Why law school? Here's the answer, part 1

My LSAT students are taking the test tomorrow. Now I will have time to clean my house, goof off, and perhaps start freaking out about law school.

But so far I’m not freaking out too much. It’s probably inevitable that I’ll be having a nervous breakdown six months from now, but why rush it? Anyway, law school does seem like the obvious next step for me, whether you want to look at it as the divine plan for my life (like my mother does) or just what has coincidentally but quite nicely worked out to be the thing I"m most well prepared to do right now to make better use of myself and avoid stagnation.

I moved to New Orleans because I’d wanted to for a long time. I’d even kicked around the idea of studying history at Tulane and becoming a writer of popular history. But I got here in January 2000, with no job and not much savings. I’d temped during tight times before and thought I would try it here. I found out Tulane had its own temp service, which seemed like it would be more pleasant and interesting than working for Manpower. I ended up getting a temp job at the admissions office at the law school, where I happened to learn about how to get into law school.

That was just part time, though. A permanent job was slow in coming, but based on my GRE scores I was able to get additional part-time work teaching for The Princeton Review. They trained me to teach the LSAT, which means they taught me to take the LSAT—and then I practiced for five years. And I couldn't help but think now and then, if I potentially have a genius LSAT score, why not use it?

Then I got my current job in the publications office. The money’s not great, but it’s steady. The work isn’t too challenging, but it’s fairly interesting. Not a lot of stress, mostly pleasant co-workers. It gave me stability for awhile, which I needed after such a long stretch of freelancing, temping, job-hopping, catering, bar-tending and slacking. The best part about it was that I got, almost by accident, the kind of broad-range education I should have gotten, but didn’t get, as an undergraduate.

Instead of getting cynical about universities, I’ve become almost romantic about the idea of the university. It’s an imperfect human creation, but it really does work to expand and transmit knowledge, which seems to me more noble than the work of churches, governments or corporations.

Anyway, during my time here I’ve gotten my eyes off my own navel (or my head out of my own ass, if you like)—at least sometimes, enough to have noticed that there are many, many interesting, useful things that need doing in the world. Even many many interesting, useful things that could be done by someone armed with intelligence, verbal skills and a JD.