I have a dream....

Law school. Such a road it's been. And I'm not even there yet. Taking the LSAT was huge. It took an entire year of my life.... no going to dinner, I had to take an online class. No chilling on the couch with Richard, because now that he was home, I had to drill the logic games. That task, so rewarding and so productive and so fruitful, took everything over. The Summer has been a blissful celebration of "nothing whatsoever to do" because I had passed my LSAT with the percentile needed to be a competitive applicant in the 2011 admission cycle.

Now that the new applications have gone live, the decision is really hitting me. I remember last year at this time talking to my mom and dad. I told him how much I wanted to go to law school.  That dream had been with me my entire life, really for as long as I can rememer. There was a brief stint where I practiced operating on brains made of playdough and removing mock tumors with butter knives, but I grew out of that grotesque stage thank God! As I spoke to them, their responses came without hesitation: "We'll help." Immediately Dad lamented, "I wish I had known you were doing this, I wouldn't have retired. I could've helped a lot more." My mom cried when I called her with my LSAT score saying how proud she was that I had achieved that for myself. But none of it was real. Not until now.

The apps are live. Now I am faced with days upon days of work, hard work that will take me away from family and friends. It feels a bit selfish, even though I know it is selfless. In emailing with a recent graduate, he punctuated for me what I already knew: The people in my life must KNOW what a committment this is. It is easy to say they know, but they MUST KNOW what they are getting into. And now I feel selfish again... for dragging my family down this road and expecting them to give up so much, so that I can achieve my dream.

I will admit, I am a little overwhelmed. Finances, child care, work hours, household duties all will change and are currently undergoing huge changes in preparation for an unbelievably high tuition, clustered schedule, homework load and emotional upheaval! And then I feel selfish again.

There is nothing unique about this road I'm going down. Hundreds of thousands have done it before me, and I try to play it off as NO BIG DEAL! But it is a big deal to me. And it's something I feel very proud to do and very honored to do. And then I realize how very selfish this all is.

Then it hits me, I may not get in. So this is all conjecture.... and it's just more... waiting. Till January.