Imagine you were a fanatical Marvel Comic fan and anxiously wait in anticipation for the premiere of Captain America—the red, white, and blue musculature taking on the malevolent Red Skull.  Good guy American super-warrior against evil organization.  Simple premise.

With soggy butter-drenched popcorn in right hand and over-priced ticket in the left you meandered to your seat with the knowledge that the next ninety minutes will be filled with a nationalistic plotline coupled with more than a smattering of CGI.  The lights dim, the music commences, and on the screen enters the blue protagonist.

Except rather than Captain America, you find Papa Smurf.  In 3-D.

No, no.  You did not just enter the wrong movie theater.  This is the film you will be seeing regardless of your intention.

While a fictional hypothetical, this premise too often becomes the reality for ambitious over-achievers willing to take on massive student loan debt.  The student only realizes he is in the wrong movie and cannot get out until it is way too late.

It is not uncommon for law students to take out over $150,000.00 to pay their tuition.  The schools justify this rate by advertising that the “average” starting salary can be well over $100,000.00 with many first year associates beginning at $160,000.00.  Even accepting the notion that every law student will graduate with the highest paying firm job, paying off this debt is not easily within reach to all.

For instance, the places with these high salaries correspond with the highest costs of living: New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Washington, D.C.  Now because of the tax bracket, the government automatically takes forty percent or sixty four thousand.  This leaves nearly $100,000.00 in disposable income, which is an impressive amount of money.

For arguments sake, it is exceedingly possible for an attorney to have expenses of $45,000.00 (i.e. $1,800/month for rent, $1500/month for cable, food, metro card, etc., and a $5,000 for trips, travels, weddings and gifts).  This leaves $55,000.00 to pay off loans, which could theoretically be paid off in three years—if you budget accordingly, i.e. taking it easy on the destination hen nights and stag parties.

The problem, though, is that it often does not reflect the reality for most young attorneys.   First, one must also take into account that most attorneys fortunate enough to enter Big Law do not stay very long.  Second, most law students fail to obtain these jobs in the first place.  For example, at Georgetown’s law school, ranked in the top 14, only 38% of their graduates landed employment at the nation’s largest firms, which paid the highest salaries.  The other 62% inevitable took jobs that received wages much lower. Furthermore, interest starts accruing from graduation whether you are ready to pay or not.  Therefore, one might need to pay back $150,000 when only receiving a $50,000 salary working for the Manhattan District Attorney’s office, which is an incredibly prestigious and difficult position to attain.

As a toddler, Hefty Smurf’s brawn and charisma with the ladies (or lady) appealed to my tot sensibilities.  Upon entering grade school, my tastes became more sophisticated (or at least relatively so) as this country’s great nationalistic comic characters penetrated my mind and imparted in me its ideals.  My only hope is that before obtaining a significant amount of debt that cannot be discharged through bankrtupcy, young attorneys make decisions that will not financially cripple them; and therefore, uphold the American Dream that Captain America fought so hard to preserve.  Student debt works for some, but certainly not all.

During my post-graduate year living in London, my Parisian classmate asked me for my take on her romantic rendezvous with an American male.  While admittedly not a relationship expert, I still became transfixed by the cultural mores separating our two nations.  Not surprisingly, this interaction forced me to confront that Americans and the French have vastly different thought processes, and learning to bridge these divergences can be quite helpful not only in confronting this particular matter of the heart, but also competing in the global marketplace.

While American education is currently attacked from those that believe American children are either pushed too hard or not enough, this week Lisa Miller analyzed the importance of raising a global kid.  Her examination detailed the benefits that can be gleaned from American students immersing themselves in other cultures in order to stay competitive with the rising Eastern nations.  The article provocatively illustrated how some American families were living abroad for years at a time in order to acculturate their children.

Reflecting upon my year abroad, I concur with Ms. Miller’s assessment that young adults can gain a great deal from cultural immersion.  Living in an international city, even in an educational environment, forces each person to develop coping mechanisms and resiliency as it relates to working with others that are different from oneself.  The lessons and relationships that can be built from these experiences last a lifetime because they force the expansion of one’s comfort zone.

As a result, my suggestion is to follow what many students do in Europe either before entering college or the working world, and take a gap year or a period of time to work, travel, volunteer, or study abroad.  This will enable the next generation to do two things: (1) escape the rigors of perfecting the resume for a substantial period of time; and (2) to engage with people of different cultures in order to maintain American competitiveness for years to come.  These gains can come in many different ways, both in the classroom, at work, or as my Parisian classmate found out, after hours.

As often happens with the viral age of You Tube, I strolled upon Harvard College’s Class Day where the student speaker wryly lamented to his classmates that they were not, as had been claimed throughout their lives, special.  Obviously, the group in attendance that spring day in Cambridge had been lauded with kudos since probably in utero, but had achieved much distinction by actually graduating from the Miramar of American higher education.[1]

While the speaker was subjecting his classmates to self-deprecation, his larger point should serve as a noteworthy message, we are not inherently exceptional.  The problem with the educators of our generation, our parents and teachers, is that this country’s young and well-educated now believe that they can and will achieve regardless of miniscule rates of success.

Case in point, a friend of mine called me for advice the other day about attending a preeminent law school ranked by the only publication that apparently matters, U.S. News and World Report, in the top twenty.  By all accounts the school is truly a great legal center with top minds teaching to our nation’s neophyte lawyers.  The problem with this school, and ostensibly all legal education today, is that the opportunity costs to attend probably only make sense to those that graduate at the top of their class and land the Big Firm job with its accompanying six-figure salary.  In this particular instance, that would mean the top twenty percent.  When one considers that tuition remains upward of one hundred and fifty thousand dollars and that three years spent in the library usurps the ability to collect a paycheck, one realizes that these costs are real.

My friend has excellent credentials graduating from one of the finest private liberal arts colleges in the nation and spending the last four years in public relations.  He has the ability to out-perform eighty percent of his classmates, but he must also recognize that his classmates matriculate with comparable grades, board scores and experiences.  Every person believes that they will be in that coveted percentile.  Few will actually succeed.

This is not to say that my friend should not to attend this law school.  I am as warm-blooded an American as exists and I certainly believe in choice and free will.  What I am saying is that we should rethink our thought process before making these decisions.  Rather than hubristically thinking one can achieve coveted status, such as the top twenty percent, because of an innate specialness, one can ask, Is this what I want to do if I fail to achieve this particular benchmark.  If “no” is the answer, maybe a different path could be found.  Ultimately, introspective questions such as this might allow oneself to find something enjoyable, fuel a passion; and yes, maybe even be special at it.

-Michael Gordon is a baseball enthusiast with great taste in white wine.  He has an infallible record when it comes to choosing where to have the best Sunday brunch