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On My (Very Likely) Giving Up the "Grand Manner"

Maybe it's time I finally accept that certain things, people, pursuits, goals, dreams and such just don't work for you. Just... don't. And that some things really just... do.

Where do I begin?

I know. I'll start with the easiest thing to rant about: school.

I'm at this impasse. I'm two weeks away from ending the semester and I'm facing finals and hand-destroying homeworks that must be passed in longhand.

And I've never been so un-motivated in my life.

Really. I'm really, really considering quitting law school. And I mean to just... not show up anymore.

And in so doing, giving up that outside shot to become Chief Justice, or to be ambassador of the country to England or France. I ought to stop daydreaming of driving that Ferrari, of owning that swanky flat in the city, of wining and dining women in posh restaurants or flying them around the world financed by my credit card and earnings as a high-powered attorney-of-law. I'll need to re-evaluate my power to get married and sending my kids to schools like Ateneo (and as of all the tuition raise talk at UP, that school looks tough too.) The mere IDEA of getting married looks trickier too.

I'm not happy here. I can run several reasons.

I gave up lots of opportunities to earn money straight out of college. Hell, some of those opportunities (editorial assistant, writing posts, ad agencies) from the people I've met (connections, fine) are what my peers would kill for. But I had to set them aside in favor of codals and cases.

I had to put aside the valuable time I once spent on getting/keeping fit. My health has hit a strange new low unheard of a year or even 2 years ago. I've always been overweight, but the past two years saw great improvement. I've lost all that work in two years in the first two months of law schooling. And it's not because of the pricey lunch-outs with classmates (because those were fun). I attribute it to lost sleep, to lost hours jogging, and, fine, the binges my blockmates indulge in that I share. And don't get me started on the blood-pressure spikes that classroom hours with profs create.

I've had to put away my draft notebooks and with them all those ideas for poems and stories that shan't ever see light of day. Hell, typing on blogs like this is the last bastion of my creativity. Already, I gave up applying for the Ateneo National workshop just to study my classes and earn a meager 2.0 in a Constitutional Law recitation and to fail the Persons midterms. I'm not growing artistically here. I'm growing only more and more sacrastic, more and more embittered.

Most painfully for me, is how my time is diverted from spending it with people I love. I think it doesn't need much extra explanation. Well. Maybe I'll only add about how many hours I've wasted on reading photocopies of these things, and it forced friends, relatives, and all other "loved ones" far, far into the background. I've made new friends and they're great. I've met several people who I can tell friends about with the famous "Hey... I met somebody" and they'd knowingly smile that familiar smile. But I'm not so dumb to think they'll ever replace the ones I've sacrificed a lot for over the years.

Hell, I don't even really get to go to Sunday mass or pray anymore. Really.

If anything, I've learned a few things here and there. Like how to survive high-pressure schooling the wrong way. Or how to cheat in tests and homeworks. Or how to flirt. Hmm. Not a good sign.

Yeah. I'm griping. But ultimately, I think it's not about being happy where you are, or taking pride in your situation. Sometimes you really can't because you know too little. Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger, commenting on how this rival soccer team manager boasted of having the best team in the world, said "Everybody things he has the prettiest wife at home." That's because we never see beyond our own punto de vista.

What would life be like away? What kind of work would a law school dropout (and Ateneo Creative Writing graduate) find?

I'll miss my friends. I'll miss Block D. I'll miss the funny moments we'd have trying to carve out a future in law. I'll have to live with never stomping around law library for that stupid Legal Bibliography homework (which, to this day, I CAN'T finish!) or never eating at Mommy's again. (Wait. No, maybe not that.) I'll need to deal with the piles of photocopied cases, the law books and the rest of the expenses my parents lovingly parted with to see me succeed in a world I never had planned to enter.

I don't regret applying and taking the test (because Lord knows what happened to me there. hehe). I just regret screwing around my personal priorities on what matters. I realize that I only wanted the glory, the stability of life, the G's. And that my original dream of Helping People got lost on the way. And that very dream can still be made real elsewhere.

I regret committing myself to that dream, knowing well what it'd take, but not knowing if it was the right dream for myself.

Granted. I'm learning a lot in law school and I've a lot more to learn too. But this? I dunno if I'm learning thing right things, at the right time.

Or, (which I personally hope to be true) that it wasn't a mistake. That, in some strange, only-God-knows way, my getting kicked out, or my dropping out, or my taking a leave, or whatever...

...all sort of opens something that I wouldn't ever have had without UP Law and law schooling "in the grand manner". (and if it's the case, it better be worth it.)

And I'm to decide whether it'll be my last two weeks and leave at the end of the sem. Or if I'll stick it till the end of the year, or, for that matter, stick as long as I'm capable of escaping the axe. Or if it's really goodbye as of right away.

Well. At the very least, I've made friends with 37 potential lawyers who can save my ass from jail someday. :p