I'm in law school and I'm doing fairly well. But assuming costs and my living situation stay relatively the same over the next couple years, I will have about $80,000 in student loan debt when I graduate. Right now I'm in the first semester and I have about $12,000 of debt so far. Before law school I was debt free and had a $10,000 emergency fund, but after trying and failing for a few years to find a "better" job with a higher salary, I decided the only way to do that would be to go back to school.
I don't dislike law school. I find the material challenging and engaging, and I like my peers. But I don't want to go $80,000 in debt just to get a job that pays well but requires me to wear a suit everyday and work 80-hour weeks.
The more I think about, the job I had before this was perfect. It was a small but successful and reputable law firm. We took on challenging, high-profile cases and represented regular people, not corporations. My office was two blocks from my apartment, so I could walk every day. All of my insurance was paid for and there were tons of great benefits, plus really good bonuses when we won or settled cases. The office was casual, so I could wear my "uniform" of comfortable jeans and a t-shirt everyday. In sum, it was a wonderful job: great culture, great people, great benefits, great work. I have a low cost of living so even though I didn't make a very high salary, I still had about $1,000 left over each month after all my expenses.
So why did I leave? Good question. Because I was convinced that I wasn't "successful" if I was just a lowly clerk. I'm smart enough to be a good lawyer so everyone always assumed that I would do something like that, i.e., a good job with a good salary. But my happiest days were the months leading up to me leaving that job. This sub is for simple living, and I had a simple but awesome life. I would get up in the morning, walk to work, leave work around 5:00 and walk home or go to the park across the street for a stroll, then spend the rest of the evening reading a book. During the summer I would walk to the park for Shakespeare in the Park. This past summer I took my grandmother to Disney World for a week, paid with cash that I had saved up. It was literally perfect. But my desire for "more," whatever that means, clouded my vision and prevented me from seeing that my life was as close to perfect as it could get. My job was rewarding but not stressful, had some variety, I never had to work more than 40 hours a week, and the rest of my time was mine to do whatever I wanted: reading, playing soccer, volunteering, etc.
So now I'm stuck here more or less wishing I'd just kept everything the same, kept it simple. I don't even know what my question is, really. I just needed to vent I guess.
Submitted December 06, 2019 at 07:14PM by Birdmeistr370 https://ift.tt/33VIHoL
