My advice to first-generation college and law students: find your people. And they might not be the people that you think. Find the people who will listen to you, genuinely get to know you, and root for you every step of the way. Your people are kind people—ones who want to see you succeed.
To use Michelle Obama’s words: build your own “Kitchen Table.”[1] In her book “The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times,” Obama writes about her “Kitchen Table,” a term she uses to refer to the collection of people she trusts most outside of her family. People she’s “asked to pull up a chair and sit with [her] in life.”[2]
Long before I knew about Obama’s Kitchen Table, I began building my own. Just a few years after entering the legal profession in 1998, I more likely considered it my “Circle of Trust,” a term used in the year 2000 hit comedy, “Meet the Parents,” featuring Ben Stiller.[3]
As a new attorney, my “social convoy,” as social psychologists call it,[4] consisted of the two federal judges I worked for as a law clerk. Judicial chambers are small, and both judges took the time to mentor me in a way that just couldn’t happen in a typical law school classroom. When I transitioned to big law, I found a partner who pushed me in a healthy way. When I felt paralyzed with fear as I took my first deposition, that partner sat beside me and said time again, “You can do this,” and “I’ve got you.” I was taking a leap but with a safety net: the trusted advisor by my side. Many years later, I met a friend who convinced me that I’d be a great law teacher. That person saw things in me I didn’t see in myself, which led to where I am now: teaching and advising students, including those who, like me, did not have a parent who attended college or law school.
“Find your people,” I tell them. Invariably, they ask where to begin. I love this question because it allows me to reflect on one of my favorite people walking the planet: a friend that I met just after the start of law school. On paper, this friend and I looked extremely different. I graduated college after three years and headed straight to law school as a young, single person. She went to law school to start a second career with a partner and a child along for the ride. My friend was fifteen years older than me, an adventurer who had the confidence to live life to the fullest. I was a classic Type-A personality who overprepared for everything, neatly coloring in the lines of life for fear of failure. Despite our many differences, we studied together, picked each other up when we needed it, and laughed about anything and everything to make our way through the three challenging years of law school.
These people I have described are my people, like those Obama describes as her “circle of well-wishers” who are “always rooting for one another’s success.”[5] When you question whether you are good enough, they answer with a resounding yes.[6] Be open to finding your people as you navigate your unfamiliar surroundings and do the same for others. Whether you engage a fellow law student, interact with an externship supervisor, visit a professor during office hours, or participate in a formal mentoring program, doing so will help you to find your people. Having a support system will allow you to feel at home in a new world and give you the confidence to build your own professional identity. There is a place for you in the law, and your people will remind you that you belong. Because you do.
*This essay was published in AALS Section on Student Services: Insights from the Field, Volume 3, Issue 1.
[1] Michelle Obama, THE LIGHT WE CARRY: OVERCOMING IN UNCERTAIN TIMES 142 (2022).
[2] Id.
[3] MEET THE PARENTS (Universal Pictures 2000).
[4] Lydia Denworth, Why You Need a Social Convoy, PSYCHOLOGY TODAY (June 30, 2018), available at https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/brain-waves/201806/why-you-need-social-convoy (last visited May 30, 2023).
[5] Michelle Obama, THE LIGHT WE CARRY: OVERCOMING IN UNCERTAIN TIMES 145 (2022).
[6] Kori Crockett, Using Social Psychology To Help First-Generation And Low-Income Students Through College (Brown Center Chalkboard Oct. 26, 2017), available at https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brown-center-chalkboard/2017/10/26/using-social-psychology-to-help-first-generation-and-low-income-students-through-college/ (last visited May 30, 2023).