Imposter Syndrome in Law School

Hello and welcome back! If you’ve been here since 2020, thank you so much for sticking around. If you’re new, welcome to my blog, and thanks for stopping by.

Things have changed quite a bit for me in the last few years, so allow me to reintroduce myself. I’m Miriam. I love writing and helping advocate for increased awareness and resources for mental health. Since you guys last heard from me, I’ve become a teacher at a daycare and started law school. I’ve also gotten officially diagnosed with ADHD, which has helped me further my understanding of myself and why I do things in the way I do.

For my first post back from the dead, I want to talk about imposter syndrome. It’s something I’ve been dealing with a lot since starting law school. I’m in my second year now, as an evening student. I work as a teacher during the day and go to classes at night. My schedule is more hectic than it’s ever been, but I don’t mind that as much as I thought I would. I like being busy. The hardest thing about law school for me so far has been the mental aspect of it: feeling like I don’t belong there.

Because I’m an evening student, most people in my class are also working full-time jobs while being law students. I thought this would create a sense of solidarity among us. I thought we were all working toward the same ultimate goal: to work in the legal field. At orientation, I learned that the majority of my classmates were already working as paralegals or legal assistants or were adjacent to law-related jobs in some way or another.

Law school, for my whole life, was a dream that I don’t think I truly believed was accessible to me. I started talking about being a lawyer in my first few years of high school. The first time I really remember thinking about it, I was probably around 12 years old. I’d read a book with some legal drama in it and found myself rereading that section over and over. I read about how lawyers craft arguments and use language in such a unique way, and I thought, I want to do that. It seemed like a perfect blend of my love of words and my longing to be a part of something bigger than myself. Even as I child, I knew that I wanted to do something that would reach other people. I was a lonely child. I had a hard time relating to kids my age. I didn’t know how to approach them. I didn’t know how to make friends. It seemed like everyone knew something they weren’t telling me. I longed for connection and closeness, and I think I saw this as a way of connecting myself to society. This was how I would reach them. This was how I could make a difference.

As I got older and learned more about the different types of lawyers and all the issues within the justice system, I learned I wanted to go into public interest work. As a 2L, I’m leaning towards public defense, but it’s possible I’ll change my mind. I’ve also looked into several mental health courts, a recent ish development in the legal field.

All that is to say that I felt a pull towards this kind of work for a long time. To the confusion of my teachers, who loved my writing and wanted me to pursue that and my mother, who didn’t understand what the draw was, I spent my high school years telling everyone who would listen to me that I was going to be a lawyer.

When I joined my college mock trial team, I immediately fell in love. I knew I’d been right. This was what I was meant to do. Despite all this, my entire first year of law school, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I didn’t belong there after all. My first few days I spent in absolute awe that I had done this for myself. I’d accomplished something that for so long had been nothing concrete. It was just something I’d talk about if you let me go long enough. I don’t know if anyone thought I’d really do it.

Around the second week is when I started to feel like an imposter. I’d listen to my classmates talk about their jobs. I’d listen to them answer questions in class, having no idea how they knew that. I felt the nagging voice in the back of my mind telling me that I was a fake, a fraud. They were all smarter and better than me. They looked like they belonged there. I didn’t, and I thought everyone could see it. It’s crazy how your mind can convince you that something isn’t right for you, even when you know with every fiber of your being that it is. Everything in me wanted to be there so badly, but my anxiety brain wouldn’t let me enjoy it. Every time I got an answer wrong in class or didn’t do well on a quiz, I’d mentally berate myself for hours. I didn’t understand how everyone was already working in the legal field. Once again, it seemed like everyone had this secret knowledge that I just wasn’t aware of.

My first year of law school was hard. Everyone says the first year is the hardest, and I hope that’s true because I’ve got three more to go. The hardest part was my mentality that I wasn’t smart enough to be there. In reality, there was no real reason for me to feel this way. I have a scholarship that is dependent on my grades. I got constant reassurance from my friends and my boyfriend. I felt like I was fooling them all though, tricking them into thinking I was smarter than I was. A classmate told me they were impressed by the ideas I shared in class, and I went home and cried because I felt like a bad person for lying to everyone.

Imposter syndrome is one of those things that makes no sense when you break it down like that. No one told me I didn’t belong there but myself. I really am my own worst enemy sometimes.

My advice for when you feel like you’re the only one not in on the secret is this: ask someone. I started asking people how they got their current jobs. I asked people how they studied for tests. Most of the time, everyone is just as lost and confused as you. And chances are, you’re not that lost and confused after all. If you’ve worked for something, if you want it badly enough and are willing to learn, where you start doesn’t matter. You belong wherever you decide you do. The only person who can decide that is you.

The biggest thing that helped me was talking to other people about how I felt and also being proactive about figuring things out for myself. For so long, I felt like things were out of my control. I can’t get the job I want because I don’t have experience. I can’t ask my professor about this because I’ll sound stupid. I can’t ask this person about their job and experiences because they’ll think I’m a weirdo. Turns out, I really did have more control than I thought I did. I talked to the career services office at my school, and all the pieces of my eventual career have been falling into place: because I booked one meeting, because I finally took that step, because I finally convinced myself I deserved it.

Stop being your own biggest critic and make the necessary steps to get to where you want to be. If you don’t know the steps, ask someone. Apparently it really does help.

It’s so great to be writing again. I’ll be back soon. Thank you to everyone who supports me.