Can you IMAGINE?

Really? Law?
I, too, can hardly believe it.

If you had asked me four years ago, or even two years ago, I never would've answered "law school." No, up until a year and a half ago I was planning to study painting in graduate school. Useless degrees be damned!

Then I started to look at my past, which led me to thinking about my future. My list of jobs since graduating college with a BFA in painting and drawing include:

• office temp
• college bookstore temp (Colorado State University)
  
• Home Depot customer service associate
• art and frame store cashier and custom framing designer
• college bookstore temp (Northeastern University)
• college bookstore temp/cashier (MIT Coop)
• support staff at the MIT Libraries

In six years I've worked at over half a dozen jobs and none of them paid me enough to maintain a decent savings account. Only the library job was at times intellectually challenging. At only one of them did I spend more than a year (my library job--three and a half years and counting).

So then I started to think about my future and deducted that with an M.F.A. in painting I would be setting myself up for more of the same. I started thinking about preparing for a career, which, I suppose, was a big step toward growing up.

I studied for the LSAT (do it; buy a book and spend at least a couple of months preparing for the test. You DO NOT want to have to take it again). I took the LSAT; I passed the LSAT; I applied to some schools; I was accepted; I won two full-tuition scholarships; I paid my deposit to Suffolk University; I registered for classes.

Now here I am, preparing to buy my books and pose for my ID photo. I have a class schedule and student health insurance (oh, beautiful liberal Massachusetts, your health insurance reform makes my heart go all pitter-pattery).

I'm excited and scared and thrilled and petrified. I have a sense that law school is going to be harder than I can even imagine (see my previous post) but I'm looking forward to the adventure. I just wish some compassionate law student out there would tell me what it's really going to be like.
Anyone?

Thirty-Something and Irons

Waking up early is fine when I have a set schedule. I consider waking up at five a.m. on a work day running late. But on Sunday morning I prefer six. So I was already grumpy this past weekend.

But once I got into the Sunday rhythm I shook off the five and drank some coffee; toddled around my apartment; cleaned a bit; took out the trash.

They sneaked in behind me:

Signs that I'm a grownup:

• Sunday morning's big event: I screwed hardware into my wall.
• I spent so long ironing curtains that my auto-shut-off-iron auto shut off. Twice.
• I ironed curtains.
• I own an iron.
• My iron has an automatic shut-off feature.
  

It's not so bad, being an adult. It's the getting old that disturbs. Sometimes I ramble. Did you really care that I awoke early this weekend? I took a long shower Sunday morning because I couldn't remember whether I'd conditioned my hair. Or, actually, even washed it. (So now you understand my auto-shut-off iron.) Later, I panicked when I realized I'd left my cellphone on the train. As adrenaline rushed me I hurriedly finished the cellphone conversation I was having so I could go back and retrieve...my...cellphone.

Indeed.