The Dirt Field

When I first left law school last September, I did so with the unwavering intention of returning this upcoming fall. It’s law school, I reasoned, and it’s been my dream and my sole motivation for years now.

Unfortunately, I then remembered that it sucked.

I have since decided that I will not being going to law school anymore. There are a number of boring logistical reasons as to why law school is just not practical at this point, but the biggest reason is that I just don’t think I will be happy as a lawyer. I’d have to wear nylons everyday, and that just does not work for me. They make my feet sweat.

All kidding aside, I’ve come to the realization that I want things out of life that being a lawyer can’t provide. When I was younger, I wanted to be a marine biologist or a divemaster or a food critic. I wanted to be out in the world, seeing and doing and trying exciting things. I also wanted to be a garbageman, but sometimes my judgment was a little off.

The point being that I never wanted to work at a desk and I never wanted to do something that would consume my life with long hours, crushing stress, and endless paperwork. I had thought that being a lawyer would enable me to get up and argue in court like Elle Woods in Legally Blonde, but law school showed me that my days would also be peppered with reading the driest books in print and writing legal documents that could bore a sloth to death.

That’s not what I want to do when I grow up.

The problem is finding what I want to do with my life now. I still want to be all of those same exciting things (maybe not the Waste Disposal Engineer), but I have no clue as to how to get there. My marketing degree will not exactly help me land a job describing the ideal risotto or collecting shrimp off a deep sea reef. And I currently work in government contracts, which provides excellent experience in the following fields:

1. Government contracts

Needless to say, I’m at a loss. I would like to go back to school and study something that will help me start a new career, but I have no clue as to where to begin. I mentioned to a friend that I was considering studying evolutionary biology, to which he asked exactly what I planned to do with that degree. It’s like a degree in philosophy; great to know, but what are you going to do? Be a philosopher?

At this point, I’ve got a decent job that offers some stability, so I’m not really in a rush to drop everything and start over. I already did that once in the past year anyways, and I’ve already used my Free To Sit At Home All Day Eating And Not Showering For Weeks On End pass. But I need some sort of plan for my future, because at this point, like my good friend Mary said, I wake up and feel doom. And that’s just not a good way to start the day.