I want to be an inspiration to all and have a day named after me when I die. This is what I will say to you when you ask me what I plan to pursue after graduation. And I will be dead serious when I tell you. At this moment, you will probably react one of two ways: You will either be disgusted by what you deem my presumption, and damn me as arrogant or holier-than-thou, or be invigorated and inspired by my confident conviction in such an unorthodox, utterly unrealistic goal. Regardless, you will still ask me, "And how do you plan to do that?" Then, I will smile and tell you that I don't know. But the fact is that I do know. I'll do it with a brazen, twisted mix of egocentricity and confidence to propel me to celebrity status, then manipulate my acquired cult of personality for positive social change. I just don't tell you this because my first statement already consumed the entire quota for conversational audacity.
A few months back, I lost my already precarious grip on the crag of reality: I not only committed myself to my dream, but I believed it to be possible as well. I was sitting in the University of Southern California's Law School taking the February LSAT and somewhere during section three, I snapped. A foreign anxiety came over me: A shame and self-loathing so nauseating that I damn near vomited all over myself. How could I, Mike Sacks, the kid who started every Chronicle interview, Spanish 63 essay and first-day-of-class introduction with "I am going to be a rock star," be selling--scratch that--paying to give away my soul and my youth to three years of passionless existence? This was an intolerable, egregious hypocrisy. The test before me became a mirror that displayed my most malignant of characteristics: Self-doubt.
Since I have been at Duke, I have felt the weight of the prevailing social, institutional and familial pressures to have a clear vocational purpose that will maximize the investment of my education (God forbid I want to be something unprofitable!) All too aware that these are the ingredients for a lost, soulless existence, yet not strong enough to cast away the temptation of a "successful" (read: Safe, comfortable, lucrative) life, I developed a plan: Last fall I told myself that I would take a year off after graduation, get a band together, write some songs, record them, then get in a van and tour the country. If, by the end of that year my band had enough momentum, fans and record company suitors, I would push forward; if not, I would go to law school happy that I gave my dream my best shot. Thinking this was a reasonable plan, I signed up for the LSAT and went off to Duke in Los Angeles to dip my toes into the rock and roll waters.
Let us return to February: I had only been in Los Angeles a month and more than my toes were wet--I was fully immersed. I was playing in two bands, taking a music industry course, interning at Interscope records and studying the "waiters" and "waitresses" around town. What I experienced, read and witnessed in these areas yanked into my consciousness what I had been keeping caged in my inner being: Giving myself only a year to become a rock star was inherently self-defeating. I doubted and denied my ability to survive in a world far from Duke's pre-professional fast track.
Indeed, there is a desolation and a hope that emanates from the out-of-work musicians, actors and artists in L.A. that I could not afford to let go unexamined. From their desolation I learned that a backup plan, which many of them did not have, is a good thing. From their hope, though, I learned that dreams must be given indefinite time to come to fruition or to die a miserable death. But only with that dream's miserable death should the truly impassioned individual fall upon his or her backup plan. Ironically, it took the LSAT, that greedy gatekeeper at the doors of blind ambition, to punch me in the throat and tell me that not only did law school not want me anytime this decade, but I sure as hell did not want it... ever.
So right there in the middle of section three, I annihilated my fear and doubt and made myself a new pact: Only if I am 28, desperately dead-ended, and have all my celebrity dreams in ashes at my feet, will I bite the bullet and go to law school. But until then, I must spend the remainder of my (relative) youth seizing my destiny so that my mom will never have to brag about her son, the lawyer, but rather, her son, Mike Sacks.
Mike Sacks is a Trinity senior and former president of the Class of 2004.
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