Read My Lips - the blog

Blame it all on Corporate America

David, in a comment to my post on how I made it through college asked:

Are you going to tell us what prompted the decision to go to law school...?

Let it never be said that I am not responsive to my readership. You can really blame it all on Corporate America.

When I graduated in 1978, having my brand spanking new Bachelor of Liberal Arts in Political Science Degree from the University of Texas at Arlington, I thought I had achieved the pinnacle of success. I spent several days sending my resume and cover letter to literally thousands of the Fortune 500 and other companies listed on the NYSE. I continued my graveyard job, kept paying my rent, drinking the beer, and smoking the cigarettes awaiting those thousands of good job offers that flooded people with college diplomas in their hands. And I waited and I waited and I waited. Then one day, after I had waited so long I had almost given up hope, I got a letter from the Prudential Insurance Company. I was offered a position with their company selling life insurance door-to-door.

Now, it is really hard for a man of 23 to cry like a baby, but I really did. I was so down and disenchanted, I picked up the phone to call the only person I knew would listen to me: my momma. The first thing my momma said to me was, "Son, I am so proud of you." That made my chest stick out a bit. The she said, "Don't give up hope, son. I had always thought you should be a lawyer, so why don't you move back home for a bit and apply to law school."

Now, one thing you have to know about me is that I was never all that crazy about the town where I grew up, and had actually gotten quite attached to Arlington, Texas, but all of a sudden the thought of me being a lawyer had a kind of a ring to it. I mean after all, my choices were 1. to stay where I was and continue building a career in convenience stores, 2. take that job and try my hand at door-to-door insurance sales,* or 3. put my tail between my legs, realize my failure, slink back home and live with my mom and dad for a bit. My mom actually made No. 3 sound like my best option, so I called my best friend, and the next morning he and I packed all my booty in the back of his pickup and we caravanned the 200 miles back to the old hacienda.

My momma had talked to my aunt** who had talked to those special customers who ate in the snack bar at the bank where she worked, and my aunt had finagled me a job working 11-7 in the data processing department of the bank. It was actually a pretty good job, although I was the low man on the totem pole despite being the only one who had a college degree. However, I knew absolutely nothing about computers and here I was working in room full of mainframes. I sorted checks on a large machine. I took the very next offering of the LSAT.

I was a bit afraid of applying to law school, as I felt I had not really done my best during my college years, and that my 3.42 GPA was not all that great. I was very pleased when my LSAT scores came back in the 85th percentile, but as it seemed to be primarily a vocabulary and logic test, it played right into my strengths. I got several partial scholarship offers from some out of state schools,*** but after researching tuition rates, I was still better off going to the State schools in Texas without any scholarship. There were 4 such schools: Texas, Texas Tech, University of Houston, and Texas Southern University.**** I applied to all four. Almost immediately I received an acceptance letter from Texas Tech. TSU followed quickly. I discarded the one from TSU because I had found that their pass rate on the bar was about 15%. I visited Tech. University of Houston came and I considered whether I would rather live in the middle of 200 miles of bare cotton fields for half the year or live 40 miles from the beach. Regrettably, the beach won,***** so I called and released my seat at Tech. I wanted Texas so badly! Alas, I never received any response, so on the deadline for accepting the seat at UofH, I called and reserved my seat.

*You have to realize that my one and only attempt at door-to-door sales had been a disaster. When I was 10, I ordered a lot of flower seeds off the back of a comic book to sell door to door to get some prize. I worked all week and did not sell a pack. I was talking about it to my momma and my little 6 year old brother asked if he could try. I let him, and within 3 hours he had sold every pack. I was not cut out to sell anything door-to-door.******

**This is the same aunt who emails me the stuff I share on this blog from time to time. She is my momma's sister and is the only aunt I have or have ever had.

***It really did disturb me that several of the schools from the Deep South had asked me to submit a picture with my application. I suspected that they didn't accept ugly people to those schools, and didn't apply.

****Texas Southern University's Thurgood Marshall School of Law was created in response to the famous separate but equal doctirine case, Sweatt vs. Texas. Their campus was actually 3 blocks from the University of Houston campus. Their pass rate on the Texas bar has greatly increased over the last few years.

*****My sinuses have never been the same after having lived in that highly humid climate in Houston for three years. I had not seemed to have the same trouble with my sinuses during the shorter haul when I was stationed at Ft. Polk, LA for 18 weeks in 1973.

******I suspect that when I run for County Attorney next year, I will have to attempt to sell myself door-to-door.

[If anyone has any interest about what it is like getting married and divorced during law school, I experienced that also.]

Posted by Tiger at July 1, 2003 09:47 PM | TrackBack