It's about the people, Part III

Who would've thought that food would serve to remind me that I'm smart?

I used to know I was smart. As smart as anyone else out there. Maybe smarter, even.

Then I went to law school. At a place full of really smart people. And for the first time, I questioned my smarts. Nothing was coming as easily any more. I had to work hard, really hard, just to keep up. But I did work hard, and I did keep up. And I graduated, believing even more that I was smart, as smart as anyone else out there -- because now I had faced a real challenge, and succeeded.

A few years as an associate at BigLawFirm, though, rid me of that knowledge. A combination of factors (analyzed well in this article) chased me out of BigLawFirm, and (fortunately) into a far more satisfying legal career. But they also left me feeling as if I wasn't smart enough to cut it in BigLaw. As someone else expressed it, “It affects your self-esteem. You start wondering if you are not a good lawyer. You internalize it.”

And internalize it I did. I questioned my abilities as a lawyer, and, by extension, my intellect. I grew tentative to voice my legal theories, doubting their soundness. My confidence was shaken, and the years between myself and my BigLawFirm life weren't enough to rebuild it.

But sharing a bottle of wine with some food friends this weekend was.

There I was, listening to my friends talk about wine, a subject about which they are passionate (and ridiculously knowledgeable). We engaged in what L calls the "Socratic method of learning about wine," in which I listen and try to understand everything they say, and ask questions when I don't. And I loved it. Always the student, I learn at every turn, even when enjoying a glass of wine in the warm post-midnight breeze on a roof high above the District.

And then, somehow, the conversation turned to L's theory of constitutional law. And I don't know whether it was the late hour, my comfort level with these folks, or a little too much delicious red wine, but the light bulb went off. You know, the light bulb that, if I lived in a comic strip, would pop up over my head and say in a thought bubble "A-HA! I know something about this, and what I have to say is intelligent. BigLawFirm shook my confidence, but no more! I will expound on the law!"

Or something like that.

So expound I did, and we had a fascinating and intellectually stimulating conversation about constitutional law and the role of law in organized society. And I remembered, finally, that I was smart. Thanks to people outside of my profession, who I would never know, were it not for a shared love of food.

L probably didn't give that conversation one more moment's thought after he left the roof that night. So he probably has no idea the impact it had on me. Someday, over a good bottle of wine, I'll have to thank him.