Friday 10 December 2010

The Top Five: Questions about giving it all up .....continued....

Good evening dear reader, you are no doubt agog to know the answers to the rest of the questions people ask about giving up a career in law.........assuming that you made it through the previous blog's ramblings without slipping into a boredom induced coma or turning to drink!

3. So when are you going back? No idea!! The thing about life with small children is that it presents constant opportunities for spontaneity but very little chance to plan reliably too far ahead.........

to blunder off at a tangent - you won't find me talking in great specific detail about the kids in this blog because (a) I have a friend who blogs about family life brilliantly and I'd rather read hers than write on the same topic and (b) hopefully there are other people out there considering a change of career and wondering how that might change their sense of self, how their identity will be affected, how to avoid watching Jeremy Kyle all day - and they may or may not have kids, but a lot of the issues will be similar...............

A big part of the "so when are you going back" is related to the children - their needs trump everything else - but there are lots of other issues.   Will The Firm (my most recent employer) want me - I'm a bit old and specialized and therefore a little bit more expensive to employ and probably stuck in my ways! What happens, when the time comes and there is a chance to go back, if I find that I don't have the heart or stomach (or, to be fair, any other organ) for the law anymore?

I started on my glittering career as a naive 17 year old contemplating what degree to do and decided that, being a bit squeamish for medicine, law looked interesting.  I enjoyed studying law, I even enjoyed the notorious year of Solicitor's exams, and the pre-qualification training I received at a Northern firm was endlessly engaging and enjoyable.  Most of my years in practice, and certainly the most recent at The Firm, have been very happy - I'm naturally talkative and nosey ("interested in people") - so a very people oriented area of law (not crime) has suited me well............but I don't know how I feel about it right now, mainly because I don't think about it.

Anyway - the other part of the answer to 3. is that I am not-at-all-secretly hoping I will somehow have a career as an opera singer so perhaps I'll wait a bit in case I get "spotted".....

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