Toward Law

I've been out of town and out of reach of a Net connection for the past 10 days or so, but now I'm back and the chaos that is the fall of an academic (either student or otherwise) is clearly churning into motion. Syllabi and lesson plans to prepare, books to buy and read, committee and other work to do. The student part of it I like ok. The teaching part is what kills me.

So, like I said, I'm leaving. And for the past few weeks I've been playing with options for what to do next: library school? a job writing or editing? a non-profit job (perhaps writing or editing for a non-profit)? law school?

The plan for the moment is this: I'll study for and take the LSAT, and let my score help me decide how badly I want to go to law school. It's possible I won't even be able to get into a decent school, and then I won't need to belabor this decision further. It will be an expensive lesson (over $1000 for the cost of the prep class and the test itself!), but at least I will be in a much better position to decide.

Ideally, while I'm doing the above with the LSAT (and teaching and taking classes, since I've committed to that for the semester), I could also volunteer with a local political campaign to continue building my political and volunteer experience. There's lots that can be done. The goal would be to build a resume for non-profit work so that in a year (or two?) I could head for the D.C. area and a good NP job—if law school doesn't work out. Whether I get a law degree or not, my goal at this point is to eventually work in some sort of political activist organization like Public Citizen or Vote Smart (or maybe Common Cause).

That's the plan for now, and it's already in motion. My first Kaplan class was today, although it was just a diagnostic test. I predict I scored around 140, which would be awful but I don't care too much since that's without any preparation whatsoever. I'll find out Monday. What I learned is that logic games could be fun, but I need a lot of work on them. Given all day, I could work any of them; given only about 1.5 minutes per game, my success rate drops do probably 10%. Any tips on the logic games? Any systems you've found that work? All advice always welcome.

Posted 04:50 PM | law school