What made you decide to go to law school?

A Celtic Studies Textbook

What made you decide to go to law school.  That's not an easy answer to question.  I mean, that's not an easy question to answer.  I guess I am just trying to skip the point.  I am going to be very honest here with myself and my readers and let the world know exactly why I went to law school.

I previously wrote about it here, but wanted to go deeper into the reasons and thoughts as I am older, wiser (hopefully) and perhaps more honest now.  Plus, I'm bitter.  I ask myself: "If I am this bitter now, what am I going to be like when I am 40, 50, 70, 80?" 

It was undergrad when I knew for sure that I wanted to go to law school.  I was neck deep in undergraduate, majoring in Celtic Studies (I started with architecture, but figured it was a crap-shoot and artsy types were starting to get on my nerves).  I honestly don't know why I thought Celtic Studies would be a good major, but my parents were so proud of me for going to college.  First in the family, you know.  Anyway, it was around the end when it really hit me that there were not really any jobs for people with my major.  And, to add insult to injury, I was probably not going to move to Ireland.  In other words, I had literally wasted a lot of time.  Then, to make this even worse, I funded this on student loans.  When I graduated from college I had about $40,000 in debt.  In other words, I needed law school.

Or so I thought.

Truth is, I rarely share my major with people.  I went to a pretty decent undergraduate university.  It was expensive, but it didn't have the word Phoenix in the title.  However, a day doesn't pass where I don't wish I would have went into computer science (perhaps with a minor in French) or BioPhysics (perhaps double majoring in Japanese Linguistics).  But, I did not, and I have to face the reality of where my life has taken me.  In other words, I knew, upon graduating, that I had to do something to supplement my degree or go to work at Kentucky Fried Chicken for life.



So, I talked it over with a counselor and decided to get some letters of recommendation and apply to some law schools.  Now, I said before it took me three years to get into a law school.  And when I did, I was working in fast food.  Yes, over two years of fast food consumed my life.  I did not like it.  However, the manager REALLY wanted me to stay and work my way up to manager (he made $150,000 at the time).  He liked my work ethic and thought I was good at most of the tasks.  Further, I was, in his words, a "model employee."  Be that as it may, I did not like the idea of working in fast food and wanted to go to law school.  I finally got in and got out of fast food, never looking back (except for now, as I write about it). 

But, this story is not HOW I got into law school but WHY I decided to go.  You see, there are some majors that are good enough so that a person does not have to go to graduate or law school.  And there are some majors out there where one realizes as they are grabbing their diploma that they made a very, very bad choice.  It hit me as I opened my diploma and it said "Celtic Studies."  I would have NEVER majored in that had I thought about how it would look on a resume.

Honestly, what would you think if you got a resume from someone and it said "Major: Celtic Studies"? 

Well, I knew that I was either going to have to go to graduate school for something (and not for Advanced Celtic Studies or any other ____ studies either).  In other words, I learned my lesson, and wonder why a person goes to graduate school and pays $70,000+ for a Celtic studies degree. 

Anyway, that's when I decided to go to law school.  What made you decide to go?