When I was in seventh grade, I wrote in my journal that I wanted to be an attorney when I grew up, because “attorneys get to do my three favorite things: argue, be dramatic and be right.” In that same journal entry, I also sheepishly acknowledged that being an attorney probably wasn’t a reality for me.

I grew up in south Mississippi to parents who, at times, lived in poverty. Nonetheless, my mother taught us to carry ourselves with dignity and shoot for the stars. So I did, and throughout middle school, high school and college, I worked hard to pursue one little dream at a time. Little did I know I was practicing for having a life I never thought possible.

Dream Becomes Reality

One night at the beginning of my senior year of college, I was talking with my friend and mentor Beth Cunningham, and I told her I wasn’t sure what I was going to do after I graduated. That’s when she dropped a match in the fuel of old dreams and asked me the big question: “Why don’t you go to law school?”

At first I balked, but then I thought, Why don’t I?

Within five years, I got admitted to law school, graduated with honors, got a one-year clerkship with a state supreme court justice and then landed my dream job, where I’ve been for 10 years now. It’s all so easy to write in a sentence, but there’s no way to calculate the thousands of hours of work that went into making my seventh-grade dream a reality.

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