Selling Out

One particularly poignant moment for me earlier this semester came as I was driving past the area in which most of the University’s Greek institutions are located. Like many colleges, these fraternities and sororities find themselves best expressed through garish murals painted along the roadside. I can’t help but notice them on my morning trips to my daughter’s school. The car is virtually the only place I can contemplate with relative ease. It’s no secret I spend most of my days stressed beyond reason. As I’m watching my chosen career field evaporate, leaving a desolate landscape in its absence, the burden of having to get a job that will allow for growth, that will help pay off my sizeable loans, and that will not make me want to kill myself daily is a heavy one to bear. (It seems that two out of those three is all that one can expect.) So, this particular morning was like every other – I’m driving – thinking about the possibilities, scheming, and fluctuating between self-assuredness and panic – when I see one of the latest additions to the Greek art repertoire. “No time to Siesta. It’s time to Fiesta!” Honestly, I think there were at least three exclamation points. I can’t recall. (Incidentally, this is my least favorite punctuation choice. Horribly abused.) I laughed, then I felt the urge to cry. Which I did not do, because I also typically put makeup on in the car and that would just be counterproductive.

(*As an aside, I do want to point out that this LL.M. was a good choice for me. In case anyone was about to experience a little schadenfreude at this statement. It is the choice to attend law school entirely that I sometimes lament, not the choice to continue further down the path.) Anyway . . .

You know, where did I go wrong in life? This was the thought that struck me. Why have I chosen this rigorous and soul-crushing path? I want my greatest concern to be what color to use on the mural for Casino Night. I want to stress out over what to wear to a formal. I want the most emotionally draining part of my week to be a fight with one of my best girlfriends that is rectified with tears, hugs, ice cream, and episodes of the Real Housewives. Yeah, yeah. I’m stereotyping. But you know, I’m not a terrible looking girl. Perhaps, I should’ve focused on my physical assets and gotten an MRS.

Law school, God bless it – is the place where undergraduate institutions send their biggest assholes. (As an LL.M. now, I can say I’m not privy to a lot of the typical pettiness – but it is true nonetheless.) And this extends, by and large, into the actual practice of law as well. I cannot imagine another professional field in which people actually take great pleasure in tearing each other down. To me, this extends from a deep dislike for oneself, but I’ll spare you the Freud speak. I am friends with one lawyer on facebook who consistently posts stories related to the decline of the legal profession. The general tone of his posts, to me, says: “I am employed and I hate it. You are thinking about law school, and you shouldn’t. (This is probably true, with some exceptions.) You are in law school, and you are hopelessly screwed. Ruining your day makes mine better.” I have always believed that a genuine desire coupled with a more specified plan of attack will produce desired results. But the drumbeat of bad news just doesn’t seem to have an end.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about an alternate strategy. It started off as a joke, but now I wonder – if presented with the opportunity – I might really go for it. Perhaps I should market myself, not as an attorney, but as a . . . uh, a domestic companion. Not really a housewife, because we don’t actually have to be married. But something along those lines. Do you want to discuss electric deregulation while I make omelettes? That can be arranged. How about I redecorate the living room, and then we can sit and talk about international energy subsidies? Imagine long walks on the beach discussing hurdles to renewable energy. Need a little help keeping the place tidy? No problem. A little reparteé on the public trust doctrine makes any household task more pleasurable. Your part of the bargain: pay off my loans and allow me the possibility of doing something meaningful with my life without fear of financial collapse. Either way, looks like I’m going to have to sell my soul, and after what she’s been through, it’s going at a bargain rate.