“Take a Small Step”: A Lesson for Law Students

Immprof Liz Keyes (Baltimore) gave us a tip about this article over at Medium: Laziness Does Not Exist. In the article, psychology professor Devon Price writes: “When a person fails to begin a project that they care about, it’s typically due to either a) anxiety about their attempts not being ‘good enough’ or b) confusion about what the first steps of the task are. Not laziness.”

Liz writes: “I love this. It rings very, very true to my experience as a clinical law professor, where students are sometimes paralyzed by the immensity of the responsibility they are assuming. And the skill of identifying and taking the first step is not intrinsic. It can be taught, though, and it can be learned.”

It’s why Liz starts the semester giving students the poem Start Close In by David Whyte.

Start close in,
don’t take the second step
or the third,
start with the first
thing
close in,
the step
you don’t want to take.

Start with
the ground
you know,
the pale ground
beneath your feet,
your own
way to begin
the conversation.

Start with your own
question,
give up on other
people’s questions,
don’t let them
smother something
simple.

To hear
another’s voice,
follow
your own voice,
wait until
that voice
becomes an
intimate
private ear
that can
really listen
to another.

Start right now
take a small step
you can call your own
don’t follow
someone else’s
heroics, be humble
and focused,
start close in,
don’t mistake
that other
for your own.

Start close in,
don’t take
the second step
or the third,
start with the first
thing
close in,
the step
you don’t want to take.

Y’all know how much I love poetry. This is a wonderful one. It’s going on my office door. Thanks so much for sharing it with us, Liz!

-KitJ