Editors’ Note: As each new 1L class begins its legal education, our thoughts often turn back to our own first few weeks of law school.  This post begins a new series on “What I Wish I Had Known When I Started Law School.”

I went to law school for all the wrong reasons. When I started in Georgetown’s part-time, evening division, I had been doing real estate development for four or five years. I was a client before I was a law student. I became quite annoyed that my attorneys seemed to be patronizing me. They spoke a language that was foreign to me. I decided to go to law school to find out what the mystique was all about and, hopefully, to emerge as a better developer.

About six weeks into law school, I realized that I was “turned on” by my studies. I told myself that I knew that I had played a lot as an undergraduate at Penn, but I had never before been intellectually excited by school. I told myself to slow down and enjoy the journey. I did just that and it changed my life. After law school, I gave up my real estate business and clerked on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, after which I joined the Georgetown Law faculty. I came to believe that the journey through law school was one of the best parts of my life.