I’m cranky, but the nice thing about law school is that one is never alone…
I walk into Real Estate Law:
Me: “Good Afternoon, Jill.”
Jill: “Hey, how are you?”
Me: “Eh. I think I’m over law school.”
Jill: “Me too. I really enjoyed 1L year but this year I just want to kill someone.”
Yikes.
The longer I am in law school, the less I see myself practicing, and the more I suspect that I am wasting my time.
…so I started researching English doctorate programs.
I opted to go to law school instead of the English PhD route because senior year I was so disgusted by some of my professors who read random theories into texts that couldn’t support them. It was a type of academic “scholarship” that was essentially creative writing masked as literary criticism.1 Shakespeare, Elvis, and McDonald’s in the African diaspora…
I rather create than criticize, but the MFA-professors at my undergrad always seemed to have a badge of inferiority because of their lack of doctorate degrees.2 The question was always, “How well was your book received? Did it sell? When is your next book coming out?”
I am going to try and get into a literary theory class next semester and pick my professor’s brain about career options, and to see if a PhD is worth it.
If all else fails, I’ll be spend the first few years after law school as an underpaid attorney or an overeducated barista. Venti or Grande? Would you like a pastry or my legal opinion with that?
1 …by people too uncreative to write an original work. This was also rampant in Art History classes, where there is a razor thin line between “advanced research” and “bullshit.”
2 It seemed absolutely ridiculous that the people who were creating work were somehow less prestigious than those who did nothing but criticize it. But that was just my perception…