divine angst

Mr. Angst and I attended an admitted students’ dinner last night for one of my schools. It was at what might be the nicest restaurant in town, so it was worth it if for no other reason than that we got to have a full meal at a place we’d probably never spring for ourselves. (NB: the food was OK. I managed to eat two things that had heavy-ish sauces and Mr. Angst’s Kobe beef was apparently chewy. But the wine was fantastic and the raspberry sorbet on our chocolate tort/cake thing was to die for.)

The dinner was small—small enough that everyone could sit at the same long table. We were about evenly mixed between admitted students, and alumni, and there was one current student present. I think I lucked out—the alumnus I sat next to happens to be in academia—he’s a visiting scholar at a university nearby, and he’s published, &c.—so I got to talk to someone who is on a track I’m interested in. That was the best part of the evening. Also, no one gave us the hard sell, which was nice. This decision-making process is miserable enough without that.

Here are some things I noticed:

The other admitted students were very nice. I didn’t get much chance to talk to them—they mostly congregated at the other end of the table, while Mr. Angst and I were between three alumni. I felt a little old, but that’s probably to be slightly expected. Mr. Angst says I didn’t LOOK older than the other admitted students, so thank you, Mom, for the good genes. I found the alumni and the law school official who were there to be MUCH more helpful than the current student. I asked her at one point how big LWR classes were (meaning, how many students?) and she seemed to think I was wondering how IMPORTANT LWR was, and tried to downplay it by mentioning that LWR grades aren’t curved. Oy.

I had hoped the evening would give me some big insight or underscore either a very big positive or a very big negative for both of us, and that didn’t happen (of course). I keep wandering around, hoping that something or someone else will make this decision for us, and that’s a foolish wish, I know. In the car on the way home, Mr. Angst said he’d enjoyed himself but that a fancy dinner wasn’t going to make him decide one way or another. He’s being smarter about this than I am.

So. The evening was nice; it was helpful to hear a little something about the academic track from someone who’s been through it (although in a slightly nontraditional way). It was nice to feel out my prospective classmates and the alumni network and to get some solid information on the school that’s not from the website. But nothing, really, has changed. I still feel the same way I did about both of my choices, and I suspect Mr. Angst does too. We’re still sitting on a fence, counting cows in both fields and trying to figure which grass is sweeter.