William Mitchell it is...

I will be attending William Mitchell College of Law next year.

I've decided and I am really happy with that decision. After my next paycheck on Friday, I'm gonna write out the check for the deposit and wait. And wait.

I mean, there's a lot that has to happen between now and then--moving up to St. Paul, Dinah getting a job, subletting (or reletting) our apartment, me maybe getting a new lap top, saving up some money just in case--but mostly it feels like I'm just biding my time until I get to start going to classes.

Luckily for me, I'm really bad at waiting. I mean, I'm not gonna pull my hair out or anything, but I am filled with no small amount anxiety (probably stemming from the fact that there's no real form or order to the way any of the above-mentioned things that need to happen are actually going to happen). Still. It already feels better knowing I know where I'm going and that it's a firm decision and not a most-likely or a maybe.

I am going to William Mitchell.

Also lucky for me that this is the beautiful gray season in the midwest that inspires all kinds of joy and happy feeling. yay. Still though, the weather here has been rather amazing until today's snow. Most of the rest of the snow we got this winter has melted away and this weekend it even felt like spring, if only for a fleeting moment.

Weather seems to be the thing that most people mention about St. Paul or Minnesota. It's gonna be cold and snowy and winter will last 8 weeks longer than it does here. And they are probably right. But I'm hoping there will be more sun there, which is a dodgy hope at best. But whatever. I've seen Minneapolis in the winter and in the summer and I think it's not gonna be so bad.

And next year, I'll be too busy at law school to care too much about the weather.

Countdown to St. Paul...

I went to a law school open house earlier this year and something one of the current students said to the group of would-be students has stuck with me. She said, "If there's something you really want to do, do it before you get to law school, because you won't have time to do anything but read once you get here."
Fair enough. That's what I want out of law school, a challenge and good preparation. And while I'm fairly certain I've made my decision about where I go, I have no idea what to do with the time I have left before I get there. I mean, I am going to continue to work, of course, so it's not like I have hours of free time to fill or anything. But the rest of the time. I've spent a lot of time filling out applications, writing and editing essays, worrying, looking at viewbooks and thinking about the what the right place for me is. Now, I am almost done with that. And I have time to do something else.
So, now my question is what do I do?
I do have some goals going into law school. First, I want to drop a little more weight, so that when I inevitably start to feel stressy and eat my feelings, I'll have a little give before I need to feel bad about myself. Second, I'd like to do some writing--including the Gumshoe, which I will probably want to have in some form of stasis before law school. I'm thinking I may publish some of my short stories here, but we'll see if I really want to do that. Then, of course, there's the moving, subletting our apartment and that kind of stuff.
I think these are attainable goals. Nothing earth shattering, which I think is what worries me. I don't feel this particular need to get too prepared for law school. I want to read a couple books on the law and economics, but other than that, I'm not sure there's too much else I can do. Just keep counting down the time and try to keep myself busy.
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So, yeah, I've pretty much made my decision about which law school and I've started to get everything ready for them. I'll send in my deposit later this month and that will be that. As anxious as I am about how I will now fill my time, while waiting for school to start and for the move to happen, I am really excited.
It's hard to quantify it, because it still feels so far away that it might all fall apart somehow*. But, Dinah and I are planning on going to an admitted students weekend in March and I am really excited about that. I imagine we'll probably spend some of the time looking around the neighborhood we plan to be in and after that I will be able to visualize it a lot easier. So, let's count this down.

*The zombies could attack anytime.

Well, now we know....

Mark McGwire used steroids.

Most of you aren't probably surprised. I was a little surprised, but not all that much. I had been working under the assumption that Big Mac had only used Andro, which he admited to way back when, and which I didn't really think of as cheating.

But, I guess not much changes in the way I view him. He did cheat and violate the law, I now know, but he was still the best slugger of his time. I think he deserves to be in the Hall of Fame (as does Bonds), but with some sort of notation that his time was one of steroid use and cheating and that he was suspected and admitted of cheating.

For all that though, I am a little more disheartened than I thought I would be.

Of bruised egos and decisions being made

I did not get into the University of Minnesota Law School. It's an elite school and because of my not-so-amazing grades at Grinnell and my strong, but not strong enough showing on the LSAT (both below their medians), I thought that would mean I would get in and be given not a lot of financial aid. So, I was pretty sure my Law School choices would come from the three schools who did let me in, but I wasn't prepared to not get in at all. I mean, there was a creeping notion in the back of my mind, but I did little to entertain it.

I've been trying to figure out what this means. Clearly it doesn't mean I can't or won't become an excellent attorney. It may make things a little harder because I won't have the opportunity to go to the best thought-of law school in the area, but, like I said, I wasn't thinking they were gonna give me the financial aid the other schools did, so I won't be as burdened by loans and payments and such when I get out, so I can take a job that I want and may be better suited to my skills as opposed to one I need. So, I think from that point of view this isn't a big blow.

It really comes down to the fact that I think they don't think I'm as good as the people they've let in and the fact that they turned me down. I understand they can only make judgments based on the numbers and application materials, and that no one is all that sure about whether the numbers are the overall guiding force or whether the other stuff helps or hurts you all that much. And I have to concede my numbers are not up to their high standards. I just thought everything else I have done, the experience I have and the writing ability I think I have, would put me in contention. And the joys of not knowing is that I can think it did. I can imagine one admission counselor fighting for me, before having to concede, that yeah, there probably are better candidates. Who knows? That might be what happened.

It's all academic at this point though. And really Minnesota probably wasn't going to be that much of an option for me. So, it's all about my ego.

I know what my choices are and hopefully in the next couple of weeks I will talk to people at each of the schools and get all the details I need to make my decision. And that's exciting.

I still have three very good schools to choose from and that makes me extremely lucky. It does dissappoint me that I won't be a Golden Gopher and that I won't be able to participate in their annual musical. But that's okay. I'll get my start in the coffee houses and grtty off broadway scene in St. Paul (where all my choices reside).