Vampires and Red-Light Cameras

I figure the road to law school is a good segue into this segment. C-Rock isn't one much for self-reflection, so if you were to ask him what inspired him to return to school after 5 years in the workforce, you'd likely get little more than a shrug and a grunt. I've had time to contemplate this question since that day last November when my husband came home from work and declared that he'd ordered a used LSAT prep book off amazon.  From what I've gathered over the years, C-Rock pulls more than his own weight at Initech, his ISP company where he works as a network engineer. To quote one of his annual reviews,   "C-Rock is a work horse." He consistently pulls in higher numbers, works longer hours, and is more dedicated than his co-workers. Thus, he was justifiably pissed when he was skipped over in favor of an older co-worker for a potential promotion (chronologically older, not with the company for a longer period of time). The day the decision was announced was the day he completed his amazon order and came home to proclaim that he was applying to law school.

This proclamation didn't initially stand out more than the one about the hot air balloon pilot's license or the plan to bicycle the circumference of Iceland or to open a pepper of the month club... so, I buckled down to ride out the latest obsession. I came home a few days later to find C-Rock sitting amidst a pile of cardboard (formerly a couple of amazon boxes) and eagerly erasing answers out of his newly acquired, though previously owned LSAT prep books. It was maybe 3 weeks later when I came home to find him yet again at the dining room table, stop-watch in one hand, pencil gripped and furiously writing with the other, that I realized this might not be a passing phase.

Sure, C-Rock set our DVR to record 20 episodes of Law and Order every day and has a strange man-crush on the fictional Jack McCoy, district attorney of New York City. Yeah, he enjoys a good argument (whether against a willing participant or not) and even was our state champ debater two years running as an upper class-man on his high school debate team.  And okay, his analytical manner of examining any given situation seems fitting with the disproportional number of law degrees in his family tree... But with a bachelors of science from a well-regarded technical institution and a steady income in an unstable economy with TONS of unemployed law grads, why LAW SCHOOL?!

C-Rock met with a former boss, Schnitzel, who was in his final year of a part-time law program at Georgia State University located no more than a mile from their office. Schnitzel was also married and told C-Rock it was completely doable to keep working a 9 to 5 while completing classes in the evenings. Plus, Initech covers a major portion of the tuition as part of their benefits package. The logistics were beginning to sound more feasible... But there were still some major hurtles to overcome.

There are 3 components to a law school application: 1) Undergraduate GPA, 2) LSAT score, 3) a personal statement. While Carson was getting good scores on his practice LSATs and fancies himself an excellent writer, there was nothing to be done about his undergrad GPA. Georgia Tech is infamously rough on its undergrads. The attrition rate is historically high and it isn't uncommon for students to find themselves in the "square root club". Members of this not-so-elite club boast GPAs so low that taking the square root of the number actually yields a higher value. Graduate admissions, however, give little if any consideration to the school when looking at GPA. C-Rock literally would have been better off majoring in basket weaving (or Urban Farming!) in community college with a 4.0 as far as admissions were concerned. To overcome his less-than-stellar GPA, we knew he would need to rock the LSAT and write a kick-ass personal statement.

When C-Rock first gave me his personal statement to edit for him, I thought he was messing with me. In the first half he referenced vampires, the loch ness monster, and chupacabra. He shifted gears in the second half of his personal statement to focus on the time he successfully weaseled out of a red-light camera citation. (Don't worry, that story is coming). After spending an hour or so on minor edits, I brought my draft to C-Rock and gently suggested he rethink some of his choices. While he appreciated my feedback and grammatical edits, he was unwilling to negotiate the content. He had spent many hours researching personal statements and insisted that his needed to stand-out. Despite my every attempt to convince him that the admissions faculty would take one look at this statement and throw his entire application packet in the trash - The vampires and red light camera tickets were staying!

I was met with such persisting indigence that eventually, I gave up. I wasn't so sure I wanted to be the wife a full-time worker, part-time law student anyway! Though he achieved an amazing LSAT score, I braced myself to support him through the impending rejection. It sure shut me up the day his acceptance letter arrived! Move over Jack McCoy... here comes SNUGGY BUNNY - ESQUIRE

Congrats package: Card, balloon, beer, and smarties