See Jane Try

They say everyone’s an expert after they go through it, you’re only a failure if you’re still in it.
I say everyone’s a failure after they go through it, you’re only an expert while you’re still in it.


One of my friends from law school just passed the California bar, and after a year of (as near as I can tell) doing nothing law related, she expects to open her own firm next month, after she’s sworn in.


I don’t know how to convince her that she’s making a terrible decision, but she really is. Telling her hasn't helped, and frankly, the year she lost while waiting to join the ranks of the bar passers has probably made her the wrong kind of desperate.


While I managed to graduate law school on the front edge of Lost Generation and snagged myself, at least briefly, paid legal work, I’m not confident that Jane* is ever going to make as much practicing law as she would have made and saved by waitressing for the past four years instead of going to law school. It breaks my heart a little bit to see.

A Perspective

Outstanding Student Loan Debt - 2009 (fed) $605,600,000,000
Outstanding Student Loan Debt - 2009 (private) $157,800,000,000
Outstanding Total Student Loan Debt - 2009 $763,400,000,000
Outstanding Mortgage Debt - 2009 $14,287,340,000,000
Outstanding Credit Card Debt - 2009 $917,000,000,000

Sources:
http://www.federalreserve.gov/econresdata/releases/mortoutstand/current.htm
http://www.hoffmanbrinker.com/credit-card-debt-statistics.html
http://www.finaid.org/loans/

Interesting, to me, which debt can be written off and escaped (and who is more likely to have that debt) and which debt cannot be eliminated through bankruptcy.