Today’s accomplishments

So…now that I have finished whining I am able to review the day.  In preparation for law school I successfully completed my phone calls to the financial aid office and to my undergrad institution to arrange for my final transcript to be sent. I spent some time looking through the courses that are available to me and reviewing information about concentrations I could pursue. The problem I discovered is that three years of law school is not enough time to take all the courses I might like.  I will need to spend more time reviewing the situation and perhaps look over some law boards to see how others have handled this.

I got the tentative schedule for orientation. I was happy to see a family event scheduled for Saturday. This allows me to include my children, for which I am grateful. It doesn’t look like an overwhelming schedule. I got my class schedule last week and was overjoyed. It looks totally manageable. Monday thru Friday classes, nothing starting earlier than 9:30 and nothing lasting past 2:45. My plan is to be at school from 8-4 five days a week, with additional evening hours as needed for interest groups, etc., but preferably not more than once a week, twice at the most. Ambitious, perhaps, but I am hopeful. I will be able to study at home after my boys are in bed.  The only concern I have is finding enough time to sleep. I am a night person by nature, and the early morning commute will force me to change my ways.  The commute, BTW, is approximately one hour.

For this week, I am reading law books. I am committed to reading only for pleasure during my week long vacation. On my law list: The Constitution of the United States (Westlaw copy), Slaying the Law School Dragon, Later in Life Lawyers and Understanding Law School – An Introduction to the LexisNexis Understanding Series. Also, I have ordered a set of LEEWS cassettes which I will listen to as soon as they arrive in my mailbox. I will read until I fall asleep tonight.

On the parenthood side of things, I have one sick child, but its not strep. Perhaps a virus. My 12 y.o. son had his physical today and is officially taller than his college freshman sister who is not impressed. Said freshman will have three wisdom teeth removed on 1/5/09. Yes, that is 3. Dentist cannot explain the missing tooth nor can I.  The boys are at work with me tonight. Another bonus to this particular job. I didn’t get too much done today around the house, but I have a full day planned for tomorrow. And that’s all folks.

Pre-law careers

Well, I will test the possibility of anonymity and truth blending well together. The more truthful I am, the easier it is to uncover my identity. Does that matter? Only because I would rather my future classmates don’t know everything about me. I prefer to remain quietly in the background in real life. Gunner will not be a word that anyone could apply to me. So….my pre-law career….working with people with disabilities. Currently, that takes the form of people with traumatic brain injury. With the 20-hour per week restriction imposed by the ABA, that will take the form of one person with a traumatic brain injury. I love people. I especially love people who struggle in the world. I’m good at what I do and that shows in my work. Along the way, I have discovered that people with disabilities need to stand up for their rights. I have also had the opportunity to learn that acts based on good intentions do not always equal acts that are right. Many people with good intentions disregard the rights of people to pursue “life, liberty, and happiness”. It is true now and has been true historically. The best thing I can do for a person is to advocate for them, which often involves advocating for things that go against the desire to “care for” a person.

I assume that all people want to live their life with as little interference from others as possible. At the same time, all people want to have relationships and associations with other people. There are exceptions to every rule, and I’m sure my assumptions are not always correct. Even the notion that all people have a fundamental desire to live has not always proven true in my experience. So it is impossible to know what any one individual wants when I first meet them. But as I work with people, I come to know them. As I come to know them, I come to understand them. And once I understand them, I am their strongest advocate. Not for what is best for them, but for what they want. More often than not, those two things are not the same. I believe in the individual right to choose and it amazes me how often that leads to conflict.

I am adjusting to my new work schedule. I am gradually preparing for my 1L year. My school year hours will involve ten hours over the weekend and ten hours late nights. Those late night hours the client is sleeping and I am being paid barely more than minimum wage. However, my weekend hours are my professional hours and those will be paying my bills.  I am not used to sitting at work and having not much to do, but this is clearly in my interest as I will be able to study here. I am working in a private home, so it seems to be the ideal part-time job.  For tonight, I am contemplating how different this is and how much of a switch it will be to move away from direct involvement with the clients.  I will miss the work.  I have learned many things over the past twenty years and worked with at least a hundred different clients. That is probably significantly underestimated. But there are lessons I have taken from it that I need to find words for. Loss is one thing I have learned the hard way, and its own way, this career change is a loss as much as it is a gain.