Time to pack up four years of books (ha), memories (if you weren't too drunk to take focused photos), outdated clothes, beat-up furniture (if you didn't burn it in the riots two years ago) and all the other accouterments of undergraduate life, stuff it in the U-Haul and drag it back to the parents' house.

Of course, if you're like most graduating students, you plan on first being here for what is more commonly known as "senior week" . . . and spending a lot of time at the bars (hey, that's my plan — see you at Café!).

But after the drunken orgiastic week is over and the diplomas have been distributed, it's time for some of us to come back to earth and decide what in the world is going to happen now.

If you're me, you're going back to the hometown and getting a job at the outlet mall or taking a temp job typing for 10 hours a day until August. That seems to be the general plan for those of us going to graduate school in the fall.

Considering I really don't know what I want to do when I grow up, my choice to attend law school has made for a very expensive, though effective, way of putting off the real world and a career for at least three years. For many majors, including English and other liberal arts categories, graduate school is the best (and longest) route to take for an upper-level job that will prove to be the most financially prosperous.

Let's see: Blue BMW, or black BMW? Leather or chamois interior?

I must say, though, that I'd rather not be making those difficult decisions anytime soon, Bimmer or not. I have now resorted to referring to my decision to go to law school as "my $60,000 mistake."

Maybe I shouldn't be calling it a mistake yet. After all, I won't start law school until August; there is no way of knowing if my decision is the wrong one for me right now.

But when I started sending out the numerous applications at the end of last semester to law schools all over the country, I felt like I was performing an amputation of myself — I was turning my back on my passion for newspaper work by giving in to the temptation of the world's second oldest profession and the material rewards it so notoriously offers.

Instead of looking for copyediting jobs and preparing myself for many lean but satisfying years, I chose an utterly different career that, after years of hard work, sacrifice and numerous student loans, will give me the luxury of choosing between the blue BMW and the black BMW by the age of 30.

What difference does this all make, though, if I hate being a lawyer? What if I'm meant to be someone else, something else, somewhere else?

Oh-so-many prayers have been murmured in my hours of sleeplessness plaguing me lately. My friends can't help me now, try as they might. My parents certainly can't help me (they paid for the applications, the LSAT prep course and the Law School Data Assembly Service fees as well as the hopes they hold so dear for me).

Nothing can help me now save the thought that I am certainly not the only one who thinks all this. I know quite a few people who are flirting with the idea of attending graduate school if only for the extra years it allows to ponder one's career choices, so there's small comfort in knowing I'm not the only one making a financially steep investment into more years of education.

My mother gave me the solid (but cliché) advice that I will always question my career choice, and I would have done the same if I had taken a copyediting job at some tiny rural newspaper somewhere. But it will always be that way, even if I am satisfied to be a lawyer.

Of course, I can always back out now. I can back out at any time, really, and decide not to attend law school anymore. I can breathe a small sigh of relief knowing no decision is completely final, that I still have more room to make mistakes.

Even if I've spent $20,000 at the end of next spring, it's not too late. No career choice is final, no graduate program is set in stone and it's never too late to put the brakes on or take a detour.

The only thing I know is that maybe I really do like having all these choices. Expensive or not. I'll just keep reminding myself not to burn my bridges and not to worry so much.