Meathook Reality

And so, with a visit to the financial aid department, I have verified that the bills have been paid, which entitles me to a little sticker on my I.D. card. That’s a $14,000 sticker this term.

I tend to look at my long-term planning much the way that I used to navigate rapids while rafting the rivers of Southern Oregon. The least-energy path is not usually straight, but requires one to plan ahead and have the Kayak in the right place long before the rapid actually happens. There’s a lot of anticipation and fear – you can still bail out and take another route, or even jump out, wade to shore, and spend the afternoon hitching a ride back to Shady Cove. At some point, though, you’re going through that rapid no matter what. That’s when everything changes: at that level of commitment, you stop thinking in terms of “Am I really doing this? Did I get it lined up right?” and start thinking “Ok, I need to survive. I’d better have gotten this lined up right.” It is this fundimental shift between the asking of questions about one’s control over the future, and the demand that one take control over their future, that makes something embarking upon law school a scary proposition. The questions of the future become the statements of the now.

I feel as though an event horizon has been passed.