The unknown

As law school quickly approaches, the list of questions I have for the program grows longer and longer. Many of these come from reading other's experiences in law school on their blogs, and maybe some of you who read mine will have answers, or suggestions, or similar concerns of your owns.

Reading other's experiences with OCI and with applying for jobs and how this process works for full time students, I'm becoming more and more concerned about how the school is going to deal with this for those of us who already have full time jobs. If second year internships lead to jobs, and second year internships are based on first year grades and/or writings, how do those of us who may not have the opportunity to do any internships get jobs? What I'm even more concerned about is not necessarily the availability of jobs for students like myself, but with the school's ability to hook us up with the right opportunity. Since I got my MBA (part time program) from the same school and have experience with their career services department, I know that if the law school career services department is anything like the MBA career services department, we're all hosed.

I know they told us during their recruiting meeting that they had firms lined up to hire nontrad students and how these firms really liked hiring nontrad type students, I'm not sure how much I believed it at the time, and I know I believe it even less now. And yes, I'm aware that I probably should have given this more thought than I did in deciding to apply for law school, but since I'm not necessarily going to law school for the job, I kind of glossed over it hoping that sometime in the next 4 years the school would get it figured out. But now, as I read other's experience, you've got me all concerned, though hopefully over nothing.

A related question that plagues me is whether or not I can talk my current employer into allowing me to take a "sabbatical" if I had the opportunity to do a summer internship for a couple of months. I know our employee handbook says sabbatical are possible for education purposes, but I don't know how that would apply to one to try out another career with intentions to leave your current employment at some point. Then again, maybe I can just figure out how to transfer to the legal department if I find out that corporate law is the thing for me.

I don't know, I don't know, I don't know. This whole thing gets really confusing at times and the closer it gets, the more confused I become. I have no idea what I'm going to do with my law degree once I get it. I don't have a goal, a career plan, or anything that is providing me some sort of direction. Yeah, I'd like to do any number of different legal things and there are probably plenty more that I'd be happy doing, but I have no idea how to get from here to there, other than to go to law school and hope it works out.

I don't mean to throw all my insecurities on those of you reading this. It's not that I'm unsure about going to law school. I'm not. It's what I've wanted to do since high school. This is the right thing for me to do. I just don't know what's next and I don't see the path I'm supposed to be following. I hate that.