LSAT sigh
Got my LSAT scores - even worse than expected. I scored 165 the first time I ever took it - with no prep. I expected to score around 170 after the prep, based on my practice sessions. Instead, I scored 161. This is 84th percentile. This is bad, and I am displeased. The first section - Reading Comprehension - was more than twice as bad as the others; in practice, I rarely missed any on it. The entire deviation between my expected and earned score is a result of the distraction.
Oh well. Life goes on, and I'm not going to Yale Law. I could probably insist that they cancel my score, but I'm not around a testing center to take it again later. I guess this mediocre score will stand, and maybe I could still get into some ok schools. [The problem is that law schools only really look at undergrad GPAs and LSATs. Mine are ok, not fantastic. All the college courses I took when I was in high school - driver's ed, photography, etc. - I got Bs in because I thought they would never matter and I had other things to focus on. And then there was that horrible first semester in college, and a summer O-chem course that kicked my ass - when they tried to curve a 94% to a C+. So, a 3.7 or so overall. But they don't count my master's degree (4.0, and not easy) or my current PhD (which would be 4.0 if two villian professors did their jobs properly).]
If law school is what I want to do at all. I think so, but I'm not sure. I'll apply to a couple schools, a couple other grad schools too for policy, and see how I feel early next year when acceptance/rejections pile up. I'm meeting my qualitative professor for coffee on Tuesday, and she thinks I should "be committed" to this program. Maybe I'll let her convince me. It just doesn't feel like ... enough. I don't think I'll leave this program prepared to do the things I want to do.
Anyway, I'll worry about it all later. I'm back to calculus, and derivatives are just SO MUCH FUN. It's like little puzzles to fit together, and the practice has made me fast, and it makes sense to me what I'm doing. It's more than just "the chain rule" or "the quotient rule" - I play around with the proofs and such to get it fairly deeply. All the rest of the book looks more like that than the evil first two chapters (which assume prior knowledge I did not have), so it should be a very fun July to work with that. Now I just need to go back and really master chapter 1 for the upcoming test. I had this moment of, "Hm! Maybe I want to study mathematics instead!" But number theory doesn't appeal to me - I like the problem solving, not the theorizing.
It also makes me reconsider the whole economics fiasco (which I started and then dropped this year). It was all calculus in that class that I didn't understand. I thought the prof was making up shit, but I just didn't have a firm grounding. Or a grounding at all. I also didn't have a firm grounding in economic theory, so I was struggling in a major way. But I could get that.
If I wanted to do anything, I think it would be much like Anil Deolalikar, the grad advisor in the econ department here. His CV is miles long of interesting projects and reports on poverty and education and health care - the things that really matter to me. I would love to have a position at a university to teach and then consult like this - with World Bank, --
OH good grief. I just did background searching. I could finish a BA in economics at UCR in a year and a summer. Probably. And then a PhD is another five. I don't want to spend all that time - I just want to spend a couple years and then slide into a life like Anil's. Sigh. I keep coming back to economics ... Wonder if I could get accepted straight into a PhD program without the undergrad background. Hm ... And wonder if I could get full funding for that.
Law would be fun; I know I would like law school and enjoy practicing for awhile - but I know it's not for forever. Doug, my advisor, points out regularly that I'm an intellectual whether I like it or not ... and I fear he's right. I want to analyze, but I want relationships with institutions that actually create change. Ivory tower alone is not enough for me, but I fear not ivory tower is also not enough.
Oh well. Life goes on, and I'm not going to Yale Law. I could probably insist that they cancel my score, but I'm not around a testing center to take it again later. I guess this mediocre score will stand, and maybe I could still get into some ok schools. [The problem is that law schools only really look at undergrad GPAs and LSATs. Mine are ok, not fantastic. All the college courses I took when I was in high school - driver's ed, photography, etc. - I got Bs in because I thought they would never matter and I had other things to focus on. And then there was that horrible first semester in college, and a summer O-chem course that kicked my ass - when they tried to curve a 94% to a C+. So, a 3.7 or so overall. But they don't count my master's degree (4.0, and not easy) or my current PhD (which would be 4.0 if two villian professors did their jobs properly).]
If law school is what I want to do at all. I think so, but I'm not sure. I'll apply to a couple schools, a couple other grad schools too for policy, and see how I feel early next year when acceptance/rejections pile up. I'm meeting my qualitative professor for coffee on Tuesday, and she thinks I should "be committed" to this program. Maybe I'll let her convince me. It just doesn't feel like ... enough. I don't think I'll leave this program prepared to do the things I want to do.
Anyway, I'll worry about it all later. I'm back to calculus, and derivatives are just SO MUCH FUN. It's like little puzzles to fit together, and the practice has made me fast, and it makes sense to me what I'm doing. It's more than just "the chain rule" or "the quotient rule" - I play around with the proofs and such to get it fairly deeply. All the rest of the book looks more like that than the evil first two chapters (which assume prior knowledge I did not have), so it should be a very fun July to work with that. Now I just need to go back and really master chapter 1 for the upcoming test. I had this moment of, "Hm! Maybe I want to study mathematics instead!" But number theory doesn't appeal to me - I like the problem solving, not the theorizing.
It also makes me reconsider the whole economics fiasco (which I started and then dropped this year). It was all calculus in that class that I didn't understand. I thought the prof was making up shit, but I just didn't have a firm grounding. Or a grounding at all. I also didn't have a firm grounding in economic theory, so I was struggling in a major way. But I could get that.
If I wanted to do anything, I think it would be much like Anil Deolalikar, the grad advisor in the econ department here. His CV is miles long of interesting projects and reports on poverty and education and health care - the things that really matter to me. I would love to have a position at a university to teach and then consult like this - with World Bank, --
OH good grief. I just did background searching. I could finish a BA in economics at UCR in a year and a summer. Probably. And then a PhD is another five. I don't want to spend all that time - I just want to spend a couple years and then slide into a life like Anil's. Sigh. I keep coming back to economics ... Wonder if I could get accepted straight into a PhD program without the undergrad background. Hm ... And wonder if I could get full funding for that.
Law would be fun; I know I would like law school and enjoy practicing for awhile - but I know it's not for forever. Doug, my advisor, points out regularly that I'm an intellectual whether I like it or not ... and I fear he's right. I want to analyze, but I want relationships with institutions that actually create change. Ivory tower alone is not enough for me, but I fear not ivory tower is also not enough.
posted by NOLA at 8:48 AM
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