on paper-writing and school nights

It’s Sunday afternoon and my mind is all fogged up from too-much-dancing-and-not-enough-sleeping last night (I apparently have yet to learn that the grad student’s weekend is not the same as the working person’s weekend, and act accordingly).  I am supposed to be writing my first paper, a four page memo recommending a political strategy to an Oregon governor from the early 1990s.  Instead, I am procrastinating.  Ah yes, the last three weeks of doing my homework three days ahead of time have now given way to the reality of avoidance-at-all-cost.  (This is hyperbole.  My paper is not due until Thursday.  And to be perfectly frank, I don’t even have the write the paper for Thursday.  I could write another paper next week, or another paper the week after that.  So my self-portrait of a procrastinating student is somewhat misleading.)

So what has public policy grad school been like so far?  I have learned a lot of things I do not entirely believe about the rational behavior of individuals in a market setting.  I have spent a lot of time on my couch (reading).  I have started to make friends.  (My little sister just started middle school, which is similar, I think, to starting graduate school.  At the end of her first week she said, “I have one friend, and everyone else is just an acquaintance.”  I think I have two, maybe three, at the end of three weeks.  Can we extrapolate a rate from our sample of two?  Is the rate of friend-making a straight line, or does it eventually become asymptotic to some physical limit of human friendship?)

Consider for a moment, how scattered this blog entry is, and then imagine me trying to write a very structured, very concise memo about anything.  No more dancing for me (though it was fabulous, the gay boys and the girls in short dresses and the drag queens, and the music, and everyone having such a good time).  Every night is a school night now.

nostalgia for the present

I’m moving to Berkeley in a month.  Berkeley and San Francisco are next door neighbors, but living next door is not the same as living in your very own lovely laughter-filled house.  I am going to leave mine, which I moved into so recently (six months, just).  Yesterday we had friends over to eat “gay cake” (rainbow-frosted) in celebration of Pride and warmth.  We sat around in the backyard drinking homemade mint lemonade and mimosas and eating food and talking and laughing.  At some point a guitar was brought and put to use.  The remnants of the party decided to make dinner, and we sat 10 people down for a feast just because we were all there and did not want to leave.  I tied an apron on to cook, and my friends in the dining room made up blues verses about each of us.  At dinner we argued and laughed and drank wine.  After dinner we cleaned up, crawled into bed.  My roommates came in to kiss me goodnight and gossip.  It was a glorious day.  

I won’t have a lot of days like that when fall hits.  There will be good moments, I am sure, and I know I will come back to my friends in the city.  But as a student, weekends are no longer enormous blocks of leisure time.  I will have to measure and worry and trade-off time.  It’s worth it; I am excited to do it; but days like yesterday remind me of what I’ll be missing for the next two years.

This is brought to the forefront of my mind due to the true beginning of my apartment search in Berkeley.  I went on Saturday and looked at three apartments, two of which were uninhabitable (one tiny, one too crowded by the residents of the adjoining house) and the third of which I would have to pay an extra half a month of rent for.  More will come, I know, but I am in the anxious stage now, where I don’t know where I will be in a month, I don’t know if this move will be an upgrade or a downgrade, and I am already nostalgic for the life I haven’t left yet.

moving

I didn’t know if I was ever going to write in this blog again, until just this moment.

I am moving tomorrow. Or the next day. Everything, as usual, is in flux. No, not usual. The last six months have been, by far, the most unsettled of my life. I have not had my own bed since June. I have lived out of a suitcase since June too, and not known exactly where I would be in a month, or what I would be doing there. Now my life is finally reordering itself. Tomorrow I am going to talk to my former boss about coming back to work full time. Tomorrow I am going to move my meager belongings into my beautiful new apartment. I am getting (almost) everything I wanted, when I was far away and dreaming of this moment. But no matter how happy I know I am, it is still difficult, the process of moving. I made a point not to really unpack in my current apartment – where I have been since the beginning of December – but still looking around my room at the piles I have created in lieu of shelves, I grow panicked, thinking of repacking it all away. I am only moving across town. I am going to live with wonderful friends, whom I love, in a neighborhood I love, in a beautiful apartment with plaster cherubs in the corners and fanciful chandeliers. I am thrilled. I am also shivering with tension. It’s almost impossible, facing an enormous task like beginning a life again, to imagine how quickly it will pass, how soon I will be on the other side, living the life I am (re)creating now.

why is everyone in law school? or, reflections on my dual personality

Everyone I know is going to law school. This may sound like an exaggeration, but spend enough time with me, meeting my friends, and you will realize that it’s true. Of my close friends – the ones in the country anyway – 90% are in law school as of this week. My acquaintances have a slightly lower rate of law school attendance, but still clock in well above average. Visiting several of these friends in New York over the weekend, I began to wonder what the predominance of law school as a life choice says about my friends, and by extension, about me.

Note: I do not want to attend law school. Occasionally I consider it for very short periods of time before remembering that I would hate it, and also I do not want to be a lawyer.

So what is it? I think there are two main explanations.

First, I think law school has become a catch-all for my generation of do-gooders who don’t know exactly how they want to do good (all of my friends in law school want to do “public interest law” when they get out). In this sense, it’s not about me at all. This characterization is insufficient though, as it makes my friends sound like they just stumbled into law school because they didn’t know what else to do. Law school was a long-term goal for many of my friends, and they all have good solid reasons behind choosing it, even if most of them don’t have a specific type of law or career path in mind (who really does in their early twenties?).

Second, I think I am drawn to intelligent, high-achieving, and public-minded people: the kind of people who excel at law school and public interest law. I’m very lucky to know my friends, who I expect to do great things with their lives. We share, generally, interest in public policy and politics, drive, and sufficient practicality (or cynicism?) to think that change often comes from within the structure of power (which is why neither I nor many of my friends are off being anarchists or protesting in the streets).

I think both of these things are true, but even in combination they feel insufficient. Why have all of my friends, one after one, gone into law and not public policy or public health or journalism or non-profit management? Is it a matter of practicality? (a lawyer can usually get a job) Or do I just like very logical people? And why am I the odd one out?

This is probably unrelated, but I realized a few months ago that I am the only younger child among my friends. I know only children, and one or two middle children, but the vast majority of my friends are older siblings. I am technically a middle child, but by the time my little sisters were born sibling roles in my family had already been established, so I consider myself a younger child. Yet I am not close to any younger children. Not a single one. Again: coincidence?

What I am pushing towards, awkwardly and with many diversions, is a sense I have of straddling a line. I get along with very logical, high-achieving people, and in those relationships I can hold my own – reason out an argument, pull apart a fallacy – but I have no desire to base my career on that kind of thought. I am happier feeling out the tangled history of a character, or a culture. I am, in some ways, more typically like an older child than my brother: driven, responsible. But my brother is holding down a solid job, saving up money, owns a house, has a nice car, and I am running around being a mess and mooching off my relatives.

It is confusing, this act of figuring out who I am. It is still a work in progress. I know it’s not any easier for older siblings in law school. Still, I think my flashes of law school consideration are due to a desire to pick one side of the line. I want to be a practical, rational person on an outward-facing career path. Or, I want to be a writer. I don’t know how to be both. I don’t know if that’s possible; will these pieces of myself be integrated, or will I veer back and forth between them for the rest of my life, always feeling out of place?

(If it’s not obvious, I have a lot of time to think just now. Possibly too much time.)