People keep telling me not to be a lawyer!

Goddamnit, it's not about what I want to do. It's about possibilities, and apptitudes, and doors. It's not about dreams and wishes and childhood.

I'm 23 years old. My breasts are 2 inches lower, at their lowest point, braless, than they were when I started college for the first time, 7 years ago. I've got grey streaks, heating bills, and three tubes of steriod creme to keep the skin on my hands on, if not soft, painless, or whole. If I were graduating Bennington two springs ago, rather than UMass Boston this summer, maybe things would be different.

But they're not. I'm old. I'm tired. I want to sleep. I want to cook. I want to perfect my muffin recipe. I want to learn to make yeast-raised biscuits, and baking powder biscuits with mashed potatoes in them. I want to paint. I used to paint. I wasn't good at it, but I enjoyed it. I want to sew, which I was good at, but don't have time to do anymore. I want to read fiction without feeling guilty. I want to have two days off in a row, from school and work. These things aren't going to happen, vocationally.

I realize that.

But I'm also very bright, and very verbal, and I've become very motivated. I can stay at the top of a class comfortably, I can achieve, I can study, I can take tests. I want doors to open to a career where the good parts of my mind matter enough to make up for the bad parts. And I want to continue my education. Graduate schools are too much like Bennington, and the only thing a graduate education in the Humanities is sure to prepare you for is some more time in academia. Not for me.

Also, the highest acceptance rate of legitimate Psychology Ph.D programs is around 8%. And you're competing against people with 4.0s exclusively. Yale Law has a 6% acceptance rate. And they're #1.

Is it so terrible to want to use my mind? Is it so terrible to want an education that will lead to a vocation? Is it so terrible to abandon, as avocational, all my dreams? It's not, by the way. It's just fucking honest.

I'm tired. I'm tired of stressing and fighting and exhausting myself trying to keep my life together. I drive to work, drive to school, drive to Rhode Island. I barely go out with friends. I think I've been out with friends twice this month, if you don't count grocery shopping with my roommate. I don't eat lunch at school with any group of peers- I drop in, drop out. My closest allegience is through work. My roommate sees her psuedo-boyfriend more often than I see my whatever. I want to just do. one. thing.

And Law School will let me do that. First year, all I have to do is work my ass off. That's all. Just work and get through it. And I know that I can. And I know that if I work hard, I will do well. It's not like this illusion of adult life I try so hard to maintain. It's one thing. And I know I can do one thing.

I can be a good law student, and then a good lawyer. And it's possible that I will get a great satisfaction from both.

So all of yall can eat it. And you know what it is.

Mmm...research.

My life has become research.

Between the emergency contraception thing (where the research is done) and a long paper for my research methods class, I've been living my life inside databases. My plans for the future- sleep, reading fiction, and basically rotting my brain. But, for now, it's fun. I actually like it. I swear. I wish I had a hamburger.