3 AM Panic Attacks

I'm sure every 0L has had this moment at least once in the pre-September days.

And it just happened to me, at 3 AM last night. The thought hit me all of a sudden.

I'm going to law school.

I'm really going to law school!

It's really happening! In less than 4 weeks! I've been assigned classes. Pretty soon a fat envelope will come with casebook assigments that I'll need to buy. I have to move at the end of this month. I'll have to spend 3 years in a really cold town, with competitive and ambitious people, with late nights at the library and mountains of reading materials and back-to-back final exams and endless interviews at firms I'm not sure I want to work for anyway and all the furtive and ego-crushing comparisons with my classmates and...

I don't feel ready. I'm not sure what ready feels like, but this is definitely not ready. I don't feel prepared. I don't feel as smart as other people. I wonder if I'm one of those sympathy admits who will graduate from the bottom of the class. I wonder if I'll hate all my classes and profs (everyone I've talked to who goes to my law school, and everyone I've talked to who knows someone who did, seems to think so.)

And there are the bigger questions too. Do I really want to go to law school? Do I really want to be a lawyer? Will I like law? Do I really want to spend the rest of my life drafting memos and reading cases and being argumentative, as opposed to... what? What else is there for someone with a relatively useless undergraduate major unsure about her life? What do I want my life to be like? What kind of career do I really want to have? If I become a lawyer, will I be sucked into this endless cycle of competition for and insecurity about my own prestige? Will I be happy? Will I be satisfied? Is it too late to change my mind?

It's too soon... wait!... I need more time to decide!

Okay, okay, breeeeathe. In... out... in... out...