This is the second post about navigating law school as a married couple. You can find the first one here, where I discuss methods of dealing with stressors unique to law school together. In this post, I’ll discuss the darkest time I experienced as someone married to a law student and the methods I’ve developed to keep my stress levels at a healthier level.
Fall 2023, Or Our Shared Stress
As I discussed in my previous post, everyone warned us how difficult the first year of law school would be, then assured us that it wouldn’t get harder. Those words carried us through a frustrating summer for Coy after his internship. He learned very quickly how little his 1L year had prepared him to be a real lawyer doing real patent law things at a real patent firm. We have since learned this is a common discovery. Other friends at the law school experienced similar feelings. One friend described it as identical to the realization that the skills he had developed to do well on the LSAT had no direct connection to what his 1L classes required of him. Now, at the start of Coy’s 2L year, we were learning how much more work was required beyond the walls of the law school to succeed as a real lawyer.
Before his stressful summer, Coy had signed up for a heavier course load during the Fall to give him more flexibility to help after our son was born during the Winter semester. His plans for Fall included fulfilling the graduation requirement his computer science brain most dreaded: the substantial writing assignment. A 30-pg paper. The longest paper he’d written in college was maybe fifteen pages and not as rigorous as legal writing. I braced myself to see him less on Saturdays, in addition to the 50-hour week he already kept at the law school.
My Unique Combination of Stressors
I’ve spent this time explaining everything piled high on Coy’s plate because I love him dearly. His wins are mine, and I feel his pains keenly. Watching his confidence deteriorate over the summer, knowing the heavy load he had undertaken for the Fall semester, I felt like my fingers were on backwards because there was nothing tangible within my control to help Coy. I grabbed my pom-poms and resumed my role as a cheerleader, but he could sense my smile was plastered on.
You see, my plate overflowed with my master’s capstone and courses, being our toddler’s primary caretaker, and being pregnant with our second child. More than that, I had chosen not to work during Coy’s 2L year so that I could be pregnant during the fall semester and then give birth during winter. (I guarantee that if you’re married to a law student, you are the one working to bring home the bacon while they’re focused on their studies, unlike other grad programs where income can be shared between the couple.) I sacrificed teaching, something I find revitalizing, to lessen my overall stress load. I hoped I would be able to give Coy more support before giving birth and knew he, in turn, would then be able to support me more while I recovered from birth and adjusted to having two small humans with me all day. (Spoiler alert: That did happen.) My choice was possible because of the savings we’d accrued while Coy worked as a software engineer before law school and because both of our expansive families live within a thirty-minute drive of Provo. Otherwise, my choices would have looked very different.
But, like a Greek tragedy, Coy started his 2L year, and everything shattered around me. After a week, I was behind in my master’s work. As my belly swelled, we experienced some complications. I went to the hospital three times in two months to check that all was well. Blessedly, my baby and I were healthy each time. What about our toddler? We were finally sleep training. Recalling those awful nights still breaks my heart. Coy and I tried every method of sleep training, and none of them worked that semester.
Then, we found a new apartment that would fit our growing family. Amidst Thanksgiving plans and my lurking capstone project deadline and finals, I started packing. And all the organizing, donation runs, and box procuring moving includes.
One last mention of Coy’s stress as the final orange brushstroke to my personal version of The Scream by Edvard Munch: between his heavy course load and his giant paper, he was utterly exhausted. Frequently, he expressed how awful he felt that he could give me so little of himself, especially with everything I was trying to balance.
Hindsight is Rose-Tinged, not 20/20
I would love for this section to be a beautiful, organized list of all the choices I could have altered and how anyone in a similar situation could apply such obvious truths to their own lives. But since we all know that obvious truths are the ones found on bumper stickers, I doubt I can get anything accurate in a space that concise. Allow me some room to explain some of my wishes regarding the hardest part of Coy’s law school for me, as well as the things I do, or am learning to do, to avoid high levels of stress.
I wish I hadn’t let my pregnancy be an excuse to keep my body still. I wish I had moved my body more, even if it was as simple as impromptu dance parties with my toddler. I’ve started counting recently how many times a day I tell myself “no, I can’t do…” and am astounded by how many times that sentence ends regarding exercise or going outside. I tell myself it’s impossible until I do some chores or am productive in a different way. But even if I just acted every five times I had these self-constraining thoughts, my actual time doing exercise or spending time outside would at least double! Wow, math saves lives.
I wish sleep had come easier. I have read enough literature and research to know how critical sleep is to my health, yet this stage of life full of sleep training and late night feedings for babies has put my sleep schedule through the ringer. With my youngest now over a year and a champion sleeper (miracles happen!) I’m starting to feel like sleep is more dependent on my choices than the needs of my children.
I wish I had fearlessly sought out more friendships, especially at the law school. More specifically, I wish I had found more people at the law school who needed a supportive community. There’s always another space at the table you can drag a folded chair over. In my experience, as long as I brought a snack – sought a way to nourish the people I met, they reciprocated.
I wish I had asked for help more often and articulated what help I needed. Ugh, I am still so bad at this!! The words “I need help” stick in my throat like a plug in a leaky dam. It’s all gonna come spilling out anyway. The issue is that by the time it spills over and I am officially overwhelmed, I am unable to state what kind of help I need to the people who love me and want nothing more than to ease my pains. Because I love them too, I decided to start asking for help earlier, even if what they help me with is something I could have done myself.
I wish I had known that law school does not “get easier;” the hard challenges of one year simply morph into new, unknown challenges and pressures as time progresses. Yes, enduring 1L with Coy was hard, and we felt in over our heads. But we learned how to navigate law school as well as how to adjust our lives. These last two years have had unique combinations of homework, leadership opportunities, children, and work. It feels like someone keeps raising the standard of excellence higher each year, and so we are constantly hiking up a steep trail. We’ve become accustomed to using these muscles but often found large boulders or even ravines
I wish I had journaled every day, even if it was just a brief sentence. Sometimes, my brief entries still carry the memories of the long-gone day like the smell of fresh bread that lingers in the kitchen into the next day. Other times, the act of giving myself permission to journal something became an opportunity to examine an event or emotion more closely.
I wish I had written down the things I knew I needed to bring up in therapy. I met with my therapist every three weeks that semester, and too often, I would arrive in her still, peaceful office and forget much of what I had endured since the previous meeting. If I had simply journaled a sentence a day, it’s easy to believe I would have gotten more of my money’s worth for one, as well as direct help. This is a goal I still have, though I am improving. If you don’t have a therapist, who’s your bestie? I’ve developed the habit of jotting down the things I want to discuss with my bestie to both catch her up on my life and to note the things I know will be helpful to discuss with her.
I hope you will fare better than me. Selfishly, I hope you will fare better because these words helped you, though the written word is not always an adequate substitute for real conversation.
If you were sitting across from me, I’d ask you questions and respond to yours over our favorite snacks and drinks until we left the table as close friends. And if we were dear friends, I’d practice asking you for help. “How can Coy and I leave all this?” I’d ask, waving vaguely around us toward the law school, our home, our life. Maybe you’d have some sage advice that would alter my perspective. Maybe you would commiserate with me or refer me to a friend or mentor who has walked this path and is a decade further down.
And maybe, ten years from now, you and I would find ourselves assuring some law students and their spouses that their hard work and sacrifices are all worth it.
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