Getting Started

I've long been wanting to start an anonymous blog, because I don't want to be overly opinionated or political and alienate my conservative friends and family members. Now that I am beginning the journey to law student-hood, I feel like perhaps I can kill two birds with one stone. I am hoping to use this blog as both a blawg and a forum for spouting off my various opinions and rants.

Deciding to go to law school was a decision I made a few years ago. I was in a great relationship with an amazing guy, who was also preparing to apply to graduate school. When he was not accepted to his choice of schools, and highly encouraged to reapply the following year, I made the decision to wait a year. I wasn't thrilled with the schools I had chosen to apply to, so this felt like a good decision.

Life intervened at that point and I found myself getting married and (much to my surprise and delight) having a baby girl. My husband got a fantastic job in medical research, and it looked like we were going to be able to stay in Home State City and not have to go on to higher schooling. I think we made this decision based on our fear of relocating with a new baby, on top of the fear of law school itself. My husband had decided to either continue on with his career path or stay home with our daughter while I went on to school, so when the job started to look shaky we decided perhaps we ought to make a plan.

So, I began the process all over again. I applied to better schools this time, having finished my undergrad with fairly high grades in the last few semesters and finding my uGPA bumped up a bit once LSAC got the update. For those considering law school, a friendly word of advice: if you do poorly in a course and it is not required for you to graduate, DO NOT RETAKE IT. Out of principal I retook a handful of classes in which I had done poorly. I had taken them because they seemed interesting, but they were extremely challenging and my scores wrecked my GPA. My university's policy was to remove the bad grade and replace it with the better, new grade. So I retook the courses and busted my ass to earn A's. BIG WASTE OF TIME. LSAC just counts both scores toward your uGPA, so you may as well save yourself some aggravation and just take a different class for the same credit hours that you know you can score well in.

I applied VERY early this time. Like, September 1 to most schools and October 1 to others, solely because some schools didn't have the applications up that early. This is great for rolling admissions, but wreaks havoc on your nerves. Some schools don't start reviewing applications until spring, so you sit and wait for six months. It's rough.

That's where I am at right now. I applied to 7 schools, 3 of which have replied with an offer of admission. Willamette University sent me a scholarship offer of about 50%, and I'm still waiting to hear back about the other 4 schools. Most of the schools do not send scholarship information until financial aid packages go out. So this adds to my nerves because I would love to have a decision made so I can begin planning our relocation, but I want to wait until I hear about other possible scholarships.

This was a lot of rambling for a first blog, but hopefully as I chill out things will get a little more coherent.