Law School

Once upon a time, Nate decided he wanted to go to law school. He's not totally sure why, but thought it would be a good opportunity for him to get a job to make enough money to provide for our future family. So to get ready to start getting ready to apply to law school, he signed up for an LSAT prep course. The Law School Admission Test is a grueling 4+ hour exam that tests reading comprehension, logical reasoning, and analytical reasoning. In January 2012, he and his friend Trent started going to this class 2 nights a week and taking a practice exam every Saturday. They did this for about 6 months and actually really liked it. Nate loved doing the logic games and thought they were so fun (nerd)! He and Trent would talk about the strategy behind the answers, how to get them done faster. Trent's wife, Kristen, and I usually used this time to go running together or other fun things while they were studying.

Finally the fateful day came... After hundreds of hours of classes, studying, and practice exams, they took the LSAT. This score was for real. It was scary, but Nate came away feeling good about the test. We had to wait a few weeks for his score, during which time it was really hard to be patient.

You see, while Nate was doing his LSAT prep, I was doing my own studying. I was studying law schools, cities, admission stats, cost of tuition, cost of living, application fees, deadlines, and everything I possibly could about this next huge decision for us. I made spreadsheet after spreadsheet about all the information I could find. Knowing his LSAT score would give us an idea of which schools to apply to and what direction we would be headed.

Seriously, I worked on this chart every day. I made several versions of it, revising it, etc. I loved it! 

Eventually he got his score and he did a great job! He scored really well and allowed him to start applying to schools. Applications opened up in October 2013 and we spent the next 3 months applying to 15 law schools.  That is more than most apply to, but we wanted to keep our options open and couldn't narrow down the list! It also helped that we didn't have to pay for applications because Nate got fee waivers from almost every school. We started finding out about his first admission decisions in December and heard from the last school in March 2013. There were only three he did not get accepted to, he was wait-listed at one, and accepted at the rest. It was great to be accepted at so many awesome schools, but it definitely didn't make the decision any easier.

To say those four months were stressful is an understatement. Every day I would look at my spreadsheet (I'm a nerd too) thinking something will jump out at me and yell "PICK ME!" We had endless lists of pros and cons. As soon as we took one school off of our list, another would be added. After we hadn't thought about one in a while, it was brought back in for consideration. It was really, really difficult to make any decisions! We couldn't come to any conclusions on our own. We were praying about it every day, but didn't feel like we were getting any answers or clues or hints! 

We still hadn't heard from Arizona State University, but weren't really considering it. To be honest, we really only applied there because Kristen is from Arizona and we thought it would be fun to go to school together there! Turns out, they didn't even apply there (what the heck!)! After an especially frustrating time, we decided to attend the temple to see if we could get any answers there. While there, we narrowed it down to BYU, William and Mary, and ASU. We're not really sure why we were thinking about ASU because he wasn't officially accepted yet, but it kept popping up. We left feeling really peaceful and knew that it would work out even though we couldn't see the future. 

As soon as we got home, the acceptance packet with scholarship information from ASU was literally waiting for us in the mailbox. It was awesome! The timing was perfect. It showed me Heavenly Father knew what was in store for us and wanted to trust in Him and His timing. That was basically our winner school, and for the next two weeks or so we still debated it, but ultimately decided to go with ASU. Less than a month before graduating from BYU we had our next step and it felt so good! 

Every once in a while I think about what it would have been like had we decided to move to Washington or Virginia. Sometimes I wish we would have ventured out to the east coast to try a new side of things, a new culture. But I know we ended up where we need to be. The scholarship they offered was hard to beat: tuition would be almost completely covered for the first two years. With a $41,000 price tag for out-of-staters, that saved us a HUGE burden of taking out loans.

Then came the next wave of spreadsheets: jobs to apply to, cities to live in, apartment complexes to check out, moving truck rentals, storage companies. But first, GRADUATION!