I'm really tired out. Its not like physical or mental fatigue, just a vague feeling of "tired". I think it stems from my boyfriend I am dumping, Mr. Law Review. Law review is this thing that they have at law schools, whereby they take the pool of candidates, take the people with the top grades, charge them money and make their lives miserable for a year and if you do okay, they give you one hour credit. Then, if you have really killed yourself, then, maybe just maybe, you can make notes editor, or voila, you can be an editor-in-chief and be even more miserable for yet another year. See, the silly thing is, the legal profession puts great importance on the most mediocre of things. The truth is, no one really reads law review or cares about it. Its total vanity publishing for the most part. If a student is very lucky, one can write on an obscure and emerging topic and then, "BAM" a judge cites you and you are important in your own mind. But mostly students go through the whole process and are not published, b/c lets face it, who really cares what a law student thinks? Or even a law professor for that matter.
I'm "on law review". That's how you say it. "On law review". But I, for my thirty-first birthday next week, am going to give myself the best present ever. I'm dumping it. I don't care about it, and really at this point in my life, I need to feel passionate about the things I'm doing. I don't want anything distracting me from that which I love. Namely, my family (e.g. my husband, kids and extended family and fictive kin network), painting pictures badly, travelling, working out, and making my friends laugh.
I'm not really an introspective person. So, I was curious why I was spending so much time online instead of working on my note topic, b/c I realized, I was spending a lot of time online. Its not like I was leaving my baby in the bathtub so I could be on message boards or anything, but it still seemed excessive to me. So I asked myself, "what is it that you want?" I realized I'd rather distract myself than deal with the fact that I really really dislike law school. In fact, I came to the realization that I don't want to do one more thing than absolutely necessary to get my degree, and hopefully get through "character and fitness" (the committee that decides if you have the moral fiber to be a lawyer based on your to then existence on earth, and in my case this may be a sticking point) and pass the bar. Then hopefully, I can get a nice quiet job in the public sector so that the Kentucky Higher Education Authority will take the principal off my substantial student loans for five years of indentured servitude and I can get good benefits.
Once I made this decision, it was like a huge weight lifted from me, but I feel tired. I think because my entire life I've always wanted to be the very best girl. I have stellar grades and my personality is to try to do everything the right way so that others will approve of me. Everyone knows, if you want to get ahead, you should be on law review. Plus, my fellow students will think I'm insane for actually "getting on law review" (believe it or not its competetive to be on law review) and then resigning. Its not some sort of drama. Its just I really prefer to do other things with my time. Like have time to laugh at things or figure out why on earth I give such credence to other people's opinions of me. Really, I secretely suspect my colleagues just may respect me for standing up for myself and telling Law Review to go away.