Tuesday, August 02, 2005
No Turning Back
Lord give me strength.
Today's the day I officially gave up my cushy, family friendly $75k p.a. plus free health benefits technical writing job, in exchange for the crushing debt, nerve-numbing anxiety and other murky delights promised by a law school education that begins some 3 weeks from today.
The reaction to my resignation at work? Here's a list of some of the polite comments typical of my colleagues, followed by their unspoken implications:
"courageous": you're out of your effing mind.
"I envy you": for about 12 seconds, until the prospect of winner-take-all finals, instant impoverishment, and caffeine-fueled study binges dawns on the speaker, who invariably mutters "courageous" as an afterthought.
"I'm sure you're making the right decision": By "right", I mean "utterly irresponsible".
It didn't help matters that my wife returned from vacation yesterday to find an email from her boss informing her that he was drastically cutting back her hours due to "economic difficulties". You want to know about economic difficulties, buster? Try a $2200 monthly mortgage, private nursery school fees, maxed out credit cards, and a spouse who by all accounts should be entering his most productive income-earning years, but instead is borrowing truckloads of cash to finance the acquisition of a law degree, in the desperate hope that it paves the way to a job offering a salary high enough to service the ever-expanding mountain of household debt.
As you can see, not much margin for error.
On second thought, Lord give me a scotch.
-LSD
Today's the day I officially gave up my cushy, family friendly $75k p.a. plus free health benefits technical writing job, in exchange for the crushing debt, nerve-numbing anxiety and other murky delights promised by a law school education that begins some 3 weeks from today.
The reaction to my resignation at work? Here's a list of some of the polite comments typical of my colleagues, followed by their unspoken implications:
"courageous": you're out of your effing mind.
"I envy you": for about 12 seconds, until the prospect of winner-take-all finals, instant impoverishment, and caffeine-fueled study binges dawns on the speaker, who invariably mutters "courageous" as an afterthought.
"I'm sure you're making the right decision": By "right", I mean "utterly irresponsible".
It didn't help matters that my wife returned from vacation yesterday to find an email from her boss informing her that he was drastically cutting back her hours due to "economic difficulties". You want to know about economic difficulties, buster? Try a $2200 monthly mortgage, private nursery school fees, maxed out credit cards, and a spouse who by all accounts should be entering his most productive income-earning years, but instead is borrowing truckloads of cash to finance the acquisition of a law degree, in the desperate hope that it paves the way to a job offering a salary high enough to service the ever-expanding mountain of household debt.
As you can see, not much margin for error.
On second thought, Lord give me a scotch.
-LSD
# posted by goldstar @ 8:11 PM 
