While I enjoy law a great deal and how it can benefit society, I know that I am too introverted and although I am emotionally strong, I am also a highly sensitive person, qualities that do not correlate to being involved in prosecution, human rights or environmental law as it requires a lot of activism and a very thick skin. I have been writing poetry for 20 years on and off, and wanted to be a writer when I was younger, and even started college as an English major. However, I had told my mom when I was a pre-teen and even in my teen years that I wanted to be a lawyer. I wanted to make her proud, so I stuck in the field, although I found it difficult to my psyche to subsist in such a ruthless, money driven field, even in the creative side of corporate law, trademarks and copyrights.
After a few therapy sessions, my therapist told me she found it interesting that I wanted to go to law school solely to become a law professor, and not to be a lawyer. I found out that one has to have legal practice experience as a lawyer to teach law. The prospect of having to practice corporate law to pay off law school loans of $150,000 to $180,000 it made me so anxious that I decided to re-evaluate my choice to go to law school. Therapy is a beneficial exercize, but I stopped going to the therapist after 5 sessions because she was telling me things I already knew as I am very self aware and can't afford to pay someone to tell me what I know. I decided to take the LSAT prep test after only a month and a half of serious study 3 days a week, and I got 160. I was shocked at this because I was terrified of doing so badly on the LSAT that I put off studying for it for a whole year. I took a second pre-test to see if the first was just luck, and scored 168. The interesting thing is that after taking test, I realized that the main reason I wanted to go to law school was to make my mom proud. I am good at English and writing, and more-so, passionate about literature and poetry, but they are not practical majors or fields where your parents can be proud of you, especially traditional parents like mine. It made me realize that as unconventional as I have been all my life, and willing to challenge what mainstream society thinks, in the area of career, I confirmed to what is expected of me because I wanted to make my mom proud as well as to be looked upon favorably by others as a success. However, in doing so, I was also stifling who I was.
I never lost my love for English. I excelled in my classes, continue to write poetry, prose and essays and read literature. I have decided to go back to this passion for literature, writing and language and study for the GRE for to get into an English MA program.
Making this decision has freed a barrier in me and to celebrate the return to my passion and myself, I have decided to redo my streaks that I gave up and have missed to pursue something other than my passion.
One lesson I have learned is to stand firm to what you like. Despite the best intentions of others, only you know what makes you comfortable. Lesson two is experiment only if the desire is from yourself, and be wise to know the difference.
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