There is a version of every law student that exists on paper. Name, university, year, internships, publications, competitions, committees, positions of responsibility, skills, interests, achievements. It is neat, structured, and carefully edited. It makes life look like a clean sequence of progress.

Then there is the version that exists behind the CV.

That version is more complicated.

I am Devansh Awasthi, a student at Dr. Ram Manohar Lohiya National Law University, Lucknow, and if there is one thing RMLNLU has taught me, it is that law school is not only about becoming a better student. It is about becoming a person who can survive ambition without losing softness.

When I entered law school, I thought success would be easier to define. I believed it would look like good internships, strong publications, committee work, moots, competitions, and a CV that slowly started looking respectable. In many ways, I still believe in all of that. I care about work. I care about writing. I care about building a profile. I care about showing up in spaces where I once felt underprepared.

But RMLNLU has taught me that the story behind every achievement is rarely as polished as the final line on a CV.

Behind one publication, there may be nights of reading, rewriting, self-doubt, and wondering whether the argument is even worth making. Behind one internship application, there may be dozens of drafts, cold emails, no replies, follow-ups, and the strange courage it takes to ask for an opportunity when you are not sure you deserve it yet. Behind one committee role, there may be exhaustion, coordination, conflict, accountability, and learning how to work with people who think differently from you. Behind one competition, there may be anxiety, comparison, disappointment, and the quiet decision to try again anyway.

This is the part of law school that people outside often do not see.

They see students becoming sharper, more articulate, more confident, more employable. They do not always see the emotional labour that comes with it. They do not see the student who sits in the library with ten tabs open, not just on the laptop but inside the mind. Career. Friendships. Family expectations. Internships. Relationships. Marks. Future plans. Fear of falling behind. Fear of not being enough. Fear that everyone else has figured it out.

At RMLNLU, I have lived somewhere between these two versions of myself. The one who wants to build a strong legal career, and the one who is still figuring out how to be okay when things do not go according to plan.

This campus has seen both.

It has seen the ambitious version of me drafting emails, planning internships, writing articles, preparing for opportunities, and trying to become someone who can one day stand confidently in the legal profession. It has also seen the uncertain version of me, the one who overthinks, compares, gets affected by small things, and sometimes wonders whether he is moving fast enough. It has seen me as a student trying to grow, but also as a person learning that growth is not always visible.

RMLNLU has its own way of teaching this. Sometimes it teaches through classrooms and professors. Sometimes through moots, research, committees, publications, and internships. But often, it teaches through the ordinary spaces of campus life.

A conversation near the Plaza can teach you more about people than a formal session ever could. A canteen table can become a place where stress, gossip, advice, ambition, and comfort sit together. A hostel corridor can hold late-night breakdowns, loud laughter, apologies, friendships, and the kind of honesty people rarely show in daylight. A competition can teach you discipline. A rejection can teach you resilience. A senior’s guidance can change how you see your own potential. A junior’s trust can make you realise that you too are slowly becoming someone others can rely on.

That is what makes a law school campus more than an institution. It becomes a training ground for both the mind and the self.

My journey at RMLNLU has also been shaped by writing. I started writing because I wanted to understand the law better. Over time, I realised that writing was also helping me understand myself. Legal writing taught me structure, precision, research, and argumentation. Personal writing taught me honesty. Between the two, I found a way to make sense of the world.

There have been days when writing a legal blog felt like building a small door into the profession. There have also been days when writing privately felt like the only way to process what I could not say aloud. In that sense, law school did not just make me more ambitious. It made me more articulate about my own confusion.

And perhaps that is important.

Because law students are often expected to be sharp, composed, and constantly productive. We are trained to argue, defend, analyse, and prove. But somewhere in that process, many of us are also quietly trying to understand friendships, love, loneliness, comparison, confidence, failure, and identity. We are trying to build CVs while also building emotional resilience. We are learning citation styles and boundaries at the same time. We are preparing for internships while also learning that not every person who matters to us will stay in the same way.

I am still figuring out relationships, and I say that not as a confession of weakness, but as part of my growth. Law school brings people very close. You study together, work together, compete together, celebrate together, and sometimes fall apart around the same people. It teaches you how deeply people can affect you. It teaches you that friendships change, that admiration can become distance, that care must come with boundaries, and that not every silence is yours to solve.

For someone like me, who feels deeply and thinks too much, this has not always been easy. I have had to learn that being sincere does not mean making yourself endlessly available. That helping people does not mean forgetting yourself. That ambition cannot be a substitute for emotional clarity. That being valued by others is beautiful, but being able to sit with yourself matters more.

These lessons do not appear on certificates. They do not become LinkedIn posts. But they matter.

In fact, they may matter just as much as the visible achievements, because the legal profession does not only need intelligent people. It needs people who can handle pressure, disagreement, rejection, responsibility, and uncertainty without becoming empty inside.

That is the kind of person RMLNLU is slowly teaching me to become.

Not perfect. Not completely confident. Not fully sorted. But more aware. More resilient. More honest. More capable of trying again.

If there is an idea I would want law schools to take seriously, it is this: students need spaces where ambition and vulnerability can exist together. We need more conversations around rejection, emotional well-being, mentorship, peer support, and the hidden pressures of building a legal career. We need seniors to speak not only about where they interned, but also about how they handled failure. We need committees and campus initiatives that normalise asking for guidance before students reach a breaking point. We need to understand that a law student is not just a CV in progress, but a person in progress.

This is what my time at RMLNLU has shown me.

I came to law school thinking I had to become impressive. I still want to do well. I still want to write, intern, publish, learn, compete, and grow. But I no longer think becoming impressive is enough. I want to become steady. I want to become kinder to myself. I want to become someone who can work hard without measuring his entire worth through outcomes. I want to become someone who can care deeply without abandoning himself.

I am still not fully there.

But maybe that is the most honest part of my story.

I am not a finished product. I am a student, a writer, an overthinker, an ambitious person, an emotional person, and someone still learning how to balance the life he wants with the person he is becoming. RMLNLU has not given me all the answers, but it has given me the questions that matter.

Who am I beyond my CV?

What kind of lawyer do I want to become?

What kind of person do I want to remain?

For now, I do not have perfect answers. But I am learning. I am trying. I am becoming. And maybe that is the story worth telling.

*Authored by - Devansh Awasthi, 3rd year B.A.LL.B. (Hons.) student at Dr. Ram Manohar Lohiya National Law University, Lucknow . Views expressed are personal.