More on School

There's something really nice about being older and in school. Even in law school, I'd focus intently on my text (like everyone else) whenever the prof would get ready to pick the next victim for the socratic-method-exchange of case studies. While these days I find it hard pressed to find anyone who buys it, I really am, at the core, a rather shy person. So all through school, I would dread being called on.

Now, I just don't care. If I sound stupid, I'm certain there will be someone else who will sound even more stupid on another day. I have a kid. And I'm just so thrilled to be doing something that's not all about diaper changes, or cleaning up, or nose-wiping, or trying to rack my brain for activities that are fun for the little one, but not too much of a logistical nightmare for me. After one's been pooped on and peed on, one just doesn't care about illusory classroom humiliations.

Also, while I was growing up, my Dad was forever bellowing his favorite phrase about education to me: "NOW is the MOST IMPORTANT time in your life!" I heard it in kindergarten, grammar school, junior high, high school, college, and in law school. I didn't realize it quite so much at the time, but unsurprisingly, it had a way of creating too much emotional pressure and angst. With my current endeavor, I'm hoping that I'll leisurely (part-time) finish up in about 2 years and with an improved economy, my specialized tax degree will translate into a job within a reasonable commuting distance from home. But if it doesn't. It doesn't. And this all will have been a rather exotic self-enrichment program. While that would not be the ideal outcome, I certainly don't have the "NOW is the MOST IMPORTANT time" urgency weighing down my psyche.

So I am determined to enjoy it. I absolutely plan on being a nerd about it. But I'm going to savor my nerd-dom. Yes. I sit in the front row. Yes. I participate regularly in class discussion. And yes. I do some unassigned problems from the text because I find it . . . fun.

Tax law probably is not everybody's cup of tea, but there are lots of reasons why it can be interesting. Plus, I can really get on board with it as a practitioner from either side of it. With immigration law (which actually has a lot of similarities with tax law -- so it's no surprise to me that I find both appealing), I felt conflicted on either side of it. I couldn't quite contemplate it from a private practitioner's point of view, because as a rule follower, I don't think I could passionately advocate on behalf of clients, who in all likelihood, broke some sort of immigration law. On the other hand, with the government side, I would sometimes feel like we were devoting too many resources to an ineffective system.

With tax law, I could definitely get on board the government side of things: why should anyone get away with evading tax when everybody else has to pay? But even on the taxpayer side, since Congress made the code so complex, full of holes and ambiguity, it is meant to be a bit of a game. Congress didn't have to opt for that kind of system, but it did. Since it's a game by design, I could get on board to let someone try to play it better. But if I got to choose, I probably would get on the government side with more relish.