last day of torts

Last night, we had our last night of torts. Surprisingly, I felt emotional about it.
We were invited by our professor, Larry Levine, to give our creative contributions as we ate pizza, chips, and brownies and drank from a buffet of beer, wine, and liquor. Only a handful of people offered their contributions with their homemade tort products and written poems (very sweet!), and a group provided us with a skit performance that was very funny and entertaining. But what hit my heart was our professor's speech at the end of it all. He told us,

"It is truly a gift to teach you all and see you grow. I know I told you all that you will come in here with minds full of mush, and that I will turn your mush into minds that can think like lawyers. But your minds were not full of mush... I appreciate your energy and your good humor. I know you're all under a lot of stress right now, but be proud of what you have accomplished."

Those are simple words, but it really hit me. I looked back at the year we've had together. I remember how we all began law school, not having a clue what we have gotten ourselves into, as bright, eager students, ready to learn the law. I remember not even knowing what a "tort" was or what a "holding" was. I remember how scared we all felt, terrified of being called on, scrambling in the wee hours of the morning and night, trying to decipher the cases to be ready to answer any questions we might be asked. I remember how it felt to be shot down, shamed and embarrassed that we didn't know the answer. I also remember the pride and glory when we were able to answer a question correctly.

Relying on endless cups of coffee, good graces of our significant others and our family members, we lugged our 50 pounds of law books around, hoping our laptops wouldn't fry before exam time, and tried to keep the laws straight in our minds, trying our best to keep them from overlapping with our other classes.

I hated life, loathed waking up in the morning, collapsed on my bed each night from exhaustion, almost died twice trying to get to school, totaled my car, chopped my hair off, broke up with my boyfriend, got demoted at work, deleted Facebook for weeks, and went into thousands of dollars into debt for this law school education, and I know I'm not alone in what I've experienced this past year. But as I heard Professor Levine tell us to be proud, I realized it was all worth it. Torts came and went, and we are one year down in our journey of earning this law degree.

I know that years later, I will look back on my torts class with fondness. Professor Levine taught us with a love of the law, love for teaching, a love for his students, and it showed throughout the year we had him. We were blessed to have him as a professor, to walk us through this terrifying experience, and I can honestly say I have never been more challenged in my entire life.

So with a heavy heart full of gratitude, we concluded our torts class with merry cheer, but I know that I will miss being in Levine's class dearly. This is what I wanted to say last night, during our hour of creative contributions.