I couldn’t help but recall my short-lived churchgoing days. Not long after my father left, my mother started taking me to an Evangelical church every week, where the Sunday school teachers frightened us into faith through cartoon drawings of sinners burning in hell. (It wasn’t until college that I learned most of these images came from Dante, not Revelations.) Consequently, I had nightmares in which an old bearded man in a sweeping white robe would curse me for being mean to a friend or lying to my mom and drop me into a fiery volcano of torture and pain where my only company would be Hitler and the homosexuals. During this period, especially when I was alone, I’d sometimes experience intrusive thoughts like the following: that I must kneel and bow ten times at the wall, else face eternal damnation. Being young, I assumed these thoughts were the voice of God. After the first few times, I told my mother about these episodes. I thought she would be proud of my piety, or impressed with my personal commitment and closeness to God. Instead, she decided that we would never go to church again.
I don’t often miss those days. But in the weeks after finding out I was rejected from Harvard, I did. Because after kneeling to the wall ten times, I’d feel pretty damn good knowing that my actions helped me avoid eternal damnation—at least until the next episode of bowing to the wall ten times. There was noguarantee now, no sense of control, not even a farcical illusion to bring temporary relief. I wasn’t sure I was going to get into law school. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to achieve my dream that I’d always assumed would become reality simply because I wanted and worked for it enough.
—
DURING THIS PERIOD OF MOURNING,the prelaw society was hosting a panel for undergraduates who wanted to learn more about the “first-year law student experience.” I dreaded attending, as it would be simply another reminder of my rejection from Harvard. But I also didn’t want my failure to just lead to more failure on the off chance that Harvard emailed me next week to say that this was all a big mistake and I had actually gotten in. I still found that to be a real possibility, far realer than the possibility that I had not gotten in—in which case there was a chance that the panel would actually include invaluable tips for success, and missing it would lead me to getting worse grades and job offers. That was a chance I couldn’t take.
That was how I found myself sitting in the second row in one of the law school seminar rooms, behind one of the curved rows of tables with long microphones in front of every seat. There were four law school students on the panel, one of whom, named Justin, had also attended Columbia for undergrad. I already hated being there. I hated the eagerness of the other audience members and the smugness of the panelists, power tripping on the fact that for once they were the ones being sucked up to rather than the ones doing the sucking up. There was a stack of printer paper in the corner by the blackboard, and I imagined using the sheets to create tiny little paper cuts in the fleshy areabetween my index finger and thumb, creating a sufficient amount of pain to distract me from the cringe I was about to witness in this room.
Indeed, the amount of cringe lived up to my vast expectations, particularly when it came to audience members asking the types of questions that they didn’t actually care to know the answers to, but were just excuses to hear their own voices or ingratiate themselves to the panelists, whom they had no reason to ingratiate themselves to except for the fact that it had been ingrained in them all their lives to kiss the ass of whoever had the most power in the room. “Why did you decide to go to law school?” one asked. “Why did you pick Columbia out of the law schools you got into?” another said. “How would you say the difficulty compared from undergrad to law school?” At this last question, I perked up. I recognized the voice—self-assured and slightly deeper than usual; intentionally affected to make its speaker seem subconsciously more masculine, and thus seem subconsciously smarter. It was Laura. What was she doing here? I thought she was going to be an investment banker, like her dad. I frequently saw her walking to Faculty House in a skirt suit and Jimmy Choo heels, padfolio tucked in her Goyard bag to collect business cards from alumni at some networking event.
“Do you ever regret going straight from undergrad to law school?” another student asked. “I’m considering taking a gap year to save some money first.”
“Definitely take the gap year,” Justin said. “Not even because of the money, but just to make sure that law school is what you really want to do.”
I tuned out as soon as I heard the question; I already knew that I wouldn’t be taking a gap year. I could see no reason topostpone my entrance into the life I had always wanted by spending a year making barely above minimum wage at some exploitative paralegal job. And I already knew that law school classes were harder than undergrad ones. Sure, it was not something that I liked to think about—my public high school in South Dakota, despite being the best public high school in the state, was still, at the end of the day, a public high school in South Dakota, and I had gone to college completely unprepared for the rigor of Columbia. Still, it was common sense that law school would only be harder. The top law schools only took the top students, and not everyone in law school classes could get an A.
Other students asked about social life in law school and how to make friends—again, both subjects that I deemed negligible in the grand scheme of things.
The panel ended after forty-five minutes, and the audience members and speakers dispersed. I returned to the lobby of the law school building. Justin, the panelist, had stopped at the vending machines, so I decided to get myself a bottle of sparkling water.
“Hey,” I said. “Thanks for doing the panel. Your answers were super helpful.” They weren’t, but as I expected, he was flattered. I planned on asking him whether getting an internship the summer before law school would help me with full-time job recruiting, but then someone greeted Justin from behind. Same affected voice, but at its normal pitch this time.
“Justin! Thank you for blessing us with your time.” Laura leaned in to give him a hug. “If only Mr. Jones could see you now.”
Laura snickered while Justin groaned. “God, don’t remind me of AP Gov. Please. I still have PTSD.” She continued to tease him about the class in that way that attractive girls dowhen they’re wielding the knowledge of their own attractiveness. I knew she wasn’t into him, just flirting, because why not? I stood there unsure what to do with my hands, ready to pull out my phone, pretending that I needed to text someone important. But then Laura turned to me, that dazzling, artificial smile still plastered on her face, like that of a model on a billboard advertising whitening toothpaste.
“Sorry for interrupting. I think we’ve met before, right? I’m Laura.”
She reached out her hand and I shook it, pretending like I also didn’t remember who she was. She turned back to Justin. “Anyway, I’ll leave you two to it. Justin, let’s grab brunch soon, okay?”
Justin nodded. “For sure, for sure. And congrats again. Harvard is lucky to have you.”
Harvard? Did I hear him correctly? Yes, I was sure he had said Harvard. He couldn’t have meant Harvard Law School though. Laura was going to be an investment banker. Investment bankers didn’t go to law school. Did he mean Harvard Business School? There was a deferred admissions program that undergraduates could apply to. But then why was Laura at a law school panel? It couldn’t be that she was going to law school. That couldn’t be it. She must’ve just been here to support Justin, her friend from high school.
Before I could stop myself, I blurted it out. “Oh, you’re going to Harvard?” The question came out a little too loud. Even I could hear the needy curiosity in my voice. Laura flinched as she turned toward me.
“Yes.” Her answer was intentionally vague, dripping with haughtiness in response to my obvious envy. I knew I couldn’thide this vulnerability. Unlike sadness or anger, which can grow just by feeding on themselves, envy demands more knowledge, like an itch that you must scratch, even when you know it will make the wound worse. Laura understood this dynamic all too well, and her vagueness was proof; it didn’t matter that she wanted me to know she had gotten in. To answer my question, Laura was implicitly demanding that I first admit in front of both her and Justin that I wanted to know the details, that I expose my own jealousy-driven curiosity. I willingly handed her that last bit of satisfaction in exchange for the information I so desperately wanted, even though I could already feel the stab in my chest from what I knew, at least deep in my gut, would be her answer.
“For…law school?”
“Yep.”
“You…got in?”
“Yes. Found out yesterday, actually.”
“Did your parents go there?”
“No.”
She and Justin exchanged a look. This had already turned into an interaction the two of them would text about later. It was too late to stop that, and I controlled myself before I could make things even worse.
“Sorry for being nosy. That’s just so impressive.” I mustered a smile.
“Thank you so much,” she said, shifting her tote bag farther up her shoulder. “Anyway, I gotta run now. See you later!”
I watched her glossy hair swing back and forth like a pendulum as she exited the law school lobby.
