Embracing Chaos: My Path to Law School

I haven’t posted on this blog for a while.

Sorry about that.

My life lately has been…chaotic to say the least. But that’s just the way the world works I suppose. This fall I will be starting law school at Suffolk University, a decision which I did not make lightly, but am nonetheless excited about.

There is no denying that my professional and educational background is eclectic. I’ve worked at internationally renowned universities and tiny nonprofits. I’ve been a panelist at conventions and given presentations to global companies. I’ve won baking competitions, take care of sick infants, and had my published work peer-reviewed. I’m a notary, an ordained minister, and first-aid certified.

Those familiar with this blog and my background know that my dream profession for as long as I can remember was to be a polymath. I changed majors and minors at least half-a-dozen times during the course of my undergraduate career and completely shifted the focus of my master’s degree halfway through the program (from 17th-century Mexico to early Christian Ireland). I have studied Spanish, Italian, Chinese, Latin, Ancient Greek, French, and German; learned to play piano, violin, and guitar; dabbled in musical theatre; and spent several months as part of an acapella group.

My personal interests are as wide and varied as my academic ones. I ran track and played volleyball, basketball, and soccer, among other sports. I have spoken at conferences, spent a few years running podcasts, and published articles (both online and in print). I have done cosplay, developed a strong interest in astronomy, written and published poetry, and gotten a publishing certificate as well as a paralegal certificate.

I have traveled around the country, and I have mentored middle and high school students as well as taken care of babies and teenagers. I experimented with cooking and baking; I learned how to sew and knit and (failed at) crochet. I was even ordained as a minister so that I could officiate my parents’ wedding (one of the best days of my life!) and wrote my great-grandmother’s obituary to speak at her funeral (one of the most bittersweet days of my life.)

And I know you are probably wondering—what does any of this have to do with law school!? Why am I about to commit the next few years of my schooling, and the rest of my life after that, to the legal profession? Well, in part because I’m already here. For the past year or so, I have been working as first a paralegal and now a project manager at a boutique Boston law firm, and I’ve never enjoyed a job so much as I do my current position.

I will not pretend that my whole life has led me here. My life—truly all of our lives—are filled with endless possibilities, with twists and turns that open and close doors. My mother has always thought I would make a good lawyer, but it was not until I voiced it myself that she threw herself wholeheartedly into her support of the endeavor.

In early 2024, I ended my role working as a communications manager for a small non-profit in Cambridge and began seeking new work. I asked myself at the time: what do I truly want to do with my life? And the fact of the matter was that I did not quite know. I was feeling stagnant, working in administrative roles because that’s what I knew how to do. I ended up working in a temporary position as a program administrator; but when that contract was up, I knew I had to make a change. That change, I decided, was to pursue a career in the legal field. I did AmeriCorps a few years back and, with my contract up, found myself unemployed—so I used my remaining AmeriCorps educational stipend to attend the online paralegal studies program at Boston University.

This was one of the best decisions I have made in my life. The more I learned about the legal profession—about the systems we have in place in the United States, their advantages and disadvantages—it all started to click for me. My wandering and eclectic path started to make sense. I secured a paralegal position at my current law firm before even graduating the course. Given that we are a firm with a number of practice areas, I have had the privilege during my time here of learning about the many ways law is practiced and the good that can be accomplished by representing people in the ways that they need to be—that they deserve to be.

The attorneys at my firm, many of them Suffolk graduates, have all been very supportive of my goal of becoming an attorney, and are a large part of why I have become dedicated to doing so. In fact, one of the reasons why I decided to attend law school via a four-year part time program is because I would be able to maintain my position while acquiring a high-quality education from Suffolk.

Once I started seriously considering becoming an attorney, my thoughts immediately turned to civil rights. (Given my many overlapping marginalized identities, my entire existence is political; and so in many ways it is just what makes sense.) And yet, I realize now that it goes so much deeper than just making sure that people from all backgrounds are offered basic protections and rights—it is about making sure that people know what those rights are and how to use the law to protect themselves and their loved ones. I find myself passionate about the idea of not just learning about the law for myself, but also broadening the ability for others to learn more, to make things understandable in a way that allows anyone and everyone to find their place. It would be a cliché to say that what I want most is to do good in the world, that I want to help people, that I want to make a difference. But clichés are such for a reason, and something being a cliché does not mean that it is not also profoundly true. 

As an attorney, I will acquire not just the knowledge but also the authority to help others in a tangible way that I would not be able to without these qualifications. I have had the privilege of exploring many paths in my life—have been allowed to stretch my wings, so to speak—to discover who and what I want to be. It is my firm belief that following this path will allow me to enable others to do the same and give back to the world that has given so much to me.

So here I am at the precipice of a new beginning, just as the world feels as though it’s falling apart. I don’t know what comes next. But as John Green says “hope isn’t crazy.” Hope isn’t crazy, but it isn’t easy either. When Pandora’s pithos released all that is bad into the world, it kept hope. Because hope is what keeps us alive, what allows us to face another day, hope is a fuel that catapults us into action. Hope is why I am still here today, and it teaches me that where I am now isn’t so much a new beginning, or even a culmination. It’s something much more terrifying, much more powerful, and much more exhilarating. It’s moving forward not because I have to or want to or even need to. It’s a choice I’m making not out of obligation, not out of desire, and not out of necessity. It’s not destiny. It’s deeper than that. It’s not finding meaning, it’s making meaning. It’s choosing love. It’s taking back power. It’s not what I’m meant to do, it’s what I’ve chosen to do. And that makes all the difference.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

—Robert Frost