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| | | My recap -- In Sections 1-3 you describe the false thought process that you used to justify the decision to go to law school, in Sections 4 and 5 you describe the real thought process that led you to law school, and in Section 6 to talk about how your awareness of your real reasons are going to influence your short-term career decision-making.
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Update (5/18) - Andrew, I'm adding my rewrite to the end of this page. So, my original comments are in BLUE . My rewrite and related comments are in GREEN. Enjoy. - Saswat
| | | THE SELF-DECEPTION ALL-STAR | | | | |
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THE SELF-DECEPTION ALL-STAR (RE-WRITE)
1. The Adviser
Unlike most graduates of the University of Michigan, I wanted to live and work in Michigan for the rest of my life. I visited a university career adviser during my senior year, who informed me that, given my history degree and the current economic recession, my most realistic options for staying in the state were learning a trade or going back to school.
2. The Rational Man
A trade? Initially, I shuddered at the thought, but that's not how The Rational Man would respond. The Rational Man would gather the data, and weigh the positives and negatives of any career option before rejecting it out of hand. And I was the Rational Man, wasn’t I? So, I created an Excel spreadsheet to "rationally" compare a tradesman's life, with that of an advanced degree holder. My spreadsheet was seemingly thorough - I had columns for the salaries and job stability of various professions. But that wasn't all. The rational man would also weigh his personal happiness along with hard statistics – so, I created a column called “fulfillment potential." My spreadsheet listed law school, separated and highlighted, up at the top. Two rows lower was a list of fifteen industrial occupations.
The Money
Average salaries for industrial jobs ranged from $35K-$60K, which would be enough to live off of in Michigan. But, on the other hand, a law school degree would allow me get a "firm job," and NALP reported that firms were paying first year associates over 100K per year. I put "100K" in the "salary" column for law school.
The Social Utility
There were many selfless and "rational" reasons to pick law school over a trade (or so I thought). Lawyers truly help people and advance the state of society, while plumbers...unclog toilets. Also, society would benefit from the utilization of my high intelligence if I were to become a lawyer, but not if I were to become a plumber. Therefore, by going to law school I would ultimately be efficiently benefiting society. I gave law school the top score under “fulfillment" for these reasons. At last, I had arrived at my choice like The Rational Man I was. Or so I thought.
3. The Truly Rational Man
My conclusions came up lame. I should have known this at the time.
The Money in Earnest | | | | |
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> | Even with a $100K+ firm job after school, a legal education is a poor financial investment for nearly all applicants, given the amount of debt and the financial opportunity-cost of attendance, among other things. Also, there was no guarantee that I would be one of the "lucky few" that earned this kind of money – most graduating lawyers actually make much less. When comparing my potential earning power to the risk incurred, law school was actually the clear loser compared to a professional trade.
The Social Utility in Earnest
The idea that I had a duty to society to attend law school because I was “too smart to not go” was narcissism gone wild. My colleges grades and aptitude test scores, while impressive, were obviously imperfect measures of intelligence. Despite my supposed "rational" thought processes, I had simply assumed that a lawyer provides more utility to society than a plumber. But, is a good plumber really worth less to society than a good attorney? Even if true, was there any reason to think that I would make a good attorney? Rather than attempt to answer these questions, I ignored them. I got in to Columbia Law School, so I went.
4. Eureka
I read the following words a week ago:
"Labour comes to be associated in men's habits of thought with weakness and subjection to a master. It is therefore a mark of inferiority, and therefore comes to be accounted unworthy of man in his best estate. By virtue of this tradition labour is felt to be debasing, and this tradition has never died out."
I had found it.
It didn't matter what being an electrician versus a lawyer was truly about in terms of money, societal value, or any other exclusively "rational" metric. I wanted to be an attorney because the profession represented "success" in my mind's eye (maybe it had something to do with those fancy glass doors). Though I am child from an auto-working family, or maybe for that very reason, professions like plumbing, construction, and industrial work represented repugnant careers of futility and toil.
Despite my attempts to be rational, I evaluated prospective professions not by their rational merits, but rather by their (irrational) outward appearance. "Prestige" and "appearance of success" should have been only one small factor of my analysis, but, in reality, they were the only considerations. I "stacked the deck" through self-deception in order to make going to law school seem like the rational best choice. Rather than act rationally, I reverted to anthropological needs by taking the bait and swallowing the hook.
5. The Crossroads
So now what? I must first decide whether or not to come back based, this time, on a truly rational decision. I’ll be distracted by a legal job this summer, but cannot lose sight of this important, and life-altering, decision. I won’t be led by the nose to the profession that projects strength if it actually makes me weaker in the end. If I’m not here next fall, I might be holding a plunger.
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