A letter from a struggling law student

Dear future self,

I hope that when you’re reading this, you’re in a much better state than you are now. It’s 11:57 p.m. on a Thursday, but you’re already spent and burnt out. You wonder how you’re going to get through the next two days before you finally get your own version of a weekend (a.k.a. Sunday). You’re doubting yourself again. You don’t think you’re cut out for this. You question whether you can still sustain this kind of lifestyle; one year down, three more to go. Hopefully, just three more.

It’s been over a year since you made the decision to finally pursue a childhood dream you felt was too much of a privilege for you to even think about. You went ahead and decided to study law, though you’re deathly scared of public speaking, and you have the memory capacity of a goldfish. You knew it was going to be hard, and you also knew you had to support yourself — law school is expensive, even with a scholarship. So you dove into law school as a full-time working professional, and a full-time student. Three weeks in and several bad recitations after, you found yourself crying on the bus on your way home. You consoled yourself by saying that, surely, it was going to get better.

A year after, three weeks into the semester, you’re going through the same things again. You are tired, sleepless and anxious all the time. You barely make it through the assignments and readings. You wake up in the morning feeling like you never slept at all. Somehow you wake up crying, and you leave the condo with bloodshot and swollen eyes. You pass it off by telling people you meet that you did not get enough sleep.

You never get enough sleep. Your class ends at 9:30 p.m., earlier if you’re lucky. You ride the bus and sometimes arrive home by 10:30 or 11 p.m. You study until your eyes can barely stay open, because you know you will not have time to study during the day. You have to work. Quitting work means quitting school — it’s a choice of one over the other.

You check the clock — it’s 2 a.m. You contemplate whether to force yourself to finish the coverage for tomorrow, or sleep and leave it all to Providence. Sometimes, you make it until 4 a.m. Oftentimes, you don’t. You wake up at 6 a.m., or at least you try to. You want to sleep more, just a little bit more — but you know that if you don’t get up now, you will be very late for work (but with Edsa traffic, you’re almost always late, anyway). You try to study during your commute, but you almost always end up taking a nap. One time, you failed to wake up, so you ended up two bus stops away from where you should have gotten off. It was not the best day, but it makes for a funny story.

You know you need help. No one goes through law school on their own, but you don’t know how to approach people. You ask them for advice, anyway, and end up feeling guilty for the time they could have spent studying. Surely, the worries of others are much heavier than yours. You find comfort in prayer, asking Our Lord that for today, just for today, may you have a little more time to just relax and breathe. You pray that today, no migraines come. You pray that just for today, you do well.

People tell you that you can do it. But more often than not, you think that you can’t. You somehow end up thinking that maybe you’re not putting enough effort — as much effort as everyone else. You beat yourself up for every little mistake. You keep replaying all the bad recitations in your head, and quizzes and exam questions that you failed to answer appear even in your dreams. You feel so incompetent, so undeserving to even get to where you are now.

Yet, each time, you go back to your why. You think of your family — the people you love the most. They have been deprived of their livelihood for years now because of a legal battle against big names with so much wealth, and how they wish they could have better legal representation. You remember their struggles, and their hope that no one else goes through the same things they are going through right now. You think of all your friends who find ways to make their presence and support known to you; friends who remind you that you’re more than your mistakes and doubts. You think of how this was your deliberate decision, because you know that this is where you are called to serve. You go back to your why, and it sustains you.

You wipe your tears, take a deep breath, and resolve to do better. There have been bad days, and there will be terrible days — but there are good ones, too, and there will surely be great ones.

Dear future self, I write this letter as my way of reminding you that wherever you are now, it took so much for you to get there. I hope your why still fuels you as much as it does me now. And if you’re in a place where you’re at peace with yourself, hopefully, I’ll get there soon.

Your struggling self

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Ging-Ging Sira, 24, is a struggling law student who misses home. This letter is a catharsis more than anything, and perhaps other working students can relate as well.