The above post (Rox_fan_here) seems to sum it up: you already know what you really want, or you wouldn't have posted the idea of it and talked that way. Law school or any kind of tough school can be demoralizing, demotivating, etc. So ask yourself: do I really want to be a lawyer when I get out? Seeing what they do day to day, is that the kind of work I would be happy doing? Just because you feel like a "mediocre" student doesn't mean you wouldn't be successful in the actual profession. It was hard enough just to get into law school, and a lot of your fellow students may be good at pleasing the professors but not so good in the real world when they get out. Here are some reasons to change fields: -if you don't think you'll like the actual job you get after the degree (or try it and know you don't) -if you don't really mesh with the people in the field - your mindset, values, and goals are different -if there's something else you always wanted to try and will be sad deep down that you never got to try it (particularly true when you're young and don't have dependents) Reasons like the above led me to walk away from a science career. I was a chemistry professor at a small school; I wasn't going to make tenure there, but I still lasted four years and could have tried again in a different environment - postdoc/research lab if I was into the lab end of it, or just teaching high school. However, I decided I had been wanting to go to music school and this was my green light to do it. I only teach science part-time now (to make ends meet) and, while my finances and lifestyle have taken a drastic hit and I'm just another starving college student now, I wouldn't change a thing about it, now that I'm finally doing what I always deep down wanted to do.
Sure is great to have you back, Isabel. Here's what I intend to teach my kids (note: I don't know if it'll work). Set your primary career priority on something you love and try to find a way to make money doing it. BUT... have a good, strong, stable "plan B" in case your primary career goal doesn't work out. Be sure that you've got a useful college degree to fall back on in case things don't work out.
I think you're being to hard on yourself. Perhaps you should finish your law degree and get into politics.
I hated law school but stuck it out. My perception was that unless I was going to a top notch MBA school, the MBA was worthless and mediocre MBAs are a dime a dozen (and so are mediocre lawyers but I was already invested). My undergrad degree is in accounting and accounting is as fun as a stick in the eye. I had choices but they all involved considerable risk of being a bum the rest of my life or stuck forever making $30k/year with 2% salary increases. I finished law school, took the BAR exam and passed, went into the financial services industry leveraging my accounting and legal background. I now work for a Fortune 100 company doing presentations for advisors and clients on advanced financial planning topics - and that JD adds tremendous credibility. I have never used my degree to practice law. If you ever want to climb the corporate ladder, an advanced degree can really help.
Finish the year as strong as you can and then spend the summer working out what you want to do. You already have one degree, so you are way ahead of a lot of people. I have a close friend, in his mid-50's, who never got a BA or a BS. He dropped out, got married, had kids, and worked as a computer engineer for the next 20+ years. The guy retired from a major computer company, his original company having merged with a larger one. (this happened 3-4 times) Now, he's trying to get a job in Austin, and he can't compete with the young people who have that piece of paper and are 30 years younger. He may have worlds of experience they don't have, but it's not doing him much good. They are cheaper, and even though they know a fraction of what he does, companies figure they can train them. My advice would be to get your master's degree in something you actually like. It will serve you well, whether you work in the field, or not. You don't have to get a degree in law, but get that second degree. It's a tough world out there... maybe tougher than you realize. Good luck.
dude, i'm about to be 30 and i know exactly how you feel. i'm still at crossroads in my life but i feel i can meet the challenge of change. i don't have any dependents so it's just me. my problem is finding what it is that makes me happy. b/c right now, my job (surfing clutchfans all day *not as fun as it sounds*) SUCKS! it's just not that enjoyable. i'm lucky to have a great boss and co-workers though.
School is not a good indication of the real world. Just because you don't like the classes doesn't mean you won't like the work. I would stick with law school and it may open up doors for you other areas that you like. What I learned in school has nothing to do with what I do now but I don't think I would have gotten to where I am now without going to school.
I may be able to offer some advice because i was in the same category. After my first year of law school I really hated it, I didn't like the person I was becoming, I didn't like the subject matter and I did not like the people I was going to school with. I had no interest in litigation or all the other limited career options that Law school professors try to make you. I wish I was mediocre, but I was in the bottom of the class, most likely because I had no interest whatsoever in the subject matter, it made me go to sleep. I knew I had no chance in going to a firm, so I decided to think differently. I realized that there was no way in hell I was going to enjoy my life if I was doing something related to what I was doing in school. The good news was that almost everyone in the class who didn't already know what they wanted to do (and I mean really[/] didn't know what they wanted to do, not just saying they wanted to be a trial attorney because it sounded cool) was applying to the same jobs, clerkships, associate positions, etc. I was seriously thinking of dropping out and even my gf who saw it as a financial loss on her part thought I should drop out. However, I decided that I would think different and try a different path. What I did instead was listed a few companies in industries that I was interested in, things that were related to my hobbies, or companies that sounded like fun places to work at. I got an internship at one, loved it, and got an offer at the end of the summer. The number of people I was competing against was zero. They didn't care about my school, my grades, all they took notice of was that I was interested in the work. And the work, while a little bit legal, was really business and deal making and knowing the industry. I'm a month away from graduation and I can honestly say that I have the coolest job in the law school. I have my foot in the movie industry, the video game industry, as well as consumer goods and publishing. I am extremely cynical in law school because I figured out that everyone has the chance and capability to get the job that they want, but either they don't know what they really want, or they are too afraid to try different avenues to get it. There are very few lawyers who will honestly say that lawschool really prepared them for their actual work, so don't think that not liking your first year (the worst year, btw) means that you won't like the profession, because it is much more diverse than your first year classes make it out to be. Take some different classes, get an externship or join the law clinic (I did the clinic and it was the best use of my time in law school). Just because you are getting a law degree doesn't meant that you need to think and act like a lawyer. I found that regular people respect you a lot more if you are just a regular person who just happens to have a law degree. If you know you can't handle it in a firm, which is as competitive as law school X10, then don't go in that direction, there are many other options if you look hard enough.
I have a lot of law school friends who had a different experience. They finished law school. They knew they did not want to practice. They used their law degree to land a job at a company in an area other than the legal dept. Talk to your career counselor about non law jobs for law grads. See if you think it would be worth it. I'm not saying to stay in. Just make sure you know all the options that could be there for you if you stay before you make the decision. Good luck.
I had a friend who dropped out of law school one week before graduation, moved to Memphis to work construction under an assumed name so he wouldn't have to pay off his loans, and ended up being quasi-successful writing screenplays. I have another friend that stuck it out, joined a big firm, hasn't had a vacation that is more than a long weekend in 20 years and at age 45 looks like death warmed over. He has a huge house but when he comes home at 10 pm every night, he looks in on his kids who are being raised by hired help, fixes something to eat in the kitchen and watches SportsCenter while he eats. He then goes to bed and wakes up at 5:30 to start all over. His house is literally 5 times the size of mine, but he uses less square footage each day simply because he's never there. I have another friend who went to top notch schools and is now a lawyer for a major environmental group. He loves his life and usually only works a 40-50 hour week. Of course, he only makes about 75k a year, but he has time to spend with family and travel. I have yet another friend who went to a big firm, hated it, went to a major corporation and hated that, then latched on to a 4 man tech start up as counsel and loves it. I really thought about going to law school, and it semed the thing to do with History degrees, but after watching a few folks I know, there is no way I'd ever devote the kind of time it takes to succeed in a firm, so I quickly abandoned that idea. So, those are my lawyer stories. Draw your own conclusions. I think the first question you need to answer (and it seems you have) is: Is material success important? I'm not talking about financial security, but material success... where you drive the best rig, live in the best neighborhood, eat at the fanciest places, have the best TV, etc. If it is, stick it out and join a firm and you'll probably get there. If it's not, first look at all the options you have as a lawyer. Are any of those palatable? Is there anything you'd really like to do where a law degree would help? If so, stick with it. I'd probably advise you to stick with it even if you don't have a clear career path. You will have many more options with a law degree and it will show people that you can read, write and think... attributes quickly disappearing in this video-driven world. Life changing? Yep. I was sliding along as a mid-level bureaucrat, as was my wife. Back in the early 90's we made over 100k a year, which was not bad for our quals. We had a kid and looked around and said, "what the hell are we doing raising a kid in a big city?" My wife quit work to be a stay-at-home mom and I took a job with the Forest Service for 35k a year. Now, I'm moving to Oregon, making about what we made as a couple, my wife will start working next fall whe our youngest starts kindergarten, and we couldn't be happier. I have a job where I can help people, where I feel like I'm contributing to society (when I'm not on this board), and where I get lots of vacation time. My summers aren't normal, but during the rest of the year, I have the freedom to take off early for any kid event. So, it took me about 15 years before I got in a job where I felt like I belonged. Don't sweat it if you can't see that far down the line. Just have faith in yourself and decide that whatever happens, you'll be a success in the way you and only you define it.
This is true. The more I thought about my post the more I also remembered folks who didn't necessarily want to practice, but planned to parlay their JD into something else.
SCF, Life's too short to be doing things that don't make you happy. I would look at finishing the year out and then evaluate your career goals and plans for the future this summer. If you feel that being a lawyer or having a job where you leverage your law degree (like RIET has done) is not for you, then I would drop out of law school. With you only being 23, you still have plenty of time to "go for it" and recover if it turns out not to be the right thing to do. My experience went like this: I made really good grades in high school, mainly because it was expected of me (both my parents were teachers) but I had no clue of what I wanted to do or major in. I thought about history but I really didn't want to be a history teacher and the only other option with a history degree (at least it seemed to me) was to go to law school. Having to spend another 3 or 4 years in school after undergrad didn't really appeal to me. Also, I was never a big fan of writing papers or doing lots of reading. So, feeling pressure to pick something, I chose engineering (specifically chemical engineering) - knowing full well that this was probably not a good fit for me either. I go off to Tennessee Tech with about 7 other guys from my graduating class (only 1 to 2 of them were good friends). I didn't last longer than a month in the engineering program (I hated drafting with a passion). Looking back at it, I could have stuck it out and probably gotten my engineering degree, but I doubt I would have been happy. I wound up changing my major to math and I transferred to Middle Tennessee the next semester. I graduated with my B.S. in 4 years but I still didn't really know what I wanted to do with. I finally decided that I would go to graduate school and get my master's and teach at a junior college/community college like my mother did. So, I got an assistantship and went straight onto grad school. Only one problem - I got in over my head and didn't have the academic GPA to graduate. So, here after 6 years of school, I had my bachelor's and 33 graduate hours in math and still no job. I moved back home with my parents at the time (I was 23 like you) and tried to figure out what to do with my life. My parents were hoping I would go back to MTSU and either finish my master's there or at least get a teaching certificate but I knew I didn't want to do that either (at least teach high school or younger). So, I took a job as a teller at a credit union making about $6.75 an hour. Needless to say, my parents weren't too happy about that. But I did it for a little over 2 years, eventually moving up to loan officer before finally deciding that this career was a dead-end one. I took a chance on something else and quit my banking job. My chance didn't work out and I went 3 months unemployed (I was 26 at the time). Fortunately, I didn't have a wife and/or kids to have to worry about, so I was able to stand that time of unemployment even though it did drive me crazy. Thanks to my connections with people at my church, I was able to get the job I have now. It has nothing to do with my degree and is more of a business/accounting/finance job. I have been at this job for 7 years and will probably die/retire from this place. What sucks is that I have found myself wanting to do other things (like sell insurance, work for Verizon, etc.) but after spending 7 years at one place for one company, I am not going to find a job that will pay me what I am making now. The reason being is that I don't have the experience for these new industries and they would have to hire me in at an entry level job. In other words, I am "locked in" at my present job. And add to the fact that I now have a wife and daughter, taking a pay cut is not an option, either. It sucks, but I try to look at the positive side and I am grateful that I do have a decent paying job. It could be worse...I could be unemployed which would mean selling my house and all kinds of other bad things. Now as for a life change - let me talk to you about getting married in your early 30's...talk about a life change! However, that's a story for another thread and another time, LOL.
SirCharlesFan, One thing I'd ask (without actually wanting the answer) is how much debt you're incurring in order to attend law school. Because I think that should be a factor in your decision to stay or quit. I attended law school for a year before getting out. I hated the school, the subject matter and my classmates, and my grades and mental health showed it. If I had been going to a reasonably priced school, though, I probably would have stuck it out. Unfortunately, I had made the stupid (given my ambivalence about law school from the very beginning) decision to attend a super-expensive private school in a super-expensive city. To finish school, I was looking at a debt of well over $100,000.00. That was just too much - I didn't want to spend the next 10 years of my life having to work in a job I hated in order to pay off my student loans. So I finished the year and moved on with my life. I don't regret my decision to leave. I've been able to pursue music in a way that a lawyer job (and the debt) would never have allowed me. And ironically, the little bit I learned in that first year got me my current job, which doesn't force me to work 70 hour work-weeks. So whatever future earnings I lost, I gained in freedom and personal happiness.
I think you should finish out law school and make some cash to pay off your loans and have some savings. When you are in a comfortable place think about what really makes you happy and try to pursue it. Remember sometimes it take a little while longer to figure out what it is your suppose to do. Until then keep going with Law School. Remember there are many tings lawyers can do.
Are we twins? I actually like both of my jobs, but one won't be around forever and the other one just doesn't seem to have the potential for growth. I'm probably either going to law school or going and getting an accounting degree. That, or I may just say **** it and be a paralegal. They can make good money and I won't have to go through three years of law school.
You're 23. You have time to feel your way around. I went from a very successful (monetarily) sales career to IT in 2000. I don't make close to the bank I did then, but I'm happy- and that's the bottom line.
I'm a CPA (about to be), and I love accounting, different strokes for different folks. In reality you can't always do what you like, this world is just not set up like that, you can take the risk, but is it worth it? I'm a big believer that you should take advantage of whatever opportunity you are presented… the chance to give your family a better life, that is the road you should take (IMHO).
Also, having your JD gives you the opportunity to practice should you decide to try it. It is very different depending on the firm size, etc. If you don't like it, go do something else. It opens doors...many of which will not open otherwise.
