Sometimes I find myself feeling good about my life and my future. You know, like feeling that even though I am in law school I don't need to practice law to be happy, or that even though I expected a certain type of life afterwards, I don't need that. When I wrote my last post about being an oil(wo)man, it was somewhat hard for me to type out that first paragraph. You know, the one about living in a nice apartment, being greeted by a door man, and feeling like I worked towards a life that, honestly, doesn't really exist. I used to watch movies where people in New York live these large lives and I thought "being a lawyer could get me that life." But, I realized that was all a pipe dream, and yes, the schools too try to make you think that kind of life is attainable for anyone who walks through the doors, sits there for three years, and passes the bar. Sometimes, even I feel that such a life is unattainable. Maybe it's just fear. Everyone feels this way during their last year...right?
Update: I realized that what I was feel was indeed fear. Reading negative sources will do that to you.
I try to remain a pretty positive person when it comes to law school. Sometimes I try to joke on this blog and make it seem that everything is alright (kind of like Lieutenant Paris on Star Trek: Voyager). I try to lighten up the load that we law students and law graduates face. It's a stressful time for us. It's a stressful time for the profession. Many law graduates are having a horrendous time finding jobs, and we end up blaming ourselves for it. Some of us break too easily and no longer try. Others keep trying, and don't really know how to go about finding a job. We are taught many different things in college, but in the end, many of us (myself included) learn so little about how to actually find a job. We figure it must be easy, or they would tell us how to do it. We are lead to believe that a job will just 'fall into our lap', but the reality is that it won't. The truth is, you have to learn how to work for it. And you have to stopping thinking negative about the idea if you are to take control of your own life.
In just a couple of weeks I will be starting up my 3L year. I have already bought my first book on half.com in an attempt to save some money. The book is about accounting as a lawyer. I figure that I should take courses that may translate into other jobs. I have no accounting skills, and I hope that this class gives me some. I feel that such a strategy may pay off. I have learned that it is often best to diversify if you are to succeed. Few people do well by putting all their eggs in one basket.
Part of me is excited to be a 3L because I will be almost done with law school. I am scared to find a job, and I am scared of getting ready for the bar (who isn't?). I am pretty sure I can pass it, but I still worry about finding a way to study for it and having income to pay my rent. I will be moving into a cheaper place this year as well in the hopes of bringing my cost of living down. I am considering a move to Harlem, as I know there are cheap rents there to be had, and that most people are more willing to let a student rent in that area (I had a horrendous time finding a place last year with no references or co-signers). Further, I know that whatever place I will end up in will not be very 'prestigious', but I have to slowly learn to give up on that idea. Prestige is not the end-all of life, just as money is not.
This is also the year I am going to need to sit down and really look for a job. I need to really step it up this time around. I need to focus on not just finding a legal job, but finding anything. The longer I wait, the worse off I will be. I need to involve myself in some outside activities and get my name known out there amongst the legal community. I need to do something I am scared to death of doing, and that's "networking". I honestly have no idea how to go up to people and talk to them. I am not the kind of person who likes to ask people for something. I don't like feeling needy. I don't like having to brown nose my way into something. It's not who I am. I have generally been a pretty shy and quiet person my whole life. In fact, I was attracted to law as most of what I read portrayed law as a pretty reserved profession full of people who liked to read and study and who were not as loud and boisterous as other professions. I am now seeing that I was wrong about that. In fact, I kind of learned that in 1L.
Sometimes I relapse. I think that I want the prestige that I felt would come with the law. I think that I need it, as if it is a drug. I mean, I felt as a kid that my parents did not expect much from me. I always wanted to go further than everyone else. Most of my friends never finished college, nor did many start. I didn't do very well in high school and, honestly, I thought that I was somewhat of an idiot back then. I wanted to change my image though as the years progressed. I became obsessed with learning and with exploring new ways of thinking. I think college did help me think far more critically about the world, as well as made me thirst for knowledge. And I hoped at the end all of that studying would be further rewarded with me having a high place in society. Alas, I now realize that there is much more to it than that. It is depressing sometimes to think that all the beliefs I had about my future would be wrong. Yet, I try to remind myself how much further I came intellectually. Yet, I realize I could have done a lot of it on my own, for far cheaper, instead of spending thousands of dollars on my education. After all, does one need a degree (a piece of paper) to be smart? For some reason, society thinks that we do.
I once was talking to a person about classes where people study the culture or religion of a certain place. One example was a Buddhist course I took after I came back from Thailand. I was really interested in what I learned about Buddhism while I was in Thailand. Well, the course cost about $3200 at my university, almost as much as my trip across South East Asia for two months. I realized that I could have done the trip even cheaper had I focused on the cities in northern Thailand, where there are many Buddhist shrines and members. Well, the truth was, I have since forgot much about the class I took, yet I will never forget about the trip. I still remember going up into Wat Doi Sutthep in Chiangmai or to the Buddhist temples in Bangkok. What I am saying is that it would make far more sense for a person to be able to get college credit for a trip like the one I took on my own instead of having to sit behind a desk and hear about Buddhism. I could have wrote a series of papers about my trip. Yet if I did that, the school would not get the money I paid, instead that money would go towards funding my travels. But wouldn't it be better for the person who was learning?
In the end, I think that there could be a lot changed with education, but I think that people don't want change. Many things are backwards now. We are told that we need to learn in a classroom and get a degree in order to be smart. If we go to an ivy league school, we are said to be smarter than if we went to a lower ranked school. Yet that is all arbitrary. I have met ivy league people who could barely order a hamburger in a restaurant without feeling confusion or anxiety. At the same time, I have met very smart people who never set foot into a college classroom. Yet our society tells us that we need this education. That we need to go at all costs, even if the cost is student loans. We need to change the way we think about education, and we need to realize that there are many other ways in which a person can become educated.
With that being said, I don't think not going to college at all is a good idea. I think that college needs to change, though. In today's world, it is very risky to not have some kind of higher education.
Update: After coming back to this entry, I have realized that my outlook on law school has changed greatly. I feel that law school was the right choice for me. I realize that it was stressful and this blog did help with that. However, as with most things, in the end I realized that the real stress was caused by what exists in my mind and not exactly what exists in reality. Negative thinking rarely gets a person ahead. I am learning that more and more all the time.
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