One benefit of post-bar/pre-work life has been the time to have a full night’s sleep. Even though I rarely worked past 7:00 in law school, I nevertheless regularly went to bed between 11:00 pm and midnight and woke up at 6:00 am. I wouldn’t describe myself as constantly tired (That would describe high school, when I woke up even earlier for 7:20 am classes.) but I would often struggle to stay awake while doing homework after lunch or late in the day. With 8-9 hours of sleep, though, I never feel tired in the middle of the day, and I never have to drag myself out of bed in the morning. I feel like a totally different person.
But as impossible as it was to get a full night’s sleep in law school, it most certainly will become an insurmountable feat in a month. In law school, I could have pulled myself away from the television at night and just gone to bed earlier. Once work starts, even on a normal day I’ll have to choose between getting to the office super-early or leaving super-late just to meet my billable requirement. Getting to bed early likely won’t be much of an option if I want to have any time with the Bun or to just get stuff done around the condo.
As I re-read what I’ve written, I realize this all sounds a bit whiny. “Poor missjillesq, she’s going to have to give up some zzzzzzz’s for a job that will pay her lots of money despite the fact that she knows pretty much nothing about the work she’ll be doing.”
But this is not meant to be a premature dirge for all the sleep I won’t be getting. I know how fortunate I am to have the opportunity to work in biglaw, and I don’t harbor any hopes or beliefs that it will be easy. I’m as aware as I can be that biglaw doesn’t just pay the big bucks for hard work. It’s also payment for all of the sacrifices in your personal life that biglaw expects– and demands–that you make.
The thing is, though, I haven’t enjoyed the luxury of a full month and a half off to get a full night’s sleep and to do whatever else I wanted in over ten years. Even though I know what I’ll be giving up (in what is now less than a month), it seems kind of ironic that the longest, uninterrupted stretch of free time I’ve had in the last decade is directly preceding the longest, uninterrupted stretch of hard work that I will have ever experienced in my life.
