Friday, August 2, 2013

My Path to Law School

Dear readers of my blog,

I know that I am not a regular blogger anyway.  I don't try to write something everyday.  Sometimes I will write a whole lot in a month.  Sometimes I won't write anything for three months in a row.  Oh well.

In about ten days I am starting law school.

Why am I doing this? 

Basically because I want to.  I really want to.  I could try to make it sound high and mighty and theological, but that wouldn't be true to reality.  Last year I was becoming disillusioned with the idea of being a teacher for my life's work.  Teaching is for some people and it's not for others.  Some might say I didn't give it long enough.  Perhaps that is a fair criticism.  I don't know, and at this point I am going to law school either way. 

In high school I did mock trial.  It was an extracurricular that I put a whole lot of effort into, and I was good at it.  I enjoyed the competition of it.  I enjoyed the preparation of it.  I went to college planning to do law school afterwards.

In college I developed some bad habits.  In high school I was driven by the desire to succeed - and have a reputation for succeeding - at all the things I did.  I did that pretty well.  Going into college, I saw the emptiness of that, but I swung the pendulum too far in the other direction.  I knew relationships were more important and I poured a lot of new time into my relationships with my fraternity brothers, with my girlfriend (now wife), and with God.  I did ministry things.  I listened to a lot of sermons.  I didn't go to a lot of classes. 

My GPA dropped, and to retain my scholarship I took a single class the summer after my freshman year.  It was a pre-law seminar.  I had just listened to a lot of Francis Chan, and the idea of Christian ministry and giving away (almost) all your money had been painted very attractively in my mind - though I had no money really to give away and obviously had not spent any actual time earning any real money.  The seminar brought in practicing lawyers.  They talked about long, hard hours.  They talked about the difficulty of law school.  They conveyed the importance of earning money.  Working long, hard hours to earn it.  Though I didn't see it at the time, I had become quite lazy, and the worldly idea of earning money just seemed sort of sub-spiritual. 

And I decided to change career paths. 

I started in on Industrial Engineering.  I had good semesters and bad semesters.  I never finally applied myself in the way that I know I can.  I regret this.  Though I went through and graduated with this degree, I knew towards the end that I had no taste for actually becoming an engineer.

What to do? 

I wanted to find a job that would give me time for family, that would allow Nicole and I to live close to her mom, that would be fulfilling, in which I would feel like I was making a difference, a job that might give me time to pursue missions opportunities.  I have always enjoyed math tutoring, and teaching jobs are necessary basically everywhere.  Summers off would be awesome.  I knew I didn't want to do engineering. 

So I started going to Kennesaw and substitute teaching until I got a job teaching at Coahulla Creek in Dalton.  I may do some complaining here, but I am actually very grateful for that job and that time in my life.  It was their first year, and it was my first year, too.  Many factors combined to make this a difficult year for me.  It was my first year being married, and Nicole had a difficult time moving to Dalton.  I was doing my grad school, so about three nights a week I would leave from school to go over an hour away to Kennesaw before returning home late.  At Coahulla, I was teaching four classes out of four possible class periods, and I did not have a textbook to teach from.  Mainly that was due to the modern shift in thinking about how we should do effective teaching.  We should not rely on textbooks.  Very well and good, but also difficult for someone strapped for time as I was.  Probably the final straw that sealed my first year misery was the sheer class sizes, due I imagine to the fact that it was a public school.  All my classes were around 25-30 students. 

What did I learn during this year? 

1.  Margin is a good thing.  It is not worth it to cram your schedule to the point of exhaustion.
2.  Marriage is difficult but rewarding.  It builds patience and rewards with joy. 
3.  Teaching is like marriage as described in #2.
4.  I really enjoy math.  I enjoy teaching people who are interested in learning.  I do not enjoy the process of trying to get students interested in learning. 

It was in the midst of that spring that I halted my Kennesaw classes and decided I wanted to go for law school.  What precipitated this change?

1.  I was dissatisfied with who I was as a teacher.  I could not picture myself doing it for life. 

2.  I came to a more balanced view of the reasons for my original course change.  I do not think hard work is to be avoided.  I do not think earning money is a bad thing - as long as we do not make it an ultimate thing. 

3.  I realized the things I enjoy doing are reading, writing, and arguing.  Those are things I found myself doing on top of my normal job of teaching math.  Law school and the practice of law, as I figured and still do, are basically this - reading and writing and arguing.  A fit!

4.  Twice in my relatively young life I have been called to jury duty and ended up serving on the jury.  Both times it has given me an itch to get back in the courtroom.  It has made me long for mock trial.

5.  Since going to college, I have not scratched my competitive itch.  I have suppressed it.  The competition of a courtroom challenge is something I long after.  The competition of law school is something I look forward to.  Maybe my high school motivations were not simply depraved through and through but were a gift of God. 

6.  In teaching I was not making very much money.  I did not have prospects to make very much money.  I decided that I did in fact want to make more money, so that Nicole could stay home when we have kids, God-willing.  I look to my own Dad as an example of how this can work well and be a thorough blessing. 

7.  I think I may as well disclose some of my baser motives, too.  A shot at law school is a shot at redeeming myself in my own eyes.  I ended at Georgia Tech well enough but below my standards for myself.  In some sense, I want to prove to myself that I can still succeed academically and professionally.  I know that this is dangerous and that my identity must be found in Christ and not in my resume or success.  That can be a black hole.  Nevertheless, this motivates me.  And secondly, I think there has been some envy in my heart.  Far more envy that greed, I may say, though the lure of riches will be something I must guard against, too.  In regards to envy, I have seen friends continue on, and some of my mock trial colleagues go on to law school before me.  While teaching, just the thought gave me an itch to go. 

All of these things, the good and the bad, coincided to compel me to ask Nicole if we could do it.  It has been one of the greatest blessings and most exciting parts of my life that she has agreed so willingly to this career change. 

This last year we moved down to Brooks.  We finished the basement and are living with Nicole's mom and their three dogs.  I thought that this would be difficult - and certainly it has been sometimes - but for the most part it has been very good.  I have been welcomed, and Nicole and I have been able to grow together. 

I got a job this year - I couldn't go to law school yet - teaching at Trinity Christian School.  I also coached.  It was a much easier time for me this year, and much more enjoyable. I enjoyed smaller class sizes, more experience on my own part, and the Christian environment.  I am glad that I have had a good year because this allows me to feel even more confident in my decision to pursue a law degree. For me, this means that I have not run from teaching because it has been all bad.  I am instead pursuing something that I really want to pursue. 

Applying to law school was a humbling and a lifting experience.  I decided to go to Georgia State because it was the best and most cost-effective school closest to where we live.  I will be commuting.  Georgia State was the only one I applied to.  All my eggs in one basket, I guess.  My GPA was slightly lower than the average incoming GPA for Georgia State, so I knew I would need a higher LSAT score.  I studied for it, took it, and immediately cancelled my score, knowing that I could do better.  The Logic Games section was entirely novel to me, taking too much time, and having done poorly on an early section, I was distracted for the later reading sections.  But I regrouped, gave myself three more months and took it again.  I did well this time.  I figured there was a decent chance I could get in, but I wasn't counting my eggs before they hatched. 

I got an email that I was admitted!  Nicole and I quit our respective jobs on the same day, and Nicole had interviewed for a Trinity job that she was offered later on.  Financially we were stressed about how we could make it happen, but we knew we were going to try to do it either way.  And then I got a wonderfully unexpected voicemail.  I hadn't expected and hadn't even thought to pray for it, but the school awarded me a scholarship worth a whole lot of money!  They apparently considered everyone who applied. 

So I have spent the summer teaching summer school, relaxing, and doing some fun reading before I have do lots and lots of required reading.  I am thrilled to be going.  I know that God is going to teach me a lot and humble me a lot and use me in some ways unforeseen. This is all exciting.  Please pray for me. 

I said at the beginning of this that I am an infrequent blogger, and I imagine that in the near future I will become even more so.

Please pray that I will learn how to be good lawyer to the glory of God and that I will live for his glory and not my own during law school.