Going Back

Its that time of year again. Summer is here, and while most people I know my age have finished up their semesters and are free at least for the summer, I start blowing off the layer of dust coating my stack of LSAT prep books and flattening out crumpled scan trons. Although I knew this time last year I would have to buckle down and get back to academic work this July the feelings of constriction and uncertainty have somehow snuck up on me.

Part of me is so ready to go back to school, to step away from the irregularity that has become my life, and immerse myself in law dictionaries, libraries, and mid-term test anxiety. Familiar and safe, school is something I know I am good at, something I can tell the grandparents all about, who will then declare their much coveted pride about their sweet granddaughter -a future lawyer!-to all their friends.

*Gag*

As much luke-warm fuzziness as these images give me they also mean radical upheaval in my life, necessitating change I am not quite sure I am ready for: limiting my time for the Lusty Lady and other sex-work, my emotional bandwidth for friends and partners, and energies for my projects and passions. I want to be able to do it all! Alas, I know that can't be how it goes.

To stay motivated I've been trying to do little things: placing sticky note reminders that I am going to law school for my own satisfaction and not that of my family all around my apartment, buying myself awesome feminist law books to read, and touching base with people who have already gone through the process and survived. Only three months of LSAT studying, three months of applications, and three years of law school...it can't be as bad as I'm thinking it will be, can it?