Sometimes I wonder how realistic it is to expect an eighteen year old to know what she wants to do with the rest of her life. Although I consider my eighteen year old self to have been relatively mature (though I do think that even the most mature eighteen year old is really, ridiculously, forgiveably, endearingly stupid), I still think that expecting me to make my career choice at that time may have been a bit ambitious. But, you may argue, Americans have among the longest adolescent period of any country in the world, why can't you get it together, you stupid girl? Well, the truth is, I did get it together. I decided that I wanted to go to law school and, rumor had it, political science was the best way to get there. A bit predictable, but sufficient. And since I had credits from high school, I had to get another major, or risk graduating in three years--so I added English to the mix.
I did well in college, but sometimes I wonder if I wouldn't have been better suited to a different career path. Just before law school, I had a mini-identity crisis and started to think that maybe I should get an MFA in creative writing. Well, starving artist didn't really appeal to me, so I decided to forgo a career in writing and stick with the original plan: law school. (Lucky for me, too, because, I am quite sure that I have very little actual talent.) Generally, I think that the best career combines a couple of objectives. First, you can make a good salary ($60k and up). Second, you avoid graduate school and are encouraged to gain employment immediately following college graduation (thus saving yourself tens of thousands of dollars in debt and a student loan payment to rival a mortgage on a mansion).
The question is... If I wasn't in law school, what would I be doing? And really, I don't have an answer. I was intimidated by math and science but thoroughly enjoyed English. But what can you do with that? Teach. Or teach. Or become a college professor, and...teach. Still, even though I sometimes think that law school was the wrong choice, I am at a loss to contemplate a better alternative. Any alternatives that I can think of would require me to go back in time and change my major in college. Well, that's not possible. And even if it WERE possible, it seems unwise to change a perfectly good major just because I vaguely wonder if there wouldn't be something better to do. Can an eighteen year old make a decision as serious as this one? It remains to be seen. I'm not a lawyer yet, so I guess the question is somewhat premature. It does seem like that's an awful lot of responsibility that society put on my poor little eighteen year old self. How will my forty five year old self feel about my choice? There's no telling. But of course, I wasn't thinking of being a forty five year old lawyer at the time when I was thinking, "Lawyers get to wear pretty shoes." (That's a joke! Seriously, I'm really not THAT vapid.) Well, I made a choice, and the truth is, I have to live with that choice.
To be completely honest, law school isn't as bad as I describe it. Sometimes, you have to take me with a grain of salt--I am prone to exaggeration, especially once I get to talking (or typing) and have been known to work myself into an entirely self-induced frenzy. I hope that you can find that to be an endearing, rather than a frustrating, quality because all too often I only realize that I've done it after it happened. In all truthfulness, law school is probably, all at once, the most completely empowering and the most humiliatingly demeaning experience I have ever had. All at once. When I fail, even the memory of my bad experience can make me blush deep crimson all the way down to my toes. Sometimes I feel like I must be the most idiotic person on the planet, because everyone else gets this stuff but me. It's like they are all part of an elitist group, all those kids with jobs after graduation and attorney parents and trust funds and, well, even those without jobs and parents and trust funds...really, everyone except me. But...when I succeed...it's probably the most exhilarating and rewarding experience I can imagine. Maybe it's because of all the failures, but sometimes I feel like I am thriving here and sometimes I think I really might be able to do this. Law school is the highest of the high and the lowest of the low--and sometimes I really think that the highs may be worth all the lows. Maybe my eighteen year old self did know something, after all. At least, my nearly twenty five year old self has a little more faith in her judgment every day.
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