I started law school after Stephanie and I had been married for two days. That’s right days. We took a one night honeymoon to Charleston and then moved into the law school rat race. If you’re not familiar with law schools, and specifically your first year of law school, it is a particularly grueling experience with hundreds of pages of reading each day, briefs to write, the stress of getting called on “Socratically” and much more. Just keeping up is a full time job.

On one of the first days of orientation, the dean told us to apologize to our loved ones because they would not be seeing much of us for the next three years because “the law is a jealous mistress.” Many of my classmates played this out. I had classmates who separated and divorced; there were others who just lost touch; and others who had nervous breakdowns.

Maybe it has something to do with a certain stubbornness that most lawyers have, but in spite of all of that negativity, those students just pushed on through law school sacrificing their families or their health. I’m not sure it was worth it for most of them. I guess it was great that they were able to graduate with great grades and land jobs with prominent law firms (only to cram in 80 hours of work each week) but was it really worth it? I guess I’m thankful that rather than focus on grades (which I did alright, but I’m definitely just an average student) I focused on my family. I came home to my wife each weekend, we went to almost all of the Clemson home games, went to church each weekend and then I was back to law school mode.

I know people have all types of “mistresses.” I hope, no matter what your mistress is (work, fishing, your kids, school, or any other hobby), you are able to get your priorities in order and focus on what is truly important.