If the best things in life are free, why bother working?

I ponder this question on a regular basis as I drag myself out of bed every morning and go do what I do to get a paycheck. I think the answer is that the worst things in life are painfully pricey. I recently celebrated the one year mark at my current position, which came with the requisite pay raise I'd been so desperately needing. Of course, given the fact that my money is only going two places, there is no joy in seeing those bigger numbers every two weeks. I continue to chip away at the student debt I married into. It's depressing, but nothing compared to what I'm getting us into, so I have zero room to complain. But my other major expense is my bar review course. I hope to have that little beast paid in full by the time I graduate because I really don't want to take out $3,000 more in student loans to pay for it. A bar review course, you ask? But aren't you spending $1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 on law school? In theory, aren't you already being taught all you need to know about practicing law so you can pass the bar? The answer to that is a resounding NO, duh. I'm still working on figuring out exactly what it is they're teaching me for all the zillions of dollars I'm paying, but evidently, it's not enough to help me actually become licensed to practice. And only a moron attempts to take the bar without having previously taken some form of bar review course. A friend posted a link to two incredibly humorous/demoralizing articles in the Times, regarding this very insanity. I have to include the excerpts here.


"Why is it necessary to take an intensive (and expensive) review course immediately after completing three years of full-time legal education?
The answer is that the legal education provided by American law schools often leaves graduates with huge debts and little practical knowledge necessary to pass the various state bar exams. This both necessitates the bar review courses and makes them such a crucial aspect of the final phase of becoming a practicing attorney.
Here are a few excerpts from this summer's [bar review] lectures:
On the test's purpose: "What they are testing you on is your ability to memorize."
On choosing from among multiple-choice answers: "If you find yourself engaged in creative reasoning, stop. Remember where you are."
On corporate law: "Why we do this is not relevant for the bar exam. Whether we can do this is."
On the inclination of students to apply today's legal scholarship to traditional doctrines: "The people who write the bar exam are not into feminist jurisprudence."
On questions about a court's authority to hear a case: "The worst way of dealing with one of these questions is to attempt it mentally."
On freedom of religion: "The key to getting these questions right is to avoid thinking for yourself."
On property law: "You must avoid any analysis whatsoever. If you can think, don't." "

If I had to formulate this into a Mastercard ad, I think it would go something like this...
3 years of law school: $1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
The going rate for your dignity in a Contracts lecture: $20
Bar review course so you can actually become a lawyer: $3,000
Entering a field where the spoils go to those who are expressly advised to avoid thinking for themselves: Priceless.