New Orleans, The Logical Choice

  (How I ended up in New Orleans after college)

My senior year of college, I remember the anxiety of taking the LSATs. I needed to get a 40 or higher to get into a "good" law school.  President of Hillel, working 20 hours at Evanston Special Recreation, my senior course load had to be balanced with my Stanley Kaplan course to prepare for the mind bending logic puzzles on the LSATs.  The stress of what to do after school mounted.  I had no clear ideas though, my parents expected that I dutifully continue my education.

Taking standardized tests were not stressful until in the tenth grade I bombed the PSATs. When I took them a second time, I proudly brought my scores to my faculty advisor who was also the headmaster. He took the test results from my hands, scanned it and proclaimed, "Well lightning strikes!" Crestfallen, I asked, being the approval hungry teenager, "You think this is a fluke?" Dismissively with his Boston (read Harvard) accent he barked, "In all my years I have never seen a single student's score jump this many hundred points!"

This explains when later that year why I burst into his office with another test score in my hands. This time the all important SAT scores were waving in my grasp like a victory flag. "Look at this! It's the exact same score as my last PSATs." I held it up for him to see with my Cheshire Cat grin smirking like I had won this tussle.  Only to be punched in the gut when he shrugged, "I guess lightning strikes twice."

Dejected I left his office, despite a good score. My parents and my college advisor though were not satisfied and insisted on me taking the SATs again.  Surely, I could do even better. Nauseated and fearful the night before the next SATs, I never made it to the test just in case lightning had indeed struck twice and would not repeat a third miracle.

I felt the same pit in my stomach this time, what if I had indeed fooled everyone at Northwestern University and was not a bright student. I took the LSATs utilizing every rational and logical facility I could muster, though my fear of bombing countered with every irrational thought and illogical conclusion.

What if my scores would be so awful that no law school would admit me.  I applied to some service programs in Israel and then the fledgling Teach For America. My application for TFA was accepted for an interview.  I needed to prepare a student lesson.  I showed up to the interview dressed up in a toga that I had embellished with grapes and Greek flourishes.  I plied them with a platter of grapes, cheese and crackers for the interviewers as I told the Dionysian myth of why dolphins were so human-like.  My delivery and engagement led me to the next round of interviews where I had a bootcamp like scarefest of an interview where a butch lesbian (I'm certain!) screamed in my face about children dangling from a window and demanding to know that instant "What would I do?"

I found out a week before the LSATs came that I had been accepted to the second corps of TFA.  More exciting to me was that I had been granted my first choice of placements: New Orleans.  Though I had a backup I still trembled when the LSATs scores came in the mail.  "Did lightning strike?"  I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw my score was in the acceptable range of everyone else's expectations.

Then I breathed a second deep breath. Unable to contain myself, I broke into a smile, not out of relief but because I decided in that moment that law school could wait two years.

I would start my adult life in New Orleans.