On September 26 of this year, I'll be taking the LSAT. 59 days, 22 hours from this moment, I'll be locked in a room with a bunch of other people on a Saturday morning to test my ability to do some stuff that is in some way related to being an attorney. It doesn't do me any good to dwell on the question of what doing logic games has to do with taking a deposition, but I've worked in law firms for a while, and I have yet to hear an attorney complaining because he chose the wrong diagram type to use on the multiple sequencing question his client needed done in 35 minutes. I'm just putting it out there.
This is where my lack of a job becomes a plus, because I can now study pretty much everyday and not get overwhelmed with my schoolwork and my internship*. For the last couple weeks I've been going to the library for a couple hours a day (more on Friday and Saturday when there's no internship) and going through study books and doing practice tests. And my score has improved. It's not quite at the goal I set, but it now seems attainable. Which is good.
Still, though. The LSAT is hitting me in a lot of ways I didn't think it would. I used to be really good at standardized tests. I didn't really study for the SAT or the ACT. I just kind of showed up and took them. And I didn't blow them away or anything, but I did pretty well. Well enough to go to a really good school, anyway. Intellectually, I knew the LSAT would be tougher than those two, but I thought it would all come back to me. It has and it hasn't. That test-taking mindset is coming back, but that confidence still isn't there. Which I think is because I feel like there's more riding on this test than on either of those two. I knew I would go to college somewhere good. It didn't seem like a possibility that I would fail. Now, it's different. I don't think it's a big possibility that I'll stumble and mess up the test so badly that no school will have me, but it's there. And truthfully, I want to go somewhere really good. If I have to go somewhere that's of lesser regard, I'll figure it out, but really I want to go to a good law school.
But it's not just that I want to go somewhere good that makes the test more worrisome than the college entrance exams. It's also that I finally figured it out. I finally figured out what I want to do. I mean, I haven't nailed down what area of law, but I've ruled some out**. And I know I don't deserve a good score just because I've figured out at almost 32 years of age what I want to do with my life, but it's been such an odd journey for me. And to finally be able to figure out where I want to go, it's frightening to think it could be elusive because I don't read as fast as others. Or because I don't know which order the speakers at Seneca Falls should go in.***
It isn't really helping that I can get obsessed with numbers. It's partially an obsessiveness that I was born with, but it's been nurtured by a life-long love of baseball. I've spent summers wondering if a pitcher could to get their ERA under 3.00 or if a batter could notch a batting average over .300. And I remember when I in London a flatmate would leave me notes about Mark McGwire's homerun chase****. I just get obsessed with numbers. So, trying to get that magic number for the LSAT is feeding into that obsession. And it's probably not good. I mean, ultimatley, five or six years from now, that number is not going to mean that much. It's gonna be a meaningless number. I mean, numbers only represent what we let them. Right now, this number represents my future. It represents where I could be. What path I could take. And that's why I'm studying everyday and the library on Lincoln and Belmont.
******
I just set up a couple law school visits in Minneapolis. That feels good.
*Note. I have only three classes left and I've done enough hours to be done with my internship. The attorney I'm working for is letting me stick around until I find something, which is cool.
**Note2. Sorry Maritime and Admiralty law. It's not you. It's.....no. It's you.
***Note3. One of the logic games I worked yesterday was about the order the speakers must go in. Apparently, Elizabeth Cady Stanton cannot speak before or after Frederick Douglas. And if Lucretia Mott goes second then Susan B. Anthony must speak fifth. I'm sure these great people would all be comforted to know that they are making gains in the all important minutae of LSAT prep tests.
****Note4. Seriously, everyone. Let him into the Hall of Fame. He didn't do anything illegal. Ethically problematic, maybe. But there are plenty of gents in the Hall whose indiscretions were a lot more dubious than taking over the counter supplements. We're not talking about going to shady doctors who are charging thousands of dollars for their "treatment" or evading federal authorities. We're talking about something he got at a nutrition store from some dude who makes $6/hr. The hardest thing he had to evade was the child-proof cap. And this Hank Aaron talk of letting Pete Rose in and keeping the steroids guys out, is making me furious. Seriously? Mr. Aaron, I respect you and all you've accomplished, but your protests about steroids and other supplements ring a little false after watching you yukking it up with Barry Bonds (who did involve himself in illegal activities, by the way) in Pepsi commercials.
But, let's look at Mr. Aaron's argument. Pete Rose bet on baseball. That's always been the BIG NUMBER 1 DO-NOT for baseball. He bet on his team when he had the ability to affect the outcome of games. Baseball is a competition. And he would have us punish people, who in an effort to be competitive, or to gain a competitive edge, took steroids. These people wanted to compete. They wanted to win. Or they wanted the money that came from being successful at their chosen craft. They didn't do it ethically, and often did it illegally, but at least they were doing it because they wanted to play harder and do better. Rose, on the other hand, he was not looking for a competitive edge. He was the manager of a team, and he had a responsibility to put that team in a position to win every night. He has a fiduciary duty to his players and to his organization. He owes them loyalty and his best judgment. But if he's got other interests--if he's looking for cash, then can he honestly say he is not putting that interest above the interest of a player who needs a day off or pitcher who probably shouldn't go out for another inning? And I know he claims he never bet on his team to lose. But, I simply don't believe him.
The difference between the two situations is that Rose was engaging in a situation where he was threatening the basic premise of the game: that it is a competition.
McGwire, Bonds, Sosa, Clemens and all those guys who did or did not use whatever. They were trying to gain an advantage. To make the game competitive. And while it can be argued they were making the game less competitive in doing so, I think I've seen enough evidence to say that so many people were using performance enhancers that it's hard to argue an advantage existed. The only thing they threatened were the numbers. Like Aaron's 756. People argue the numbers meaningless. That's the thing. They always were meaningless. They're numbers. They only represent what we let them represent. And Aaron's remarkable journey to 756 is not now meaningless because Bonds took a more dubious path to a higher number. In fact, I would argue it's more meaningful. But. Yes, Mr. Aaron, your name is no longer the first one in the book. And I can understand why that would piss you off.
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