divine angst

Choices are good. Everyone says so.

I, however, am the kind of person who prefers NOT to have choices. I’ve mentioned this before, but I only applied to three colleges (four if you count the college that lost my application), and I only applied to five law schools (four if you consider that one was a school I was almost positive I wouldn’t end up at, for geographic reasons).

That’s how I roll, you know. Limited choices work well for me. I think this is because I don’t like having regrets. And I usually find that when you have lots of options, at least two or three of them will be really good options, and hard to distinguish from each other. In other words, lots of options = greater chance of regrets.

In other words, I have some choices now, and I would almost rather not. The options are terrific, and choosing between them will not be easy. And I don’t want to make a choice. For now, at least, I can put it off. Maybe some new information will come along and make the choice easier for me. Or maybe the options will get more difficult.

I am completely twitched. One of these scuttled across my kitchen counter today when I went make the coffee. We’d seen something like this before — maybe back in July sometime — and Mr. Angst had killed it. But that one was in the living room, near an exterior wall, so we thought it probably just came in the window when the windows were all still open after we moved in.

But now they’re in the kitchen? I am generally not all that bothered by bugs (except the dreaded cockroach, but who wouldn’t get freaked out by a 2-inch long beetle that will FLY INTO YOUR FACE with no warning?), but this sucker made me shiver all over.

Thankfully, it ran from me and my coffee pot right into the sink, where I turned the hot water on full blast and washed it away. I even got the sprayer involved, so I could make sure the drain was flushed out and the bug was DEAD.

My skin is still crawlling.

I just got a confirmation email about my birthday present from Mr. Angst: I’m taking a two-night class on SAUCES at a local cooking school. Even though the classes are a month away, I am SOOOOOO excited. It’s the best birthday present, ever, probably.

Mr. Angst is finally home. I don’t like it when he travels without me, and I don’t much care for being home alone–particularly with lots of work to do and no one to distract me from it but myself. I’m glad he’s home safe and sound.

I was remembering earlier today where I was five years ago–as I think many Americans are today. I was at work, and checking the news. Yahoo had a news spot about a plane crashing into the World Trade Center and I remember thinking, Huh. I wonder if it was a biplane? How does that even happen, crashing into a building that big?

But within twenty minutes, it was clear that something More had happened. CNN suddenly stopped being available online for a little while; when it came back they’d put up a stripped-down page with nothing but text headlines. A student came into my office and said he heard a second plane had hit the Trade Center, and some other building in Midtown Manhattan had fallen. (One of the many rumors flying that day.) Then we heard a plane crashed somewhere in Washington and another was on the way to the Capitol. No one in our building really knew what was going on. Someone dragged a TV into the main office and we fiddled with the antenna to get a signal. Finally, I realized I should just walk over to the Student Union and see what was going on on the TVs over there.

The union was packed; students were practically standing on top of each other, and every TV was tuned to CNN. (I am not sure if that was unusual; now that I think about it, they might always be tuned to CNN. Maybe it was that, on that day, the volume was turned all the way up on every TV.) The towers had just fallen a few minutes earlier, and the TVs–all of them, across the great big room–were replaying the footage, over and over and over. It was too much for me, so I left.

Despite the anxiety everyone felt, we did not shut down. Students went to classes, we stayed in our offices and worked–or searched online for any news that was new, that said something that might explain it all, that might retract something we’d seen on the TV. I remember going to the American Airlines website, hoping to see good news about what we would later learn was Flight 93 (at that time, we only knew there was a fourth plane unaccounted for), only to see another stripped-down page with a phone number for concerned relatives to call. Then the emails started–who was living in New York? Did they make it out OK? One friend was working in one of the Trade Center buildings, but made it out with no problems. Another was on a bus when the second plane crashed into the Trade Center. The entire busload of people, en masse, told the bus driver to turn around and take them back to Brooklyn. The brother of an acquaintance, who was an EMT, put a piece of tape on his chest reading “EMT” and went down to try and help with the triage. Later he would recount how disoriented he felt when there was no triage, no one to help but a few individuals with scrapes or panic attacks.

By the time I got home, I was completely drained. Mr. Angst had been sent home from a training, so I went to his house and we lay on the couch and held each other and worried and despaired. A childhood friend was having a birthday party that night, and I wondered what she and her guests were doing. I wondered how my own birthday, the next day, would feel. Would I feel wrong celebrating my birthday? Like I didn’t deserve to celebrate? Everything was so confused.

I don’t know that five years has lessened the confusion. I still feel a little funny about my birthday, though I don’t really know why. I am still so grateful that no one I know was hurt. And I still ache for all those who lost someone. And I think I ache a little for my innocence.

So it’s raining quite a bit here today and I think it’s messing with all kinds of stuff. Like, my cellphone? Signal keeps cutting out, no matter how close to the window I stand. My cable? Completely screwy, cutting out with both picture and sound CONSTANTLY, as I’m trying to watch a movie. Even the buzzer, when Peapod came, sounded like it was not quite working right, like the signal was broken up.

Maybe it’s me. My brother makes streetlights go out when he passes, so maybe I’m coming down with whatever weird magnetic field he has.

Welcome to this week’s Law School Roundup, the Things-That-Are-Good edition.

• Math. (Law School Virgin)
• Cheese. (Preaching to the Perverted)
• Two Pair. (Frequent Citations)
• Fear. (There’s No Competition in Law School)
• Vocabulary. (The Namby Pamby)
• Money. (Law & Alcoholism–A Theory of Jurishprudensh)
• One Day. (Cella Bellum)
• Spirit. (Rambling Without Cause)
• Manliness. (Think Like a Woman. Act Like a Man.)
• Mourning. (Negligent Use of a Dangerous Mind)
• Food. (Amicus Curiae)
• Helpfulness. (Shellvester Diaries)
• Efficiency. (Transmogriflaw)
• Cake. (by the seat of my skirt)
• Apologies. (pseudostoops)
• Babies! (Magic Cookie)

And that’s it for this week! Next week, look for the Roundup at Evan Schaeffer’s Legal Underground. In two weeks, it’ll be back here.

#72: People will throw just about anything on the sidewalks and the grass, including glass bottles, plastic bags, and things my dog likes to eat that will make him sick.

It took me a little under an hour to exacto the binding off my biggest casebook, pull the pages apart (in sections, which means I’ll be pulling pages apart for months), and punch holes in them with my dinky holepunch.

The result is not the way I wanted my cut casebook to look–the back edges of the pages are icky with little shreds of book glue, and a fair number are wrinkled and puckered from being pulled away from the glue backing. But all the pages are in a binder–all but the pages for this week’s classes.

One more casebook to go! That one is half the size, though, and I’ve already done this thing once. I can knock it out tomorrow morning while I wait for Peapod.

Stupid national chain copy shop.

They no longer cut the bindings off books because it damages their blades. Further, they now charge 3¢ per page to drill holes through things, which means that JUST having holes put in one of my casebooks would cost me $21. TWENTY-ONE DOLLARS!

That, my friends, is ridiculous. Ri-gosh-darn-diculous, in fact.

So I’ve cut the binding off the big one myself. Now I’m dithering on whether I should start punching holes in it myself, or take it to school or another copy shop and try to use a heavy-duty hole punch. (Mine only does about 10 pages at once. Yeek!)

VERY frustrating, people. VERY.

I am getting tired of wearing my suit.

Also, I just noticed today that my black heels, which are unusually comfy due to their rounded toe, make my legs look stumpy. I’ve been interviewing with stumpy legs. Boo.

Mr. Angst is out of town, so tonight I plan to draft some thank you notes, do some research for my externship, do some research for my comment, and watch some TV. Maybe not in that order. What I don’t get done tonight, I’ll do tomorrow or Sunday, since I’ll be home alone those days, too. (I do have a party to go to tomorrow night, so I’m not being completely anti-social.) Hopefully I’ll also have time to get my books cut, do my reading for Monday and Tuesday, and get some rest. This week has been exhausting.

This is what I love about having a dog.

I’ve had a long day. I mean, LONG. I raced home for all of 5 minutes earlier today to take Himself out to pee, but otherwise, haven’t really seen him all day. I am now home, and he is curled up next to me, cuddling on me, licking me, super-excited to see me. And that makes me happy. I am happy to just sit here with my dog, watch my DVR’d Project Runway, and drink a glass of wine.

Of course, I have to leave in about an hour for another obligation. Sigh.

I feel like a bad dog owner.

Because of a combination of factors (Mr. Angst is going out of town for five days, I have an interview, and need to go meet the judge I’m working for this semester, and have a meeting with the professor overseeing my comment, and a CLASS), I am afraid Himself is going to be home alone for a long time tomorrow.

If I had some foresight, I would have arranged for a dogwalker. But we haven’t even set up with a dogwalker for them to meet Himself, get keys, sign papers, etc., so that’s not an option. I can try and blaze home between things and just let him out to pee, but I’m not actually worried about his bladder. I’m just worried about him.

He loves being with his people so much that, when we get home from being gone, he is just manically excited. Which makes me suspicious that he’s really sad when we’re not here.

I know, I know, I’m reading too much into him. He has his toys and his bed, and cool, fresh water, so he should be fine, even for an extended day alone. But I still feel bad. (And tomorrow, I won’t even be able to make it up to him in the evening, since I have an obligation then, too. This weekend is just the worst weekend for Mr. Angst to be out of town. Or for me to be losing my mind, either one.)

So, I’m going to be really busy this semester. Between my classes, my office hours, my comment, my externship, and, oh yeah, trying to find a job, I am not exactly sure when I will sleep, eat, exercise, or blog. Don’t worry, though–I’ll find time to do at least three of the four. At least my classes appear to be good, though it’s hard to say after only one day. I am a bit nervous about one of them, seeing as the prof thought I volunteered to answer a question simply because I made eye contact. And here I thought I was just being polite and listening.

The other thing that will be tough this semester will be coordinating schedules with Mr. Angst. He’ll be in class three nights a week, which, among other things, makes me sad. It also means we have to be careful about Himself–making sure he gets his walks, eats at a normal time, and gets plenty of love. Most tricky will actually be this week–Mr. Angst will be out of town Thursday midday through Monday morning, and I have a packed schedule on Thursday. Himself may be alone for quite a while on Thursday, and I am NOT happy about that. I will make it up to him on Saturday, though, when I plan to spend the entire day home–doing work, probably, but home.

The semester has started…and I’m already tired.

He’s just SO CUTE. Seriously.

Sleeping in, for me, using to mean getting up somewhere around noon. Certainly, if I was sleeping in, I would not be up any earlier than 11.

So when did sleeping in come to mean getting up by 9:30? Having a dog certainly doesn’t make sleeping in easier, since I get up at 6:45 to take Himself out, but I am just as likely to go back to bed as not. So why am I losing hours of sleeping-in time? I think I know the answer, but I’m afraid to articulate it, since that might make it true. OK, fine, I’ll say it. I think it’s because I’m old now. Sigh.

One final thing: my earlier post on the good and bad reasons to go to law school? I recognize that my advice is not applicable in EVERY situation. I know people who have VERY specific goals that don’t include practicing law for the rest of their lives–but law school, for a variety of reasons, is necessary to meet those goals. Those people are not the people my advice was aimed at. My advice was aimed at the people who don’t want to be attorneys but who don’t know exactly what else they want to do, and figure law school can’t hurt. Hah. If you are willing to consider being an attorney, then, yeah, law school probably won’t hurt. But if you really don’t want to be a lawyer, law school sure isn’t going to help.

And that’s the last thing I’m going to say on THAT.

I have refrained from giving out lots of law school advice this summer because others have been doing a better job of it than I, and I hate being duplicative.

But one piece of advice comes to mind today and, while it’s all over the internets, I think it bears repeating.

DO NOT GO TO LAW SCHOOL IF YOU DO NOT WANT TO BE AN ATTORNEY.

As I slog through the OCI process, talking to numerous lawyers, I realize one key thing: they are all attorneys. Funny, that. If you don’t want to be an attorney, law school is a really stupid path to choose. Yeah, yeah, people will tell you that you can “do anything” with a JD, and perhaps they are right–if the “anything” you are doing happens to involve being an attorney.

Because, yes, you can do any number of things as an attorney–you can draft contracts, negotiate deals, shepherd clients through regulatory mazes, defend them when they get sued, or sue others on their behalf. And within those options are even more options, depending on the industry your clients are in, the fact situations involved, and the type of service you are providing.

But it’s all still being an attorney.

And, OK, maybe it’s also true that eventually you can do anything with a JD–things like become General Counsel of a company (practicing as an attorney), sit on the board of a company (benefiting from being an attorney), or consult with general counsels and board members of big companies (also benefitting from that legal education).

If you ask yourself, “What do I want to be doing in thirty years?” and the answer is “Not dealing with the law,” you should not go to law school. Because while you may not actually be practicing law, as in billing clients for work only attorneys are allowed to do, chances are you will be doing SOMETHING that you would not be able to do without some kind of legal education.

I know for many of you 1Ls, your semester has already started. You may think it’s too late if you now realize you don’t want to be an attorney. It’s not. You can probably still get a chunk of your money back if you drop out now. And you’ll save yourself oodles of money over the next three years while you are at it.

So, yeah, this post is a bit depressing, and you probably think it’s all bogus, because, hey! if you have a law degree you can also be a prosecutor, or a public defender, or that guy from A Civil Action, righting the world’s wrongs. But remember–even those people are attorneys, even if the work they do sounds sexier. If you want to do those things, good–you want to be an attorney! But if you don’t, and you also don’t want to be an attorney for The Man, rethink it all.

*NB: I actually do want to be an attorney. But even I feel, in myself, a boatload of misgivings about the kind of work that’s out there for me. So be careful that you understand what you are getting into when you get into law school, ‘K?

Leave it to me to be the procrastinatey type.

Classes start Tuesday. OCI is over today. What will I be doing this weekend? Bluebooking, for my summer job.

Now, it’s a good thing I generally enjoy Bluebooking. It’s almost mindless, soothing in a way. But the weather this weekend is going to be INSANELY beautiful, we’re about to head into my worst semester EVER (and that includes college), and I think I’m going to want to take some time off!

But I will, instead, be Bluebooking. Why? Because I put it off. And off, and off, and off. Shame on me, I have no one to blame but myself.