First Person

Pushing the Big Red Button

Article tools

Printer friendly	E-mail article	Subscribe	Order reprints
	Discuss any Chronicle article in our forums
Latest Headlines First Person Half a Sabbatical Giving up a full year's leave to take only a semester off was a mistake but even a limited break has its benefits. The Fund Raiser Collateral Baggage Who, exactly, is the audience for a capital campaign once it goes public? The CV Doctor Does Your Vita Need Work? Submit your CV and it may be selected for an online critique by our Career Talk columnists. Career Talk Starting Fresh A primer for new professors on what to expect in the first year on the job. Resource Salaries: Faculty | Administrative Presidential pay: Private | Public Financial resources: Salary and cost-of-living calculators Career resources: Academic | Nonacademic Library: Previous articles by topic | by date | by column Career Talk, Ms. Mentor, and more... Landing your first job On the tenure track Mid-career and on Administrative careers Nonacademic careers for Ph.D.'s Talk about your career Blogs

By Nathan Holstein

As a 40-year-old with a doctorate in music performance and six fruitless years on the academic job market, I'm now considering chucking it all and pushing the Big Red Button. The Nuclear Option. That's right: law school.

I've become a cliché -- yet another humanities refugee looking for a quick fix to all my problems. But will I be a happy cliché?

Ever since receiving my law-school acceptance letters, I've twisted myself into an anxious pretzel, trying to imagine life as a lawyer. I know what life is like as a classical musician -- I've been doing it since I was 12 and the stage holds few surprises. As an adjunct and visiting instructor for six years, I've gotten pretty good at teaching courses in music theory and appreciation.

In fact, I'd have to say I'm living my dream life in my small mountain town in the West: I'm the concertmaster of the local orchestra, and first violinist of an educational quartet. I'm first call for most other groups, including a baroque orchestra and a contemporary ensemble. I teach one or two courses a quarter as an adjunct at Provincial State University in town.

And even with a small studio of private students, I still have plenty of time to pursue my outdoor passions: cycling, skiing, hiking, and fishing. At the age of 40, I'm in the best physical shape of my life, and I'm finally beginning to master the art of fly fishing.

The small town where my wife and I live has a renowned theater festival, blocks of fine restaurants and art galleries, and a wealth of cozy coffee shops. There's a ski mountain just up the road, and we live within a short drive of the Pacific coast. The weather is mild, and the summers, while hot, are dry and insect-free. The local populace is a hotbed of liberalism.

Yes, it sounds like paradise. Don't remind me.

So why would I give it all up for what is certain to be years of mental slavery? Why would I throw away years of practice on the violin, and a doctorate? The free time to pursue my outdoor adventures? My status as an accomplished musician?

Because the writing is on the wall.

Our small idyllic mountain town has become a prime retirement destination, which has led to a real-estate feeding frenzy. Unless we win the lottery, we'll never be able to afford a house here.

On the other hand, wages in this area are very low (my wife is making half of what she made in the Midwest), and none of what I do is high-paying or guaranteed. We're short of money at the end of every month. We rarely see those festival plays, dine in any of those great restaurants, or bedeck our walls with art from those galleries.

And I refuse to pay $1.40 for a cup of coffee when I can make it myself.

Even if I wanted to leave, my tenure-track prospects in the rest of the country aren't much better. Since 1999 when I left graduate school, I've had two one-year posts and two adjunct jobs, but a tenure-track position has eluded me.

The market for string teachers in academe has all but collapsed. This year the number of violin positions has barely exceeded single digits. Eliminate vacancies at small religious colleges or at high-profile conservatories, and the number of positions for which I'm suited falls to near zero.

The market in symphony orchestras hasn't been much better, and if positions in low-paying or unattainable major orchestras are eliminated, the possibilities shrink like a tuxedo accidentally left in the dryer on high.

I've kept playing for years with little to show for it, convinced that the big score was just around the bend. Maybe just one more audition, one more hiring season.

Even if I were to be offered a tenure-track position at a music department, I would face some moral dilemmas about doing the job. I know that I would be under pressure to recruit string students to fill my studio and the school symphony, thus ensuring my own position. But how could I do that knowing the abysmal state of the job market?

There are too many music schools and departments, and too many string players being trained as it is. Could I live with myself by pandering to the dreams of young and blissfully unaware musicians?

I admit that I'm jealous of my colleagues. It's painful to watch younger teachers with tenure moving into their second houses or planning summer adventures while I wonder if I should risk a few months without health insurance. Without a clear future, without any retirement savings whatsoever, and with college loans, it's clear we can't go on this way.

My midweek fishing expeditions and epic cycling journeys have become guilt trips. At my age, I should be entering my most productive years. Instead I'm biking, hiking, and skiing my professional and economic future away.

But what else can I do with my qualifications here? Most of the other jobs in the area are low-paying service jobs -- I can make more teaching two private students than most people make in a day. But the what-ifs are endless: What if I injure my hand and can't perform? What if my aging car gives out? What if I'm not needed to teach next quarter at the university? Do I want to be doing this at 50? At 60? Can I stand the uncertainty of the summer months?

The solution to all my problems? Law school. Right? Well, maybe.

I've gotten in, and have even been offered a small grant to a good regional university. I'm a good writer, and I know I have the discipline. My wife will be happy to move back to her hometown and family in the Midwest, where houses cost half as much. I'll be closer to my family.

There's the possibility of an intellectually stimulating and high-paying career. I'll be helping people, or perhaps working on the important legal conundrums of our time. And maybe I'll be able to afford that old Italian violin I've lusted after for years, or a 14-pound carbon-fiber bike.

We'll be able to travel and plan for the future -- like grown-ups, as my wife says. I've done my homework by talking to as many lawyers as possible: in prosecutors' offices, in legal-aid clinics, and in private practice. I've talked to lawyers who have left music, and musicians who have left law. In both cases, most seemed to enjoy their careers and make a decent living.

I've read all the law-school exposés (I'm well aware that the first year they scare you, the second year they work you, and the third year they bore you). I've perused the endless stream of glossy brochures featuring attractive young people in oxford button-downs happily studying case law on their laptops under a tree.

But try as I might, I can't imagine life as a lawyer. Will it be never-ending tedium? Will I be forced to compromise my morals by defending a vicious killer or an evil chemical company?

I guess I'm confused about what I really want in life. Sometimes I would really just love to rake it in and drive a Porsche, and sometimes I would gladly perform manual labor so that I could pursue my outdoor diversions. I have always prided myself on my quasi-counterculture life, and I've never really cared about status or social climbing, or brokering power deals. I've never even had a real 9-to-5 job.

Then there's the issue of debt. I already owe $40,000. After law school, it could be doubled. Will I be damning myself to some sort of real-life Lord of the Flies-type rat race just to pay for tuition?

And more what-ifs: What if my 40-year-old brain explodes during a lecture on civil procedure? What if I flunk out? What if I hate it?

And yet something is telling me to do it. I don't see much hope in my present career, and no one outside academe is going to hire a 40-year-old with little practical business experience and a doctorate that's even more specialized and useless than most. Sure, the law market has cooled down, but it's better than academe or music.

My friends say my fondness for gratuitous dialectic will make me a great lawyer. I could see myself as a prosecutor; I still look back with fondness to my first college job when I busted a score of students for plagiarism (and thoroughly enjoyed it). All in all, I know it will take a huge leap of faith, years of indentured servitude, and the abandonment of my carefree lifestyle.

A door to the possibility of a better -- or at least a different -- life has been opened. Will I walk through it? Can I press that Big Red Button? I've sent in the first deposit. You know, just in case. The second deposit is due in a few weeks. What will I do? I have no idea. In the meantime, the spring steelhead are running. I'm going fishing.