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So here’s the deal.  Law school was great.  I had a fun time.  Met a lot of smart and interesting people, learned some law, got to repeat my standard “I used to be a poker player but no I don’t count cards and you haven’t seen me on TV” schpiel a million times, and had a lot of fun.  The work was manageable and classes were generally pretty engaging. And then exams started.  Worst 3 weeks of my life.  Given that some of you loyal blog readers know the downswings I’ve been on, that’s saying something.  Before exams, I thought everybody who complains about law school was overstating how bad it is but now I know that they were right.

Still, I was planning on toughing it out.  Really, I was.  I had told myself,  “This is just a few bad weeks, stay strong and it gets way easier next year.”  And then Krantz called me right in the middle of exams and made me an offer I couldn’t refuse.  The offer went something like this: “Drop out of law school and make more videos and coach more!”  I weighed the pros and cons.

Pros: Law school is stressful and draining, money is good, it’s fun to make videos and coach.  I’ll have time to have hobbies and read for pleasure again.

Cons: Everybody who always told me I was an idiot for going to law school and that I’d drop out in in no time would feel all smug and be able to say “I told you so.”

The pros had it.  So I’m taking a leave of absence for a semester, likely for two semesters, and possibly for forever.  I’ve got an apartment in Cambridge and don’t understand the concept of sunk cost, so I’m going to stay in Massachusetts for at least the next few months.  Cambridge may not be New York, but there’s a Starbucks on the corner and I’m only a 15 minute walk in the bitter cold away from the first halfway decent restaurant so I imagine living here without having anything to do all day will be totally awesome.

Will I ever go back to law school? I don’t know, it depends.  The grass is always greener and when I was playing poker I wanted to do something interesting and when I was doing something interesting I wanted to be able to just chill.  I think my involvement with DeucesCracked, combined with my work on http://RapGenius.com (formerly known as RapeXegesis) will keep me sufficiently engaged.  If not, at least I now know what it’s like to work every day so I’ll have a better sense of what I’m getting into when deciding whether or not to re-quit poker.  Right now I’d say my return to law school is about 50/50.   Exams notwithstanding, I really did love my time there but if my new projects give me something to do that I find engaging and lucrative, it’ll be a hard decision.  We’ll see.

And yes, I’ll be blogging more.  I’ve got some CRAZY stories from law school that I’ll be putting up on the blog every once in a while (for example, did you know that some states use a national standard for determining medical malpractice whereas some states use a modified locality rule?) but for the most part it’ll be poker content.  Stay tuned.