...And the living is easy. Or so the song goes.
I guess it's true, though. I spend my days, 8 to 3, sitting in an office with a computer and telephone. Most of the time is spent on Facebook or playing pointless games or catching up on all that reading lost over freshman year. Plus, the weekly paycheck is not a bad reminder that things could be much worse.
I'm also taking the time to really try and figure out what I want to do with life. I entered college determined to be the 5% that never changes their mind about what they want to do. Entering with two majors in English and Secondary Education was the first step in my goal of becoming a high school English teacher. I had loved reading since a young age and wanted to share that with future generations. It all changed over the summer between senior high school year and move-in day of freshman year.
I spent the summer watching every episode of Law and Order: Special Victims Unit. I had never really been into the crime genre until reading a series of books dealing with it and became hooked. Knowing that my weight, which is less-than-ideal for most people, would prohibit me from taking the Police Academy test and passing, I focused on the other half of the title, the 'order' part of things. Alex Cabot become my goal. I wanted to fight for the proverbial "good guys" with my perfectly groomed blonde hair and impeciable lawyer fashion. While I lack the blonde locks from my childhood and haven't quite gotten my skirts and tailored jackets together, the prosecutors are still what I aim to become.
And before anyone points out that life as an assistant district attorney is nothing like what is portrayed on television, I realized that a while ago from simply researching.
Instead of looking for good schools to get a Masters in English, I've been researching law schools. Instead of reading up on the Classics that every good English major should know inside and out, I thumb through "Criminal Law in a Nutshell."
The hardest part is trying to convince my family that I am serious about considering law school. Every time my sister catches me looking into New York Law School or NYU, she has to comment that it won't matter, that I'm going to be an English teacher, not a lawyer. My mother found out when she joined Facebook and saw that, in my profile, I had said I was considering becoming a prosecutor. Somehow, I get the feeling that they don't think I can do it or that I'm blindly following a friend who is also planning on going into law. I wish I could tell them I'm not. I feel a genuine passion for this and even though I still plan on double majoring in both English (which I've heard is a good undergrad degree to start law school with) and Secondary Education (a fall back if anything else), I have added the minors of Political Science and Writing and Rhetoric and I'm currently toying with the idea of a third minor in Communications.
I've been looking for internships for my junior or senior year. Most of them are through the Washington Center in D.C. There's placements in NCIS, the US Marshal Service, the Department of Justice, and the Attorney General's office. When I bring these up with my mother, she seems skeptical about their significance to education and how it would help me become a better teacher. It's as if she doesn't think I am serious about all this when I really want to scream it from the mountaintop that this is the course I want to take in life. I just don't understand why some people are so unsupportive of my goal in life, as uncertain and unlike the person they know it is. Yes, I started as a high school English teacher, but things have changed and what I really want to spend my life doing is standing in front of twelve jurors and argue my case.
