The "forgotten class" nightmare

There's a reoccurring dream that I have whenever I find myself in a new, unfamiliar situation, with new, overwhelming responsibilities. I remember the exact time that I first had this dream. As an elementary school student, I attended a very small, Christian school, in which I progressed through grades one through six with the same group of 8-10 others. We had one teacher who taught us every subject. We had one classroom that we stayed in all day. And we all kept our books in our desks. This was a very simple upbringing.

When the time for middle school came, I switched to a slightly larger school, though by no means the largest in town. Suddenly, I was confronted with the responsibilities of switching classes, switching teachers for each different subject. I kept all my books in a locker, which was out in the hall amongst a series of other lockers, where I had to go and switch out my books before each class. I had to keep up with the different assignments in each different class. And each day, I had to navigate my way through a sea of other kids just to get to class, to break, to lunch.

One night during my first week of middle school, I was kept up by this half-dreaming, half-waking fear that I had forgotten one of my classes. That I had been going through my day, trying to keep up with all my different classes, all my different books, but one had fallen through the cracks. I was gripped by an anxiety over forgetting something. And having some irreparable harm take place as a result: failing a class, for example, suffering a great humiliation. I have had this same dream reoccur on at least four different occasions, and I can name each one of them. But I'll start by mentioning the most recent example, which happened last night.

Prior to starting my current job at a small, fairly high-volume plaintiffs' litigation firm, I worked for the state government for a number of years. That job did not involve a lot of client contact, out-of-office experience, or a diverse range of responsibilities. I essentially took in cases as they came, evaluated those cases by reviewing the record and researching the law, wrote memos and briefs, and handed them off to a supervisor. It was a peaceful, if not monotonous, existence. I often found myself craving excitement, worldly contact, and dramatics. And I got all of that in my current job.

Now, I am in a very different position. Having had a certain degree of experience already, I was placed into a fairly high-responsibility, low-training position. I manage my own cases, am the primary contact for many clients, draft all my pleadings, write all my own correspondence, attend hearings, negotiate settlement, and do basically everything that is required to take a piece of litigation from start to finish. At present, I am managing at least 20 cases, and I am the primary working attorney on at least half of those. To say the least, this new set of responsibilities has been challenging. Overwhelming is a better word. And its all compounded by the fact that many of my new responsibilities are things that are completely new to me. For example, I never conducted discovery at my old position, and this is something that has proved to be time-consuming and at times very complicated.

It doesn't take much to see where this is going: Last night, I had the dream again. But it was a variation of the dream from middle school. This is the dream that I've had since college. In this version of the dream, it is very near to the end of a college semester. I have many classes for which I am preparing for final exams or preparing some final paper. As I'm going through everything I have to do, I realize that there is one class that I've been enrolled in all year, to which I started going at the beginning of the semester, but which I've since forgotten about and haven't attended at all for a long period of time. This is a feeling of complete helplessness. I try frantically to think of what to do: is there any way to salvage this? Is it possible to start showing up now and hope that I haven't missed too much? But in my dream, this question is never resolved: I wake up from a feeling of complete helplessness, complete loss. I've let something fall through the cracks and now there's nothing I can do about it.

The dream represents the ultimate fear of a young litigator. Or of anyone who is suddenly confronted with more responsibilities than they know how to handle. The other three times that I remember having the dream (or something very similar) are once when I started high school, once when I started college, and then again when I started law school. Looking back, each of these things seems progressively easier, but, at the time I started them, the challenges they presented were entirely new and entirely terrifying. There were so many new things to remember, and it seemed impossible really not to forget to do something. In the litigation context, this fear is especially acute, due to the added dynamic of hard, statutorily-prescribed deadlines.

I spoke today with a couple of slightly more seasoned attorneys at my firm, and, much to my surprise, they both had experienced the same dream at some point in time. I neglected to ask if the dream followed the beginning of their experience as litigators, but I can't help but think that this is the case. There is a certain common horror of responsibility that we all feel, and this is manifest in our dreams. It makes one wonder why we ever take on such responsibilities at all? What drives us to do something that fundamentally terrifies us? For some, it is probably a sense of duty. For others, a sense of ambition. For most, probably some combination of both. That, and then there is the sweet and eventual moment when you realize you've finally become comfortable with your new responsibilities, and your anxieties can rest. Perhaps that is truly the thing we crave: simple, sweet, well-deserved release.