Life

Every so often I remind myself that I was in Spain this time, last year. I remember the whole thing being totally surreal. How? I started at my bilingual middle school with the help of Carlos, my bilingual coordinator and supervisor with his hybrid Spanish-British accent. Then there was the odd factor of being openly stared at in the street like I was from another planet, to my agreement that yeah, SoCal and a small, Southern town in Spain are on different planets.

Now everything is back to normal, but it's like I don't know what normal is supposed to be after spending four years in college, a year in Spain, and now back to a place where I have spent very little time -- Simi Valley. Now there's another difference: the SoCal culture and NY culture are pretty much opposite in a lot of ways. New York is much louder and brash. People don't act like their moods are affected by constant sunshine and like life is a Disney movie, where the biggest problem in the morning is deciding between a Gucci or Versace pair of sunglasses.
Oh, of course there are the Hamptons and the obscenely rich people who own oil companies, just like the left coast. But the people who I associated with weren't usually those people, except for the few I knew who I competed against, riding. Back to the cultural aspect, though -- I usually want to get the *bleep* out of Simi Valley and go back to New York. The problem with me is that I'm never 100% comfortable wherever I land, because nothing is familiar. I haven't lived in the same place for more than 3 years at a time since I left Michigan, when I was 16. Yeah I talk about it a lot, blah blah, but I'm getting used to SoCal, still, so I am going to think about it if not just complain. It's not that I want to complain as much as try to figure this whole thing out and come to terms with living here indefinitely.

I started LSAT prep class. Well, more like I took the diagnostic test and I'm waiting for the real classes to start and get the wake up call that I need to learn to pace myself better in taking the test. I will get hung up on making sure I have done my process of elimination while evaluating which answer best suits the question I'm reading, and getting worried, because sometimes they look like they all could be correct. Actually, it's sometimes obvious that two of the answers were put there to play tricks on you so I just throw those out and concentrate on what does fit.

Truth be told, I am such a huge nerd for reading and writing that the LSAT doesn't faze me as much as it should. I'm a Libra, after all, and we're all about balance, right? Ya damn straight. I get so in the zone when I'm taking the (practice) tests that when I hear someone sneeze I jump. My favorite part of the test are the logic puzzles, because I feel like I'm good at that. The worst part is the long passages, because although I'm a fast reader, I want to be thorough. Being completely nitpicky isn't an option when you have 35 minutes to get through 26 questions while reading the long passages and answering questions. Kind of weird, because when I used to take scantron tests in high school I remember always being one of the first people done. But the stakes are way higher this time, it's not like if I bomb the test about WWI that I'll get a chance to up my overall grade on the next test.

A lot of people have been asking me "seriously? Law school?" and I just say yeah, I'm interested in pursuing it. I remember my insanely demanding sophomore year at Ithaca, and how I was assigned to write two 25+ page essays, I had a job, I wrote for the paper, and oh yeah, I was living with a sociopathic roommate, all at the same time. I managed to keep my sh*t together the first semester, but I just snapped like a twig the second. "Twig" makes it sound like it wasn't too bad. Let's say I started sending sparks in every possible direction, like a toaster dropped in the bathtub. Point? I feel I've matured a lot since then and managed keeping my anxiety in check, more. Clearly the (lack of) sleep exacerbates my ability to work efficiently, but I'm working on it s'more.

One thing that has made me anxious is the job situation. I've found that the employers who are interested are now telling me (NOW TELLING. ME.) that they can't get a hold of the American contact to affirm that I worked in Spain. Well, sh*t. That makes it seem fishy, obviously, and it feels like a year of work was wasted. In any case, I've been told to provide new contacts, so I put down one of my riding trainers and my mom's last boss who went with me to El Salvador last year. Let's hope this will catapult me into the right direction, because I'm stuck otherwise. I mean, I worked at a newspaper and in Spain, I speak nearly fluent Spanish and Italian, I did other grunt work, and shouldn't that be enough for some entry level job of some sort? But of course just going to undergrad means nothing these days unless you want to be chief fry cook at your local In N Out, I guess, especially in this economy. Moan, groan, vomit.

OK I think it's time to sleep. ¡Buenas Noches!