Obedience in Civil Disobedience

So, my Civil Disobedience professor assigned us all to a daily journal. Not that he's going to read it. Or base our grade on it. But I'm a blogger, all I need is an excuse, no matter how flimsy. Besides, it's been awhile since I've written daily. And I'm excited to be in a law class that encourages us to "know ourselves." So for the next semester at least, this will be my online journal.

First, "Professor Ghandi," as I will call him here, asked us why we took the Civil Disobedience class, which was a question I hadn't anticipated. I answered truthfully: that I thought it would be fun and that taking another Bar course would have killed me but, since I hadn't questioned my decision beyond that, the rest of my answer floundered. I said something about having always felt different from the rest of the world, feeling as if, since I'm not like most of the world, that perhaps I engaged in small pieces of disobedience almost every day and that, even without a group, I felt they should amount to something by some point in my life. Then he asked me in what ways I'm different from the rest of the world. I thought for a second before blathering on about never doing anything because I "should." That, for instance, many had thought I shouldn't have pursued acting as a young adult and, again, that it was suicide to go into law school at my age. That I had made a promise to myself to go to bed every night having made life choices that would lead to my happiness. And that those who'd made life choices based on what their family or society wanted them to do confounded me. I didn't have a pat answer as I hadn't considered my decision that deeply. If my professor's reaction was any gauge, my answer was long, not nearly profound enough, and, in hindsight, I probably came off sounding very arrogant. I should have just said that I couldn't come up with an answer on the spot and left it at that.

Told you I never do what I should.