You know, if you spend your life in the i, i need, i want, i think, i feel, that becomes pretty boring and very limiting because your sense of self is only fed by you and thats limited by you. And by that i mean you can only give so much to yourself because you need to feed yourself in positive ways to be able to create and give back in more meaningful ways. So i understood that from Public Service mostly when i got to college, where i began to do a little bit of it and realized that each experience gave me so much more in return than i gave it, because it taught me about people, about their needs, about the structure of society. Some of its weaknesses in helping people. In one of the First Community projects i got involved in in college, it came as a result of reading in the local newspaper that a gentleman had been coming from puerto rico and the plane had been diverted from a new york airport to newark. While at newark, when it landed, he became a little bit upset because he didnt u
She was a little shocked. I am often asked, what is the greatest obstacle . Is a fear of not asking for help when you dont know something. I know ive seen it in my 20plus years as a judge in my different courts. You ask them a question, they dont know the answer. And instead of saying i dont know the answer, they blunderbust and try to make something up. And then theyre skewered by the judges. Ok . Its not much fun. But they seem to fear more the saying i dont know, the embarrassment of that, than the embarrassment of failure in finding the right answer. And i think for me, i understood very, very early on that asking for help is the most important thing to do. Thats what finding mentors is about. For me, who should be your mentor . Someone who can do something you cant do. And someone who can do something you cant do and knows how to do it well so that you can learn from them, so you can take from them their experience, their knowledge, and try to adopt it to fill in a hole that you m
Justice. All youths feel a connection with her. Struggle every day, often people of color, feel that their dreams can be realized because of her. And respect given to my friend is palpable. Regardless of what is going on in her life, is always friendly, takes a photo with the to her. Ho comes up she gives it her all to everyone 24 7, 365 days a year. Who is she . Sotomayor . A i remember Sonia Sotomayor in law school. Out for a number of reasons. , principled,iant hardworking, determined, caring others, generous and full of life. School we lived in different cities had different jobs. And this being before email and internet lost touch. But our paths crossed again when considered for judicial appointment to the Southern District of new york by clinton and senator moynihan. I can well remember saying to said,r moynihan when he who is Sonia Sotomayor . , and i said, well, shes brilliant, principled, caringrking, determined, about others, generous, full of life, and will make an outstandi
All of these things are constantly taking you from one point to another. At the end of one activity to another, all day long, at the end of my first year i once said, i now know why the brain is a muscle. This job has showed me how much it can stretch. There was so much new information my first year on the bench that i was absorbing that i didnt have a headache, i had a head that ached. Theres a big difference. That was what continued for my five years on the bench on the District Court. You do get to interact with the lawyers in the courtroom. You get to see a lot of human nature in terms of witnesses and what theyre talking about. But the job of a District Court judge is to develop a record, to get the evidence out, and then to rule on it. And ive often described their job as doing justice in the individual case. Theyve got two parties. They have to resolve that dispute according to the law. And so theyre worried basically their attention is focused on these two people who sit before
And i said, no. How do you do it . She explained her method. I went home and tried it. And after that i did pretty well in school. And obviously over time i figured out my own shortcuts, my own ways to do things. Im often asked whats the greatest obstacle in your life. Whats the greatest obstacle to success . I tell them its the fear of being embarrassed, of not asking for help when you dont know something. How many lawyers im sure you saw it in the year that you were with me on the Supreme Court and i know ive seen it in my 20plus years as a judge in my different courts. You ask them a question, they dont know the answer. And instead of saying i dont know the answer, they blunderbust and try to make something up. And then theyre skewered by the judges. Ok . Its not much fun. But they seem to fear more the saying i dont know, the embarrassment of that, than the embarrassment of failure in finding the right answer. And i think for me, i understood very, very early on that asking for hel