People, I’m not dead. I was in training for work all week with no internet access. So Friday I even paid $6 to log in from a Starbucks with my laptop just to remedy the rumors about my possible demise. I spent the week staring at Powerpoint illustrations of database cylinders and nebulous clouds representing the Internet. I’m not sure what I learned about Oracle 9i database administration, but I did manage to finish reading Life of Pi, some Japanese comic books, and my LSAT book. I recommend Life of Pi for a look at spirituality reinvented, the comic books for some graphic samurai gore, and the LSAT book if you like to spend hours figuring out which bus Doug is riding in and whether or not Jocelyn or Grace could also be in that bus with him. Why Grace and Helena always insist on riding together, we’ll never know.
I read a fact/fiction article at the LSAC site today that insisted on ramming home the fact that law school will be the hardest thing I will ever do in my entire life. Strangely, my eyes glazed over at this and I could feel a bit of drool seeping from the corner of my mouth. I guess I am still not over my CMU trauma. I feel like a shell-shocked war veteran, watching small animals being ruthlessly killed with an unflinching eye. Perhaps then, the best time to go back to school is when the pain of it is still fresh. I still dream of taking a long vacation on a tropical island and riding horses on the beach and eating coconuts (but don’t eat coconuts while riding because you could choke) before starting something so difficult again, but if I do that I fear I’ll never do anything difficult again.
Of course, this begs the question, why subject myself to this? Nothing says I have to do anything really difficult, ever again. I could kick back in a tiny condo in Northern California, work at my 10-4 job, and continue dreaming of tropical islands. I guess, in some masochistic way, I am not happy with that. The general public appears split, opinionwise, on this topic.
My friends are on and off in their support, which is understandable. Good friends don’t just blindly support you; they make inferences from your own enthusiasm and opinions and situation and base their suggestions on that. Obviously, if you are very excited about something, friends will look at it with a critical eye, but they will more than likely support you if they see that it makes you happy and will promote your interests and future. It’s when you are wishy-washy about a decision but looking for blind support that your real friends will balk. That’s when they’ll withhold their encouragement until they can see that you have made a convincing decision. My problem, however, is simply that — I want help, one way or another, in solidifying this decision. Maybe friends are worried about giving the wrong advice. But really, advice thought out and given is never wrong when the exercise itself helps a person to know that they are not alone on the journey.
And then of course, in my confusion, there is the hate mail I received the other day from an online dating service. You minority hater, egotistical bitch, wanna-be, uncultured loser, and so forth, ad nauseum. How I made this person so angry, I’ll never know, since I’ve never met him or spoken to him in my life, but it’s my first and last stint at online dating, and I think at this point that law school is looking much easier than dating. Thank goodness I didn’t pay $19.99/month to be verbally abused. I mean seriously, I can listen to that for free anytime I like.
