NLU Delhi: A Heartfelt Piece by a Student Who Died Far Too Soon

NLU Delhi: Reflections from a Lost Voice

Musings of a Mediocre Neurodivergent Person in Law School

by Amrutavarshiny Senthil Kumar

I thought I had heard of every possible cliche (now read as forebodings) about law school. About the endless work, the toxic competition, the non-existent balance to life. I romanticised them all before I stepped foot in here. I believed that life would be transformed radically in a day, that somehow, I’d be different and wouldn’t face any trouble, exempt from everything that affects everyone else. How naive, how overconfident!

Joan Didion wrote once that innocence ends when one is stripped of the delusion that one likes oneself. In many ways, I am now envious of the trust I had in myself then, including but not limited to my academic abilities. Law school also marked the death of my political apathy, but that is a larger conversation to be had in multiple essays, not this one.  

For me, poetry has been a wall of support, something to lean against and rest and feel relief in my bones, in that part of the marrow from which vitality springs. I was, and still am, a literature and poetry enthusiast, someone that indulges in the finer edges of language that captures the range of human emotions. I have filed away poems capturing every emotion I’ve had the pleasure or misfortune of experiencing in my life. It has been so significant a part of me that I think and process my life’s events through poetry. Law school to me felt mostly an evasive concept, an eel that slipped underneath my feet. I couldn’t find any poem that completely captured the embarrassment, the fear and just the perplexity this new world evoked in me. It seemed an awful metaphor for the terrifying endless morass that adulthood usually seems to be, at least at the end of adolescence. 

Law school was..a whirlwind, a hurricane. It felt like cannonballing from a cliff's edge into the ocean, the cold shock awakening your bones, drowning you clean and making you feel alive. Except it didn't feel half as good. All the sensations of being shocked into the presence was just fear. Fear of feeling out of place, fear of not knowing what to do next, fear of being unable to progress at the same pace as everyone else. People here adapt fast, sharpen their killer instincts and get on ahead quickly. There’s always an unsaid rule hanging in the air: you earn your respect by doing extraordinary things, or you internalise the unworthiness. You’d think it was in your head; it is uncomfortable to think of, but it’s true. 

The easiest way to ensure a neurodivergent disaster is to put them in a vague, opaque setting with lofty goals, unclear instructions and zero guidance or feedback on how to finish it. We will simply give up. Unfortunately, law school from the bird’s eye view and law school on the unitary level, all feel the same level of perplexing. To any person with ADHD, Generalized Anxiety Disorder, chronic depression, Autism, Dyslexia, Dsycalculia, Bipolar Disorder, Dissociative identity disorder and OCD, being called lazy or “full of underutilised potential” is not a novel experience. But law school solidifies this experience. It reifies it, with the constant feedback loop that prizes ‘merit’ above all else. You feel the pressure to catch up with people that are so clearly different from you, people that aren’t time blind, people that don’t struggle with brain fog, people with perfectly fine working memories. Jean Paul Sarte wrote in his infamous novel, Nausea, that his thoughts fail in fastening on to words, and remain misty and nebulous in his head. This is how most of law school feels to a neurodivergent person, on a good day.

On bad days, they look like self-loathing, panic attacks, crying in the library’s washroom, struggling with appetite, being burnt out, feeling completely out of place and alienated from your peers. 

In the words of Goodrich, the law tells stories, just as stories are told about the law. There are stories to be listened from the not-so-glamorous side of the student body too, from students that struggle with access and utilisation of the resources that able-bodied and neurotypical students can easily partake in. There are difficult conversations to be had about the way merit is organised in this university, and in premier educational institutions across this country. Who do we reward? What do we prioritise? Do we have sufficient disability accommodations? Is our definition of disability accommodative enough? Who gets to decide what is a ‘reasonable’ accommodation? Do we take the lazy, selfish and miserly way out, and let the students compete against each other mercilessly and hate each other? Do the students take at least some joy and validation out of being able to be ‘better’ than everyone else? 

We can’t define what we cannot imagine. I hardly know what it’s like to be neurotypical, but I don’t think anyone would mind being a little less stressed out, having a little more help and being able to operate out of inspiration, passion and curiosity instead of fear, anxiety and insecurity. The labour of imagination is not something that we should ask only the severely affected to bear. We must partake in the most basic humane task of empathy, of listening, of giving space, of organising and lobbying for a more equitable campus. We must want to get better, for otherwise, we leave the vulnerable ones to be doomed. NLU Delhi, now more than ever, needs community, radical love and growth. 

I’ve found hope to be a lamp that burns clean, a lamp that sustains. It is belief that all of humanity’s collective efforts are worth everything else that it has to bear. I choose to hold on to this hope, tonight and every night that I spend in this campus. For better or for worse, this is where we all stay for a huge part of our lives. We might as well make it worthwhile.