If indecisive, last semester can be agony
COMMENTARY
Jenny Specht

A truly indecisive person like myself (who didn’t consider herself indecisive until someone described her as such) hates choices.

Picking a major was an agony. After four official changes at the registrar’s office, I am finally coasting through my last semester.

Yet — and I know many of my classmates can sympathize — the truly important choices are just about to come.

I admire those with a thought-out plan. I am currently pretending to know what I am doing by going to law school (a.k.a., a three-year deterrent to a real job).

However, as admissions decisions trickle in from the eight schools to which I applied, I find myself sucked in to the quicksand of decision-making.

Part of my indecisiveness can be attributed to my penchant to explore every side of an issue and evaluate pros and cons. For example, tremendous private school debt versus a cheap state institution; cold weather versus warm; prestige versus location; leaving people I love versus a lifetime of regrets.

Some have tried to ask logical questions that they think will help the decision-making progress.

Where do you want to eventually live? (Not West, with the exception of Seattle; nowhere in Texas besides Dallas; in a city.)

What kind of law do you want to practice? (Preferably none; for sure, nothing involving criminals or my greatest fear, public speaking.)

When are you going to get married? (This is from my mother; to be perfectly truthful. she has asked me this question once a week since I was 16. It doesn’t really have anything to do with law school, although she thinks it has to do with everything.)

We see answers are not found simply. Basically, I have narrowed my future down to: twelve or so cities, a billion jobs for lawyers who do not want to litigate; a continuing disappoint for my not-yet-a-grandmother; and a commitment to study nonstop and get yelled at by law professors for the best part of my 20s.

A lot has happened to affect college graduates in the recent past and the near future: the burst of the dot-com bubble, the slow economy and the collapse of giants Enron and WorldCom. Graduate school applications are up; job opportunities are down; living on your own is expensive. Enlisting in the military is always an option, but in the current dangerous state of affairs abroad, not necessarily desirable.

We seniors are panicking. Faced with the revocation of send-home and the elimination of 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. schedules, we are desperate.

And yet, amidst this frenzy, I have to remind myself that it is the accumulation of the hard work of many that has granted me these choices. People my age from other families, from other countries, from other economic classes, do not have these options. My grandmothers, because of their gender, faced a different set of expectations and possibilities than I do. For this I will not shirk opportunity, but rather force myself to chose a path.

However, that decision may be made by drawing a slip of paper out of a hat.

Jenny Specht is a senior English and political science major from Fort Worth.