I heart Seattle, I anti-heart the red eye flight back to MPS

Sigh.

Well gentle reader, my love of the overly-caffinated, underly-concerned Pacific Northwest has been solidified. Overly-caffinated because you can literally smell coffee in the air, and even the barista at the drink cart at a student union can make a coffee drink that would make the angels weep, and underly-concerned because Amber and I were almost run over at one point, and the most the super mellow west coast driver could muster was a shrug and a chuckle. I think of Seattle as a Minneapolis that is larger, more cosmopolitan, and all-importantly located on the water. It has everything I want: ocean, socially concious citizenry, sustainability, fashionable shops, lots and lots of terrific coffee, year-round excellent produce, gourmet markets and foodie restaurants, tulips, and a plethora, a veritable cornucopia, if you will, of cute bachelors.

And yet, I will be attending Roger Williams University School of Law in Rhode Island for the next three years.

Let me back up:

Last weekend I went out to Bristol, RI by way of Boston to visit Roger Williams University, aka "the school no one has heard of". When looking at law schools they tell you two things: 1) pick the location you want to practice in, and 2) go to the biggest name you can. I am instead going to 1) where they are throwing the most money at me, and 2) where I've been told, verbatim, that I will be the center of the faculty's attention. At the Honor's student event they took us to dinner, where I got to sit next to the Dean and pretty much wrap him around my finger, and then the students took us out drinking. Being persuasive and drinking... two of my favorite things. Oh, and somehow, despite my best intentions in a new place, I managed to present myself once again as a huge party-er. One of the other girls there at the event turned to me at one point in the night and said "if we go to school together, we're going to be trouble." I liked her.

Bristol is a cute little town, like a cross between Star's Hollow, where the Gilmore Girls live, and New Ulm, MN, where my mother was born and raised. Everyone knows you, everyone knows what and who you've been doing, and consequently the bar to church ratio is about 1:1. It's about an hour away from Boston, three hours away from the big NYC, and a half hour away from Providence, which I've heard many nice things about despite my father thinking it's a cesspool for unknown and unknowable reasons. So, it's well situated in a very pretty part of coastal New England, and I think I could be reasonably happy there. But what I really like is the school. It's got some great programs: a maritime law program, international/study abroad opportunities that are really interesting, and a strong public interest focus, all things I was looking for. Plus, they started out offering me a 50% scholarship, and are now at about 75% through a couple of different scholarships. Graduating from law school with about half to three-quarters less debt than most law students is super attractive, especially if you are like me and want to save the planet instead of being a wage slave at some giant, autonomous mega-firm. I have zero interest in working 80 hours a week and making partner so that I can enjoy my huge bonus on my... non existent weekends and vacation days.

But still, I wanted to see what else was out there. So I boarded a loooooong flight to Seattle, prepared to fall in love with Seattle University. However, they were not prepared to fall in love with me. First, when I went to the admissions office I was literally ignored. As in, someone looked at me, and then actively decided not to help me. Nice. Then, the girl who finally did escort me to the class I was supposed to attend introduced me to the Professor as "Andrea". Strike two. Finally, when I found my way back up to the admissions office for the appointment I made a month ago, they kept me waiting for half an hour, again ignoring me, while they talked to other students. Let's just say, I was panicking a tad bit, because I really was struggling with not being able to come to Seattle. So I did the only logical thing: I called the Dean of RWU, who had also taught at Seattle U. Now, keep in mind it was 6:30pm on a Friday night on the east coast, and the man spoke with me for about half an hour about whether or not I should go to someone else's school. And he spoke with me honestly, helping me weigh my pros and cons. At the end of the conversation, he promised me that if after a year I didn't like it, he would help me transfer. The flattery is nice, but the fact that he took that kind of time to talk to me really told me something.

So, I'll be going to school where the Dean knows my phone number, not the one where they can't remember my relatively unique name. It's weird to be making a decision that will take me so far away from the town I know I want to be in. It's weird to be responsible enough that I can recognize that long term goals sometimes require short term sacrifice. Deep.