It is an odd feeling to be finished with all of my law school coursework. Today I turned in a paper and two take home exams. Assuming I didn’t blow it completely on any of them, I’m all done.

I was giddy with excitement as I ran through each of the exams one last time to be sure I hadn’t misspelled anything or written a grammatically impossible sentence. I was still giddy as I walked into the faculty support office and delivered the paper and those two exams. But as I left the office the old familiar gnawing doubts crept into my brain. What if my pathetic, feeble shareholder’s agreement for my startups class is so much worse than everyone else’s that I don’t even get a passing grade? What if I missed something vital in the paper I just turned in, despite hours and hours of research and distillation and wordsmithing?

To a large extent law school is about becoming comfortable with ambiguous outcomes. I suppose for some students getting an A in a class is like a math equation: If I put x number of hours into this class over x period of time, I will get an A. It was never like that for me. I’ve been taken by surprise negatively and positively with exams. I worked incredibly hard on my first law school paper and was convinced that it was not up to par. I got the top grade in the class. The following semester I walked out of my evidence class feeling like it wasn’t all that bad after all. It was.

I’m not sure when I’ll shake the nagging doubts, and simply acknowledge that it is really over. Perhaps in many weeks, when my diploma arrives in the mail, that written instrument with my name on it will erase those doubts and allow me to finally savor the ending to this lengthy, winding story.

To those of you who are graduating, congratulations! To those of you who are about to wind up finals or already have, enjoy the summer!

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