Both of my parents are very wealthy multimillionaires. Both of them are at the very top of every hierarchy they are a part of.

I believe the mental health leave was related to the fact that both of my parents constantly berated me that I am “not good enough” and I eventually had a mental breakdown under the stress of this, combined with the fact that where I went to school is just really hard to get through.

I worked in the commercial real estate industry from when I graduated college, to two years ago. This entire industry has been in a slow-motion collapse since the global crisis. I have been struggling to stay afloat off of what used to be my “side business” since.
I took the LSAT and applied to law schools in 2023.
In January, I learned that I’d been accepted to a law school in Texas with a partial scholarship. I have also been accepted to a comparably ranked program in Florida with a full scholarship, but it is contingent on me establishing residency in Florida after the first year.

So here is the summary of the latest fight, and my AITJ:

My mother had a conversation with me last night about how she spoke to one of her clients, who is a partner at one of the top real estate law firms in Dallas.

She had asked me if I wanted to be introduced to him about a week ago, and I had said yes. She took it upon herself to have the conversation with him for me on my behalf. So she said that I had gotten into these two law schools with scholarships.

He basically reacted with “we only hire from SMU”, which is not the program I got into in TX. She added a ton of information to his response (it was a text message that she showed me later) about how the law schools I did get into were “not good enough” to impress this guy.

We were supposed to meet for lunch today to continue this conversation. I called to confirm the lunch appointment and she said her day was “falling apart and hectic”. I suggested we cancel lunch and just conclude on the call. To paraphrase, I said that I bet there will be other opportunities for people who go where I got accepted into, and I am not going to judge my own self-worth through the eyes of a guy I’ve never met.

She blew up and said that she has to “walk on eggshells” around me, “I had this conversation to help you”, “you need to value what he thinks”, “I am trying to get you onto the inside track”. Then she went completely silent. I asked “are we done?” and she hung up after a long silence.

She immediately texted me “I don’t need your nonsense”, to which I replied, “I don’t need you”.

So, am I the jerk here?”

Another User Comments:

“I’m a lawyer at a large firm. I don’t know which firm your mom dealt with, but I have never heard of a firm say that they only hire from literally one school.

Even if that were true, SMU is a good school. But it isn’t elite. It’s not even the best in Texas. I flatly don’t believe that they only hire from SMU. Are you telling me that if a guy from Harvard, UT Austin (which is higher ranked than SMU) or NYU rocked up, they’d turn them away just because they didn’t go to SMU??

Your mom is not telling you the truth. No firm works like that. ” QuesoDelDiablos

Another User Comments:

“NTJ. Polish up that shiny steel spine and go live your best life. Nobody needs people in their circle who spend their time tearing you down instead of building you up.

Congrats on the scholarships. Take whichever one is best for you, and run with it.” savinathewhite

Another User Comments:

“No jerks here. Firstly well done for getting into Law school! Good job. The neat thing about these threads is that you get to be an outside observer without all the stress and emotions involved. In this case, it is blatantly obvious that both you and your mother have the same goal – a good outcome in regard to Law school.

Is your mum over-involved, yep! Is she trying to help, yep! Is it unhelpful, very probably! Is the whole situation escalating into the personal, hurtful, nasty territory? Sadly yes. It’s probably unhelpful also for me to say that it is almost certainly best for both of you to take a step back and perhaps re-approach after having a think about what you really want from each other and how you are going about it.

It’s unhelpful because it is really hard to do. Just as it’s hard to realize that if you don’t want her to be involved at all that is also an option. – For you – would you want your mother’s help if it was the useful kind?

What would be useful? How can you communicate that? – For your mother – can I provide what my son is asking for or am I too invested in doing things my way? Am I going to keep pulling in a different direction? But the very first step is realizing you both want the same thing at the end of the day, you appear to both be smart driven people and there are many different pathways to reach your goal. Good luck btw, it’s exciting and I wish you all the success in the world.” Something-bothersome

People Hope To Move On From Their “Am I The Jerk?” Stories