Graduation nears. Although I finish law school in August, many of my friends will finish next month. The horizon looks both promising and treacherous. In a few weeks, my fellow graduates will dress the role of degree laden adults, ready to commemorate their achievements.

Then, after expensive dinners and dozens of congratulatory toasts, graduates will go on to search for jobs where they can use nascent research skills and freshly polished legal rhetoric—after passing the State Bar, naturally.

The one community I spend more time with in person than online is my law school community. Here, busy would-be professionals try to stay organized and ahead of the grading curve, just long enough to prepare for the rigors of practicing law.

So with no more class outlines, case briefs, and the Socratic method of teaching to occupy my brain, I’ve started wondering where my classmates and I will wind up in a few years.

As many students do, Thomas Jefferson students typically get involved in a variety of leadership activities. Upon graduation, will the leaders on campus transfer their experience in fundraising, preparing and promoting events to zealously advocating involvement in their communities? How many will read voter information materials as rigorously as we were taught to read case law? How many will want to encourage others to vote for a particular candidate or proposition as they once encouraged attending a guest speaker?

Will any of us choose to run for an elected office, as TJSL graduates Bonnie Dumanis and Duncan Hunter chose to?

Even if I never rise above the title of JD, or put those three small but expensive E-S-Q letters behind my name, it will always be my job to encourage others and to stay involved in politics, at the local, state and even federal levels. If law school did nothing else for this student, it awoke a sense of how long it takes to change things when citizens sit quietly by waiting for someone else to say and do something.

To the class of 2008, congratulations! As the end of school approaches, let’s remember to stay educated.

-Citizen Voices blogger Alma Sove has spent most of her life in San Diego and is currently attending law school.