late.

Smith's discussion resonated with me because I felt that it related a great deal to the idea of splitting and because his assertions make me uncomfortable. I worry that, on the one hand, I came to law school because I hadn't yet discovered my passion and on the other, that if law is my passion, I will make excuses for myself and fail to achieve a great legal career. I can recognize that any interest I have in pursuing a career in a large law firm (a career that Smith would almost certainly consider of the "high work load, high stress, blood sucking, soul destroying" variety) is based on fear - I fear that I will not be able to support myself if I don't work in a large law firm, that I will not be able to provide any financial support to my parents when they retire, that I am not creative or capable enough to strike a balance between "doing good" and "doing well." I can also recognize that these fears are (hopefully) excuses and that by relying on these excuses to hide from work that I might really care about I am in the process of splitting. That I am aware of my fears and that I am hopeful that they are excuses has, to my surprise, made me feel more complacent than motivated. I've begun to convince myself that I have at least accomplished something by becoming conscious of the splitting - that I am taking a step in the right direction and can sit tight for a while. Perhaps this is just another split. Whatever it is, I am not entirely confident about how to proceed from here. I accepted an internship related to women's rights this summer solely because the person who interviewed me was more passionate and animated about her career than any lawyer I had met before. However misguided the reason for my decision might have been (I realize that I cannot merely convert someone else's passion into my own), I think this was my attempt to make sure that my fears really are excuses and to see if I really have what it takes to pursue a great career.

-- ElizabethSullivan - 28 Mar 2012

Elizabeth,

Your post made me remember advice I got from a college professor my junior year. I went into his office to tell him about what I wanted to "be" when I graduated and he told me my focus was misplaced - that I should consider what I want to "do" (accomplish on a day to day basis) as opposed to what I want to "be" (a lawyer, a banker, etc). He said this was the only way to attempt to line up your aspirations with reality.

Smith's thoughts resonate with me because I do value human relationships more than career accomplishments and, in a way, that feels like something you are never supposed to say, excuse or not. I find it interesting that your self-recognition has made you complacent - in what ways? And do you think that it's possible that the patience we need to maintain right now, until we figure out exactly what we'll do at the end of this, may feel like complacency in times of frustration? Can there be an element of wait-and-see or is that laziness?

I also wonder - and this may be tangential to your point but it hit me while I was reading - if law needs to be something we're passionate about in order to make this all worthwhile. Or can law be used as the vehicle by which we "do" what we "do," and can our careers still be great, in serving a separate passion altogether?

-- SherieGertler - 28 Mar 2012

Sherie,

I totally agree with your proposition that the law could simply be a tool that we choose to use to serve our own passions. I think this speaks to what Eben says about the beauty of the law lying in the fact that it is one of the weakest forms of social control. Statutes and judicial pronouncements on their own are powerless. As Alexander Hamilton said, the judiciary “has no influence over either the sword or the purse; nor direction either of the strength or of the wealth of the society; and can take no active resolution whatever…[it has] neither force nor will, but merely judgment.” The laws and the government bodies that posit and interpret them are, on their own, extremely weak. They only have the power that our social compact chooses to accord them through affirmation, respect and adherence. I think legal beauty lies in its inherent weakness because its power and efficacy is really at the mercy of undoubtedly social forces. It is therefore capable of evolving and growing with human values, at times preempting a turning of the tides and at others re-molding to adapt to existing ground-level realities. While you can obviously pursue your passion outside the law, the law is valuable as a malleable vehicle - if we know when and where to exert the right amount of pressure - through which to propel our passions forward towards eventual realization. Whether your interest lies in the environment, health care, LGBT rights or international governance, knowledge of the law and the human context in which it operates and is given force could be immensely useful if applied strategically and appropriately. I think Eben is right that our 1L summers should be a time for self-reflection. If we haven’t yet discovered what outrages or inspires us, there is no better time than now to do so. For those of us who see the law as an ideal path for pursuing these passions, we can then return in the fall and begin to piece together the puzzle of how to capitalize on the weaknesses inherent in the legal structure to extract a strength and force capable of bolstering and promoting our individual career goals.

-- MeaganBurrows - 28 Mar 2012

I think we've all heard some variant of this advice at some point - find your passion, do what you love, follow your dreams. Larry Smith definitely sells it well in the video above. Perhaps I'm making excuses, but I'm not convinced that it's great advice in isolation.

First, the things we are passionate about don't necessarily lead us to a specific career choice. I'm passionate about technology, but that doesn't really narrow my options for a career. I can be a programmer, a lawyer, or a writer and still find a way to incorporate my interests (although that may be a bad word for Smith).

Second, the process of finding the career you want requires more than pure introspection. I'm a firm believer that you can't know if you will love doing something until you actually do it. I'd argue that it is more important to be open to new opportunities and passions than to try to lock yourself into the ones you think you already have.

Lastly, I once received advice I liked from a partner at a big law firm with a bad reputation. He told me that I would know I was on the right track with my career when I went into work and continued to learn new things. Once I stopped learning, I would have a job and a reason to do something else.

-- SanjayMurti - 29 Mar 2012