Michelle Blanchard Ardillo

What’s something you would attempt if you were guaranteed not to fail.

For most of the first 25 years of my life I wanted to be an attorney. My career path seemed to be set in stone, as from an early age, I remember my father saying someday I would make a great lawyer. When a family friend – a lawyer of course -was culling his book collection, a small box of books was brought to me, all books about the law or actual textbooks from LSU Law School.

So, the plan was that I would go to undergraduate school at a small state school, graduate there with a liberal arts degree, and then go to law school either at LSU in Baton Rouge or one of the law schools in New Orleans, either Tulane or Loyola. I didn’t receive much counseling at my high school as to how to best put this plan into action, what goals I should set and hopefully meet, in order to make that plan a reality.

After graduating with a degree in Speech Communications, most of a minor in English (another long story), I sat for the LSAT. The results were not good. At the time the LSAT was basically half English based and half math based, and of those two halves, you can probably guess which section I struggled with. So, while it was devastating, the rejection letter from LSU Law School was not a huge surprise.

Still, I was focused on the original career goal of becoming an attorney. I moved back to my college town and got a job in a small, highly respected law firm. I received excellent training in paralegal work and my desire to get into law school was well-known. Alas, after preparing more stringently and taking the LSAT a second time, the score was almost identical to the first time, and again, I was not accepted.

My fourth attempt at the LSAT produced a slightly higher score, and that coupled with a personal recommendation from that family friend mentioned above, who was now a district court judge, produced the letter I had been hoping and praying for.

I started law school in the fall semester of 1980 and even though I loved it, I ended my law school experience that same semester. I’ll never really understand what happened, but I did not pass any of my finals. I worked hard all semester, I never missed a single class, I was a member of a small study group where everyone else did extremely well on the finals, everyone except me, when we had all studied from the exact same materials and spent countless hours together reading, taking notes, sharing notes, discussing cases, and creating outlines that we all shared. One member of the group made law review and went on to be a very successful trial lawyer. Another member also made law review and went on to become a member of the law school faculty. If we were all on the “same page” throughout the whole semester studying together, how is it that I did so poorly when the others did so exceptionally well?

I returned to working as a paralegal, extending my skills to doing oil and gas title abstracts as a subcontractor for the oil companies drilling in Louisiana and Mississippi. From there, I transitioned to commercial real estate legal work, and had a very lucrative and successful career drafting and negotiating lease agreements between my employer as landlord and tenants moving into the shopping centers we managed, big names such as Subway, Hallmark, Burger King, Sally Beauty, The Gap, etc.

I continued this work until 2002 when my family moved overseas for my husband’s job. It was during that time in Belgium, volunteering at the international school my daughters attended, that I began thinking about a career change. Once we returned to the States in 2004, I embarked on a new goal, to become a teacher, returning to graduate school to get certified in English for grades 7-12.

I retired from teaching in January of 2024, and I absolutely loved teaching middle school English and literature. I didn’t always love all aspects of teaching, but I loved the time I spent in the classroom, I loved the interaction with my favorite grade levels, 7th and 8th grades. I loved the feeling that I was making a difference, giving them the foundation in reading and writing for high school and beyond.

So with two 20-year careers behind me, one in the legal field and one in education, I still wonder “what if?”

Growing up, my mother would call me Carmen Miranda, an entertainer known for singing and dancing wearing a headdress constructed of pieces of fruit. I apparently was always pretending I was on stage or acting in a movie, wanting to dress up, even if it was just putting a dishtowel on my head!

I excelled in high school at giving speeches and went on to major in Speech. For five years after my failed attempt at law school, I was heavily involved in a community theatre group, working backstage or acting on stage in over 40 productions, even serving on the board of directors for the group. I was an extra in one TV pilot and an extra in a movie, both being filmed in my college town.

My aunt always told me I should have been on TV, specifically on the Today Show. She told me this my whole life, while my father was simultaneously asking me, for DECADES after failing at law school, “Any thoughts on going back to law school?”

I often wonder if I had heeded my aunt’s advice instead of my father’s if I would have had a successful career on TV or as an actor. I rarely suffered from stage fright when on stage, whether a small role or a lead role. I loved all of my stage experiences, and after marriage and children, I stopped auditioning but continued to be involved by directing plays and musicals at the middle school level. Since retiring, I’ve auditioned a few times without success but I am still itching to get back on stage!

In something similar to the nature or nurture debate, I wonder if my true nature was to be a performer, a modern version of Carmen Miranda, instead of an attorney, a Southern girl version of Perry Mason. While teaching literature in my 7th and 8th grade classes, I would often read aloud from whatever we were reading as a class, using accents or props to bring the literature to life. Former students still comment on my in-class acting skills, most memorably the opening scene of Hamlet and the ending of Richard Matheson’s short story “Button, Button” which if you haven’t read, I highly recommend it!

So in answer to the original question, “What’s something you would attempt if you were guaranteed not to fail?” I suppose if given the chance I would love the chance to be on stage again. I have a few roles I would love to play, Lady Bracknell in the Importance of Being Earnest being #1, with her famous line, “A HANDBAG!” IYKYK!