A year into Peace Corps service is about the time many Volunteers begin asking themselves, what next? Some of the most common post-PC plans are grad school, extending PC service in country, doing Peace Corps Response for another 6 months to a year in another country, trying to get hired by PC, trying to get hired by the Federal government, trying to get hired anywhere. If grad school is in a PCVs future, maybe they are thinking about where to apply and for what. Volunteers start researching prospects on the job market and deciding where in the world they want to live.
Tim and I never really expected we would go through the, “what next?” conundrum. We came into Peace Corps knowing with unwavering certainty that our plans after PC were, for Tim to get a teaching job and Chelsea to go to law school. Then after I finish law school, Tim would go back to get his masters degree in education and we would think about starting our family. Seemed like a simple, straightforward 5-7 year plan.
Well, one of the funny things we have found about Peace Corps is that this experience makes you rethink everything from who you are, who you want to be, what your priorities in life are, the nature of humanity and life itself and other deep, mind boggling nonsense. For a time, Tim and I had adopted a very Zen mentality; we would be the pebbles and let the river of life flow over us. We would take in these experiences and go with the flow. But now, with a little over a year left in our time here we are having to think about whats next and we are finding ourselves reevaluating that simple, straightforward plan. Thus we find ourselves, as the blog title states, pondering perplexing prospects. The purpose of this blog is to lay out some of our thoughts to you, our friends and family, and solicit advice from our loved ones.
Law school: now, later or never?
Recently there have been a ton of articles published about why law school is not such a great idea. The first of these articles I read was in the New York Times, titled, Is Law School a Losing Game? (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/09/business/09law.html). And, frankly, it freaked me out! Most it talks about how overpriced law schools are, how tough and competitive the job market is and how the debt you will go into in law school makes you a slave to the work force, basically chaining recent grads into jobs they don't love just so they can make loan payments. This, and many other similar articles, recommend that if you want to go to law school you had better damn well be sure you want to be a lawyer and even then, don't be so cocky as to think that you will be one of the very few, who upon exiting law school, will nab one of those $160k jobs. Well, to honest, I was sort of envisioning exactly that. Am I being naive?
I have always wanted to go to law school and become a lawyer. I worked in an immigration law office and LOVED it! I envision myself dong immigration law, at both a corporate level and also working on the type of cases I dealt with at Casa Cornelia Law Center; refugee and asylee cases and victimized women and children. But maybe I have been confining myself to that idea, not looking outside the box. In the light of these recent articles, I had to ask myself, is there anything else I can see myself doing? And the honest answer is “yes”. I believe I could be happy doing any number of other careers. I could work for Peace Corps in a regional office, I could work for a University doing all sorts of administrative things, I could do administrative or design and management work for non-profits and community organizations. There are almost too many things I can see myself doing that would make me happy. As Peace Corps has taught us, anything in life will be what you make of it. So, considering that, do Tim and I want to put ourselves 150k in debt for me to go to law school at all? Maybe it's not worth it since we already have a hefty debt from both our undergraduate work and Tim's teaching credential and we could be happy as a couple of working individuals. Or maybe we both work for a little while (5 years?) and save some money so we don't have to fund my law school on debt alone? I mean, law school isn't going anywhere, right?
The other factor that is throwing a little wrench into our proverbial future planning gears is our changed philosophy on family. Maybe its being in Peace Corps and being so far away from our families that has made us reevaluate the concept of family. Maybe it is working around children and mothers and advising families everyday that has made us yearn both for our families back home and a family of our own making. But in any case, we have decided to make family a bigger priority in our life planning. We want to be able to be geographically close to both our families (they are spread out across California, so we want to limit our job/school searches to our home state of Cali) and we want to have a baby. Sooner rather than later. So that means we will either become parents while I am in law school (which, although it may sound NUTS, we have actually read is a great time to be new parents, since the flexibility of being a student is more than the flexibility of being a brand new attorney) or within the first few years of being back in the work force in California.
So, where does all this leave us, besides perplexed? Well, We know for sure we want to live in California. We want to be able to take a road trip to visit either of our families, so sorry to the rest of the United States, but we are ruling you out as a prospective new home for the Tibbses. We know Tim will teach when we get back, and he can get a job almost anywhere in California, although the more flexible we are in terms of where we live, the easier it will be for him to find a job. We know Tim will go back to graduate school within the next few years, working towards a masters in education and probably administration (which means more student loan debt, but will open so many more opportunities for Tim and be well worth it). And me? Well, I have no idea what to do. Apply to law school, bite the bullet and take on the debt? Go to a top tier school, knowing I will have better chances of landing that cushy corporate job or apply to lower tier schools hoping for more scholarship money? Or work, save money, start a family and maybe go back to school later, but cross that bridge when we get to it?
Tim and I talked a lot about this recently and his opinion is that I should apply only to the top law schools that I want to get into, Berkeley, Stanford, UCLA and UC Davis, and if I get in then I should go. Yes, we will have debt but I shouldn't be too freaked out about it. He is confident that we will be able to make minimum payments at least and if we are ever in a pickle we can defer. Plus, no one can ever take your education away from you, so there is no better reason to go into debt. If I don't get in to any of my top schools, he says, we work out what to do when we get there.
Yet, I am one of those people who like to have an idea of where I am going in life. I am a planner. I used to be more attached to the outcome of my plans, freaking out when things didn't go as I had intended. But in this last year, living in Guyana has helped me be a little more flexible. I know that we cannot plan our lives out to a T. I know that even if we try, we will inevitably be directed along different paths, by the world's mysterious forces, call them what you will. I guess, at this stage I am just trying to decide which path to take, knowing that we may get blown off course, but at least we are going in the general direction that we purposefully set. And, we are trying to be realistic and practical about our life plans, whatever that means, taking into account long term goals; our education and careers, having a child, saving for a house, a college fund, our own adventures and luxuries, etc. How do we get there if we don't even know where there is?
No matter how perplexed we are in this moment, we have been having some interesting conversations with each other, which is fun (and sometimes stressful) and revealing. We are learning more about each other. For example, I have found out how savvy Tim actually is about financial matters, like lending jargon. And Tim is grateful for the long-term foresight that I bring to the table. We have had hilarious conversations about our child rearing philosophies, fears and excitements. We continue to work together as a team to figure out what we want in life, as a couple. I am proud of us and confident that no matter what we decide to do, our lives will be rich with love and support. But, stewing in the pot of the future planning conundrum, we invite you, our friends, family and readers in the blogosphere, to add your spicy advice to make this perplexing stew even more rich and interesting.
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