My Life After the LSATS

Everyone I know seems to be making promises to themselves lately in hopes of becoming a better version of themselves. My artist friends are making promises to draw everyday, my writer friend is promising to write every day... so it truly leaves me wondering, once my LSATS are over (in exactly a week from today!!!) what will I be doing every day? I mean obviously, I wont be practicing law every day; thats what the three years of hell they call law school will be for. No, for my year off, I want to do something great for myself. So here's a small list I've compiled.

1. Get serious about my diet- I have lost 15 pounds since I graduated college, and I'm extremely proud of that. However, I have roughly another 5 pounds I'd like to shed, and they're proving to be the most difficult. I know I can do it, but it means skipping that dessert at night, doing the full hour of cardio at the gym, and no more taking that extra helping, no matter how small it may be, because the food is just so good.

2. Knit a blanket- I taught myself how to knit last year, and although I still don't really know if I'm doing a knit stitch or a purl stitch, or what the difference is, or how to combine those two stitches to get any other pattern than the one I always knit, I honestly love the process. I know it may look a little dorky, I will be that 22 year old knitting on the subway, but it's fun to do something with your hands while you're just sitting there. The better part is to actually know you're creating something. I know an entire blanket may be a bit adventurous, but I do have an entire year!

3. Make jam- I don't really have an explanation for this. I honestly don't even eat jam that often, so I don't know where this sick need to make jam has come from, but it has. I want to make jam and I want to give my jam to everyone! All sorts of jam! I was thinking that I could ask all my friends if they wanted jam, and all they would have to do is give me an empty jam bottle and they'd get it back filled with jam! For those of you living far away, you could just ship me an empty bottle with enough money for delivery and I'll send it back to you!

4. De-clutter my life- I am a self-professed materialistic girl. It's true. I really like things. People may see this as a bad thing, but I don't. In the end, I know that what I buy is just stuff, and they wont necessarily make me happy for long. Unfortunately, that doesn't change the fact that I really do get joy out of shopping for things and having new things. As a girl, these "things" usually mean clothes and bags. I honestly can't even begin to express the amount of joy I have carrying around my new patent leather coach bag, dressed in all my new work clothes has brought me. However, years of this habit, alongside parents who have always been kind enough to feed this need, has left me with a lot of stuff. It's gotten to a point where I have taken over three rooms in my house, and that, I'm starting to realize, is a little absurd. So I will clean, donate and knowing me, probably buy new things to fill the void!

5. Read- My lack of a life and the lack of things to do on Long Island has led to many trips to Borders with my friend. In fact, we started calling the combination of blockbuster, borders and starbucks, "the trinity" as we usually wind up hitting all three on any given night. Anyways, as we'd perusal the books at borders, I'd constantly pick up books pretending like I had the time or motivation to read them. I'd come home, add them to the growing pile of books by my bedside table, and there they'd stay. I started a few, even got halfway through one (Lev Grossman's The Magicians- read it! It's really good so far!) but have yet to finish a single one. So, I want to attack that pile full force and read more classics. There are a ton of books that I feel like I should have read already, and I haven't, or some that were assigned to me in high school that I never really gave the attention deserved because it was an "assignment."

6. Apply to law school- I have spent a year studying for this god-forsaken test, so while most people wouldn't be excited at the prospect of mulling over applications, I truly am. I love looking at glossy brochures, thinking about the life I could live at any one of the hundreds of institutions. I dream about my life in another city and these feelings of longing and excitement fill me. Part of me can't wait for getting on with that part of my life, but in the end I know that I still have a lot to accomplish in this year first!

Working Girl!

I'm a working girl! Yesterday I had my first internship meeting and today, my first day of work! My thoughts of life in the real world? Its boring. Lets start with yesterday....

So heres the scene. I had just woken up at 7am for the first time since.... well, longer than i can remember. I get ready in a blur, go to the train station and am standing there with my earphones in my ear. Now for anyone who speaks New Yorker, this is a clear sign to not speak to me unless you arm is falling off, and even then, don't expect me to care. So, I'm standing there, rocking out to emo in the early hours of the morning when a girl who must have been like a year or two younger than me came up to me. She didn't speak, she didn't tap me, she literally just came up to me, an inch away from my face. I try my best to ignore her, to avoid eye contact, but she just stood there looking at my eyes. So, I grudgingly take off my earphones and growl, "yes?"

"Excuse me ma'am, I was wondering if you had any makeup," she said. Firstly, I am not a fucking ma'am, you're my age! Secondly, if you're going to speak to me, make sure its from a respectable distance. One inch does not qualitfy. The girl was not winning any votes from me. "No, I don't. Sorry," even though it was quite obvious from my voice that I was not in the slightest bit sympathetic to this girl. I take a step away from her, and move to grab a hold of my earphones to shove back into my ear.

"Well," she went on, taking a step closer, closing the nice distance I had created to a mere two inches, "the thing is, I'm going to be on television and I was just throwing up so my eye make up is a little smudged." If this was really supposed to make me care about anything other than the fact that this girl who just vomited was standing so close to me, we'll she failed.

"Oh, I'm sorry," I replied again, "but no, I don't have any make up with me," and an eager attempt to end the conversation, I ended with, "but your make up looks fine. Really, can't tell at all." There, I was civil, I conveyed the point that I didn't have my up with me, thats the end of the conversation right? I again reached for my earphones and she again thwarted my plans by responding.

"Thanks! But the camera picks up everything, I'm going to be on television." No fucking kidding. So, lacking creativity due to the a.m. blur, I again say I'm sorry, put the earphone in my ear and quickly walk away. Heres a hint to anyone i may see in the mornings- do not talk to me.

The intern meeting went well, basically just got to know one another and then got to know the history of the organization I will be working for and what my job entails. Basically, I'll be working within the New York City courts with an outside organization, interviewing and helping jurors, listening to their problems, complaints, comments, and the like.Then, it is my job to write down their problems, complaints and comments and go to the office once a week to enter it into a computer. Nothing too complicated....

...and yet somehow today when I woke up at 6am to make a 7am train to get to the court house by 9, I was worried. After spending two and a half hour at the meeting, I still seemed to have no idea what my job was. I mean, I didn't know where I was supposed to sit, let alone where the bathrooms, cafeteria or anything else a juror might ask me were. I didn't know where they were supposed to go, what they were supposed to do, what forms had to be filled. It was clearly a classic case of the blind leading the blind. Did I fall asleep during orientation or something? Why don't I know any of this?

At 8:45 I'm standing outside of the courthouse ready to meet my doom. They were all going to realize that I was a fraud. I took a deep breath in, and entered the courthouse. Here I realized that there were two doors, one leading to a security check point and the other just leading past a security officer. I decided to follow the professionally dressed people, gave a big smile to the officer and didn't get bothered at all. Success! I walked around on the bottom floor for a while, trying to find an elevator and went up to the 15th floor, thereby pretty much using all the information I was given. Luckily, as soon as I got up there, a man saw my confusion and my name badge and told me to follow him. He showed me the booth I would be sitting at, which had to be rolled out to about 20 feet away. Now this may not sound like a lot, but I had been up since 6, had just walked about half a mile in heels and my bag and was now expected to roll this giant booth twenty feet, in my heels with my bag and a cup of coffee in hand. My face must have truly expressed everything I was thinking because about a second later he was wheeling it for me. God, sometimes I love being a small girl.

All in all, things didn't go so badly, just very slowly. The three hours I was there felt like 8 and I learned some where the bathroom was and where the lounge room was, and could answer at least those questions by the end. Now, its 330 and I'm back in the comfort of my own bed staring at my LSAT books staring back at me, sipping on my fifth coffee of the day wondering when it will be time to go out for drinks with my friends. We all need a reason to live for and clearly work isn't going to be mine.