kellyfrost wrote:
My monthly student loan payment is $183.64. I don't have that high of a loan balance. Look, right now you haven't taken the LSAT, you haven't been admitted to law school, you haven't graduated law school, and you haven't taken the bar exam. Your only job "offer" is at a DA office. I would say your future looks pretty bleak.
It was a joke, I got the impression you don't have high student loans for some reason prior to posting that.
I would say having someone tell me I can work at the DA's office where I wouldn't even have thought of wanting to work with LS 2 years away is quite the opposite of bleak. Keep in mind that I have the resources to start my own practice if I had to. Also, I can see if you were telling me this about Med School. It just doesn't fit, that isn't me. My interests don't align and I would have trouble with the MCAT, etc. Also, acceptance rates at med schools are much much lower, on the contrary job prospects are much higher but that's not the point. The point is I would hate preparing for it, I would hate taking the test, I would hate attending Med School.
We are talking about something I have thought about for 5 years and I have decided to pursue it. I have the resources to attend, I will most likely get a scholarship anyway. I have a high GPA, I understand the 5 sections of the LSAT and I have PT'ed pretty high without heavy studying just to get an impression of the LSAT. I have a game plan I will follow to really prepare me for the LSAT when the time comes. This includes hiring tutors if need be.
I don't want to overwhelm myself with it or lead myself in the wrong direction so I am taking it slow. I will heavily induce myself into an LSAT induced coma the summer prior to my senior year. I will purchase everything I have read that will help me the most. I will study 3-5 hours a day since concentration is not a problem and I enjoy learning about it, my philosophy classes were fun to me.
I will PT until I perfect it. I played Cornerback/Safety without playing prior to high school because practice makes perfect. I broke the record for the mile run because I woke up at 5am & kept running a mile everyday in a manner that will evolve my speed & endurance until my time got faster & faster. The same I will do when I PT, the scores will get higher & higher.
You must also have the heart & the grit. It is also hard if you don't have the athletic abilities to get yourself in the right shape for it. The same is true for the LSAT, if you don't have the mental capabilities to practice in a manner that makes you succeed at it. It would be like trying to lift heavy weights you can't press, your muscles just will not get any bigger.
Again, if we were talking about the MCAT. No matter how hard I studied, I probably will not succeed at it, although I have a hard time believing this since I believe you can do anything if you set your mind up for it and if your interests align. But they don't, so that is why I say I probably will not succeed because I am not motivated for it.
I wanted to be a artist/music producer at 14, everyday I read numerous technical books and purchased all the programs and experimented with them. Afterwards, I experimented with it as I understood it and it actually amounted to me composing music. Then I began providing my expertise for other people. By 17 I have produced for people that have sold their music and have been signed by labels. Further down the road, I wasn't just capable of producing music and recording, mixing & mastering myself & others, but learned how to manage and publish music to receive royalties for works provided. I learned marketing traits that I developed a company outside the music realm with.
Although I wasn't a large music producer that made millions & got famous. It wasn't necessarily in my interest to do so, since I focused on what I can accomplish outside of the music to establish a life for myself. I thought I was just going to be a construction contractor & make 250k/year and live a good life, but that is not what I wanted to do. Of course, no one would give something like that up but I didn't solely bring it about, it was through family and in the family it remains.
The point of the music producer thing isn't to tell my story but to establish the following point. At 12, I thought it would be impossible to be a music producer/artist, it just doesn't happen, as far as learning all of the material and being able to do what I do in a recording studio. The same is true for when I was 17-18 about being a lawyer, I thought it was just impossible if you weren't an honor roll student in high school regardless of how bad you wanted to be one. By 21 I realized I can become a lawyer. I went to CC, got a 4.0 and transferred to a university where I maintained an honors GPA & made the Dean's list.
I will put everything I have into this standardized test. I haven't produced music in 3 years. I haven't worked construction in 3 years. I gave up my life to do this, and while some of you might say I shouldn't have. I can always go back to it. I can even get a law degree & not be a lawyer but go back to construction (regardless if I can pass the bar or not). I have a plan if I can't get into a good LS, but that doesn't matter because as I have stated I can go to LS & not be a lawyer. Because I have Plan B, C, & D with regard to LS, I will most likely be able to do Plan A. Which is attend a T14 & go into BigLaw.
As for complaining about BigLaw, it is doing something you love to do, although most people don't love that type of stuff/environment/clients, etc. Try waking up around 6am to arrive at work at 7am to work until 7pm or later 6 days a week (sometimes even on Sundays) doing something physical that you don't really like. I am not an engineer like my father, I didn't enjoy the work, every job we did wasn't a puzzle to me that I can easily figure out.
It was 12 hours+ of hard work that had to be done without dealing with anybody else other than one or two workers. When I would get home and lay in bed, my mind would play in a very calm tone the sound of the work we did that day, whatever it was, the sound even played me to sleep because it is all I did all day without too much time to talk. I am also a people person, it is what I am, who I am so working in Law is working with people to a degree, no?.
