In my last post, I wrote that one of the reasons I was heading back to the gym was to gain a sense of control over something. The lack of control over my tenuous job offer and even my grades (at the law school, grading is fairly capricious . . . or at least that has been my experience), has made this last semester unpleasant. I’m doing my best, but I never stop wondering whether that will be enough.
Why does it matter? I’ll grant you that I may be lacking perspective, but my ability to snag a job with decent pay seems like the most important thing in my world right now. Maybe, if I had a husband or a child I wouldn’t feel this way, but it’s just me right now. If I can’t pay my student loans or keep a roof over my head, it will be a huge problem.
It will be a problem in more ways than one. There are the obvious practical problems that come with graduating without a job. Then there are the philosophical ones. It is disheartening to think that after putting my life on hold for four years and completing two academic degrees, I might end up no better off than I was before I started. The fundamental premise of my upbringing was that education is universally valued and, therefore, if you work hard to educate yourself, you will be valued.
By selecting relatively “good” schools, I thought I was making a relatively safe choice when I invested huge amounts of time and money in my post-secondary education. And that’s what the problem might be: I like to take the safe route. It might be that by doing things that are “safe”–trying to stick with the Big Law offer, for example–I am inhibiting my own success or satisfaction.
180 days until graduation . . .
Read the full article: Control