Sunday, August 6: The Great Beyond
10 days ago all of my law school friends brought their scholarly track to a conclusion by taking the bar exam, one of the most daunting challenges in all of academia. The typical course of action is to relax for a couple week in May after finals are over, then begin Bar-Bri, which is basically summer school to prepare you for the bar, consisting of 5 days of 6-hour classes, and (so they recommend) 6 to 8 hours of home study each day. Pretty brutal, and I'm not looking forward to tackling it if I ever sack up and decide to take the bar myself...although I'm somewhat averse to it, I'm slowly coming around to the realization that I should probably do it so that I have something to show for my law school experience...and I know that if I don't take it soon after graduation, I'll probably never get around to doing it. Owing to my semester leave to pursue all things poker, I graduate in December, and would take the bar in February or July next.
So after 8 weeks of Bar preparation courses and few social outings, everyone goes up to Albany, or wherever they're writing their State's bar exam and tries to focus for the 2-day exam, after which they all celebrate by getting blackout drunk and going on what's known as a "bar trip", which is basically a big blow-out travel extravaganza from early August through whenever they have chosen to start working at their law firm...usually in September or October.
The premise of the bar trip is: "this really is our last chance to travel the world before we have to buckle down and start working 12 to 16-hour days 6 days each week as junior associates at our firms." So most of them are currently off on 6-week travel excursions through Europe, Eastern Asia, Hawaii, etc.; a couple are even going to swing down here through Australia and pay me a visit. I find the whole concept of "bar trips" somewhat depressing (although I understand that the modest financial freedom that I get from poker allows me to take that position). While they're generally exciting and carefree (and conveniently bankrolled by $5 - $10K advances from the travelers' employers-to-be), they've got to be colored by a pervasive feeling of dread, like a sword of Damocles constantly reminding them: "this really is the last time I'm going to be able to take a carefree trip like this for a long, long, long time." I shudder just thinking about that.
Sure, some of my classmates are 6-figures in debt and really have no realistic option other than to take a $180,000 salary, which still will only allow them to pay off their loans in 5 to 7 years (I woulda thought sooner, but interest is a killer, so they tell me.) But many others have little to no debt and they're still buying into this whole corporate law thing, even while acknowledging that they're preparing themselves to absolutely hate it. I feel like shouting from the rooftops "You don't have to do this with your lives!!" (In fairness, a few of them are really looking forward to law firm life, and I'm sure will be terrific successes...if they can handle the lifestyle.)
Meanwhle I'm down here in Australia chugging along. It's really curious to watch the busloads of tourists that drive by my apartment, even in the dead of Winter, although it's still in the mid-60s here. The bus stops at the observation deck above the sandy beach, they all disembark with their digital cameras, pose for a few snapshots, some take off their shoes and venture out to the tides in their suit pants, then put their shoes back and get back on the bus, I suppose happily ticking off "see beach" on their vacation's to-do list. It really brings home for me how fortunate I am to literally live somewhere where other people come to vacation...it's an odd dynamic, isn't it? Reminds me of the folk story about the corporate bigwig who takes his family on a Carribean vacation, and the waiter who brings him his drink on the beach hears him complaining to his wife about how many hours he's been putting in at the office, so the waiter asks "Sir, I hope you don't mind me asking, but why is it you work so very hard at a job you appear to dislike?" And the man replies "I work hard because it lets me take vacations like this to beatiful beaches." The waiter, confused, replies "But I serve drinks for only 4 hours per day, and I get to come to this beach 365 days a year." Makes you think about why it is that people assign such a high value to traveling to warm locales just so they can get away from their 'real lives.'
Although I really like the balance that I've found in recent months, and it might seem like I really am 'living the life', it's also eerily isolating...I'm happy and carefree in some respects, but I also feel to some extent like this makes it harder to relate to those who, even against their better judgement, have chosen the corporate rat-race...these are my best friends, and it kind of scares me that our lives seem to be diverging in a rather fundamental way. My experience at the Univ. of Sydney so far has given me a pretty interesting vantage point on this whole thing...see, law school in Australia (in fact in most parts of the world other than North America) isn't 'grad school', as we would think of it in the US where everyone does a 4-year undergraduate degree and then can enroll in a 3-year law school program to get their law degree. Here "law" is more like an undergraduate 'major' that students can enroll in right out of high school, and complete in 4-5 years. So it's populated largely by 19 - 22 year olds...although maybe around 20% of the students are in their mid-twenties like me. So I had a bit of a weird night last weekend, when I was hanging out with a friend from law school here who lives in the school's dorms with a bunch of American study-abroad undergraduate students, so they were mostly 19 to 21, and we went to a houseparty one of them was throwing. It was quite a mindfuck to be surrounded by this whole gaggle of undergrads, and while I don't think I looked all that out of place (since I look pretty young and could probably pass for 20 - 22), it was maybe the first time I've realized that I just don't 'belong' in that scene anymore. I mean, being amonst those undergrads, part of me wanted more than anything to still be that carefree; to still have that set of life priorities; for my goal 4 days out of every week to be to see how drunk I could get and still find my way home; never having to pay a bill of any kind, or wonder what type of career I might find most fulfilling. And so there was one voice telling me "well what the hell's stopping you?? Grab the funnel and relive those glory days." But I couldn't shake the other voice telling me that I just wasn't that guy anymore. I had that window in my life, and I exploited the hell out of it and had an absolute ball...and I don't really know if I want to do it again. To loosely borrow a theory from Floyd in "Dazed and Confused", all I ever really strive for in life is to be able to say 'you know what, I did the absolute best that I was able to, and lived to the fullest during that time in my life, even if I didn't always come out smelling like roses', and I really do think that's a standard I mostly lived up to in law school -- and during most of my undergraduate years (although not so much during my 2 years in New York in between.) And it's just this awfully strange feeling now to be surrounded by images of what I used to be but no longer am, and at the same time see my law school friends go off and start their law-firm lives, all the while not really being drawn to that world either...I've always relished taking the path less trodden, but that approach - bold as it may seem - inevitably comes along with these periods of isolation and doubt, wondering if everything would just be easier if I joined the masses and followed the well-worn path to corporate America that has turned out just fine for generation after generation. Age has always stood apart as one of the more curious labels people seem to get hung up about. We all have these ingrained expectations about things in life we're supposed to have accomplished by certain ages. Education, marriage, employment, promotions, procreation, self-sufficiency, spirituality. I sometimes wonder what I'd feel like if one day I found out that my birth certificate was off by a few years, and I wasn't actually 26 but rather 29. While I currently have all sorts of imagery about what life is supposed to look like at 30, would finding out that I don't actually have 4 years to get there, but rather only 1 change my approach to things, or my assessment of my life's accomplishments to date? People love to remind you that 'life is not a race', but isn't it also undeniable that society attaches certain expectations to your age? Madding in some respects, yes, but if that's 'just the way it is', why should I waste my breath debating the principle's validity? I've written plenty that one of poker's greatest benefits for me has been that I no longer feel beholden to any corporate entity to earn my keep...it's a luxury and a challenge, because making decisions, like it or not, is hard. I don't mean the little "what should I have on my salad?" decisions, but the big ones that shape the direction of your life. My path to this point has been very scripted: finish up high school, go to college (as if that was an option), work a couple years in an office, go to law school...maybe one of the most well worn paths for children of middle-to-upper-class Baby Boomers, and now with mere months to go before I graduate, I find myself reluctantly tip-toeing toward the edge of my known universe and peering out darkly into a world of possibilities that I realize few people on the planet have the good fortune to choose from, and it's exciting, invigorating, and terrifying.
(Oh yeah, I guess this blog is supposed to maintain some poker content. Well, I am retreating from the higher-stakes games with my tail between my legs, back to my 30/60 - 50/100 haunts; details on my painful higher-stakes 'education' to come...)
So after 8 weeks of Bar preparation courses and few social outings, everyone goes up to Albany, or wherever they're writing their State's bar exam and tries to focus for the 2-day exam, after which they all celebrate by getting blackout drunk and going on what's known as a "bar trip", which is basically a big blow-out travel extravaganza from early August through whenever they have chosen to start working at their law firm...usually in September or October.
The premise of the bar trip is: "this really is our last chance to travel the world before we have to buckle down and start working 12 to 16-hour days 6 days each week as junior associates at our firms." So most of them are currently off on 6-week travel excursions through Europe, Eastern Asia, Hawaii, etc.; a couple are even going to swing down here through Australia and pay me a visit. I find the whole concept of "bar trips" somewhat depressing (although I understand that the modest financial freedom that I get from poker allows me to take that position). While they're generally exciting and carefree (and conveniently bankrolled by $5 - $10K advances from the travelers' employers-to-be), they've got to be colored by a pervasive feeling of dread, like a sword of Damocles constantly reminding them: "this really is the last time I'm going to be able to take a carefree trip like this for a long, long, long time." I shudder just thinking about that.
Sure, some of my classmates are 6-figures in debt and really have no realistic option other than to take a $180,000 salary, which still will only allow them to pay off their loans in 5 to 7 years (I woulda thought sooner, but interest is a killer, so they tell me.) But many others have little to no debt and they're still buying into this whole corporate law thing, even while acknowledging that they're preparing themselves to absolutely hate it. I feel like shouting from the rooftops "You don't have to do this with your lives!!" (In fairness, a few of them are really looking forward to law firm life, and I'm sure will be terrific successes...if they can handle the lifestyle.)
Meanwhle I'm down here in Australia chugging along. It's really curious to watch the busloads of tourists that drive by my apartment, even in the dead of Winter, although it's still in the mid-60s here. The bus stops at the observation deck above the sandy beach, they all disembark with their digital cameras, pose for a few snapshots, some take off their shoes and venture out to the tides in their suit pants, then put their shoes back and get back on the bus, I suppose happily ticking off "see beach" on their vacation's to-do list. It really brings home for me how fortunate I am to literally live somewhere where other people come to vacation...it's an odd dynamic, isn't it? Reminds me of the folk story about the corporate bigwig who takes his family on a Carribean vacation, and the waiter who brings him his drink on the beach hears him complaining to his wife about how many hours he's been putting in at the office, so the waiter asks "Sir, I hope you don't mind me asking, but why is it you work so very hard at a job you appear to dislike?" And the man replies "I work hard because it lets me take vacations like this to beatiful beaches." The waiter, confused, replies "But I serve drinks for only 4 hours per day, and I get to come to this beach 365 days a year." Makes you think about why it is that people assign such a high value to traveling to warm locales just so they can get away from their 'real lives.'
Although I really like the balance that I've found in recent months, and it might seem like I really am 'living the life', it's also eerily isolating...I'm happy and carefree in some respects, but I also feel to some extent like this makes it harder to relate to those who, even against their better judgement, have chosen the corporate rat-race...these are my best friends, and it kind of scares me that our lives seem to be diverging in a rather fundamental way. My experience at the Univ. of Sydney so far has given me a pretty interesting vantage point on this whole thing...see, law school in Australia (in fact in most parts of the world other than North America) isn't 'grad school', as we would think of it in the US where everyone does a 4-year undergraduate degree and then can enroll in a 3-year law school program to get their law degree. Here "law" is more like an undergraduate 'major' that students can enroll in right out of high school, and complete in 4-5 years. So it's populated largely by 19 - 22 year olds...although maybe around 20% of the students are in their mid-twenties like me. So I had a bit of a weird night last weekend, when I was hanging out with a friend from law school here who lives in the school's dorms with a bunch of American study-abroad undergraduate students, so they were mostly 19 to 21, and we went to a houseparty one of them was throwing. It was quite a mindfuck to be surrounded by this whole gaggle of undergrads, and while I don't think I looked all that out of place (since I look pretty young and could probably pass for 20 - 22), it was maybe the first time I've realized that I just don't 'belong' in that scene anymore. I mean, being amonst those undergrads, part of me wanted more than anything to still be that carefree; to still have that set of life priorities; for my goal 4 days out of every week to be to see how drunk I could get and still find my way home; never having to pay a bill of any kind, or wonder what type of career I might find most fulfilling. And so there was one voice telling me "well what the hell's stopping you?? Grab the funnel and relive those glory days." But I couldn't shake the other voice telling me that I just wasn't that guy anymore. I had that window in my life, and I exploited the hell out of it and had an absolute ball...and I don't really know if I want to do it again. To loosely borrow a theory from Floyd in "Dazed and Confused", all I ever really strive for in life is to be able to say 'you know what, I did the absolute best that I was able to, and lived to the fullest during that time in my life, even if I didn't always come out smelling like roses', and I really do think that's a standard I mostly lived up to in law school -- and during most of my undergraduate years (although not so much during my 2 years in New York in between.) And it's just this awfully strange feeling now to be surrounded by images of what I used to be but no longer am, and at the same time see my law school friends go off and start their law-firm lives, all the while not really being drawn to that world either...I've always relished taking the path less trodden, but that approach - bold as it may seem - inevitably comes along with these periods of isolation and doubt, wondering if everything would just be easier if I joined the masses and followed the well-worn path to corporate America that has turned out just fine for generation after generation. Age has always stood apart as one of the more curious labels people seem to get hung up about. We all have these ingrained expectations about things in life we're supposed to have accomplished by certain ages. Education, marriage, employment, promotions, procreation, self-sufficiency, spirituality. I sometimes wonder what I'd feel like if one day I found out that my birth certificate was off by a few years, and I wasn't actually 26 but rather 29. While I currently have all sorts of imagery about what life is supposed to look like at 30, would finding out that I don't actually have 4 years to get there, but rather only 1 change my approach to things, or my assessment of my life's accomplishments to date? People love to remind you that 'life is not a race', but isn't it also undeniable that society attaches certain expectations to your age? Madding in some respects, yes, but if that's 'just the way it is', why should I waste my breath debating the principle's validity? I've written plenty that one of poker's greatest benefits for me has been that I no longer feel beholden to any corporate entity to earn my keep...it's a luxury and a challenge, because making decisions, like it or not, is hard. I don't mean the little "what should I have on my salad?" decisions, but the big ones that shape the direction of your life. My path to this point has been very scripted: finish up high school, go to college (as if that was an option), work a couple years in an office, go to law school...maybe one of the most well worn paths for children of middle-to-upper-class Baby Boomers, and now with mere months to go before I graduate, I find myself reluctantly tip-toeing toward the edge of my known universe and peering out darkly into a world of possibilities that I realize few people on the planet have the good fortune to choose from, and it's exciting, invigorating, and terrifying.
(Oh yeah, I guess this blog is supposed to maintain some poker content. Well, I am retreating from the higher-stakes games with my tail between my legs, back to my 30/60 - 50/100 haunts; details on my painful higher-stakes 'education' to come...)
posted by Blog Administrator at 8:52 AM
8 Comments:
Deep.
You remind me of Crusoe. Where's Friday?
Your blog is one of the best that I follow. It really gives great perspective to alot of things. Keep it up.
sol
www.sollucas.com
Really nice post.
excellent blog, very insightful and interesting to read... really enjoyed it..
also a faining law school student, in fact i have class tomorrow and am unlikely to attend..
check my blog out if u like
www.zeroascention.blogspot.com
LSD: I'm also a law school dropout of a sort. Check out my response to your thoughts.
-chip
I really enjoyed reading your blog. I'm graduating from college in September, dont know excactly what to do with my life... but whatever it is I do I'm going to try to ballance in Poker... it's a great hobby and also an awesome part-time job.
G'luck with the Bar exam
-Bo
Very in depth, great that you're exploring Down Under. I love that place.
Grab some Turkish kebabs for me while you're there.
And keep kicking a$$ at the poker.
www.sportsandpokeronline.com
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