The Persistent Dream

 

 

           

            I remember that it had been a beautiful spring day in May. I had just finished my last exam as a college student at the University of Maryland, College Park and – after four tumultuous years in my College Park university cocoon – it was finally time for me to leave this academic environment and enter the working world.  

            I was somewhat apprehensive and nervous as I headed back to my apartment located just off the campus. I had not planned to return home to my parents who lived in New York at that time. I had hoped to remain in the area and look for employment as a high school teacher (my degree was in English Secondary Education). As I was about to take that last step and walk off campus and head to my car for the last time as an undergraduate, I stopped and took a long and expansive look at the tree-lined student “Quad” area with its many stately Oak trees. All was simply gorgeous on a sunny May afternoon!…. It was at that moment that I had that thought again: “the nurturing academic environment of a college campus would be a wonderful place for me to pursue a teaching career” thought.

            If that thought had gone through my head once, it had gone through me a hundred times. Frankly, college teaching had been my dream since about my sophomore year in college. However, I never gave the idea serious consideration, nor did I ever sit down and ask myself why I kept coming back to college teaching, or, at least, see if it were a feasible option for me. I simply turned my head back to the road and headed on out of that university for the last time. I moved on and exchanged my subsidized existence as a full time college student, for a high school teaching job with little pay but much personal satisfaction.

            I had missed the moment and let the dream slip away on that May afternoon . . . .

I take every opportunity that I have in speaking with our law students here at North Carolina Central University School of Law to listen for, and then recognize, the “moment,” i.e., the inner call to their dream career, “passion” or whatever you want to call it. . . What if it doesn’t come? What if I can’t hear it?. For most, it will indeed come. You just have to be open and be listening.

 When I experienced the call to my dream (to higher education), I dropped the ball.  I simply dismissed the thought, never giving it a proper hearing and serious consideration, though a professor had even suggested that I apply to a graduate studies program and then a teaching fellowship. After a circuitous path taking me through both public and private law practice, I have finally picked up the ball and returned to my dream as a educator in an academic environment  (where I should have been from day one, I might add. However, at the same time, with no regrets for a fascinating legal career in the middle.)   

Times are extremely difficult now for law students who are seeking work in a legal industry that appears to be changing and evolving into new something quite different than it had been in the recent past. Law firms are remodeling and restructuring; public interest entities now in hiring “freezes” and work is now at a premium. Therefore, this “dream thing” must be carefully thought out now. It’s not enough to just say that you are being “called” to be a lawyer. Explore your reasoning: to make good money?: this is not a “persistent dream,” it is naïve foolishness and a student who goes to law school to make money (or another equally superficial motive) would certainly be heading for a “train wreck.”

The "dream thing" will again hit you once you are in law school and have cleared that first hurdle. Recognize it in the form of what area of  law you may wish to enter as your specialty. You'll feel the drive . .i.e. to litigate, to enter a specific government agency, civil, criminal. .  . what's that area of practice that you are always thinking about?? Here comes your "persistent dream" --right at you!

Law school is not for the faint hearted these days, but I write to tell you that if you can take all this in, and still have the drive and desire to pursue a legal career, don’t let all the “prophets of doom” deter you. Think it through, make reasonable choices about school costs and career options and then follow your “persistent dream.”

Philip A. Guzman, Esq.

Revised from an original publication in the NALP Bulletin, September 2010