Bryan Stevenson

And the people in my group started saying,

invoking these familial connections.

They were all talking about how they were the son or the daughter or the grandson, the granddaughter, the nephew, the niece of a lawyer.

And after the fifth one, I started to squirm a bit because I knew I wasn't related to a lawyer.

And then after the seventh or eighth person made that same invocation of a family relation, I really started to feel diminished.

And then I realized that not only was I not related to a lawyer, I realized I'd never even met a lawyer.

And by the time they got to me,

I just felt so out of place.

I didn't answer the question.

I told a joke.

I tried to distract people.

And as soon as that meeting was over, I called my mom.

I said, mom, I don't belong at this law school.

And I had one of those kind of mothers.

My mother said, what are you talking about?

You belong wherever you go.

You're the smartest person in the world.

You can do anything you want to do.

And then she said, now you need to go find those kids and tell them why you're really in law school.

And I felt better after talking to my mom, but I didn't think I could actually pull those kids together.