Now a law student at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law, Hasan reflects on how a DRBU education—rooted in close reading, contemplative practices, and self-reflection—prepared him for legal study and inspired a deeper engagement with the world.

What are you up to now? 

I’m currently in law school at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law.

How did DRBU prepare you for law school?

In law school, you have to do a lot of close reading. The level of close reading and textual analysis that you do at DRBU is really good preparation for something like law school. And also the ability to pay attention and focus at a deep level not only on the text but also the ideas it contains and follow the thread of them. 

Studying at DRBU also helped me recognize or identify all the factors that come into play when people make decisions, and to pay attention to that in myself. Law is really like a history of people making a lot of decisions that they think serve certain moral values, like justice or equality. It’s interesting to see how that develops over time and the things they’re conscious of in making those decisions, and the things that they’re maybe not conscious of but that come into play because of the larger cultural context. 

How did you decide to go to law school? 

For most of my life I felt like things were just happening to me, and DRBU is part of what helped me realize that that didn’t have to be my relationship to the world. I can actually be an active agent in the world rather than just being a recipient of what’s happening. I became interested in law school because it’s a way to move closer to what feels like the center of power and I can have a wider impact. I can also have more agency, and I think there’s more freedom in a way.