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Back to School – Tale from the Wife of a Law Student

By on August 28, 2013
Law School

Law School

Yesterday was our last day of summer. Ryan heads back to law school today. This means going back to only seeing him on the weekends, unless you count the moments around 12:30 am that he sneaks into bed after getting home after a long day. Or, at 5:30 in the morning as he politely shuffles around getting ready in the morning while I’m still sleeping peacefully. See, not only is he a law student, he also works full-time at the DA’s office. I’m amazed at how he manages to “do it all”.

law student

It It is hard being married to an adult student (and that’s coming from the partner who is not doing all the work). I know A LOT of people have it much harder than us– those with spouses in the armed forces or working in separate states or countries. But we face our own small struggles. Ryan is always tired and always anxious. He lives off of 5 hours a sleep a night and goes from 6 am – 12:30 am each week day. We have four more semesters to struggle through and I’m sure they will go fast. In the meantime we muddle through. This means often having to put off a few of our dreams and plans until ALS (after law school). Money and time are tight. I’m left with much time to dive into my work and day-dream about the future. We do a lot of hoping. We hope that his old beaters of a car will get us through two more years. We hope I can keep my current job. We hope we can remain in our current rental. We hope for a job after he passes his bar so we can start to conquer the mountain of student loan debt (his and mine both).

We enjoyed a lot of quality time together this summer. We made sure to really celebrate being newlyweds. Yesterday was our final salute to the summer. It was a good last day to relax and to be calm before the stress of school and work crashes over us.

We took time to enjoy a slow Sunday to take it all in. To slow life down a beat, to remember all that was and all that will be. We sat out all morning on our deck with our dog Maggie and read and chatted about how far we’ve come and what lies ahead this year. It was a picturesque last day of summer that smelled faintly like freshly sharpened pencils and shiny new plastic binders. Which to me were always synonymous with freshly minted dreams of the new school year. The bright green trees simply existed against the clear blue sky – begging to be noticed – to be admired for simply being. As I looked at Ryan and back out at the sky I could only think “this is my life” and it’s pretty beautiful.

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About Katie Walsh MacDonald

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