okay um well the first thing uh what do you think you would offer as far as uh
uh information about selecting a school
well first i think they've got to have a pretty good idea of what they want to what they want to do uh once they have that then they can start looking in
uh-huh
all the various publications that give out all the information about schools and write to the schools themselves
and start finding out about the different requirements for the programs and what kind of uh of job assistance and all that other kind of stuff they offer
yeah
uh do you do you feel that the first two years that the um depending upon the field i know there are some fields which a person should go to the school that school all four years
but i know there are some fields where it's really not necessary
yeah a lot fields are most of your liberal arts degrees and stuff aren't really concerned with your first two years anyway it's it's your core education your general requirements general education requirements um
uh-huh
if you know if they want to get a liberal arts degree i don't i don't know what advice i'd give them go to the school you'd like to go to that's what i did
yeah
i didn't care about the program or anything else i went where i wanted to go
yeah
yeah what was your degree in
uh political science
political science oh okay well i know i know i'm going to school right now and uh i have a friend uh UTD University of Texas Dallas
where are you at
well yeah i guess everybody's in Dallas that i talk to i'm in north Carolina
i know well that's where Texas Instruments is
yeah right
um something that i i think that i've noticed that i i have a friend i think if you're going into like uh law or medicine
a very particular very specific field even even engineering you can get you can meet a lot of the requirements at a public
um institution
sure
and uh it's a lot cheaper my parents my parents made a mistake in uh in sending my sister to a private institution for the first two years
oh yeah
um
and she found out after that she said you know my parents they just they really wasted a lot of money this is about twenty years ago but uh
uh-huh
well right now i just i mean as far as selecting selecting a school i i i feel that uh a lot of it depends upon the major
yeah it does Um i didn't know what i wanted to do after i got my my degree um originally i had planned
uh-huh
uh undergrad degree in political science and then a master's in public administration And i went ahead and pursued that i i got as far as the thesis and decided To hell with it i didn't want it
um-hum
Um and from that point i went to law school and after a year and a half of that i decided i didn't want that either haven't figured out what i want to be when i grow up
uh-huh
okay
yeah
and so but i i i really did enjoy the law i mean that's that's where i wanted to be but i didn't want to go through the uh the hassle that the law schools put you through because i never did want to be a practicing attorney i just wanted a law degree
uh-huh
and i've since discovered that i would be far better off being in the paralegal field because that's the nuts and bolts of the law and that's what i like
yeah
and you don't have to put up with all the B S that the lawyers have to so that's that's what i'm pursuing right now
right
and i'm pretty happy with it so far
um
yeah yeah i'm i'm pursuing what they what's what's called an interdisciplinary field i'm a speech therapy major and fortunately i have a lot of i have a good medical background and
uh-huh
yeah that's probably very useful
yeah it's it's actually turning out to be more more useful than what i thought and um i also have a good languages background linguistics
uh-huh
uh-huh
and some psychology so it's all working together the only field i'm not familiar with really is education which is required as well it requires about four or five different fields really
yeah
oh good grief
so it's a
yeah i thought at one time i wanted to be a teacher but i i quickly dispelled that idea when i became a substitute teacher for a while just to get my feet wet i said uh i couldn't do this everyday no way
uh-huh
maybe maybe being a tenured professor would be one thing but being a public school teacher is entirely another thing
um
oh
so you are a disgruntled graduate student
i am a disgruntled i am i am just a disgruntled person all around i'm the uh i'm the uh original uh mister Scrooge i guess
oh
yeah bah humbug
yeah bah humbug Yeah i just
i i i think yeah there is i i i think uh law would be a fine field a fine profession fine field to go into um i know one time i was in a political science class and you know talking about
fields people going into different fields i made an off off the cuff remark about lawyers about their integrity being questionable and i mean oh that was like a can of worms no
probably you probably got everybody on you because they were probably all going to law school
no there was a woman she said my my best friends are lawyers and you know all this and it was just
well that remark in itself is a slam My best friends are lawyers you know like like uh my best friends are blacks
yeah i know it was
or or Jewish it used to be Jewish you know
jewish now blacks and i guess i i guess Iraqi now is the
yeah
i know it but
law law was a lot of fun until you get to law school
and it doesn't become fun anymore
yeah
yeah i have a i have a friend she's studying she's going into law another friend going into law and that she's i i i'm really i'm really concerned about you know she's just going to be
you know what's going to happen when she gets there you know all of her dreams will be dispelled
yeah you going
oh yeah Yeah if if if you've ever seen the program paper chase it's very much like that except worse
yeah
yeah it's i i think it's probably more embarrassing and very painful i i see i see that happening
it is
yeah very much so yeah it's it's a lot of that Um it it was enjoyable for a while
yeah
um but it's such a grind and you begin to wonder you know if if i'm not i mean you really have to be dead set on being a lawyer
yeah
to do it if you have any doubts whatsoever you better not get into it i mean i wasted a year and a half of awfully hard and i aged ten years
uh-huh
um-hum
uh-huh
but i i i wouldn't trade the experience for anything in the world It never hurts to have some kind of a grounding in law
yeah i i went to a language school and and that was a it was a an
i guess uh United States Institution it was i was military at the time and i i think probably the biggest huh
what branch were you in what branch were you in i was too
i was in the Air Force yeah yeah for myself i mean i think that military experience was fine it was just i just wish that there was something else that that that i could have done you know with
yeah
yeah well i got i got tired of the service after a while i mean it i had a terrific job really enjoyed it uh command post
yeah
yeah
uh
i was i was a linguist
i was just wondering were you in SAC by any chance
were you in SAC
hum
in TAC
SAC
uh no i wasn't
oh okay i i thought maybe you might have had some experience with the uh R C one thirty fives
no no i didn't i didn't go flight crew matter of fact i didn't make it completely through that through that field i was i was in intelligence school and about three weeks short
oh
i didn't make it i sort of washed out
well that's
yeah after about eighteen months of talking about the year and a half training you know it's it's something you know i think that's why you know children really need to
uh-huh
think about the field they're going to going into and i mean spend a lot of serious reading before they i mean not just thinking about they actually should do some reading and they should study it
yeah
yeah
that's right and it
and if it's possible even get some experience at it or at least watch some people do it
yeah i i i i think i think there's a lot to be said for kids working after school i mean they they find out whether just how much of a people person they are
uh-huh sure
that's true i found that out when i was in high school i worked at McDonald's
yeah
oh and i tell you what i worked at McDonald's as well and i i can tell you one thing there are just some people that i you know you just came to the point where
i mean and oh i eventually worked in a lab in a lab as a lab technician and i worked front desk and i mean somebody could walk in the door and i knew exactly what they were going to do and say
yeah yeah i was the same way too i'm not a people person i i i hate um
having to play such a nice guy you know especially when it's all phony especially when you got some uh jerk coming in
yeah
um-hum
i it's just not for me i'm uh i deal much better in research and books and stuff like that
uh-huh
which is why i'm going to enjoy the paralegal field a lot
um-hum
yeah
that's good i was just wondering um
getting back to the school thing so i mean i
i i almost wish that there was some
