Stomach bugs

I am becoming increasingly excited about law school. This is probably dumb. By all accounts, come six months from now I will be one big person-shaped mound of stress. Nonetheless. I'm looking forward to trying, yet again, to stay on top of all my reading. Maybe five years out of the books and classrooms will have changed me for the better somehow. I definitely sense that I have a leg up on many incoming law students, in that I know what I'm going to law school for and I think I have reasonable expectations. Despite what some relatives may be mistakenly expecting, I won't be coming out of school with a six-figure salary. I'll consider myself lucky to break $50,000. But that's okay. Low expectations with high returns are certainly better than the other way around.

One thing I'm grateful for, with respect to my upbringing, is that I was never mindful of money. Not in a "we have so much of it, I don't even notice it" way. More like in a "it doesn't exist, just make do with what you have" way. It's not that my family was poor (as a wise person once told me, one should NEVER call oneself poor unless s/he is truly poor). Rather, I recall things as always having been in some state of disrepair or another around my house. The charred circle on the linoeum kitchen floor, where my mom had set a flaming pot down in a panic; the ever-shifting water marks on the second floor ceilings, where water seeped in from the roof; the hand-shaped hole in the wall outside my bedroom door, born of someone's poor anger management skills. I'd say that I got used to things being less-than-perfect.

I'm glad for that, because I grew up relatively unscarred and learned to find joy in things other than a clean house, a nice car or designer jeans. Now, I know that whatever hand I am dealt, I can live with it. I see no reason to strive for the big paycheck, because what will big pay buy me that I absolutely must have. More importantly, I want to be paid to do something that I can live with doing for the bulk of my days. That something is public service, bringing justice to those who would otherwise do without it.

At this point in my post, I picture myself as some kind of puffed up superhero who forgot that underpants go on *under* your pants. Hands on hips, I look gloriously off to some distant point... blah. I'm not a superhero and don't want to be one. But I don't want to be a high paid attorney either, and I don't really have a clue about what it means to work for a Big Firm. I don't really care, and I hope it stays that way. I feel liberated by the fact that I don't seek a big salary, and the fact that I am not going to take on $100,000 in loans to go to school. Hopefully, I'll even be able to keep it under $50,000!

I'm excited. The problem is, it's only the beginning of June. I've got a couple of months that I'm supposed to spend enjoying the "freedom" of not being in law school. (Translation: Working.) And no, I haven't made a final decision on a law school, though hopefully that's coming tomorrow. We have talked ourselves silly, and I'm leaning toward an answer that I will articulate eventually.

Maybe I will turn into a blawger after all.