Day 46: More Career Moves

As a follow up to yesterday's post about professions and career choices I wanted to share what my next steps professionally will not include. I will not be attending Law School in September. Everybody take a sigh of relief, just like I did when I didn't have to send the tuition check this week!

So for those of you who didn't know, I applied to Law School some months back. I started the application process back in October of 2009. Studying for the LSAT (Law School Admissions Test), compiling school transcripts some 25 years old, and collecting letters of recommendation. Wow, do you feel old when you start applying to learning institutions for yourself (not your kids) when you have been out of the game for so many years!

In addition to always wanting to study law, I applied with my winggal Rebecca Simon. Rebecca had already completed a year of law school, but had to suspended her studies to attend to family obligations. Unfortunately she lost those credits and has to retake the entire first year. But together we thought, we could do this -- after you run a political campaign in Los Angeles you are fearless and nothing seems too daunting of a task. So we applied together. Of course we are in different points in our lives.

While I did not get accepted to my first choice school, I was accepted at other local institutions. The problem is none of them offered the schedule I need nor the opportunity to go with Rebecca. In addition, there was the tuition thing! With three children to put through college over the next 10 years, I really needed to soul search about this expenditure.

Were there other ways that I could continue being an advocate for children and the causes near and dear to me without the law degree? Yes of course. Can I continue to lobby elected officials to see change in the arenas I care about without a law degree? Yes of course. So could I really justify the expense of law school versus my children's education? The answer is no, I can't.

Brian and I made a goal with each other that if at all possible we wanted to fund all three of our boys college educations so that they could graduate with little or no debt. I feel an obligation to this goal we set many moons ago when we were building our family.

Even with Brandon's baseball scholarship, sending him to a private high ranking university out of State is an enormous expense for our family. And I know we've got two more who will be shuffling off in 3 years. So the combination of not getting into the perfect school for my agenda, coupled with the expense, I have decided to place on hold my law school education. I say hold because I'm not saying I will never go, I'm just sayin' I'm not starting this year.

At first I was very disappointed, then I realized I was relieved. Relived about the money part, but also about the brain energy part. At 49, with a full house and active life, I was nervous about how my brain cells would absorb so much new material. While I know I could have done the work, the question was, at what cost? What cost to my family, my checkbook, and my health.

So now that this decision has been made, I can pursue other opportunities that have been presented which I had put on hold pending the law school decision. First up is to continue working on my nerve pain, continue running to accomplish my goal of completing a marathon next year, and continue building my Birthday Blog.

What is great about this story is that I went for it. Many of us hit a certain age and believe that we are "too old" to do fill in the blank... and the truth is you are not. Yes, it's more challenging pursuing difficult things the older we get and the more complicated our lives become, but who doesn't love a damn good challenge. I know I do and I am proud that I went through the process.

And I gotta say, I am relieved that I won't be pouring over textbooks, but rather pouring more wine for the next 4 years!