My law degree made me a lot of things, but not a lawyer
I must admit, I had an incredibly inaccurate and idealistic view on what lawyers actually do when I signed up for my law degree.
I was under the impression that I would be using my passion for writing and public speaking during my degree and that I would be protecting innocent people from criminals. Truth is, I studied law to become a journalist, a teacher and a mother.
I transitioned from a job as a paralegal to a job as a community journalist in 2016. I realised that I had been given the opportunity to make music with my words and I refused to write about community issues such as the broken traffic light down the road or a large pot hole. Instead, I went on my own mission and wrote legal articles and interviewed attorneys in the area. I also found interesting people — such as a 100-year-old grandmother who had beaten breast cancer two decades prior to our interview. I empathized with the security guard down the road with a disabled child and spent hours speaking to real, fascinating members of my community. Thus, my writing mantra was born:
I write stories about ordinary people who have an extraordinary story to tell.
One of my most memorable experiences as a journalist was in an abandoned field down the road from a large shopping mall.
I was there to write a story on the homeless families that had set up homes in the field. As I stood, interviewing a man cooking a tin of beans over a fire, I noticed the grandeur of the buildings behind him. He bent over his pot, barefoot with tattered clothing, as the backdrop of the buildings formed a speech bubble displaying his dreams. He looked as though he had been drawn into a comic book.
The critical thinking skills that I learned during my law degree made me a more capable journalist and I followed the story of these displaced persons for months — documenting their lives, speaking to them and even photographing them as they were kicked off of the land by the police. My colleagues at work renamed this piece of land ‘Pascale’s Park’.
The law taught me that it is illegal to live on a piece of land without lawfully owning it, but being a journalist taught me that it is unlawful to deprive human-beings of a place to lay their heads at night.
As a mother, raising my children in a pandemic-ridden, social-media-obsessed, gun-wielding, online-schooling madhouse of an era, I am grateful that I studied works on justice, honesty, peace and freedom.
I took a particular interest in South African law and the emphasis that Her constitution plays in the law. People’s right to freedom, equality and expression inspire me and these parts of the law restore my faith in humanity. We live in a world where leaders are mothers, fathers, married, unmarried, old, young, she, he, him and her. There are no boundaries when it comes to leadership because of the laws that are in place in many (unfortunately not all) countries in the world.
Even the ugliest of viruses can exist in places they are not welcome. Racism exists, but it is not welcome here. Because we are not immune to the viruses of hate, of fear, of other. We never have been. But we can be the nation that discovers the cure. — Jacinda Ardern
I am most proud of my work as a teacher because I spent the entire duration of my law degree wishing that I had been studying education. There is something very special about holding the young mind of a learner in my hands. Perhaps I am going to teach a future lawyer who will fight passionately for human rights.
My unwanted legal knowledge may trickle from my brain into the learners’ minds in my class.
When I finally qualified as a teacher, I put my academic dress over my pajamas and took a photograph with my children. The realness and authenticity of this ‘graduation ceremony’ made my teaching qualification even more special.
The moral of the story is that I did not waste my time studying law. I took the long and treacherous journey to my promised land by foot-stepping over thorns and cautiously navigating through the unknown — carrying the wrong map but finding my way nonetheless.
We sometimes feel like a failure if we don’t succeed in the path we started on. I could say, I failed as a lawyer. But that’s not true. No learning is wasted. Everything you learn gets used in the end in one way or another. I found my way, and so can you.
