I’ve officially hit the point in life where when I meet someone new, or even for that matter, someone I know fairly well, the conversation heads into “future plans” territory. I’m a political science student. And I’m graduating in six months. Most people’s automatic response to those two pieces of information is: “Oh, law school?” I got told by some random stranger in Berkeley last weekend that I even look like a future lawyer (to which I say: what does that even look like?) When I say no, I get persistence. “Grad school? MBA?”

Nope. I was pre-law once, when I started my freshman year of college. I thought law school was definitely the track for someone like me. Then I promptly dropped the pre-law within a few months of arriving here. Why?

Law school is expensive. The average law student is graduating with student loan debt in the six-figure range. And law students almost immediately need to find a job that pays enough to start paying back those loans right away.

Lawyers have some of the longest work hours and lowest job satisfaction rates. No joke. They’re the most depressed of all professionals.

Law schools get so many political science applicants they don’t even WANT us anymore, they’d rather have the unique chemistry major instead of the sea of PS majors!

And it’s always assumed that once you have a law degree, people will respect you more, and it will open all kinds of doors and make it easier for you to find a job. That’s not really true anymore…law school grads are having even more trouble finding decent jobs, and many of them are caught up in mundane procedural bullshit instead of courtroom trials or constitutional law.

What I have learned from the questioning I’ve been getting from people is that people inherently want to understand you, but that means they first have to make you easier to understand. That means they will put you in a box, and political science and law school sound like they fit nicely together in a box. People can’t imagine what political science majors do in the real world; so the first image that pops into their head is lawyer. Why would someone study political science unless they’re doing it as their ticket into law school, they say.

Why? Because I love it. I really do. I knew I was going to major in political science when I was 15, and I’ve never wanted to change my major. Sure, that means I have to go through the uncertainty of a big, long, jobhunt over the next few months, while some of my friends are sitting comfortably on their law school and b-school acceptances. But I’m ok with a little uncertainty; I feel like the uncertainty makes other people more uncomfortable than me. I’d rather take that time to figure out what I really want to do, than rush into grad school unsure of how much I want it, just out of fear that I have no other options. I wouldn’t say I have ruled out all forms of graduate school completely for the future, but I definitely don’t want more schooling right now.

It’s surprising to me how many people still think that the only option for liberal arts majors is heading straight to graduate school. We can get jobs you know…