Too much ambition?

“You say look at my degrees and you look at my life…These guys are out here making all this money all these ways, and I’m spending mine to be smart. You know why?Because when i die, buddy, you know what’s going to keep me warm? That’s right, those degrees!” -Kanye West, The College Dropout

That was essentially the speech I got tonight from a young, black, female law professor. I’m here to interview for a scholarship tomorrow but tonight was a meet & greet dinner where all the candidates got to speak with current students and faculty. Everybody seems really nice (if a bit quirky) but this lady was way intense. She was railing on about how television turns your brain to mush and how setting goals is essential. Not that any of that is untrue, but the way she said it was so over the top. “When I came to law school I set a goal for myself that I was going to graduate in the top 10% of my class. And I did, and now I’m a law professor. You can do that too, but it’s a lot of hard work.”

Okay, standard motivational speech so far and nothing I haven’t heard before. Carry on.

“I was watching Project Runway and Lauren Hutton said that if you want to be successful, you have to work four times harder than the next person. And you know, I had to think about myself. I feel that I’m working hard, but not four times harder. I am always trying to improve as a professor but you know what? Those three, four hours a week I’m watching television I need to be reading up on my field. And when you get here next year, you’re going to see people going to parties and stuff, but you know what you can’t do that. You have to say no to the parties, no to the dates, no to the television if you want to be successful. It’s fine if you just want to be mediocre, and just graduate but if you want to achieve you have to sacrifice. But you know what, it’s only three years of law school and it’s not like your friends won’t remember you. They’ll be there when you get out.”

SCREEEEEEEECCCCHHHHHH!

About halfway through her diatribe I started thinking, This lady is crazy. I’ve heard all the horror stories about law school but frankly, I’m starting to lose my fear of it because I remember–I’m about to graduate from one of the best engineering schools in the country. A school which I argue is more academically rigorous than any Ivy League institution because there is almost zero grade inflation. People fail here, and they do so frequently. Most of the professors aren’t bending over backwards to make sure you understand the material so you often have to teach it to yourself. I’ve been writing research papers since my freshman year and I’ve taken several 4000 level classes where I got nothing less than a B, and I was competing with graduate students. So provided I do my due diligence, there’s no reason why law school should be something that defeats me.

But going back to the professor, her speech really bothered me because she seems to have lost all sense of having a balance in her life. She seems to be consumed with professional success and when I peeked over at her left hand there wasn’t a ring in sight. Now, for all I know she could very well have a boyfriend, but I really wondered given the fact that four hours of television in an entire week seemed excessive to her. I mean, your life can’t be all work. And I’m certainly not giving up my social life entirely for THREE WHOLE YEARS. That’s absolutely ridiculous. I’m supposed to be engaged before the year is out, how am I going to get married if I don’t see or talk to my fiance for the next three years? What the hell ever.

This is when I start to really believe that black women shoot themselves in the foot when it comes to dating. They ignore great guys for their career or in hopes of finding greener pastures (i.e., a model handsome dude with deep pockets) and then get to age 35 and wonder why they are single. Sigh. This myth that you can have everything is just a pretty lie. Men give up bonding with their kids to put in overtime at work and make sure they have clothes, food and a roof over their heads. Why do women think we are so special that we don’t have to make that choice?

Oh well. Love is one of those things that can’t be mandated. I’m just happy I found the one for me, and hope that other women will too.