(no subject)

[vicarz]

Revelation: I now understand why I'm performing the way I am.
Somehow I lost perspective of the choices I was making. Every week I make sure that I get my studying done, but I'm doing the bare minimum to get by. I read the material and brief all the cases. That's it. I attend class and take notes there. At the end of the semester, I go into a marathon of consolidating the entire semester into an outline and cramming for the exam. I feel as though I don't have time for anything else. That's not true.

I choose to go to the gym. I choose to go out with my friends. I choose to attend parties and clubs. I choose to participate in student groups. I feel constrained because I can do so little of those activities, but the fact that I do them at all is a choice. The fact that I don't drop out of law school is a choice. If I studied more, worked less, and played less, I'd do better in law school. Somehow I was forgetting that life outside that little arena was a choice.

With that, I'm sticking with these choices. I would like to do better in school, but I choose to continue to try and balance multiple interests with the obligations of study.

I have other choices to make. I have to remember that they are choices, and if they seem overwhelming of difficult - I should keep perspective not only of the choice, but the series of choices that I made before I wound up at each crossroad. Each choice may be important, but the process is far more important than any one choice.

Comments

[anarcha.livejournal.com]

You and I think more and more alike everyday.

But also remember that there can be more than one "right" choice. I don't see working your ass off at the expense of your social life as either more or less laudable than another choice. Different people are happy with different balances of short-term (fun) and long-run (work) achievement.

But again, I agree that it's very important for people to acknowledge that the fact that others have other options available to them is BECAUSE others have made other choices.

Generally, it's the same people that criticize me for working too hard who also tell me that I'm "lucky" for pulling the income I do.

[vicar.livejournal.com]

The comment I loathed the most was after the government furlough, when a coworker was complaining about his late fees because he lives paycheck to paycheck. He asked how I was, and I stated that because I live beneath my means I had a buffer and wasn't hurt by it. He said "Oh, well I guess some of us got it like that." I explained in great detail that was we MADE THE SAME AMOUNT OF MONEY that I did not have it like that, rather I made it like this. Fucker (a friend, but that really pissed me off).

Luck. That is another really annoying thing to throw at someone who works hard and sacrifices much. There is that danger of taking full credit for your accomplishments and ignoring the advantages you were born with, but I know in your case you're very open about how you started. Today however, you're my poster child for why I don't want to practice big-firm law. I envy your income not at all because I know what it takes.

More alike? Scary. What's doing that, the twisting of law study or just life experience? Or is it DC tap water?

More than one right choice is a godo thing to remember. I've been accused of saying one thing and doing another, for I think I choose my friends over money and career. However, I can have both - and my friends can wait a while when I need to study, while the studying is on a very strict schedule.

I try to choose multiple paths simultaneously. You'd think I could do the splits...