My windshield wiper fluid had been empty for a week, so I was really proud of myself when I finally bought some fluid from Wal-Mart.

In fact, I was SO excited that I popped my hood in the parking lot and filled the wiper fluid right there. Just because I’m that classy.

But when I got into my car, the “you need windshield wiper fluid” light was still on.

On the way home I realized why the light was still on – I poured the windshield fluid in the radiator!

The next day I was on the phone with Valvoline. They wanted $79 to flush my radiator.

I then called my car dealership’s repair shop – they wanted $125.

A few minutes later I’m speaking with a very knowledgeable boyish-woman at Valvoline. The amount of mechanics was amazing. It looked like a setup for a Bollywood dance number.

While my car was being pumped, yanked, and greased, I crossed Hennepin and went to SpyHouse, aka, the indie coffee shop.

I had two Time magazines that had been in my car for weeks. I got my overpriced coffee from the spot-bleached and pierced barista, and then found a seat among the macs and skinny jeans.

This was my first time “hanging out” in a coffee shop for months. I had done a substantial part of my law review petition at another indie coffee shop, but my café life basically ended once I got a car and a job.

The cliché in law school is “to do the things that make you happy so you don’t get angsty.” But the problem is that it’s hard to realize that you’ve stopped doing something that makes you happy – I didn’t realize how much I missed just hanging out until that day.

Somehow, during the dog walks and commutes to work, my extracurriculars became guilt-laced. And although my social life is now on par with the my best days in Miami, I forgot how important side projects and “me time” are.

And it took a windshield wiper fluid mix-up for me to figure that unstructured time needs to be a priority.

Something else was bothering me this week. Actually, I missed class on Wednesday and almost didn’t go back.

I didn’t fully understand what the problem was until I had a drink with Mobs at the Eagle.

The problem? Morale at the law school is low because a lot of us feel shafted. There was this unspoken expectation that if we went to a prestigious school and worked hard, that we would have some sort of job security.

Obviously, a quick glance at Above the Law reminds everyone that the job market is bleak.

Now, neither of us feel completely unemployable – it’s just that if we knew that we would have to do this much leg work and face this kind of uncertainty, then we would have done it for free at a less prestigious school.¹

I don’t know how Mobs feels, but I definitely consider going to the University of Minnesota a mistake. My scholarship is a joke, and tuition for out of state students is the equivalent of a bitchslap.

The only problem is that there was no way I would have known that this was a bad idea. During undergrad I forwent Macalester, NYU, and Georgetown to go the University of Miami.

Sure, I was on a full ride and got to stay in a fun city, but I felt that I had shortchanged myself for the money.

So for grad school I went to my first choice school, despite getting full rides at dozens² of schools.

My point is that the mild inferiority complex of going to a tier 3 school is better than cementing yourself into debt and jumping into a river of unemployment.³ And no, that’s not dramatic at all…

But with debt comes freedom. I’m going to finish my degree at UMN because a single year of law school is even more useless towards paying off loans than a JD degree. And since gainful law-related employment⁴ seems unlikely, I can focus what law interests me without worrying about “what looks good” to a non-existent employer – which I would have done anyway if I took a full ride at a third tier.

So this week I recommitted to me-time and focusing on law that I enjoy, which was the plan before I started law school. It only took trip to Valvoline and a $150,000 loan to get back to that goal.

¹ There’s also the other inherent problem of going to a prestigious-but-not-top-5 school: there’s a curve and our peers are smart. Most of the people in our school are used to being in the top 10% of their class, but 90% of us can’t achieve that. All it takes is one question on an exam or one nutball professor and you’re screwed – and it’s too late to snatch that full ride at NoName University.

² Yes, I applied to almost every school that sent me a fee waiver…

³ Fashion analogy? The girl with the Wal-Mart purse covets the Guess Bag. The girl who went into debt to buy the Guess bag realizes that the stupid bag is not worth the debt, and that Guess is still a few steps away from Gucci.

⁴ Gainful as in, “I can pay my student loan payment and still feed my dog.”