an explanation, and a break in precedent

So my last post was more than a post. It was a boat-burning. It was the seal on a decision. Now I can say the decision is made, and I've done something to cement it.

My last post was also the beginning of my most recent law school essay attempt. Which is why posting it here was a boat-burning. If I was actually going to submit it to any schools, I wouldn't have posted it here. So my having posted it makes it final that I'm not going to submit it.

But wait-- there's more. Not only am I not going to submit that essay, I am not going to submit any other essay, written or yet-to-be written. This year. Which is a fancy way of saying, I'm not applying to law school this year.

Wow. Writing it feels weird. I've been pretty settled in the decision, but actually typing and publishing it (for all the world to see, right?) is a different thing. It's real now. Kind of like when I cut my hair... I'd been imagining and thinking of it short for two weeks, but actually seeing it short was still pretty dramatic.

Oh yeah, I cut off all my hair. That was the "thing I'm doing on Friday," for those of you keeping score at home. It's short now. I'm just starting to get used to it.

But I digress. By most counts, deciding not to apply-- yet-- to law school is more momentous than the sudden breeze at the back of my neck (though I am knitting up a new crop of scarves to get me through the winter.) And some of you probably want to know why (actually, some of you probably want to know why I cut my hair, too. But we're focusing here. On law school. Not the hair.)

It started when I was trying to write my second essay, which ended up being the one I just posted. I had weeks and weeks of false starts, though, and that's usually a bad sign. I can have problems in writing, when I'm lazy or unfocused or just not in a writing mood... and at those times one of two tactics fixes the problem: either just gritting my teeth and writing until it starts to flow, or putting it to rest for an hour or a day until I'm in a better place. But when I've tried, day after day and week after week, and pushed through actually getting words on the page, but still can't manage to hit my stride, then it's usually a sign that something else is wrong. "Something else" might be the topic I'm trying to write on, or some emotional issue that needs to be written out before I can devote creative energy to anything else... but something is wrong, and just sitting and writing won't fix it.

So I started to get this sense of something wrong, but several topic shifts weren't taking care of it. At last I managed to get an essay out, and kind of a cool one I thought. So I submitted it to my review board. (Again, for those of you keeping score at home, I did not in fact string them up by their toenails, though I wanted to for a minute or two.) They came back with basically the same response that the first essay received: great writing, interesting enough, gives insight into who you are, but not a compelling reason to admit you to my law school. (Neither of them has a law school by the way; though if they did I'd totally go.)

So after a lengthy text-message argument, which served nicely to pass the first four or five hours of my shift at work that night, I got to thinking. Then I went home and thought some more, while I was supposed to be asleep. And the end of all my thinking was: Maybe I shouldn't apply to law school yet.

It was one of those decisions I talked about in my post a couple weeks ago on decisions. I kinda knew right away that it was the right thing. But I thought about it more, because I don't trust these impulses, and also because I've been planning my entire life around being at law school next year. Only the more I thought, the more good reasons I came up with for not going yet.

The reason, in brief, is that I'm not ready yet. There are things I want to do to prepare. I'll talk about some of those later, but that's the gist of it. I put off college for the same reason, and it was one of the better decisions I've made in my life. When I went, I knew who I was and what I was about. Of course, all of that changed through my four years there, but I went in poised and focused, and that was good.

If I enter law school next year, it will be with a firm but vague conviction that that's what I want to do. And that's not enough. That's not how I do things. Nothing about the process, right now, sits well with me. My plan was to apply to a bunch of schools that seemed good to me, and then investigate them further once I'd found out whether or not I got in. But that's not how I do things either. I figure out what I want, and what steps will best help me get there, then I take them. None of this scattershot method of choosing where I'll spend three difficult years. So one of the things I need to do to prepare is visit law schools... all the ones on my list and others that seem worth investigation (anyone want to road-trip to Chicago or New York in the next seven months?)

This is good. I'm excited about it. It's a little sad, putting off returning to an academic environment for another year, but there's plenty for me to study on my own (Russian is next on the list.) And I won't mind having my intellectual freedom for a little longer. It's going to be hard for me, especially at first, to let go of all the fun things I like to do with my brain to focus on law. I want to make sure I'm fully ready before I attempt it.

So that's that. I will be entering law school no earlier than the fall of 2008. I'm pretty confident that it's the right decision, and anyway it's made. And, as I've been learning, sometimes to have a decision made is more important than having it be the right one.