As I look around the Law School, I see too many people who shouldn’t be here. They should be philosophers, they should be novelists and at least 11 of us (otherwise known as the Acappellants, the Law School’s premier vocal sensation) should be off-off Broadway stars, if not off-Broadway. Yet more than 90 percent of us will, upon graduation, take our rightful place as Summer Associate #257 at Law Firm “Name & Name,” “Name, Name & Name” or “Name, Name, Name, Name & Name.”

To be fair, I’m not overly optimistic about the chances of our unconventional life aspirations bearing fruit. As the great scholar Billie-Joe Armstrong and the fictional Bad Santa have both infamously said, “Wish in one hand, s[p]it in the other, and see which gets filled first.” Due to our extreme, communal risk-aversion, we law students even try to congratulate ourselves for foregoing the vagaries of personal fame in the name of pursuing justice for the underdogs like Accenture and Kaiser Permanente.

Yep. Abandoning our dreams is basically a moral obligation, and we have done our duty splendidly. We should probably just stop thinking about this issue and forget where we buried it.

In other news, how ‘bout that election in Kenya, the 1.5 inch Macbook and Citibank’s worst quarter in history? Never saw those coming.

Wait, what’s that noise I hear? A faint thumping, no, a beating, a pulse of a faint hope that cannot die. Our dreams, they’re still alive!

Maybe pursuing one’s artistic ambitions is just a question of costs and possible benefits. Let’s take my personal fantasy, for example, to be a stand-up comedian and/or in Cirque du Soleil. For the sake of argument, let’s assume that if I dropped out of school, fled Palo Alto and devoted myself to humorous performances, I could make a decent living and possibly even get a big break and become the next Jayram Seinfeld. If, instead, I decided to finish school, let’s assume I could snag a mid-level bureaucratic job at the UN.

What’s the ol’ CBA look like? Well, if I opted for comedy, I’d be leaving a stable job and a routine lifestyle of concomitant prestige and social benefits. On a larger scale, society would be losing one mid-level UN cog. On the plus side, I think I’d be a happier person, which would benefit my family, my kids, neighbors and pet monkeys. The societal benefit: one more pretty crappy stand-up comedian.

So why have I done what I done did? Because I’m a crippled coward? Because I’m a loser lemming? Because the best bit I’ve written in years involves Jamie Lynn Spears walking into a bar and juggling with a long-faced horse that tells ‘Not!’ jokes?

Honestly, I’m not sure it matters. We act as we do for a variety of conscious, subconscious and unconscious reasons, and explaining our behavior via core motivations is at best inane and at worst incoherent. When all is said and done, I’m in law school now, and my mediocre comedic talents are consigned to page A4 of some no name rag that even my dad refuses to read (I love you, Daily!)

Paul Gauguin — the famous painter who, by my understanding, painted some paintings some time ago that influenced the way other painters painted their paintings — famously abandoned his job and family to focus exclusively on his art. As a result, the lives of his wife and children fell apart — two of his sons died before their time and the rest continued on with only basic privations. Now, you might say to yourself, “Wow, Gauguin was a [h]ick.” Well, maybe he was, but at the same time I think we can admire the part of him that was willing to pursue deep meaning and creative expression regardless of the cost. Even the best of us are usually unwilling to take so bold a move, even though we would sacrifice far less in doing so.