The Part of Law School No One Told Me About

by Joshua James Gomez

No one really warns you about this part of law school.

They tell you about the readings, the recitations, and the sleepless nights spent memorizing and preparing. They warn you about the pressure of being called in class and the possibility of failing. Those things, strangely enough, are easier to prepare for.

What they don’t warn you about is the quiet exhaustion.

Not the dramatic burnout people talk about, but the kind that slowly builds over time. The kind where you wake up tired even after sleeping. Where the stack of readings feels heavier than it should. Where you stare at the same paragraph for ten minutes and still can’t process it.

And then the questions start to appear.

Why am I even here?
Did I make the right decision?
Am I really meant to do this?

Sometimes the questions become even more blunt.

What if I just quit?

Because the truth is, you could. You could close the books, walk away, and choose to live life. You could decide that law school is not worth the constant pressure, the endless readings, and the mental toll it takes every day.

There are moments when the thought feels strangely comforting.

You imagine waking up without the weight of unfinished readings. Without the anxiety of recitations. Without the feeling that you are constantly trying to catch up with something that never slows down.

And in those quiet moments, you find yourself asking again:

Why am I still here?

Law school has a way of humbling you. Just when you begin to feel like you understand something, it reminds you how much you still don’t know. There are days when you feel completely stuck. You are no longer driven by the excitement of the first year, but not yet close enough to the finish line to see the end.

You’re just somewhere in the middle.

And the middle is where doubt grows the loudest.

There are times when you close your readings and feel like nothing stayed in your head. Days when you leave class feeling smaller than when you entered it.

Moments when the quiet thought appears again:

You could just quit.

No more cases. No more doctrines. No more endless pages of readings that seem to multiply overnight.

Just walk away.

This, I think, is the part of law school no one warned me about. Not just the difficulty of the law, but the quiet battle happening in your own mind.

That’s when I started thinking about a story often told about Alexander the Great.

When he and his army arrived on the Persian shore, they faced a powerful city that seemed nearly impossible to conquer. The soldiers could see how vast the enemy army was. They were heavily outnumbered, and fear began to spread among them.

Because there was always another option.

They could retreat. They could go back to the ships that had brought them there. They could sail home and avoid the battle altogether.

In other words, they could quit.

But Alexander did something unexpected.

He ordered his men to burn their own ships.

The same ships that carried them across the sea—their only easy path back.

As the flames consumed the vessels, the message became clear. There would be no retreat. No turning back when things became difficult. No quiet decision to abandon the fight halfway through.

The only direction left was forward, and to sail home with enemy ships.

For a long time, I thought that story was simply about Alexander's military excellence. But somewhere in the middle of law school, it started to mean something else.

It’s about removing the option to quit.

Because the hardest part of any difficult journey is knowing that you can still walk away. Knowing that there is always an easier road waiting somewhere behind you.

But once the ships are burned, the question changes.

You stop asking whether you should go back.

You start asking how you will move forward.

There are still days when law school feels overwhelming. Days when the readings feel endless, and the pressure feels heavier than it should. Days when exhaustion whispers again that quitting would be easier.

And yes, sometimes I still ask myself:

Why am I here?

But maybe the real answer is simple.

Because I chose to stay.

Because somewhere along the way, I decided to burn my ships too.

And now that they’re burning behind me, quitting is no longer the story.

Fighting forward is.