| Originally Posted by Wmcmanus /img/forum/go_quote.gif I don't know, exactly. I was pretty intense as a student. At heart, I was always an academic type of person. I did my undergrad in 3 years and then went straight into the master's program and then the CPA and CMA exams all by age 21. After that I started teaching college on a full time basis and wrote my first textbook as I was entering a Ph.D. program at age 23. Much of it is a blur now, although you would be surprised to know how much beer I drank, how many parties I went to, how many albums I'd spin into the wee hours of the night, how many great concerts I took in, how many road trips, etc. I just used my time extremely well back then and never bothered to sleep much. I still don't sleep much, actually. Maybe 4 hours per night, if that, for the past 27 years. In those days I felt as though I was on a mission, or that I had something to prove. My parents weren't in a position to help much financially so I had to make it or break it on my own. My biggest fear was that I'd end up holding a jackhammer for a living, Not that there is anything wrong with that (seriously). Yet, a lot of the people whom I grew up with ended up living the rest of their lives in our small Midwestern town. Many of them seem miserable today, and I knew that I'd end up that way if I didn't push myself academically. The best thing about working hard at something that you're not sure you'll succeed at, is that you tend to get good results! Then your initial success builds to bring further success and you gain more confidence in yourself and start to believe anything is possible. Yet, the irony for me was that at age 25 and a Ph.D. dropout, I started to think of myself as a failure. The main reason for attending law school was to make sure that I was running toward something (in a positive way) rather than running away from something. For whatever reasons, I really didn't want to be a researcher and that's what Ph.D. programs are designed to create in their graduates. I wanted to be a teacher and already was one! So going the law school route and later the LLM gave me a chance to teach at small, private, liberal arts colleges in accounting, taxation and business law. Thus, leaving the Ph.D. program turned out to be the best decision I've ever made in the sense that it opened new windows of opportunity to really expand on the real career that I was pursuing in teaching. It was nice to have a diversified course load and not to get pigeon holed into just tax or auditing or whatever. As I look back on things, I don't think I would have done much differently. Sure, I missed out on some fun by being a "serious" student but if you work hard when you're young you can play hard when you get a little older, and nobody can ever take your education away from you. I was fortunate enough to retire early 4 and a half years ago at age 41 (now 45) although I still teach part time at the local college and involve myself in all sorts of other things professionally. But the nice thing is that I now get to pick and choose my spots and don't have a boss over my shoulder (other than Jude). I'm about to embark on another leg in the journey of life my spending several months this spring and summer (beginning in a couple of weeks) touring the US and some of Canada in a motorhome with my Ariel Atom in tow. Part of the tour this year will be to go back and visit all of the colleges and universities that I've studied at or have taught at, mostly to check out the campuses and knock on doors of some of my old professors (those who are still around). But also to revisit the restaurants and pubs and anything that looks familiar. When I was an undergraduate student, I remember one of our professors saying, "Some of you folks ought to think about becoming one of us. The chalk washes off quickly and you really don't have to worry about much else if you're good enough in the classroom!" He really was a star professor and what he was getting at was that it doesn't have to be "publish or perish" if you put yourself in the right environment. At the top tier schools, sure research is king. But at many smaller schools, excellent teaching is still highly rewarded (as well as rewarding in terms of the satisfaction it brings). Anyway, I'm obviously different than most people who went to college to get a degree to get a job and to move on with life. For me, getting degrees was sort of my job, in a way. I knew that I wanted to stay in the academic environment so I completely embraced it and didn't view it with any disdain as I've so often seen during the past 25 years as a college teacher. You know, that bit about, "I need to get the piece of paper..." It's as though they absolutely refuse to see any relevance in what they are studying and view the entire process of higher education as a false reality. More often than not (but not always, there will be exceptions), those who succeed most famously in that false reality will be the exact same people who succeed most famously in their next reality (i.e., the business world or wherever they go next). So what was so false about the first one? Instead, I believe that the highly popular disdain among today's students toward higher education is either: 1) an excuse for their failures to adjust to meet the system's requirements that will ensure their success, or 2) their inability, and sometimes outward refusal, to see the relevance of their education vis-a-via the "real world". Thus, these same students will only exert minimal efforts to achieve a grade, even if that means they will actively fight the possibility of actually learning something. Everything is done at the last minute and haphazardly. Nobody goes to the library anymore just for the fun of hanging out in this incredible, massive, awe inspiring, University library! Nobody is in college to be in college! If that makes any sense... so what I'm getting at is that you can give up your beer during week nights and really focus on your courses, and then knowing that you've done everything you should have done all week long, that first beer on Friday night will taste that much colder and that much better! Why? Because you don't have to stay up all Sunday night trying to get a project done. You've already done the research and have written up the outline at some point during the week when you've been working as a serious student while others have been partying. Now it's just a matter of spending a couple of hours to finish up the project and get prepared for your courses for the next week. In other words, don't hate your courses. Embrace the opportunity to learn and to grow intellectually and to begin a lifetime of achievement. The patterns that you establish while you're young will set you up for the rest of your life. For most people, what they do between the age of 18 and 25 will be more telling in their ultimate life stories than what they've done (or have not done) during any other period in their life. Long story, but I really hate to see young people throw away the opportunities that are right in front of them. The most amazing thing about the college environment is that there is room for everyone to succeed! If you learn the material and demonstrate your knowledge to the degree necessary to get an A in the course, you'll get an A in the course; same for everyone else! Nobody gets passed up for a promotion. Everyone who deserves it gets it. If you don't give it your best when that opportunity is right in front of you, why would you expect a potential employer to think that suddenly you'll become a star when you're handed a big paycheck? The reality is that you may have every bit as much star potential as that A student sitting next to you in college, but if you're a C student, you'll never get that chance to prove it in the "real world". What I love most about teaching is working with those C students to make them start to think of themselves as A students, whether they ever get there or not. So to answer your question, yes, I enjoyed it all. |
| So going the law school route and later the LLM gave me a chance to teach at small, private, liberal arts colleges in accounting, taxation and business law. |
| Originally Posted by mbd2884 /img/forum/go_quote.gif McGill University, Montreal, QC Psychology/Political Science Double Soon grad school for masters in education. |
| Originally Posted by nealric /img/forum/go_quote.gif Could you elaborate on how you parlayed the tax LLM into teaching at the liberal arts college? I am considering a joint LLM to go with my JD and would love some info. Did you start with a firm/government or did you go straight to academia? Was there a reason you chose undergrad education as opposed to teaching law school? |
| If you are a T14 student, LLM is a complete waste unless you are doing Tax, in which case the LLM is very important. |
| Originally Posted by nealric /img/forum/go_quote.gif I'm at at a T14 with a good tax LLM program. I'm a 2L with a summer associate job at a vault-ranked NYC firm. Good grades, but not at the top of the class. I can do the LLM with just one more semester after the JD. My understanding is that the firm I'm going to has pretty much all their new tax associates doing a part time LLM at NYU (but the idea of doing school while maintaining 2k billable hrs sounds pretty rough) Since a lot of firms are deferring start dates this year, my thought is they might do so again next year- giving me time to do the LLM. I'm fully aware of how difficult legal academia is. I guess I was more curious about the possibility of teaching undergrad and the impact the tax LLM had on teaching prospects. I wouldn't mind teaching at a third or fourth tier law school though. |
| I am sure you have considered your particular personal tax issues already |
| Originally Posted by nealric /img/forum/go_quote.gif Yeah, but those have to be weighed against the suckage of working and going to school simultaneously
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