Chaos Descends
School has begun. I teach two (undergraduate) classes, take two (graduate) classes, and grade papers for an hourly wage on the side. Lots of busy. I've decided that what kills me about academia is the summer and the regular (and rather lengthy breaks): All that time off is forever an unfulfilled promise. You begin teaching thinking you'll have such a great schedule with big, huge breaks on holidays and during the summer, but this never turns out to be the case.
The cycle begins every August when you wake up and realize that the summer is almost over. You panic and try to pack as much in to the final weeks off as possible, which usually means you have to catch up on mundane chores like yardwork or whatever that you've put off all summer. This means you don't really prepare well for the fall (by spending more time developing your syllabi and lesson plans, or by reading ahead for the classes you'll be taking). Since you start a bit behind, work begins piling up quickly and you just as quickly start mentally scheduling fall break (Thanksgiving) as a catch-up time. Work through fall break, taking a day (maybe two) to lay in front of the tv and let your brain have a bit of a breather. Then bam! The semester's over, it's winter break (Christmas), and you've postponed so much over the course of the semester that you spend half or more of the "break" finishing up a paper that you had to ask for an extension on, so that again you start the spring semester behind and without adequately preparing lessons and materials for the classes you're going to teach and take, which means you're behind when spring break rolls around so you work through that, too, and when May finally comes and summer is supposed to begin, you probably have a paper (or by this time, two) dragging into June, and as soon as you finish that (or while you're finishing it) you're frantically looking for some sort of summer income to make it through the lean months and if you're lucky you find some kind of teaching- or editing-related gig that provides you (at most) something like $1000/mo. during summer, meaning you still can't really take any breaks because you have to work and because you can't afford to travel or indulge in any extras, and then it's late August and fall semester is starting and you haven't had the time or energy to prepare your lessons and class materials and....
....and it all begins again.
The bottom line is this: You get less vacation as an academic, not more. (And this isn't even getting into the fact that you never get a free weekend since weekends are filled with grading and class prep and catching up on the reading you fell behind on during the week.)
Don't you wish you could be a college English graduate student and instructor!? Good times, man. Goooood times.
(Of course, some people love the academic life, and thrive in it, and to them I say "More power to you." However, if you're thinking of applying to graduate school in the Humanities, let me humbly suggest that you not make the same mistakes I made and ignore all advice along the lines of the above about how it's often not all it's cracked up to be. One thing I've definitely learned in the past three years is that sometimes we should listen to the people who have gone down the road before us. Perhaps that's why I've been so obsessed with finding opinions and information about law school and law before jumping in with both feet...)
Posted 09:42 PM | life generally
LSAT Schmellsat?
This doesn't seem like a bad way to start down a road toward law: I took the LSAT with zero prep and scored 163. Perhaps with a few weeks of studying, I'll manage to qualify for scholarships somewhere! (Knock on wood.) I'll keep the fingers crossed, buckle down, and pray the logic games start to make some sense soon.
Meanwhile, Sua Sponte points to Waddling Thunder, another 1-L blog of what appears to be a somewhat experimental nature. Still, what fun to view the whole enterprise of law school through these people's eyes. I mean, why should I even bother going, if those ahead of me are going to tell me all about it on their blogs?
Speaking of JCA, she of the strangely captivating blog, I'd put my money on her not really liking the volunteer clinic she's exploring. Call it a guess educated by her previous posts, but I just don't get the idea she's the public interest, law clinic type.
Posted 10:54 AM | Comments (1) | law school
Blogging Politics
Sites like dailysummit.net, a blog about the World Summit on Sustainable Development, are what make blogs such cool things. This summit is something that's only getting blippy headlines here and there, but for those who want more than "there's an environmental summit right now in Johannesburg, dude," dailysummit.net delivers. The link comes via Scripting News, which recently has awakened to the practical political power of weblogs. Its author, Dave Winer, has designed a website for libertarian North Carolina congressional candidate Tara Sue Grubb. I've been reading Winer regularly for the past six months and it's great to see him finally awakening to what could be a really great thing for democracy -- blogs and politics. Yeah, he's only interested because the North Carolina incumbent has proposed some goofy computer legislation (which I actually find difficult to take seriously because it's so patently absurd), but at least it's a start. With any luck, Winer will wake up and realize that there are dozens if not hundreds of other issues that need an advocate with an audience. Go Dave!
Of related interest is Grubb herself. She's only 26, a single mother, and she's obviously campaigning on nothing more than what seems right to her. No focus groups, no opinion polls, no speechwriters or even PR people (as far as I can tell). Wouldn't it be great if campaigns like this could really take off? What if we had more than two options for every political contest? What if you didn't need several million dollars to buy your way into office? Grubb represents, for the moment, a hint of what our world could look like. Of course she won't win, but here's hoping that by being an honest candidate with a weblog, she's starting something that will grow far beyond one North Carolina congressional contest.
Posted 10:51 AM | meta-blogging
Moritz 1L Advice
More "real world" advice on law school from Garret Moritz. Some good, fresh information here, and his first tip—Embrace Confusion—is very heartening. Just like I'm all about ambiguity, I'm all about confusion. I can be very comfortable when confused (though that sounds strange to say), and in fact I'm almost reflexively suspicious of things that seem too cut and dried (because, again, the world just doesn't work in binaries, despite what programmers might lead you to believe). Although Moritz has probably never read it, his description of the "legal fault lines" exposed by confusion is very like Alan Sinfield's description of how literary criticism works. Sinfield's book is called, not surprisingly, Faultlines. So after three solid years of learning to look for and appreciate the nuances of texts, situations, theories, and problems, I am well-prepared for embracing the confusion. I probably won't have too work too hard (but a little) on keeping my mouth shut, and semicolons were my friends a long time ago. (What's pretentious about punctuation that shows a close relationship between two otherwise complete sentences?)
Moritz also has a great piece on how cell phones are ruining society, and one about the fact that our society is more feudal than democratic. Great stuff. Couldn't agree more. In fact, gTexts is the latest addition to the blogroll at left. Moritz describes himself as "a remorseless windbag and busybody," and while anywhere else those might be seen as negative traits, at gTexts they produce hours of fun.
Posted 10:00 PM | law school
LSAT Lameness
Below is a sample LSAT question and the possible answers. What do you think the answer is?
Question:
Six months ago, a blight destroyed the cattle population in the town of Cebra, eradicating the town's beef supply. As a result, since that time the only meat available for consumption has been poultry, lamb, and other non-beef meats.
Which of the following can be reasonably inferred from the statements above?
- Villagers in the town of Cebra consume only beef raised by Cebra farmers.
- Cebra villagers prefer lamb and poultry to beef.
- The town of Cebra has not imported beef for consumption during the last six months.
- Most of the residents of Cebra are meat eaters.
- Before the blight occurred, Cebra villagers ate more beef than any other type of meat.
Click "more" for the answers.
Choice (3) is correct. If elimination of the town's beef supply means that no beef has been available, then the town must have had no external beef provider for the past six months.
Choice (1). We know that Cebra-raised beef has not been available for the past six months, and that beef in general has not been available for the past six months. What role does non-Cebra beef play in this situation? If beef has not been available at all, we can't infer if it's because Cebrans don't eat non-Cebran beef, or because non-Cebran beef hasn't been available.
Choice (2). This choice addresses unsupported meat preferences. The argument centers on availability, not preference.
Choice (4). We have no basis to infer that most Cebrans are meat-eaters.
Choice (5). This choice is concerned with consumption patterns prior to the blight, but our stimulus provides no information from which we can infer previous beef consumption. We only know that the blight wiped out the beef supply six months ago, and since that time beef has not been available.
-----
I got the question right, but I found myself making a plausible case (in my head) for the answer to be 1. Why? After thinking about it a bit more, I don't know, because obviously the question of whether Cebrans eat non-Cebran beef would be second to whether it's even available for consumption, and it couldn't be available if no non-Cebran beef had been imported. The point is, the questions are phrased such that they can appear to be asking you to make fine distinctions, which are often not so fine after all. Tricky. But then, I could see why some lawyers would try to make such tricks their stock in trade... Must remember to watch the details. If it takes too much thought, I've probably missed an obvious distinction somewhere.
Posted 09:13 PM | law school
Life is short. Misery is overrated.
'Tis the "back-to-school" season and advice for new law students is plentiful (and welcome). Although the earliest I would start law school would be a year from now, hearing what people have to say about it helps clarify my decision to work toward that goal.
First, there's Dahlia Lithwick's advice in Slate [via Jason Rylander, who has also generously offered terrific and pointed thoughts on the subject]. Lithwick provides a pithy summary of a lot of the best things I've already read and heard elsewhere: Know why you're going to law school and you'll have to work very hard to avoid the lure of BigLaw once you've racked up all those loans. A little line buried within point B-1 is what I'm most concerned about. Lithwick writes:
Law school manages to impose odd new values on virtually everyone.
Of course this is true—it would be difficult or impossible to go through three years of intense education and not be changed by it, and many of those changes are the whole reason for going. Still, I fear law school's homogenizing effects. I feel confident enough in my views and values to know I won't come out of law school some free-market neo-conservative, but how much more "mainstream" might it make my political views? And yet, more "mainstream" is exactly what I hope law school will make me (in a way). People who are too radical or extreme are often dismissed, and our society has developed effective mechanisms for keeping extremes (especially socialist/progressive extremes) safely in the margins where they can make lots of noise but have little practical effect. So law school appeals to me in that it appears to be a way to take a radical sensibility and apply it to mainstream methods of social change (laws, public policy). I guess it's the cliche of trying to "use the master's tools to destroy the master's house," except I don't want to destroy so much as remodel extensively. So if law school gives me a better sense of the mainstream and teaches me how to better communicate with that mainstream, I should come out a much more effective agent for social change. That would be the ideal outcome, the goal. So the challenge is to learn which of those "odd new values" I encounter in law school might be helpful for a progressive social activist, and which of them are just the siren song of the bourgeoisie.
A lot of advice for 1-Ls has to do with not being obsessed with grades or showing off to your professors or whatever, and with having "a life" outside of grad school. That kind of thing forms a large part of "Down the Rabbit Hole," some advice from "Alice W." [via Sua Sponte] All of this sort of advice seems targeted at the serious Type-A personalities. Even the "don't be a recluse" advice is about not spending too much time in the library. I think the advice I'd need would be more like: "Take this seriously—it really is important."
Then there's Top 10 Law School Survival Skills from Lois Schwartz on law.com [also via Sua Sponte]. Point 3 is very encouraging:
I'm all about the ambiguities. In fact, the "black-and-white" version of almost anything has always eluded me. So again, this speaks to one of my more prominent reservations about law—that it forces you to reduce the world to either/or binaries or to follow "the law" as if it were black and white. Since life isn't like that, it's good to hear from a lawyer that law and law school don't have to be like that either.
Schwartz also defines what a "hornbook" is—finally! I've been seeing references to these things everywhere, but no one's taken the time before to tell me that hornbooks are "scholarly treatises on law school subjects." Now I know. But wait. Does that mean a hornbook is basically an academic essay or journal article? Or are we talking book-length works only?
Posted 11:18 AM | law school
Toward Law
I've been out of town and out of reach of a Net connection for the past 10 days or so, but now I'm back and the chaos that is the fall of an academic (either student or otherwise) is clearly churning into motion. Syllabi and lesson plans to prepare, books to buy and read, committee and other work to do. The student part of it I like ok. The teaching part is what kills me.
So, like I said, I'm leaving. And for the past few weeks I've been playing with options for what to do next: library school? a job writing or editing? a non-profit job (perhaps writing or editing for a non-profit)? law school?
The plan for the moment is this: I'll study for and take the LSAT, and let my score help me decide how badly I want to go to law school. It's possible I won't even be able to get into a decent school, and then I won't need to belabor this decision further. It will be an expensive lesson (over $1000 for the cost of the prep class and the test itself!), but at least I will be in a much better position to decide.
Ideally, while I'm doing the above with the LSAT (and teaching and taking classes, since I've committed to that for the semester), I could also volunteer with a local political campaign to continue building my political and volunteer experience. There's lots that can be done. The goal would be to build a resume for non-profit work so that in a year (or two?) I could head for the D.C. area and a good NP job—if law school doesn't work out. Whether I get a law degree or not, my goal at this point is to eventually work in some sort of political activist organization like Public Citizen or Vote Smart (or maybe Common Cause).
That's the plan for now, and it's already in motion. My first Kaplan class was today, although it was just a diagnostic test. I predict I scored around 140, which would be awful but I don't care too much since that's without any preparation whatsoever. I'll find out Monday. What I learned is that logic games could be fun, but I need a lot of work on them. Given all day, I could work any of them; given only about 1.5 minutes per game, my success rate drops do probably 10%. Any tips on the logic games? Any systems you've found that work? All advice always welcome.
Posted 04:50 PM | law school
Fear of "Signs"
To those of you who have seen and liked "Signs," please explain.
****** Potential Spoilers Below *******
My girlfriend and I saw "Signs" last night and we both thought it was about the most offensive, racist and xenophobic piece of sentimental propaganda to come out of Hollywood since... well, maybe since "Birth of A Nation." That might be an exaggeration, but I'm serious here— this movie was downright scary, and quadruply so when you think that it was a box-office winner this past weekend and yet there's no national outcry over the film's repulsive message. What is that message? Well, you tell me, because as my girlfriend and I cringed and guffawed at a show that everyone around us seemed gripped by, we gradually began to think we'd lost our minds.
The movie we saw looked like it was going to be a sort of campy parody of those who are terrified by "outsiders" (i.e., people of national and ethnic origin other than the U.S.) and the prospect of some force (i.e., terrorism, Al Qaeda) invading and destroying our peaceful and wholesome U.S. lives. The whole thing with the Doctor/wife-killer being the only non-white person in the show was such an obvious and racist decision on the part of the film's makers, that we just assumed that they were going to do something with the second half of the show to mock American racism and xenophobia. But no, it only got worse because the Doctor/wife-killer turns out to be a nice guy -- it's just that he couldn't help being bad because "it was meant to be." Translation: U.S. minorities aren't bad people, but they'll fuck up your life anyway because they just can't help it -- it's meant to be.
(I've since learned that the writer/director himself, M. Night Shyamalan, plays the Doctor/wife-killer, but that only adds to the bizarre horror at such a plot/characterization choice. The pseudo-"bad guy" in the film is a person of color, while all other major characters are white. This was an intentional choice. Why was this choice made?)
Then there's the whole "believe" thing. At first, judging from the whole scene on the couch where the Joaquin Pheonix character is begging Mel Gibson's character to give him some hope, this "spiritual" thread also looked like it was going to parody people who are saying we should do nothing about the problems in the world except pray and believe in a higher power so that if the shit hits the fan we'll see it as a "sign" of hope instead of becoming hopeless. That's what we thought, but no -- in the end, the movie reinforces this hokey "don't worry, be happy (and pray and believe)" message w/Pheonix lecturing Gibson in what is perhaps, save the bad aliens, the most unconvincing turn of bad acting in the whole film.
Finally, the "aliens" turn out to be terrorists (of course!), and since they're "aliens" we should feel free to just "swing away" at them if we don't like them or if we feel threatened by them. Translation in context of current events: It's ok for us to declare people "hostile combatants" and take away all their rights because they're not people, they're hostile combatants (didn't you get the memo?). It's also ok for the U.S. to bomb the shit out of (swing away at) anyone who seems even remotely threatening to anything we even remotely want or have an interest in.
Oh yeah, and when Gibson puts on the clerical collar at the end, I just burst out laughing -- it was so, so, so awful and predictable and unconvincing and... ugh! Needless to say, we got some disturbed looks moments later when the lights went up; apparently everyone else bought it.
Ok, so we left the theater thinking we were crazy, baffled that we hadn't heard anything about this awfulness before we saw the film. (Salon and Ebert both liked it, and neither said anything about it being racist/xenophobic, or campy.) So in order to maintain some sanity and find an explanation for this, here's what I'm hoping: Shyamalan originally wrote the parody that this movie flirts with being. Note that the aliens turn out to look like and do exactly what everyone in the movie fears the most, making it seem like the aliens are a product of the characters' imaginations -- thus, the movie attempts to mock xenophobia (at least in parts). Note also the campy, cartoony aliens who can be overcome just by splashing some water on them -- we can't be meant to take this at all seriously, right? So the movie was originally a super-parody of American xenophobia and racism, but then 9-11 happened and the studio (Disney, isn't it?) told Shyamalan he couldn't do a movie like that. So Shyamalan revised the script, built up the "believe, it was meant to be" thing, and the studio bought it. So now Shyamalan laughs bitterly all the way to the bank as U.S. audiences flock to this movie that only confirms their racism and xenophobia.
If you've seen this movie: Am I crazy, or what? How is this film not awful, offensive, and scary in a much more real way than little green men and UFOs will ever be?
Posted 11:48 AM | Comments (4) | ai movies
Librarians Wanted
One of the other options I've been considering in my career search is to go to library school and become a librarian. However, this has always been a sort of "safety" plan, and I've never felt very drawn to it. It's just one of those things that fits my interests and which I think I could do pretty well at, plus it has the bonus of being low-stress, stable and secure, with a fairly clear career path. These things are appealing, yet I've pretty much decided I'm ok with taking some more risks in life and heading into less clearly-charted waters. Of course, just when I was about to declare myself sure that library school would not be in my (immediate) future, the Chronicle runs another story saying librarians wanted. So again I'm thinking: Am I crazy to contemplate a law and/or non-profit job when all I hear about both is that jobs are scarce? Shouldn't I be heading for a field where there's real demand? *sigh*
Posted 10:00 AM | librarianship
The Awful NP Cycle
A very discouraging thread on idealist.com: Entry-level position impossible? Highly qualified people can't find NP jobs. The most obvious reason for this is that NPs have no money. And NPs have no money because the gov't cuts taxes and shifts billions to the "defense" budget. This means NPs can't hire anyone to do the work of lobbying the government and society more generally to value (and fund) NP work. So NPs have no money. And NPs have no money because the gov't cuts taxes...
What a brutal cycle. And this is what I'm talking about when I second-guess my desire to go into NP work: this kind of BS would just piss me off daily and make me perpetually frustrated. The appeal of law is that I'd be higher on the "food chain," so to speak, and would be more likely to be in a better position to address these kinds of structural, public policy issues. That's what I'm thinking, anyway, but am I just deluded to think that having a JD will put me in a better position to effect real change on a macro level?
Posted 12:18 PM | law school
Nonprofit Job Market
The Washington Post's "Live Online" forum today was about nonprofit career trends. For anyone looking for NP work, especially in the D.C. area, the transcript might be helpful. My question and response was:
Jacqui Salmon: I guess the important part of your query is, what do YOU want to do? Do you really want to go to law school now? Or are you just not that interested right now and would prefer to start a career and THEN go back to school?
It's best to sort out your priorities rather than trying to fit them into what you think various nonprofits-or companies, for that matter-want.
She's probably right, of course. Again the question: Do I really want to go to law school now? Yes. And no. Ambivalent imbroglio.
Another highlight was this helpful post:
That list is encouraging because I've not only done a lot of what's on the list, I'm also very proficient at many of those things, and they're things I enjoy.
And finally this advice:
Still more evidence that I'd be great at NP work and that I could probably find a great job if I'd just commit to it. Ambivalent. Imbroglio.
Posted 11:28 AM | law school
A "Better" BigLaw Job
Another tip from the non-profit law discussion thread at idealist.com:
This online booklet: A guide to researching law firms prepared by the National Lawyers Guild chapter of Columbia University. It describes ways to evaluate BigLaw firms to improve the chances that you won't have to work on cases that you find immoral/offensive. Definitely something to consider if you're thinking of going into law or looking for firm jobs. Unfortunately, if message boards are any indication, recent law grads don't generally have much choice when it comes to getting jobs these days—they just have to take whatever they can find. (Here's yet another reason going to a "top-tier" school is important, but I don't see that happening for me and I have no desire to go into that kind of debt....)
Posted 09:54 AM | law school
Loan Repayment for Lawyers
Following up on what my friend (hereafter referred to as "Lawfriend") told me yesterday about programs that help lawyers pay off school loans if they go into non-profit work: Check out Equal Justice Works (formerly the National Association for Public Interest Law, or NAPIL). The site uses frames (bad bad), but if you click on "Loan Repayment Information" in the navbar on the left you'll see what I'm talking about. Or go directly to the page here.
The site also has great info about choosing a law school and finding work in the non-profit/public interest sector. [via the recent Lawyers for Non-Profit thread at Idealist.com]
Posted 08:39 AM | law school
Law Exams Look Awful
Supposedly this is a real law school exam. [via Outside the Law]
Sounds awful, doesn't it? Now why would a person (like me) want to pay thousands of dollars for the privilege of taking such a test as this? I'm serious. If you're a lawyer, why did you do it?
Posted 09:38 PM | Comments (1) | law school
Law: First Person
Today I had lunch with a current law student. She started the English program with me, but left for law school last year after she got her M.A. We were never close, but we were always friendly with each other. She was going into English renaissance stuff, so we were never on very similar paths. She did, however, use an old powerbook, and as Martha Stewart was wont to say, "That's a good thing."
All that helps put some perspective on what she told me, which was basically: Law school is like the Borg: If you go to law school, you will be assimilated.
She said the first year is about learning a new language, steep learning curve, adjusting to being one of the oldest in your class, having to put up with the go-go-go aggressive attitudes of the early-20-somethings who think they know everything, etc. She likes the class time (as I think I would—the whole Socratic method thing), but reading case law is a drag (no surprise). In short, the first year sucks, but she's hoping and nearly certain it will get better.
The important thing is this: She said she entered law school with the idea that she wanted to do public interest law, but after just one year she's now headed toward corporate BigLaw. Why the switch? She said she's tired of never getting paid well (she taught H.S. before coming to grad school), and it's awful to see all your peers making five times more than you (which is what will happen if you go into public interest law while all your schoolmates go to big firms). She tried fighting the system when she started, becoming indignant at all the hoops they made her jump through, resisting the awful writing they make you do (run-on sentences and other poor writing styles are mandatory, apparently), being appalled by the basic greed that motivated her fellow students. But then she realized that she'd just fail and/or be miserable if she kept fighting these things, and she asked herself, "What's best for me?" and she came up with the fact that she doesn't want to be in debt her whole life and she'd like to be able to help out her poor parents and it's not so bad to do 3-5 years of BigLaw in order to make enough money to do something she might prefer more. Oh, and it's ok with her to have to work 60-80 hour weeks in order to do all this.
*sigh*
Another story: She's heard stories about people interviewing for internships and law jobs. The interviewer asks: "Why do you want this job?" If you respond with some high-minded, idealistic answer about how you'd like to help people and/or make the world a better place, they'll look at you funny and say, "What else?" On the other hand, they'll nod approvingly and move on if you respond simply and directly, "I wanted to make money and this was the best and fastest way I found to do that." In other words, law sounds like it rewards a culture of greed and self-interest, which really explains a lot about how our world works. (Lawyers affect just about every facet of society in some way, and if they're all trained that greed and self-interest are good, then that's inevitably going to play a role in society as a whole.) And, if you stop to think about it, of course law rewards those who are willing to put their own interests ahead of all others: this is basically what you have to do when you work for a client. If your client wins, that's good for you, so whatever your client's argument is, you need to be able to make it your own and not get caught up in your own value hangups. But it seems that law would work best when your client's interests coincide with yours. What if lawyers refused to work on cases they disagreed with? Would the world be a better or worse place? (In light of the above fact that lawyers have learned that greedy self-interest is good, I imagine the world might be a much worse place. Sobering thought.)
According to my friend, only about 2% of law graduates go into public interest law. This is not surprising, but it seems to suggest that it would be easier to get a job in that field. On that note, however, she said the law career services office is basically designed to get people big-firm jobs in Chicago and if you want a public interest job you're really on your own. Great. And this is at a school that supposedly has a great, "top-10" public interest program. (She didn't seem to be aware of her own school's high ranking in this regard.)
One semi-bright spot: She said there are some law schools that will pay off your student loans if you go into public interest law. Apparently it works like this: If you take a public interest job that pays less than $30-35k/year, you'll get your loans reduced by 25% in your first year on that job, a little more in your second year, and so on until the loans are completely forgiven which could take 5-7 years. Sounds great. Sign me up! The problem: Those programs aren't exactly common.
What's funny about all of this (in a not funny at all way) is that none if it is the least bit surprising, and yet it makes me very depressed and sad. I mean, my friend only confirmed what I've read elsewhere and heard from others. So why did it bum me out so much? Why am I so determined to find some tiny flicker of good in law to hold onto? Is this some martyr thing where I want to go into a field where I will be constantly surrounded by people who disagree with me and who exert continuous pressure for me to become like them, to be assimilated? Why? I tried that with English—I heard all the bad stuff and I knew I wouldn't "fit in" with all that I'd heard, but I believed I could make a place for myself, I could hold my own and be the one who did it his way. That didn't work. I just became miserable. What would keep that from happening if I went into law? (Scary thought: The difference might be that in law I might actually be able to get a job and make a living. What would I think of English right now if I knew that I'd probably get a pretty good-paying job by "giving in" and becoming like everyone else and jumping through all the hoops? Would I want to do it? At bottom, is my frustration with English simply that there's no money in it? Ugh.)
Perhaps the question I need to answer is this: Is it possible to be an idealistic lawyer? Or is "idealistic" the wrong term? Why must it be "practical" to accept greed and self-interest above all other values? In fact, greed and self-interest are ideals in that it would be great if—in an ideal world—we could all be as greedy and self-interested as we want and not cause or suffer serious negative consequences. However, that's not the world we live in. Our greed and self-interest always comes at the expense of someone else, so we must, as a practical matter, consider others when making our choices in life. I know this is true. I know it. And if becoming a lawyer would force me to ignore this truth, then I would certainly be the most miserable lawyer ever.
So a question for you if you are a lawyer or law student: Is it possible for someone on the political left to become a lawyer without sacrificing his/her values? Can you be a lawyer with leftist principals (supporting the interests of workers over capitalists/managers, supporting environmental protections, civil liberties over "national security," in favor of universal health care, etc.)?
Posted 08:44 PM | Comments (1) | law general
What Law Is Like
Reading around the web, trying to get some idea of what kind of a law career might suit me, I came upon the Greedy Associates and their Greedy Law Students Board. Interesting stuff there, but especially this post asking about alternatives to practicing law (once you've already got the degree), and the response that points to the Alternative Careers column at New York Lawyer. The column is a Q & A style written by Doug Richardson, a career counselor and former lawyer. What follows are large chunks from two columns that seemed especially helpful.
First, there is the advice to someone who wonders what he/she can do other than practice law after spending three years slogging through law school, which offers some good insights into what law school and the practice of law are all about:
This much is true: law is more the province of the individual contributor (“I do it myself”) than the collaborative/affiliative type, law is fundamentally repetitive, law emphasizes spotting risk more than opportunity, and those who love to draw outside the lines frequently find law frustrating.
So in your case – what was not to like? Or, put more positively, what kinds of satisfactions or incentives entice your more than whatever rewards law might hold? Those who enter law because they wanted membership in a profession they think is secure, stable, collegial and respectable are getting a rude surprise these days. The practice of law is moving away from stability and headlong towards being competitive, specialized and adversarial – often even with one’s own colleagues. The risk/reward equation is shifting: big paydays also mean big risks. Those who somehow got the idea that law is either intellectually stimulating or creative are disappointed more often than not. Law does have opportunities for intellectuals – but not all that many. Ergo, you are not alone in questioning whether you should engineer an immediate change of venue.
This speaks to my concern that I won't be a good fit for law because I do like to "draw outside the lines." Yet, I believe I'm generally more of an individual contributor than a "collaborative/affiliative" type, so in that regard law might suit me fine. I take what he's saying about the cutthroat nature of law with a bit of skepticism because I wonder if he's considering public interest law, or just speaking primarily of big-firm, big-money law.
The second helpful column talks about the different reasons people generally have for going to law school:
Another large group say the want to learn to do something with their legal education, whether to right wrongs, make a lot of money, or be recognized as the world's greatest expert on electromagnetic torts. This "instrumental" motivation sees law as a tool one uses for a particular purpose, not as a ticket for inclusion into an exclusive club.
A third, much smaller group, studies law because they want to know stuff. It is the intellectual substance and challenge of law that captivates them. They see law in terms of norms, values, systems and history. They see the big picture. They generally are miserably unhappy in the mundane practice of law, but they make great law professors or appellate judges.
The final category contains all the "default" reasons: "My dad is a lawyer." "The LSATs said I might be good at law" [note that they never promised that you would enjoy law]. "It seemed like the thing to do at the time." "My folks said they would pay for it." These reasons can be very powerful, but fundamentally they are insubstantial: they are reactive rather than proactive, and therefore carry a high risk of later career dissatisfaction.
If one has thought through all these practical and motivation questions and is prepared to be cross-examined on one's motives, directions and sanity, effective spin control is not all that difficult. But be prepared to address this point: the majority of people who self-select into law are temperamentally suited to be specialists -- to be known for their knowledge in a certain discipline. In this regard they are much like accountants, plumbers, IT experts and human resources professionals. Their underlying drive often is to be an "individual contributor:" someone who "does it him(her)self."
I see a little of all of the above reasons in my own desire to go to law school. I primarily think of it as a tool (reason #2) that would help me contribute more to the public interest causes that I find so important. But the security and stability of the "profession" (reason #1) also figure in, as does the desire for the intellectual challenge (reason #3). The default reasons that might be motivating me include:
- The security: maybe I'm just looking for something that seems kind of safe? And yet, how "safe" is law when there's an excess of lawyers and the economy's in recession and lawyers are being layed off? Also, how "safe" is it to want to go into public interest law, where I'll likely make only $30-40k/year? (Funny thing is that "safety" is relative: If I stuck w/academia I'd likely eventually make more like $20-30k/year.) Also, law doesn't seem all that safe and secure if you stop to think of the cost: It could easily cost $30-90k for three years of law school, which would take a lot of time to repay on $30-40k/year. But I've already decided that I won't go if I have to pay more than $30k for it, so that's a little easier. (The best option would obviously be that I wouldn't have to pay at all, which would make law school an easy decision, but...)
- Another "default" reason I might choose to go to law school is the promise of the career path of law (this is related to safety). Right now I could either enter some other graduate program (law or library school, probably), or strike out into the big wide world of work (as a writer/journalist or in some capacity with a non-profit like Vote Smart or Public Citizen). Compared to the unpredictability that immediate entry into the workforce would involve, there's a certain amount of safety and predictability about pursuing another degree -- especially one like law or library school, either of which would send me down a more definite and bounded career path.
- Finally, I'm not sure this qualifies as a "default" reason for going to law school, but it is one I'm suspicious of and which is closely related to the other two: Law school (or library school) could be kind of simple right now. "Simple?" you ask? "Is he on crack?" What I mean is that I'm pretty sure I have a good chance of getting into the law school at my current university which would make law school simple because I wouldn't have to move, I wouldn't have to pay out-of-state tuition, and it's also a top-ten public interest school. (Library school here would be the same -- I could probably get in, tuition's reasonable, and it's a top-five program). I'm not crazy about the idea of moving and rearranging my whole life at the moment, so in that regard transitioning to another grad program here would be very simple. Easy. Entering another degree program just because it's easy doesn't seem like the best idea.
Richardson concludes both columns with similar advice, one version of which is :
Self-awareness is the goal here; I'm a little tired of kissing frogs.
Posted 10:08 AM | law general
Beautiful Balloon
It began as… well, actually, I wish I knew how it began, but that would be too simple, too clean. There is no beginning to these things: they start as little, often imperceptible pinpricks in your hot-air balloon of happiness, satisfaction, and contentment. A tiny hole here, a teeny tear there—most of them are so small you hardly notice when they occur. Once in a while you'll feel the pinch as the needle goes in—perhaps because it's unusually large, or because it delivers an exceptionally stinging venom—but even when the sting lasts for days, your balloon is big and strong and high enough that it barely sinks, and eventually you regain your altitude almost as if nothing had ever happened.
I believe that this is how life ought to be. No matter who you are or what you're doing, minor setbacks and challenges are inevitable; in fact, sometimes it's those little pricks of challenge and adversity that keeps us going. Challenge can make life interesting and worth living. Sometimes.
But there are times, for some people, when life doesn't seem to work out that way. Nine months ago (or thereabouts), I was sailing my hot-air balloon of happiness through the often stormy skies of academia. I was a graduate student (technically, I still am), a grad student in English "literature," to be exact. (The fact that I feel compelled to put "literature" in quotes might tell you something; exploring what that something might be might be the tangent of another day.) I was in my third year of a seven-year program (yes, that's right seven years—and it's not uncommon to extend it to eight or nine), and I was making good progress. I enjoyed reading large amounts of interesting fiction and history and criticism and critical theory, and I enjoyed attending class and discussing all that reading with my peers and professors . I even (mostly) enjoyed writing 20-30 page seminar papers, although trying to do more than two of those in a semester was enough to almost kill me. And I was also learning to make peace with teaching, which is much harder than it looks—especially if you have no real training in it, and when you're teaching two different classes per semester (which means two preps every day).* For the most part, making peace with teaching meant accepting that I would never be satisfied with my work because I would never have enough time to adequately prepare for each class and to adequately comment upon all the writing that my students did, etc. It takes a very special person to carry a full time load as a graduate student while simultaneously performing well as a teacher.
In other words, teaching was one of the pinpricks in my balloon. In fact, it was probably a whole constellation of pinpricks, which over time developed into something of a gaping hole.
But teaching wasn't alone in puncturing my flight to academic success. There was also the profession itself, which is, I dare say, the most dysfunctional profession you could possibly imagine. The short story is that the profession is producing way too many people with Ph.Ds, while the market demand for those people is rapidly shrinking.** This makes it very hard to justify the accumulation of further student loan debt in order to pay for earning a degree that will eventually be worth approximately nothing. The bad job market for English grads also makes it harder to tolerate the interpersonal politics of English departments like mine, which is poorly managed and riven with internal divisions. (The poor management and factious politics also mean that it's next to impossible for the department to meaningfully address its problems (like budget cuts, loss of prominent faculty, etc). This, in turn, means that life in the department has steadily worsened in the three years I've been here, and there's no turnaround in sight.)
Did I say there was a constellation of holes in my balloon of happiness in academia? Perhaps it was more like an entire galaxy. And obviously, it doesn't matter who you are, no one's balloon of happiness can stay aloft once its fabric has been riddled by a galaxy of holes.
Now, before my extended metaphor collapses of its own weight, the situation now is this: My balloon has lost serious altitude, and it doesn't look like it's going to rise again any time soon—at least not in the stormy skies of academia.
Which leaves me in a bit of an imbroglio, as you can see:
im·bro·glio: 1. a complicated misunderstanding or disagreement. 2. an intricate and perplexing state of affairs.
And at first I thought the imbroglio was ambiguous, but when I started seriously considering my options, and then I began flipping through each one, back and forth and back again, I realized that the imbroglio I'm in is more one of ambivalence than ambiguity:
So what to do now? Where to go from here? I'm something of an academic fugitive, on the run toward... what? Over the course of the next few days (and weeks?), I'll be trying to figure that out, although the process has already reached something of an advanced state. Right now, the options include law, library school, becoming a journalist/freelance writer, or heading off into the wild and wooly world of work with some non-profit like Vote Smart or Public Citizen. And the point here is that if you have any thoughts on any of this (academia, English as a profession, law, law school, libraries, becoming a librarian, library school, working for non-profits, these non-profits in particular, job searching and career changing more generally, etc.).... If you have any thoughts as this process continues, please do share by clicking the comment button below.
Footnotes
* If you've been out of college for a while, or if you attended a private school with an adequate budget, you may not realize that the majority of undergraduate courses at major public universities in the U.S. are taught by graduate students and part-time or "adjunct" faculty. Many of the adjuncts have M.A.s or Ph.D.s in their fields, but it's not uncommon (in fact, it's standard practice at my university) for a graduate student in his/her first year to teach entry-level courses in literature and composition, and possibly languages as well. Many of these new graduate students head to grad school straight out of college at the tender age of 21 or 22—I've known college teachers who are younger than the majority of their students. Age should not be an issue, but experience is. These teachers are forced to choose texts and design syllabi with no more than 3-5 days of "orientation" before they're thrown in front of their own classroom of bright-eyed (at best) undergraduates. It may be a good way to keep tuition low, but it's a poor way to educate people. The experience can also make the first year or more of graduate school a living and perpetual hell.
** The slightly longer story here is that the profession of English (or Englit) has, for all intents and purposes, lost its social mandate. That mandate was weak and highly contested to begin with, but for the past 100-150 years it has been enough to establish English departments as a cornerstone of any liberal university. The foundation of that mandate has traditionally been that teaching literature (defined as the "great books" or the "classics") to young people was a way to transfer and preserve "the best" of Western civilization, and to give each new generation the foundation on which they could build Western culture. This was all well and good in the latter 19th and early 20th centuries when a relatively small and elite critical establishment determined, almost as if by fiat, exactly what the "great" books were, or what was included in the English canon. But in the last 50 years, that critical establishment (which was almost exclusively white and male) has crumbled in the face of challenges from previously silenced voices (basically anyone neither white and male, but also anyone who is not wealthy) who have demanded that the canon be expanded to include writing by and about people who are neither white, nor male, nor wealthy. The paradox here is that while the expansion of the canon has threatened to completely undermine the profession of English, it is also the best thing to ever happen to that profession. Most people within Englit recognize this, but they've had trouble convincing the rest of the world and unfortunately the rest of the world (specifically, American taxpayers) doesn't like to fund things it doesn't understand. So Englit is a financially poor profession, which makes it an increasingly cutthroat profession. And that means it's become one of the biggest abusers of adjunct and temporary labor in all of higher education. Which means that in order to work in Englit, you more or less have to accept that you'll either be exploited (as an adjunct), or you will exploit (as a faculty member). It's not a pretty choice. I've basically reached a point where every time I see a faculty member I want to ask him/her how he/she sleeps at night knowing his/her paycheck comes on the backs of the overworked, underpaid, and disrespected adjuncts who are increasingly numerous in the halls of our department. Needless to say, this kind of disrespect for your colleagues/superiors is not conducive to a positive work environment or future in a field of work.
Posted 08:15 PM | law school
Linkbacks via Stephen's Web
Still getting things set up a bit: Trying to provide an "auto linkback" service so that it's easy for me (and anyone else) to see who links to this page. The service is made simple by Stephen's Web's referrer javascript, but I'm not smart enough to edit the scripts to get them working on my site. Any advice?
Posted 01:43 PM | meta-blogging
Who I am and What This Is
Hello!
This site is the product of a late-20-something graduate student in English at a large and supposedly prominent (though I had barely heard of it before applying here) midwestern university. Having thoroughly exhausted all desire to pursue a Ph.D. in English, I am now searching for alternative plans. This site is about that search, as well as related issues, sites, questions, etc. I imagine someday (soon) I'll rewrite this little introduction to say how the search has ended. I look forward to that day.
For much of my life, travel and change have played a major role. Up until recently I was able to dubiously boast that I had changed living places (I wouldn't call them homes) an average of every nine months for close to a decade. During my life I have lived in six U.S. states (Wyoming, Iowa, Missouri, Nevada, California, and Illinois) and traveled to numerous countries, including a month in Australia and nine months in Finland (as an exchange student). I have also biked solo and self-supported (as in pedalled, carrying my tent and luggage on the bike) through Europe "from the Arctic Circle (in Finland) to the Straits of Gibraltar (at the southern tip of Spain) -- a trip of over 3,000 miles. 
Partially because of that experience, my first job out of college was with Backroads, "The World's Number One Active Travel Company." As a leader of high-end, weeklong bicycle and hiking tours, I've worked in California, Utah, Arizona, Wyoming, Montana, Massachusetts, Maine, and Vermont. I fell in love with New England and I hope to be able to live there someday.
The many different lifestyles and norms I've observed and experienced in my travels and moves have shown me that, while there is no "right" way to live life, some ways are better than others. My life experience—added to three years spent in intensive study of U.S. cultural, literary, and political history—has led me to the conviction that humans are what Aristotle called zoon politican, or social animals. We need each other, and regardless of what pop culture tells us about our autonomy and individuality, none of us would be who were are today without the help and influence of other human beings (first and foremost, for most of us, our parental figures). Since our cultural mainstream tends to ignore or dismiss the extent of our human interdependence, my worldview puts me pretty far left of center. I hope to contribute to the conversation about important issues, and to offer another voice on the left to balance out the "war bloggers" and other libertarian and neoconservatives who have taken up the blog as their soapbox of choice.
I hope what you read here is amusing or thought-provoking. Most of all, I hope if you have any thoughts about what you see here, you'll let me know. You can reach me at: ai at mowabb dot com.
Posted 09:55 AM | meta-blogging
Testing Trackback
This is only a test. If this had been an actual post of substance, I probably wouldn't be linking to the TrackBack Development blog. Is Trackback working? How will I know? Why should we care? Here's the trouble with these blogs -- they eat time and often it's hard to tell what we gain from the massive investment we make. "Just when you thought you was out, they puuuull you back in!"
Posted 11:31 PM | meta-blogging
MT Search
The search box on the left is provided by MT Search from Open Wire (thanks Jay Allen!). It's designed to search the entries of this blog, which may someday be handy. Right now only the advanced search option seems to be working. If you type at term and click the "Go" button, you'll get this fun message:
Here's hoping Trackback will ping Openwire and I'll get some clue about how to make this work better.
Posted 11:18 PM | Comments (1) | meta-blogging
hello world
What is an ambiguous imbroglio? You're looking at it. And if you're like me, you also look at it every day when you look in the mirror. This will be a record of a couple of things, including:
- A search for a career/job that will be both satisfying to me and beneficial to the world.
- The web travels of a Net addict who's interested in blogs (as potentially more than just fun), current and ongoing political events, the continuing saga of Apple and the Macintosh (and OS X), and notable books, magazines, television programs, movies, and music. In other words, expect a little bit of everything, with a focus on number one (for now).
And in order to get the party started quickly: Google! DayPop! This is my blogchalk: English, United States, Middletown, Illinois, Male, 26-30!
Posted 04:59 PM | meta-blogging
