Dear Annetta,
At age 7, you told yourself that you wanted to be a Lawyer when you grew up without fully understanding what the career path meant and without having a full grasp on the concept of Law & Order. The year was 2004 and you had seen the robe and wig of your Mother’s partner Norris Scholar hanging around his home and had become fascinated with this idea. Unlike most children however, you did not change career aspirations after this or sift through several options. You had made a firm choice that this was in fact what you wanted for yourself. There have been many persons who had asked you why you didn’t study another discipline or asked if you were pressured to study law… You knew what they did not. This was entirely your choice.
When it came time for you to prepare to sit your CSEC exams, you took the initiative of looking up the pre-requisites and entry requirements to study Law at the University of the West Indies and the Antigua State College and shaped your subject options based on that entry criteria. Your interests grew and expanded, your hobbies opened you up to many opportunities; a lot of which are on the opposite end of the spectrum from Law, but still you had your mind set on the career path.
Now you’re older, you think of your varied interests now and you finally recognise that none of them can be looked at in isolation from my overall goal. As a photographer, you had to pay attention to detail. Your image has to be sharp and focused, but you also have to be adaptable and quick in order to capture the perfect shot. As a lawyer, detail is everything and your ability to pick up on things is the difference between a loss and a victory for your client. As a writer you have to think about what you’re typing, you have to be creative and frame what you say in a way that reads well and is easily understood. Being a lawyer involves effective communication and imports all these things. Without realising it, you have been shaped by everything around you to assist on your path to a legal career.
4 years ago when you left Antigua to pursue studies you were only 19 but you had already come up with a plan. You wanted to achieve your goal of being a Lawyer and making a difference in the world around you with your life and you wanted to ensure that you did so without wasting a dime of Danie Horsford’s money. You understood that in order for you to pursue your dream that she had made sacrifices for you to an extent which you still, at this time 4 years later, will never be able to know. Uncle Norris would always say to you “Remember small island people can’t go away to fail. Everyone will know. Those people from those big countries can afford to get lost, but in Antigua everyone knows your business”. This statement was stuck in your head and you pondered on it like a devotional. If this was something that you wanted, something you cared about, you were warned that you had to do it well.
When you graduated with your LLB in 2019, you were pleased to graduate. Overjoyed even. However, It was more important to you that you had kept your promise to yourself to ensure that your mother was proud of you and that she could see that the sacrifices that she had made were not in vain. It felt nice to know that you could make her proud and that she could see that she was right to believe in you, to invest in you. After all, you often remind yourself she did not have to.
Then in September of 2019 you started the Bar course. Everyone has heard the horror stories about the bar and had seen the statistics with the rates of failure… You went into this academic year with anxiety and pressure. On the heels of graduating with First Class honours, you could not stumble now because you would have no place to hide. This bar course year has been the most stressful undertaking of your entire academic career to date. The volume of work you had to study, retain, and put into practice was enormous. You had developed anxiety and you probably stressed too much. You even sat examinations in the wake of a global pandemic. But you did it.
Today, November 6th 2020 marks a milestone for you. This morning at 7:50am you opened your eyes, checked your email and saw your transcript with tour grades for the Bar Course. You had passed every single assessment on the first attempt and did so with good grades and achieved an overall mark of Very Competent.
The first thing you did was cry. You felt a weight lift off your shoulder because you hadn’t even realised that you were anxious. You called your aunt and shared the good news and then you called your mom. Because honestly, her reaction was all that really mattered to you. Your heart warmed when you saw her grin on your phone screen and you felt an enormous amount of pride. You didn’t cry on the phone with her but you cried when she hung up. She said to you that she didn’t mind the sacrifices she had to make, she didn’t mind wearing an old dress if it meant she had to pay for something for you because she had no doubt that you would make her proud. You walked out of your room and you told Uncle Norris, your mentor in the grand scheme of things, and you laughed with him at how nothing less than this was expected. You sat in your room remembering the overheard conversations where he would casually slip in that you had just returned from Bar School and that you were a young lawyer on the rise.
As you sit now in your adulthood and your accomplishments you must always remember this feeling. You must remember how it felt to be able to be deserving of the blind faith and support that you have been offered. You must remember the feeling of being able to help your mother realise the return on her investment. You must remember the feeling of hearing your mentor speak with pride about you and your accomplishments to others because they are proud of the work you have done.
I want you to remember that whatever you do is not solely for yourself. It is for them. It is for their sacrifices, and love, and unwavering support. Move through life with this mentality and you will always be filled with pride.
- Yours Sincerely,
Annetta Deborah Jackson, LLB(Hons) PGDip | Barrister (in waiting)