Stuck in a Quarter Life Crisis

now that i've decided to embark on this tedious journey towards getting into law school, i am faced with some big decisions. i have set a goal to take the lsat in december. i need to get familiar with it and its recommended you don't take it more than twice, if absolutely necessary. i'm gonna make every effort to end 2006 on a positive note. the best way to do that is to take forward steps in my journey. the dilemma i face now is what lsat prep course to take. you've got your princeton reviews, your kaplans, your testmasters, and plenty of other test prep courses and study aids. i could base my decision on cost or testimonials. but i'm a little weary of testimonials because they could be written by some test-taking genius who just had jitters during the diagnostic exam, only to score off the charts during the actual exam. i could also save myself over $1,000 and study on my own. however, since i haven't made any effort to do that in years past, there's no sense in thinking i'll change overnight. i'm a pretty cheap thrifty individual, so investing 4 digits of my hard earned money in a test prep course would give me the motivation to buckle down and study. but damn! do you know what i could do with that money?!?!? that thousand dollar prep curse only adds to the astronomical costs of applying to law school. there's testing fees, lsdas fees, application fees, and lets not even take into consideration the cost of tuition if i even make it that far. i swear the more i think about the cost of just applying to law school, the more turned off i get! this might be why i have my sights on getting into [insert cheapest law school here].

some other major obstacles i face are writing that dreaded personal statement and bribing finding a few people to write convincing letters of recommendation for me. i've targeted 4 people so far. two are definites, while the others may need time to remember who in the hell i am and how i know them. the personal statement is going to give me the most trouble. i honestly would rather simultaneously receive a root canal and pap smear while listening to david hasselhoff "sing" (not rap) random public enemy songs, than to sit down and write a personal statement. i know it's generally seen as a writing sample, but it also helps to convince some panel of admissions officers why they should grant me the privilege of getting into debt up to my eyeballs attending their school. this is going to be the real test to see how serious i am about my goals. if i were really that put off, i'd simply apply to a grad school program that only requires an application, transcript, and a standardized test score. but that's not what i want. i've set my goals, and i'm going to finally work towards accomplishing them.

typing this post is very difficult for me despite the cynical (and witty IMO) remarks. it's one thing to just think about things you want to do in life, but to make the effort to actually write them down is the first step into bringing those ideas into fruition. written goals are more binding than thoughts in your head. i now have to hold myself accountable as days go by and deadlines approach. and not only that, but once you share your goals with others (that means YOU), you are bound to those goals even more. i, for one, absolutely hate to have someone bring up something i said i was going to do long ago. this usually happens at family gatherings which i have come to loathe in recent years. "dareal/alex...what do you plan to do with your life"..."i thought you said you were going to school [insert any year after my college graduation]?"..."so how long before you go back to school"..."don't sit out too long, you'll never go back." what bothers me even more, is not having anyone in my family with more years of education than me. not one possible mentor. now when it comes to examples of people i don't want to be like, there are plenty of them around. well, i'm off to go write out a check that's sure to give me heartburn when it's posted on my account.