Career Change?

I really love my job. I love teaching college students--traditional and nontraditional. I love talking about literature and advocating my liberal feminist agenda. I don't love grading papers, but I really love (most of) my colleagues and (most of) my students and the fact that I have to sit down and read novels and it's "work."

The thing is, I almost went to law school.

I had a total freak out my senior year of college. I was graduating with a business degree, but I loathed my business classes and had chosen my major because I didn't know what else to do with my life (Terrible choice! If you don't know what to do with your life, AT LEAST do yourself a favor and choose a major in the humanities). I talked with a friend who'd graduated a couple years before me with a business degree and he was working in a cubicle. He tried to sell me on it (and he's since become very successful doing something business-y, I think), but it sounded TERRIBLE to me. I went to a career fair at Mizzou and I remember talking to the nicest person at the Edward Jones table who was telling me that I could be a financial advisor and I felt like I was circling the innermost circle of hell. Like all my instincts were screaming RUN, but I just kept smiling and nodding and clutching my resume in my sweaty hands.

I thought for a long time (probably about three weeks in undergraduate time) about what I wanted to do. My favorite classes were literature (Shakespeare) and political science. It was probably because they were the two best professors I had, but still. The classes were great. So, naturally, I decided I should either go to law school or graduate school for English literature. Both professors were really encouraging.

And I couldn't decide.

Instead of just choosing one, I studied for both the GRE, the subject GRE in English literature, and the LSAT. I made myself crazy. (And the guy I was sort-of-but-not-really-dating at the time didn't help). I took all three exams between October and December of my senior year of college, and I basically cut back on eating and sleeping in order to make that happen. Things I did not cut back on: partying and going to Wal-Mart in the middle of the night. Which begs the question: WHY do we let 21-year-olds make big decisions?

Also, 9/11 happened my senior year of college, and it completely altered my mindset about the future. I wanted to do something that mattered, but also something that I actually, genuinely cared about--not just something that was easy for me to get good grades in. It was like it had just occurred to me for the first time that my life could get cut short without warning, and I wanted to do make the most of it in the meantime. Also, I think I was scared of graduating and being a "real" adult. (Haha, if only I knew now that this is a concept that still eludes me at times--except when ordering salad at the deli counter, obviously.)

I actually scored better on the LSAT than I did on the GRE, which made me lean strongly toward going to law school (Look! I'm already good at this!) but my parents were not encouraging about the idea of me becoming a lawyer (seriously, like when I reflect on it, I'm kind of surprised at how discouraging they actually were... the phrase "sell your soul" literally came into the conversation), and I really had no idea what I would want to do with a law degree. Did I want to be a public defender? A prosecutor? A divorce attorney? How do I sign up to be Elle Woods? Could I be a law professor? Would I rather be an English professor? In the end, I got accepted to a few pretty good law programs and a couple of not too bad literature programs. I visited all of them, and I decided to do a PhD in literature because the financial aid package was better. (The potential return on investment was actually MUCH WORSE, but I was an idiotic 21-year-old, so such practicalities didn't really cross my mind.) Also I didn't really "decide" so much as defer law school for a year because that's how uncertain I was and I feared I would change my mind.

I'm not sure what made me stick with graduate school, honestly, because my first year was basically horrible. I didn't do that well. I felt like a total imposter. I was convinced that everyone else in my class was better prepared and smarter than I was. But maybe it was a case of the devil you know? Or a perverse determination to stay the course and prove to myself that I could do this even though it was the first time in my life that school didn't feel easy.

Anyway, I'm not exactly sorry that I made the choice I made. As I said, I mostly love my job and an academic lifestyle suits me in so many ways, and I'd rather read a novel than do pretty much anything else except hug my kids. I'm especially grateful for the flexibility and the autonomy of my job--those things are invaluable in my mind.

But, sometimes I think about what I'd do if I were to do it over and I had to do it differently. I like to imagine that I would have gone to law school and found my footing in criminal law (because civil law seems super boring to me). Then I would have gotten involved in the innocence project and gone to work for the Southern Poverty Law Center or something similar. I could write books about my work and then maybe teach law students.

Would I really want to do this?

Well, I think I'd be capable of doing it. Like, I could be good at it. And I think it's such important work, but I'm not sure I'm really best-suited for it. I imagine that such work requires really long hours, and reading boring stuff, and it probably also demands an enormous emotional investment, or an enormous amount of energy devoted to NOT getting emotionally invested.

I hate reading boring documents, and also the literal life-or-death stuff is undoubtedly way more stressful than the students who merely think their GPA is life-or-death, so I think that's something I'd really struggle with.

But still... my fascination with criminal law cases, with false convictions and unjust incarcerations, with the school to prison pipeline... sometimes I wish that I could do something more concrete with my concerns and my sense of injustice. (Besides talk about with literature students... we occasionally get off on a tangent.)

So... I'm curious. If you were to go back to school and drastically change careers, what would you do? Or how and why did you decide to do what you did? Can you imagine yourself doing something else?