Perhaps the rest of you don't feel this way. Maybe those of you who studied accounting or engineering over the last four years knew you'd be here all along; maybe you slithering young republicans or vacuous democratic hacks schemed for years about beginning your political career with this degree. Some of us, though, didn't expect our degrees in the arts to result in the often-rote toiling that law school entails.

Personally, I thought the Distinction in Creative-Nonfiction that I earned as an undergraduate would provide limitless possibilities for me. Publishers and periodicals, I imagined, would be lining up for my services; I would write a great novel or two, and then sink into addiction, pathos being my drug of choice. And whiskey, too, I suppose. This was my chief ambition, and I loved it. Like many would-be writers before me, however, I found out that the pay rate for a floundering author would not afford the type of lifestyle that I wished to live. So law school it was!

To be frank, I sometimes feel a bit guilty/jealous when I talk to friends in Eastern-Slavic Mythological Studies (excluding Dracula) Departments, or places equally as ridiculous. They may be learning esoteric nonsense, but it's esoteric nonsense that they love, and they're willing to live uncomfortably to pursue their passions. These students stupidly and nobly shrugged off practicality to continue to learn about their first love, and I think that's at least as admirable as it is avoidable.

The last thing I want to do is seem ungrateful, or like I don't want to be here. I really do enjoy studying the law, and I appreciate the nearly-limitless opportunities a law degree affords its possessor; I, as much as anyone, look forward to smarmily looking at a potential client and saying, "Trust me—I'm a lawyer." My only point is that, for some people with an undergraduate degree in the arts, going to law school instead of pursuing writing/painting/editing/photographing/filming is like picking the drop-dead gorgeous girl that you may or may not care for over the deep-down-inner-beauty-if-you'd-only-get-to-know-her girl. Your friends might high-five you over the decision, but you're the one that has to live with it. So we slouch toward our new goal, rationalizing our abandonment of photography by pledging to take an art law class, and forsaking our writing but pledging to take a seminar on Women in Literature and the Legal Ramifications of Their Actions as Seen Through a New Critical Viewpoint, if only they offered it when we didn't have a scheduling conflict.

It's when I think about these things that I wish I had sold out earlier and studied computer science or business management as an undergrad; if that were the case, I could probably make a flow-chart or computer program to compare my potential success as a lawyer with my potential success as an engineer/businessman. Recently, though, I've dropped the melodrama and decided to view entering the legal field as a small shift rather than a drastic change, as one facet of the arts that I embraced is still present in law: pretension. Instead of waxing intellectual about deconstruction and Victorian Sensationalist novels, I use Latin jargon like "Res Ipsa Loquitur" in everyday speech. Rather than playing the isolated artist, I now get to be the worldly-wise attorney. Best of all, verbosity is treasured in both. I haven't abandoned academic pretentiousness; I've just learned to speak it in a new language. And who knows, maybe someday I can be both a writer and a lawyer, like John Grisham. Then maybe (also like John Grisham), both writers and attorneys could consider me a hack.

This article will appear next week in the inagural issue of Consortium, a new legal journal whose contributors avoid legal analysis like the plague, but have much to say about professional life, social life, law blogs, the state of legal education, and more. Consortium will be published quarterly in an online version, and each issue will be published in hard copy once a year. For more information or to subscribe, go to www.ConsortiumJournal.org.