The Close of a Chapter
Our guest writer this week, Grace, is a Singaporean Roman Catholic. She graduated from the National University of Singapore, Faculty of Law in mid-2018 and recently entered practice. This reflection was written just before entering the working world, looking back on God’s hand revealed through four years of law school.
It’s been two months since my last university exam, and it’s now one day before I officially enter the work force. I thought I’d write a reflection on these past four years, and I thought I’d begin with a prayer I wrote just before entering university:
I remember typing this very quickly into my phone in the piazza one Sunday. It captures some of the fears and dreams I had at the time. It feels surreal to look back now at how that prayer, and more, have been answered in my four years of law school.
The prayer mentions the noise of daily life. At the time, I remember feeling very concerned about what others thought about me, and whether I was living up to the ideal I had for myself (smart, servant leader, sociable, studies outdoors, smells the roses, still gets top grades). I’ve long stopped studying outdoors. It’s too hot, and nobody actually lies on the lower quad to read cases like they do in stock photos. As for the rest, my four years taught me that life is indeed full of noise, but nothing can lead you astray quite like the noise inside your soul.
There are two seemingly contradictory lies I held dear to myself, which I struggled to silence.
The first was that I was always right. Even though getting into law school was difficult, by the time I entered I had somehow gotten it into my head that I would excel academically with minimal effort. This is really embarrassing to type now. But it is a lesson that I nonetheless learnt the hard way (with apologies to my scholarship officer, who probably had a mini heart attack when my grades for Year 1 came in). Yet, another lesson that one of my favourite professors in law school taught us in our last class of the semester was this: that we tend to overrate objective achievement, and underrate subjective achievement. Therefore, the subjects I’ll remember most fondly are not the ones where I scored my highest grades, or the ones which came most easily to me. I’ll remember the ones where I felt horribly lost and insecure in the first class, where I wondered for weeks (even after the Add-Drop deadline was over) if I should quit, and where by the end of it I had somehow, miraculously, found something to love. And for that reason, if I should ever do law school over again (which I wouldn’t), I would keep my first year intact. Hitting rock bottom was a good way for me to find out that I was not always right. This, in turn, opened the door for me to learn more things: how to ask for help, when I was lost. To ask for forgiveness from friends, when I was wrong. To ask for humility from the Lord, when my pride kept itching to “know it all”.
The second lie I told myself was that I was not enough. Not smart enough. Not sociable enough. Not good enough for this opportunity or that. Ironically, I careened between believing the (unrealistic) best in myself, and not believing in myself at all. I often wondered why I wasn’t like somebody else, or why my law school journey didn’t look like somebody else’s. But by the grace of God, I am ridiculously happy with how my law school journey turned out. I am grateful that my law school journey didn’t look like somebody else’s. My four years in law school brought me closer to God. Looking back at the journey I can see how He held me in the palm of His hand and how He waited patiently for me to return whenever I ran away. The story of my law school journey is inextricably the story of my faith journey. I praise God for that.
I learnt that what you get back in life depends on what you give yourself to. When I charted my paths and planned my ideals without reference to God, I gave myself to the world and got back discontent, thirst, and insecurity. When I learnt to let God in and let Him take over, I received peace, joy and overflowing grace. That’s not to say that I revert to not working hard because “it will all turn out well in the end”, or that I don’t feel disheartened when the results don’t match the effort I put in. But I am trying consciously to re-order my life such that God is first. It’s not about thinking less of myself at all. It’s about thinking more often, and more highly, of His greatness. (In The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, there’s a lovely scene at the end which captures this. The Witch and Aslan are fighting over her right to kill a traitor. “Of course everyone present knew that she meant Edmund. But Edmund had got past thinking about himself after all he’d been through and after the talk he’d had that morning. He just went on looking at Aslan. It didn’t seem to matter what the Witch said.”)
Another literary reference to round off this reflection: in Anne of the Island, elderly Aunt Jamesina is distrustful of the value of four years in college and asks the girls what those years ever taught them. Anne’s friend Priscilla quotes her university professor: “There is so much in the world for us all if we only have the eyes to see it, and the heart to love it, and the hand to gather it to ourselves – so much in men and women, so much in art and literature, so much everywhere in which to delight, and for which to be thankful.” (Aunt Jamesina’s incredulous response is that you can learn in four years with natural gumption what others would take twenty years of living to learn.)
There’s much living to be done yet. There’s a whole new world waiting around the corner of today. But I thank God for everything He has given me in the past four years. I praise Him for His love and mercy. And I pray that in the years to come, whatever they may bring, I will always see His hand, guiding me where I must go.
It’s been two months since my last university exam, and it’s now one day before I officially enter the work force. I thought I’d write a reflection on these past four years, and I thought I’d begin with a prayer I wrote just before entering university:
- To remember what defines me: values, and not the institutions which uphold them. To believe the best in people: and include in those, myself.
- To remain open to the joys which God brings my way when I am not looking.
- To remain humbly, God’s servant: To remember my purpose, which must always be tethered to love and how best to serve.
- To be comfortable in the silence and allow God’s peace to transcend the noise of daily life.
- To remember how small I am, not in the face of difficulties or the “real world”, but in the palm of God’s hand; He shall carry me through and look after me, even when I cannot see Him.
I remember typing this very quickly into my phone in the piazza one Sunday. It captures some of the fears and dreams I had at the time. It feels surreal to look back now at how that prayer, and more, have been answered in my four years of law school.
The prayer mentions the noise of daily life. At the time, I remember feeling very concerned about what others thought about me, and whether I was living up to the ideal I had for myself (smart, servant leader, sociable, studies outdoors, smells the roses, still gets top grades). I’ve long stopped studying outdoors. It’s too hot, and nobody actually lies on the lower quad to read cases like they do in stock photos. As for the rest, my four years taught me that life is indeed full of noise, but nothing can lead you astray quite like the noise inside your soul.
There are two seemingly contradictory lies I held dear to myself, which I struggled to silence.
The first was that I was always right. Even though getting into law school was difficult, by the time I entered I had somehow gotten it into my head that I would excel academically with minimal effort. This is really embarrassing to type now. But it is a lesson that I nonetheless learnt the hard way (with apologies to my scholarship officer, who probably had a mini heart attack when my grades for Year 1 came in). Yet, another lesson that one of my favourite professors in law school taught us in our last class of the semester was this: that we tend to overrate objective achievement, and underrate subjective achievement. Therefore, the subjects I’ll remember most fondly are not the ones where I scored my highest grades, or the ones which came most easily to me. I’ll remember the ones where I felt horribly lost and insecure in the first class, where I wondered for weeks (even after the Add-Drop deadline was over) if I should quit, and where by the end of it I had somehow, miraculously, found something to love. And for that reason, if I should ever do law school over again (which I wouldn’t), I would keep my first year intact. Hitting rock bottom was a good way for me to find out that I was not always right. This, in turn, opened the door for me to learn more things: how to ask for help, when I was lost. To ask for forgiveness from friends, when I was wrong. To ask for humility from the Lord, when my pride kept itching to “know it all”.
I learnt that what you get back in life depends on what you give yourself to. When I charted my paths and planned my ideals without reference to God, I gave myself to the world and got back discontent, thirst, and insecurity. When I learnt to let God in and let Him take over, I received peace, joy and overflowing grace. That’s not to say that I revert to not working hard because “it will all turn out well in the end”, or that I don’t feel disheartened when the results don’t match the effort I put in. But I am trying consciously to re-order my life such that God is first. It’s not about thinking less of myself at all. It’s about thinking more often, and more highly, of His greatness. (In The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, there’s a lovely scene at the end which captures this. The Witch and Aslan are fighting over her right to kill a traitor. “Of course everyone present knew that she meant Edmund. But Edmund had got past thinking about himself after all he’d been through and after the talk he’d had that morning. He just went on looking at Aslan. It didn’t seem to matter what the Witch said.”)
There’s much living to be done yet. There’s a whole new world waiting around the corner of today. But I thank God for everything He has given me in the past four years. I praise Him for His love and mercy. And I pray that in the years to come, whatever they may bring, I will always see His hand, guiding me where I must go.
Comments
Post a Comment