Law Schools

The Grace To Handle Law School While Raising 3 Kids

Along with the sweet came the sour.

By Kelly Zech  
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(Image via Getty)

Ed. note: This is the latest installment in a series of posts on motherhood in the legal profession, in partnership with our friends at MothersEsquire. Welcome Kelly Zech to our pages. Click here if you’d like to donate to MothersEsquire.

I am a mom of three awesome kids, ages 9, 7, and 6. I served as a surface warfare officer in the Navy for more than six years before transitioning to be a stay-at-home mom for the next seven years. I felt blessed to have the opportunity to be home with my kids while they were babies, but I could not shake a little voice pushing me to keep following a dream I held onto since I was 10 years old. So, between dance practices, play dates, and bedtime routines, I studied for the LSAT and worked on my law school applications. I found out I was accepted to my dream school at preschool pick-up and swung my son around with joy before having some midwinter ice cream with a fellow mom.

That first semester of law school was filled with constant newness, and I drank it in like a camel at an oasis. Being home with my kids was emotionally fulfilling, but not so intellectually. Now, I had the opportunity to sit in a classroom and just learn. No one interrupted me, pulled on me, or used my shirt as a Kleenex, and it was glorious. But along with the sweet came some sour. My husband traveled for his job for weeks at a time, and it was difficult to juggle my school schedule with the childcare schedule. I felt pressure to not let my relationship with my kids and home life in general suffer because I decided to go to law school in my 30s, turning everything upside down.  Whenever I felt overwhelmed, I reminded myself that I was giving my kids the greatest gift by modeling the importance of education while providing them with a more secure future. And then within the first semester I found out that all that work, effort, and sacrifice was reduced to being a disappointment.

During the next two semesters, the unthinkable happened, and the world shut down. My kids and I were forced to learn how to do remote learning together, and now my classroom and study time became filled with interruptions, being pulled on, and used as a human tissue box. But a funny thing happened as everything fell apart around me. I no longer felt like a disappointment.

As my first year of law school progressed, I realized that I was experiencing a pressure for perfection similar to what I first encountered in the Navy, and that because I failed to acknowledge that strain, I was responding as I had as a young junior officer. In the Navy, the exactitude expected in my work came with particularly good reason. If I failed as a leader and manager of my sailors, people could die. I pushed myself and my sailors to as close to perfection as I could manage; I did the same thing that first semester — I pushed myself to achieve perfection in everything I did. But the thing about perfection is that it is elusive. Through the course of my Naval career, I had discovered something — the harder I pushed, the more demanding I was, the worse we did. It was when I cared about my sailors as people first and the mission second that we improved as a team.

The same is true of my law school career. The more I focused on exacting perfection, the less joy I felt in the experience and the worse I did in every area of my life overall. Stay at home orders brought all of that to stark reality.  I was forced to make a choice — continue to push myself as hard as I could in every direction or choose grace for me and my family so that I could do my best in school. I chose grace to be the leader I needed.

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Grace gives up exactitude and perfection. Instead, it asks what is the best I can do right now instead of what is the best I could do ever. I mindfully choose and prioritize because dinner is going to be simple, boxes from our move at the start of the semester will not be unpacked this month, and occasionally my kids need a hug even if I am in class because remote learning is hard for them, too. Sometimes, especially when I feel frustrated because studying for finals is replete with constant interruptions and demands, and the unrelenting pressure that my grades will not be as good as they could have been and so I will not get a good job builds, I realize that is when I need grace the most. Because when I start to wonder why I am doing this, I take a deep breath and remind myself that I am not a disappointment. I am a dream chaser, someone who believes I can use my mind and passion to make a difference in this world, and that I am setting the best example I can for my kids. I give myself the grace I need to lead myself and my family through all of the unforeseen challenges 2020 has brought. Embracing the grace to lead makes us stronger together, it releases the binds of perfection, and it rises to the now.

Kelly Zech completed her undergraduate degree at the University of Minnesota, Carlson School of Management while simultaneously training as a midshipman in the University’s Naval Reserve Officer Training Corps battalion.  She commissioned as a Surface Warfare Officer upon graduation, and primarily served in operations and navigation roles.  Currently, Kelly is a 2L at the University of Minnesota Law School, earning the business law concentration, and she has interned with UnitedHealthcare and U.S. Bank.  She is the wife of a supportive husband and proud mom of one daughter and two sons.  You can email her at kien0019@umn.edu and connect with her on LinkedIn.

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