At my age, I'm acutely aware that I don't have all the time in the world anymore. That's difficult for me since I was a kid who believed that everything was interesting. I always envied people who knew what they wanted to do in life. I remember a fellow student named Toby in the 8th grade who said he was going to be an architect. I thought that was amazing. How could he know that?
Me? Then and now, I could think of thousands of things that I could easily have spent my life doing. The list of things I would not want to do is probably shorter than the list of things I would want to do.
Being a computer programmer? Yeah, sounds good.
Musician? Guitar teacher / player? Study classical guitar, music theory and sight singing/ear training in college? That seems like it'd be awesome.
Army commando? Whoohoo!
Management in a big company? Count me in.
Entrepreneur? Naturally.
Ironman triathlete? Coolness!
Officer in the Navy? Can't think of anything better.
Those are just the things I've done that took up a substantial amount of time. Then, there are my casual hobbies: playing the piano, skiing, competitive marksmanship, scuba diving, etc.
Every moment of my life feels like a kid in a candy store looking at a nearly unlimited number of options, where the joy of being able to choose is always balanced out by the bittersweet realization that I can't pick everything.
Now, though, I'm in my mid-40s. I've clearly lost a step. I'm paunchy, balding and gray. My skin is starting to show the fatigue of over 4 decades of exposure to wind and sun.
Law school for me is probably it. I felt, after I finished my MBA, that I'd go back to school "someday". By the time I start in the fall, that'll represent a 14 year layoff.
My law career, if I am lucky enough to have one, will start when I'm about 50. At that point, I have 15, maybe 20 working years left. Not a lot of room to zig and zag at that point.
So, in all likelihood, this is one of the last, and probably the last major change I'll be making in my life as far as vocation goes.
It's also my very last, and perhaps best chance to do something really extraordinary. Getting a JD is an accomplishment and a half, but if I can do it with a high class rank, that really will be an accomplishment that I can be proud of, that very few others can say they did.
In a lot of ways, I'm a much better student now than I was when I was younger.
So many things in life happen backwards. The time to be an entrepreneur, if you ask me, is when you're very young. You can apply yourself fully. You have plenty of time to recover if you crash and burn. Me? I started my first serious business when I was 39.
The time to make a lot of money is when you're starting out in life. You need to buy a house, start a family, get a car, get furniture, pay off student loans or pay for school. Most people earn a lot of money late in life, but not so much early on. I ate a lot of white rice when my career was starting out.
I was a terrible student, but for the most part, the older I got, the better I got at it. By the time I was going for my master's degree, I had discovered the value of attending class, keeping current on assignments and turning things in on time. The 3.5 I got at CWRU's Weatherhead School of Management came with considerably less angst than the 3.0 I got on all my undergraduate coursework.
I honestly don't think there's another time in my life where I would be better suited to do this. Provided my business stays profitable (a big "if" these days), I'll be in a great position to be a full-time student. I'm more focused and disciplined.
For the longest time, I've felt like I needed to go back to school. It just took me a long, long time to figure out for what, and why. Now, I know. It's time to go.
It just dawned on me this morning as I was exchanging forum posts with a law school student, that I described my activities as "0L".
In law school, a first year student is called a 1L. The guys in their 3rd and final year are called 3Ls. For some unexplained reason, the guys in their second year are called "lord high majesty"... go figure. Okay, not really, they're called 2Ls.
That's not so surprising. I mean, you have to call them something. There aren't four years, so you can't really call them "Law Freshmen" or whatnot. I guess somebody could have, sometime in the past, started calling them "Bob" or "Fern", but nobody did.
To me, the funny part is that you can say "0L" and people know exactly what you mean: somebody who will be starting law school next year.
Really, in a way, you're in law school before you even submit your application. 0Ls are just as likely to influence their careers, and perhaps moreso, than 3Ls. It's like, "not a law student" is a category of law student.
One of the concepts I got introduced to early on is that law school is a five year process. You have the three years of law school, itself. You have the year afterwards where you study for the Bar Exam and have to wait months for the results.
Then, there's 0L year. For most law students, that means taking the LSAT, applying to law schools, sifting through acceptances, rejections and figuring out where you're going to go.
However, I read a very convincing blog post by a guy who did very well his 1L year and he recommended the stuff that I summarized in this post:
http://lawgoround.blogspot.com/2011/03/theres-method-to-0l-madness.html
To me, preparing, academically, for 0L is about as natural and obvious as showing up for classes during 1L. The funny thing is, this seems to be totally unheard-of outside of law school. Nobody in business school started mastering the material a year before. Even med school students don't specifically start studying for med school.
The 0L prep is not only wierd outside the law school community, but it is so common within it that when you talk about the things you're doing in your 0L year, the very concept requires no explanation.
Funny to think that all the details are now in place. I think I started to entertain this idea about six months ago. In the mean time, the LSAT was taken, I was accepted to the only school I really wanted to go to, and I got a scholarship. I'm ready to go. Mostly, I've accepted that, but parts of me are still waiting for some other sign that I'll actually be doing this.
Classes start in August. 4 more months.
No comments:
Post a Comment