Law School

The truth is, I'm taking an LSAT prep class, I'm budgeting my finances to accommodate application fees, I'm planning to apply to law school. And come any acceptances, I might even go.

This is the subject of my daily thinking. It (law school) got put on the schedule--on the to-do list--during a conversation I had with my oldest brother, Nate, over Spring Break. We were waiting for Soren, my almost 7-year-old nephew and Nate's son, to play it out in an elementary-school-level chess competition (300 little people squirming, sticking out tongues, and checkmating), and we were, of course, talking about how we're going to change the world. I was two months or so into my master's program in Curriculum & Instruction (education) and two months into my new life in Austin, and I realized, at some point in that conversation, that I have professional goals and that, for two months (or so), I'd forgotten them. It.

I have a professional goal.

I'd forgotten that, that there were/are things I want to do and/or accomplish, professionally speaking. (Maybe I'll post the two drafts of my personal statement that I wrote for my graduate school application, to thus better explain.)

And it struck me, as I was standing there on the grassy, sunny, cement-bordered lawns of the U, that a good way to get there, to do those professional things, would be to go to law school.

This was confirmed by a visit I made to one of my professors, Dr. Cinthia Salinas. I said, "Dr. Salinas, I want to know how to educate a city." She looked at me quizzically. (I was not really expecting quizzicality.) "How do I learn to educate a city?"

She waited, moved her "fabulous hair" (I told her once that she has great hair; her even reponse: "I do have fabulous hair."), and said calmly, "Well, it depends on which city you want to educate."

She explained that there are five ways I can get somewhere in education: curriculum & instruction, assessment, law, public policy, and something else (actual teaching, maybe).

I'm only saying this as a beginning, a tip-in to a larger, running conversation. One which, at present, I'm having largely by myself. But my family does or has weighed in (occasionally). Anika said, "I know law school sounds sexy, but maybe I'm still too close to it. Are you sure you want to go?"

Mom reports that Rachel and Peter also are reluctant supporters. "Is Sarah really going to go to law school?" they asked at yesterday's breakfast table.

"What do they want me to do with my future?" I asked Mom.

"I got the feeling they are thinking you should be getting a PhD."


This is long, and blockier and windier than I'd anticipated being, but I want to (a) begin this conversation, and (b) let everyone know, let the world know, that I do have this conversation, I am in question, that the ways and means of our futures are/should be subject to our own rigorous analyses.

And I found five dollars.