I have this thing where I hate updating my own journal when I'm not remotely caught up on everyone else's. It feels selfish, or at least, arrogant, and there are enough times when I've had to go and do it anyway that unless I'm super stressed or something urgent is happening, I prioritize reading what you all have to say instead of babbling myself. So, after catching up on a few days' worth at least, here's my past... ah, couple weeks in review.
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The LSAC law school forum in NYC was decent, but I'm glad it wasn't the only thing I did in NY. I also *didn't* need to wear my suit, something I really wish the few people in the world who've ever blogged about their attendance at such an event had bothered to note so I'd have known ahead of time :D. Yeah there were suits, and yes I wore mine, but I didn't need the jacket, and it wasn't as if anyone I talked to at any school's table actually made any notes about me individually. I have, however, gotten a lot more mail and email from schools because of it, and learned a few things about schools I'm considering that I didn't know. LSAC talks about the most important thing you get out of the forum being facetime with admissions officers, and that's bullshit. Some of them just wanted to shove a packet into my hand; others did want to talk, but no connections that would be useful for increasing odds of admission were made.
What I did learn, though, is that financial aid is likely to be as big a hurdle as getting in. As someone who got lots of aid for undergrad, I'd thought it might work similarly. I knew I'd get more loans than grants, but I hadn't realized that as someone who's been working, I'm not going to be considered as needing aid by some schools. I'm still unsure quite how it works. Also, verbatim from a workshop, "if you have bad credit you probably can't afford to go to law school," which got me all glum and angry because I have bad credit because of my layoff 3 years ago, and just, argh, when will that stop haunting me? Anyway. Glad I went, but gah.
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Visiting my brother, however, rocked. He lives in this fabulous house in southern western Connecticut that's on a lot of acres, has its own pond and pool, and is huge and rambling and friendly. He has 3 roommates, they all rent, they totally pay below market, and I love it there, despite its bachelor-pad upkeep. We both really needed that visit. As some but not all of you know we'd just lost one of our aunts to cancer the week before, and there is no planned family memorial, so just being together meant a lot.
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Thoughts on Media: My brother and I watched a lot of Buffy (I've as of tonight gotten as far as the end of Season 3), and also the first Superman movie. We were seriously surprised by how bad the Superman was. And we both love the Superman legend, it's just... gah. The cheese! The hitting over the head with things a viewer can realize on their own! The taking forever to get through a dumb plot that could easily fit into a modern hour-minus-commercials TV episode! The totally 2-dimensional characters! The completely un-Michael-Rosenbaum-like Lex Luthor! More fodder for the
Steven Berlin Johnson theory (see
Everything Bad is Good For You) that modern media culture really is so much smarter and savvier, and that modern interactive consumers are not willing to settle for less. Seriously, it totally redeemed even some of the worst of Smallville Season 4, seeing this Superman.
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Halloween was nice. I went to a party at the Harvard Club, where I'd never been before. It was reasonable, though the dance music, as in most trying-for-wide-appeal situations, was eh. The desserts, however, were fantabulous. A friend dressed as Bob Barker and another friend and I went as his lovely assistants. "Bob" brought a Price is Right board game and a fake mic, and we actually got several sets of folks to play along, winning the fake prizes (on playing cards) and everything. I had a lot of fun with that. I also walked across the MIT bridge in heels, which I don't recommend.
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Work is still super busy. I still love my job and my employer, but the busyness... Anyway, between work and the LSAT studying, the other things in my life are blog group and contra dancing and vegging out on the weekend with my computer. Ok, but missing something(s).
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Wistfulness for community and rootedness: I'm feeling pretty strongly these past few weeks a real pull of longing for a strong sense of community and being rooted. Partly this is prompted by the knowledge that I may be leaving Boston to go to school in the fall, and trying to think about what I'd prefer. Part is just a long building sense of, stop, I want off this merry-go-round. I like my life and I like the myriad things I am only able to do here in a major city but I also hate how frantic everything feels. How hard it is to make time for basic things like cooking my own meals or going to my havurah (a kind of synagogue). Or being in places with lots of trees on a regular basis. I think in many ways the people I know who are really rooted in community are already "settled" to at least some extent. They're married or partnered and don't have to go to all sorts of social events trying to meet people. Though presumably they still want to go to social events in their own right, they can affford to go to them within a more insular, tight-knit community if they want to. Or they're settled in their careers and live in a place they mean to live in for a while. Maybe even a place they own or have a longstanding good rental arrangement. They have an actual yard they can garden in. They really *live* in the place they live, and find time to cook meals, and... I want that so badly. And it shouldn't be so hard to have at least some of it. And then I miss my hometown and wonder if I am missing its partcular brand of suburbia, where the suburb was so close to the city and so close to the rural areas that you didn't feel deprived of anything. The thought of leaving Boston and needing to make whole new sets of friends again, though, doesn't feel good either.
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LSAT and career goals and oh my!: I am trying to figure out whether my lack of enthusiasm for studying for the LSAT is because I'm having serious second thoughts about this whole law school plan, and whether these second thoughts are enough to mean I ought to hold off on applying, even if I weren't already concerned about being behind on the applications process.
I mean, I *know* law is not my ideal occupation. But the sort of stuff I want to do, one doesn't often get paid for, and when one does, life can still suck cos one is then extremely overworked and underpaid. I've done the professional activist thing, I've been burned out and broken and taken a year to recover from it, ain't going back there, not in the same way at least. But... trying to figure out which professional career path will be useful, fulfilling, flexible enough for me to be happy, non-major-city-focused enough that I could go back to my hometown sometime if I want to, and viable enough that I don't have to panic about living in a box when I retire, is still tough.
Yes, law seems like the right answer, but even within law I am torn. Do I want to focus on alternative dispute resolution and mediation, which I have experience in and have always been good at and which can translate into lots of different kinds of careers, and is a useful skill? Do I want to focus on intellectual "property" and how it's being abused and what can be done to fight for fairness, which is important in everything from fandom to the WTO, but which lots of smart people are already doing? Do I want to focus on urban planning and community building and public space and maybe even someday run for local office, because I strongly believe that the only meaningful lasting global change will happen at the local politics, grassroots level? And is there a way to combine any of it? And if I pick option 3 what is the best way to prepare for it? And do I really need an advanced degree or is that just my fear kicking in? And is that fear not, after all, realistic? When my dad recently spent a year unemployed, I got hit pretty hard with the importance of being able to save for the future, especially when we thought my parents might have to go bankrupt or sell the house, and heck, I don't ever want to be in that place again. I don't have the luxury of much of a safety net to fall back on. And, and... so yeah. Any and all advice on my strengths and weaknesses as related to careers, and advice in general, I'd really really dig.
< / long-ass update > :D
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