exercise is a mind game
Mid-December 2007, I joined a gym for the first time in years. I stuck with it, visiting 5 to 7 times a week. Sometime around February, I got the idea to go to law school. These two events must be connected. For one thing, I began feeling a lot more energetic. Before, although only slightly overweight, I felt sluggish and weak. Generally unambitious. I worked hard enough, took care of my family, but didn’t have much gas left over for wild ideas and new adventures.
Once I started seeing results from the gym–a little more muscle, a little less on the scale–I began snapping out of the funky moods that could descend and derail my intentions of getting things done on a given day. We’re talking simple little productive things like doing laundry, returning library books or even sending an invoice to a client right away. Suddenly, returning to school seemed do-able, not daunting.
I kept up those workouts all through a busy summer and made time to study for the LSAT. Kept going through a fall of putting my application together. One week in early January 2008, I found out that I had been accepted to my law school of choice and–surprise–that I was pregnant with my second child. Yep, due the week of orientation. Luckily, my school let me defer enrollment until 2009.
Achieving my goal of going to law school temporarily receded from view, replaced by a more pressing (on my ribcage and bladder) concern, but it helped knowing that I had somewhere to be in 20 months. So, I plugged away at the gym. Slowing down, of course, but still showing up. I even hauled my gargantuan self in there the day before my daughter was born. I had a C-section, as I had with my older daughter, but this time, instead of babying myself, I got up and moving within hours of the birth, went for daily walks at home and returned to the gym on the very day my six weeks of rest were up.
For now, making exercise an essential part of my life, week in and week out, is perhaps the most important thing I am doing to prepare for law school. It’s a rewarding way to prove that I can accomplish something when I put my mind to it. Also, unless working out is absolutely routine now, I’d be crazy to think that I’d start hitting the gym as a harried law student (and parent). Finally, and vainly, I don’t want to be a decrepit 30-something specimen amid a sea of sleek 20-somethings. They are, after all, the competition.
