When Paul Sacksteder entered law school, he didn’t know that his eventual degree in would have nothing to do with the career he would choose.
But that is the goal of the third-year student in the College of Law as he anticipates graduation in May 2004.
Even though a law degree allows one to enter the field in a variety of capacities or even the world of politics, Sacksteder realizes that his path is “actually taking a really nontraditional route.”
He estimates that nearly 90 percent of law students “go practice in some capacity.”
Sacksteder says his interests are elsewhere, at least for now.
“Legal thought and legal practice…is not my cup of tea,” he said. “I just feel legal theory is really bound into much smaller spheres of thought-not that it’s not really deep thinking.”
Although he intended to practice, his change of heart is not so surprising to him anymore as he prepares for one last semester in law school.
“I tell a lot of my friends at school. I find a lot of people being jealous,” wishing they could do the same, he said.
Sacksteder says he thinks a lot of people in law school find that they don’t actually like it once they already attend.
Many go into practice anyway, however, for a variety of reasons.
“You’re $80,000 in debt and it’s time to get out of school,” he says of the general feeling many students have.
But “I miss art and creativity,” Sacksteder said. “I hope to teach one day.”
As his interest in law has slowly dwindled, Sacksteder remembers what brought him to the U in the first place.
As an undergraduate at Maryville College in Tennessee, a small liberal-arts school, Sacksteder began his educational endeavors with an interest in biology.
That interest, he says, was sparked by his involvement in a local environmental organization.
He spent a year working there, but there was still something missing for him, he said.
At the organization, there was a strong emphasis on air quality. According to Sacksteder, “There was such a focus [on it], they kind of forgot why they were doing it.”
Sacksteder says he felt like those within the organization were the types of people, who in the interest of the atmosphere of the world and getting it back to its original state, “would be fine if people faded off the face of the world” to meet those goals.
To him, “people were more important.”
“It’s taken me a long time to figure out what I like and what I’m good at,” Sacksteder said. With his biology degree in hand and a new perspective, “an idealistic vision of who I am and a desire to help people” brought him to law school in Utah.
Single and living in a house in the Avenues, law school has taken up the majority of his time while in the state, Sacksteder said.
As he prepares for his doctorate in literature, hoping to attend a school out West or at one of his dream schools-New York University, the University of California at Berkeley or Brown University-he knows that his degree in law is always there in case he ever chooses to fall back on it.
