
Lately I've been doing the last bit of study I have to do before getting my pracitising certificate which will qualify me to be a solicitor in the lovely state of Victoria. And, like at all 'transitional' times of my life, it's led me to think a plethora of thoughts.
Let me tell you a story.
Educated in Melbourne for my whole life, I finished the VCE (
Victorian Certificate of Education - high school for you out-of-towners) with a good ENTER score
* and not the faintest idea what I wanted to do. Commerce? Sounds good. Law? Even better. Science? Could be interesting. Not a clue. "Well," advised a good-hearted careers counsellor from my school, "Your score is high enough to get you into any degree you want." So, with no better reason than 'because my ENTER allows me', in the week before uni offers came out I switched my preferred degree from Commerce/Law to Engineering (electrical)/Law.
Engineering/Law is the kind of degree that sparks a couple of standard reactions in people.
(1) What the ****? Are you crazy?
(2) That's a very interesting combination. Why did you choose that? *Confused face*
(3) I didn't know you could do that combination together. Now let's talk about the weather.
I truly admire anyone who's completed an engineering/law degree. Actually I admire anyone who's completed an engineering degree. The workload is immense and after two years it became clear to me that I did not enjoy it. I made a very long and tortuous decision to discontinue my engineering degree. It was very hard for me to do that - my engineering marks were brilliant, my law ones were dismal, I knew I would have a weird looking transcript, and there was the question of 'wasting' the last couple of years and the overriding fear of looking like a dropout. In the end, after countless headaches, internal analyses and tears (yes, engineering made me cry), I decided to say goodbye to the EEE department.
And so, I became a straight law student. I never
ever intended to practice law. I was one of those students who thought that law would be a good general degree to have.** I met plenty of law students just like me, who fell into law partly by default and partly due to a suitable ENTER and no idea what to do.
In my final year at law school I got a job offer to work in tax. I still wasn't quite convinced that I wanted to work in that area, so I packed my bags and went to China, and then Korea. When my time overseas was drawing to an end, I began to think about what I
really wanted to do with the next few years of my life.
In my head there were two columns; one entitled 'What I Want' and the other entitled 'What I Can Realistically Do, Given my Qualifications'. The two columns didn't intersect quite as much as I'd hoped.
So I have decided, at least for the next little bit of my life, to follow the law path. While I was once convinced I'd never actually be a
lawyer, I'm now going to do exactly that. And it doesn't look so bad after all. I think it might even be... enjoyable?
Funny how life changes. I remember the day I found out my ENTER score which has determined the career aspects of my life so far. It was summer, and the sunlight was white and strong, making everything look kind of faded. I was outside, walking around the spa. Our spa is built into the pool and the spa water overflows into the pool, which means the walls of the spa are covered with a thin stream of water which is particularly nice to walk on on a hot summer day. My mum handed me the phone telling me the principal was on the line. If, at that moment, I'd known what the future held I might have made my uni course choice based on a little more than the score I was about to receive.
Or then again, maybe not.
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*The score you receive upon leaving high school. It's not so much a score actually, as a ranking against every other student in the state. The highest possible score is 99.95, meaning you are in the top 0.05%.**I wish I read this earlier. I highly recommend the article. I discovered it while googling 'I hate law' as a part of my pre-exam procrastination.