3 Things Law Students And Young Lawyers Can Learn From First Lady Michelle Obama
Michelle Obama has motivated audiences throughout the nation with her personal stories, compelling anecdotes, and life lessons.
“But you graduate when you make it up out of the streets /
From the moments of pain, look how far we done came /
Haters saying you changed, now you doing your thing.” — Kanye West
Many know Michelle Obama as the polished First Lady of the United States. Before she was the First Lady, she was a Harvard Law School student and an associate at Sidley Austin. In 1989, she met her future husband, Barack Obama, while he was a summer associate at her firm. And as they say, the rest is history.
Last week, like so many times before, Michelle Obama delivered a stirring commencement speech for young graduates. Whether it was at Martin Luther King Jr. Preparatory High School, Tuskegee University, or George Washington University, Michelle Obama has motivated audiences throughout the nation with her personal stories, compelling anecdotes, and life lessons. For those who have never had the opportunity to hear the First Lady speak, I wanted to share some of her best advice.
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1. Stay Hungry.
Instead of letting your hardships and failures discourage or exhaust you, let them inspire you. Let them make you even hungrier to succeed. . . . Now, my Dad didn’t live to see me in the White House. He passed away from complications from his illness when I was in my twenties. And, graduates, let me tell you, he is the hole in my heart. His loss is my scar. But let me tell you something, his memory drives me forward every single day of my life. Every day, I work to make him proud. Every day, I stay hungry, not just for myself, but for him and for my mom and for all the kids I grew up with who never had the opportunities that my family provided for me. And, graduates, today, I want to urge you all to do the same thing. There are so many folks in your school and in your families who believe in you, who have sacrificed for you, who have poured all of their love and hope and ambition into you. And you need to stay hungry for them.
Last week was not the first time the First Lady implored the audience to stay hungry. She spoke about this last year at Dillard University. She will probably speak about it again in the near future. Whether it’s getting a bad grade on a final exam, a bad review on a memo, or suffering a personal setback, it’s important to focus on the big picture.
Don’t let a quarter block out the sun. We have stood on the shoulders of giants and those after us will stand on our shoulders. We should hope to remain inspired so that we may in turn inspire others. Many of us are the first in our family to attend college or law school. Many of the people we know never had the opportunities that we have been afforded. It is important for us, for those who made sacrifices for us, and for those who come after us to make the most of our opportunities. Our hunger is our competitive advantage.
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2. The Road Ahead Is Not Going To Be Easy.
[The world] will make assumptions about who they think you are based on their limited notion of the world. . . . And all of that is going to be a heavy burden to carry. It can feel isolating. It can make you feel like your life somehow doesn’t matter . . . And as we’ve seen over the past few years, those feelings are real. They’re rooted in decades of structural challenges that have made too many folks feel frustrated and invisible. And those feelings are playing out in communities like Baltimore and Ferguson and so many others across this country. . . . But, graduates, today, I want to be very clear that those feelings are not an excuse to just throw up our hands and give up. Not an excuse. They are not an excuse to lose hope. To succumb to feelings of despair and anger only means that in the end, we lose.
Besides the anxiety we face in our personal lives, lawyers face much of the same work-life balance issues, stress on the job, and long hours that have caused multiple suicides over the last year on Wall Street.
In Alexander Pope’s “Essay on Man” he wrote, “Hope springs eternal in the human breast; Man never is, but always to be blessed: The soul, uneasy and confined from home, rests and expatiates in a life to come.” No one before or after him has captured the optimistic philosophy so eloquently. When someone is filled with optimism and hope there is little room for negative feelings. The road ahead of us in our legal careers is not going to be easy. Nobody said it would be, but I know many lawyers who have promised that it will be worth it. Hopefully, we will be able to recognize the beauty in the struggle.
3. Keep Going. Keep Giving. Keep Engaging.
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It is through the simple act of engaging with your counterparts around the world that you can make the world a safer place. As you know, in times of tension, we tend to focus on what makes us different — things like color or creed; class or country — when sometimes, that only serves to deepen misunderstanding and harden mistrust. In the midst of our struggles, we too easily forget about all that we share in common — that no matter where or how we live, we all have the same dreams: a life of dignity, a chance at opportunity, a better future for our kids.
We all live in bubbles. Some prefer them to be an echo chamber, others attempt to pop them when they recognize it. Perhaps because of our legal education and experiences we are best suited to engage with the diverse world around us, to get out of our comfort zone, and to be open-minded. For many, it is a time of tension. We must keep going. We must keep giving. We must keep engaging. As the First Lady has reminded us, it’s our turn. It’s time for us to take the baton. It’s time for us to carry the banner forward. It’s time for us to wake the each other up and show the world everything we’ve got.
Renwei Chung is a 2L at Southern Methodist University School of Law. He has an undergraduate degree from Michigan State University and an MBA from the University of Chicago. He is the author of The Golden Rule: How Income Inequality Will Ruin America (affiliate link). He has been randomly blogging about anything and everything at Live Your Truth since 2008. He was born in California, raised in Michigan, and lives in Texas. He has a yellow lab named Izza and enjoys old-school hip hop, the NBA and stand up paddleboarding (SUP). He is really interested in startups, entrepreneurship, and innovative technologies. You can contact Renwei by email at [email protected], follow him on Twitter (@renweichung), or connect with him on LinkedIn.
