Happy Holidays!

Four applications to law school are now out the door and headed for George Washington U., American U., George Mason U, and Boston College. Is five enough? Hmmm.. I'll ponder that some more ... later. But first, I'm off to Michigan, then on to Montana to spend time with the famdamily, so posts will likely be fairly infrequent for the next few weeks. If you'd like to direct my Survivor application video, please let me know so I can have my people contact your people and maybe we can do lunch early next year.

Now, everybody sing:
Let's hear those sleigh bells jinglin', ring-ting-tinglin', too.
Come on it's lovely weather for a sleigh ride together with you...

Posted 08:24 PM | life generally

Survivor 5, 6, and 7

When "Survivor" first started several years ago, it spawned a wave of copy-cat "reality" television shows. The name is unfortunate—there's very little "reality" in the contrived situations "Survivor" casts have been in during the show's five seasons. Sure, they really do go hungry and have to sleep on the ground, but there is always a camera crew there with radio contact to helicopters and hospitals and whatever. That's not to say none of the so-called "survivors" has never been in any real physical danger; wasn't it the second season where Michael was choppered out after falling into the fire? So bad stuff can happen, but it's still only "real" in a very contrived sense.

So who cares about that "reality" moniker, is what I say. I find the show fascinating. "Survivor" and "The Amazing Race" are great, but you can keep your "Bachelor" and "Temptation Island" and "Big Brother" and "Osbornes." The appeal of those shows kind of bothers me. Why is it so great to see people humiliated and embarrassed and cheated on and lied to? Oh wait, that's also what happens on "Survivor," isn't it?

Anyway, "Survivor 5—Thailand" ended last night and the official story says:

After 39 days on a physical and mental roller coaster, Brian Heidik, the 34-year-old used car salesman from Quartz Hill, California, won a majority of the Jury's votes, earning him the title of SOLE SURVIVOR and giving him the million-dollar prize.

One of the things that gets me about the show (and another way in which it is anything but "real") is the power the editors have over viewers' opinions of the action and the "players." I want to say that Brian was the satanic incarnation of the sleaziest used car salesman stereotype you've ever heard. But what do I know?He's also apparently an actor. So aside from internet gossip, we only know what the producers/editors decided to show, and it's obvious they do whatever they can to magnify character flaws and tensions between people. But the point is, what does it take to win? And the answer is: That depends. According to Jeff Probst, "King of the Hyenas" (salon.com's name for Probst during the 2nd season), if you want to be a survivor, you should:

Study John Nash's "non-cooperative game playing theory." All the answers to Survivor are there.

If you want to be a Survivor, here's the casting call. According the application, Survivor 7 will be filmed in June/July 2003, and the application process goes from the Feb 11 application deadline to final selection in April. You know me; I'm crazy about application processes, and heck, by now I should be a pro at them. Don't you think a few weeks as a Survivor contestant would be a good way to blow off steam before starting law school?

The application requires a 3-minute video. Does anyone have a digital video camera I could borrow for the next couple of weeks? ;-)

Footnote: A history of "Survivor" winners:

1. Survivor 1—Pulau Tiga: Richard Hatch, the 39-year old corporate trainer from Newport, Rhode Island.


2. Survivor2—Austrailian Outback: Tina Wesson, mother and personal nurse from Knoxville, Tennessee.


3. Survivor 3—Africa: Ethan Zohn, the 27-year-old professional soccer player from Lexington, MA.


4. Survivor 4—Marquesas: Vecepia Towery, the 36-year-old office manager from Portland, Oregon.

Posted 01:05 PM | life generally

Writing Personal Statements

For the last three years I've taught introductory literature and business/technical writing classes at a state university. Now that I'm applying to law school, I'm in the dubious position of writing my own personal statement, while at the same time being asked by my students to give advice on how to write personal statements. If you read my statement, you may think I'm not well qualified to give advice on these things, and since I haven't yet been admitted anywhere, I'd have to agree with you. That's why I point my students to other authorities on the subject. For example, here's a succinct guide from a book called Graduate Admissions Essays -- What Works, What Doesn't, and Why by Donald Asher:

Although you should never be slave to a formula, there is a set of key ingredients that many successful essays share. They have great opening lines or paragraphs. They convey at least a glimpse of the applicant's personality, substantiate specific academic preparation and knowledge of subject matter, and demonstrate an understanding of the challenges as well as the rewards of the chosen career. They often give a sense of the candidate's maturity, compassion, stamina, teamwork skills, leadership potential, and general likability, usually without addressing these issues directly. Then they go on to show how the applicant plans to use the graduate education in her planned career, and establish that the student has an understanding of her place in the 'big picture.'

The essay is an opportunity to tie all the disparate pieces of your application together into a comprehensive, coherent whole. Some admissions directors told me that they are not always looking for new information in the essay; rather, they are interested in having the essay 'make sense' of the rest of the application. ... All the best essays will be both honest and forthcoming" (43).

I think that's pretty good advice, but again, I recommend looking at some of the books out there to see the kinds of things they recommend. When I'm in need of advice like this, I always make a trip to the bookstore and spend some quality time with the books they have there. I often find I don't need to buy a book, but looking at the samples and different strategies always gives me ideas to get the job done.

Posted 12:10 PM | law school

The Eli Lilly Bandit

So who is the "Eli Lilly Bandit"? If you know, go collect your reward.

Posted 12:06 PM | general politics

LRAP Roundup

I'm trying to pick the last one or two schools I'm going to apply to, so I'm taking a closer look at Loan Repayment Assistance Programs (LRAPs) to help me make my choices. Below is some of the information I've found, in case you're also looking at this aspect of grad school. (If you have first- or second-hand experience with any of these programs, I'd really like to hear about it. Although many of these programs sound good, I hear that most of them aren't used much, which suggests to me that there are often hidden "catches" that aren't obvious to the untrained eye. Thanks!)

UPENN: They've made some recent improvements to what I'd call a "Cadillac" program. The details are in this pdf, but here are some highlights: If you make $30k/year or less in a qualified public interest position, Penn will pick up your full loan tab. If you make $30k-$35k/year, you'll have to contribute 20% of the amount of your salary over $30k to your loan payments—Penn will pick up the rest. If you make $35k-$40k, you'll pay $1000 plus 40% of the amount of your salary above $35k. And finally, if you make more than $40k/year, you'll have to pay $3000, plus 60% of the amount of your salary over $40k. And this is all on the 10-year repayment plan. Sounds like a great deal to me.

Georgetown: GULC also has a top of the line program. It uses a formula to determine how much you pay on your loans, and how much GULC pays:

The Standard Maintenance Allowance (SMA) is the "salary cap" used in calculating LRAP awards and is adjusted regularly for inflation. Additionally, the SMA recognizes that "high cost" areas have increased basic living costs (i.e. Washington, D.C., Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York City and San Francisco). For the 2003 year, the SMA is $33,150 for standard cost areas and $35,800 for high cost areas.

For both LRAP I and II, the SMA is subtracted along with any other qualified deductions (see Special Considerations) from the graduate's gross annualized salary. If the salary exceeds the SMA, then the participant is expected to contribute at least 50% of the difference towards his/her annual student loan payments. For example, if a graduate earns $34,150 in a standard cost area, the participant would have an expected contribution towards the next 12 months of loan payments of $500 ($34,150 - $33,150 SMA = $1,000 x 50% = $500 contribution).

The participant's calculated contribution is subtracted from his/her calculated annual student loan payments to determine the LRAP maximum award coverage.

Both the Penn and GULC programs help out with undergraduate or non-law-school debt, as well, under certain circumstances. GULC's program pays on a 15-year schedule for Federal Stafford loans (I think the max you can borrow via Stafford is $65k/individual), a 20-year schedule for commercial loans, and a 15-year schedule for Perkins loans.

George Washington: GW's program is based on a "target income" of $35k/year:

Generally speaking, you are financially eligible for LRAP funding if your gross annual salary minus your annual law loan repayments is equal to or less than $35,000.

Example:
Salary (Gross) MINUS Law loan debt =
$37,000/yr MINUS $8,000/yr = $29,000: You are eligible

GW's program does not cover judicial clerkships (Penn's counts time in clerkships as time in its LRAP for purposes of loan forgiveness); however, the good thing is that your LRAP loans from GW are forgiven every year. (Most of these programs help you pay your student loans by giving you new loans, then the school forgives the loans it made you. Sometimes the loans from the school are forgiven immediately, sometimes over a period of 3-5 years.)

American: The info online about American's LRAP is rather cryptic. It's got a $40k/year salary cap and you can only participate in the story for up to 10 years, but there are no more details. Doesn't sound great. Anyone have experience with this one?

Boston University: No LRAP, but they claim to provide funding to 82% of their students. Plus, I was told BU was preferable to BC? Can anyone tell me more about that?

Boston College: BC touts its Summer Public Interest Stipends to draw public interest lawyers—approximately 80 students/year get $3500 for 10-week programs working in the public interest. Sounds good. The school also has a long list of other financial aid programs. The BC LRAP has a healthy salary cap of $47,500k/year, but I don't see anything about the repayment schedule. Does it pay all your loan payments until your salary goes over the cap, or are you expected to pay something? Why don't law schools make these things super-clear on their websites!? (Maybe because they can't really afford for many people to take advantage of these programs?)

Michigan: Yet another terrific plan. The basic outline:

First, the applicant's annual available income (AAI) is calculated. A formula that includes income, assets, and various deductions such as undergraduate debt and childcare costs is used to determine the AAI. If the AAI is less than $36,000 the applicant is not expected to contribute any payments toward the loans that are covered under the program for that year. If the AAI is greater than $36,000, the applicant's expected contribution is 35% of the AAI over $36,000.

For example: if the AAI is $38,000 the applicant is expected to contribute $700 toward their loan payments for that year. ($38,000-$36,000) x .35 = $700

Posted 11:44 AM | law school

Injustice or Inequity

I'll get down off of my SUV-bashing high horse now. Instead of acting all self-righteous about the fact that I don't drive an SUV, I'll beg for your sympathy as I try to write a new essay to get financial aid for law school. Here's the challenge of the day:

Identify a domestic or international situation where you perceive there to be great injustice or inequity and briefly describe the factors that you believe created and/or have perpetuated that condition. How do you believe being awarded the Public Interest/Public Service scholarship at Americna University Washington College of Law, and a law degree, would help you constructively address the challenges presented by this situation?

So where do I start? Environmental problems caused by the U.S.'s refusal to participate in the Kyoto Protocol or, locally, in our refusal to raise fuel-efficiency standards and really hold automakers to them? Where's the justice in allowing the people of the U.S. to do more to destroy the global environment than anyone else on the planet? So fine, it's an obvious injustice based on a great inequity, but how would a law degree help me "address the challenges presented by this situation"? Would it be theoretically possible to mount a class action suit against the EPA for failing to protect the environment? Or against Congress for failing to pass laws that would enable the EPA to do its job?

Another great injustice involves campaign finance reform: Congress passed the "Bipartisan Campaign Finance Reform Act of 2002" early in the year, but now the Federal Elections Commission (FEC) is trying to gut the law by not enforcing it. It seems most parties agree that the way campaigns are financed is bad for Democracy, but critics of reform argue that limits on the amount of money we can give to politicians are limits on our freedom of speech. What seems to me an obvious solution to this conundrum is publicly-funded elections. If taxpayers picked up the bills for campaigns, those campaigns would cost a lot less, be open to more candidates, and would be much less influenced by special interests. But what would a law degree allow me to do about this? I could lobby. I could work with legislators to craft policy on this subject. I could work for Public Citizen or Public Campaign or those kinds of organizations to see that these laws are enforced. Are there other things I could do?

What about people who can't afford health care in our society? What about the problem of underfunded schools and the danger that school vouchers will only widen the gap between good (wealthy) and bad (poor) schools? Or what about capital punishment? Is an eye for an eye really a good way to achieve justice? Must focus....

The problem is not that I don't see issues to write about. The problem is that I have only vague ideas of how becoming a lawyer would enable me to "constructively address the problems created by" these situations. Lawyers don't just sue and litigate—they also lobby and negotiate and write policy and advise politicians and other policy-makers. I want to do any and all of that, but I'm not sure I have a concrete idea of precisely how I'll do so. I'll work on it...

Posted 11:22 AM | Comments (1) | law school

SUVs and SOBs

As most of us get set to head into a holiday week and try to forget that there's a war looming (didn't the marketing people say January or February would be a good time to roll out the new "attack" product line?), Alternet serves up a tasty little morsel on the connection between war and SUVs (especially Hummers, which seem to be selling briskly this season). Combine that with this review of High and Mighty: SUVs by Keith Bradsher, and you've got a pretty complete picture of a society run amok:

According to market research conducted by the country's leading automakers, Bradsher reports, SUV buyers tend to be "insecure and vain. They are frequently nervous about their marriages and uncomfortable about parenthood. They often lack confidence in their driving skills. Above all, they are apt to be self-centered and self-absorbed, with little interest in their neighbors and communities. They are more restless, more sybaritic, and less social than most Americans are. They tend to like fine restaurants a lot more than off-road driving, seldom go to church and have limited interest in doing volunteer work to help others."

So let's see if I've got this right: We buy SUVs because we're rich, insecure and antisocial, and also because they're status symbols that tell the world how affluent we are. Yet, these very vehicles pollute our environment more than other vehicles we might drive, thereby making us less safe. SUVs are also prone to rollovers, so there again they make us less safe. And all the gas they consume makes the U.S. more reliant than ever on foreign oil, which again makes all of us less safe because it makes us think we need to fight wars for oil. But then, in a nice little feedback loop, our wars for oil make us feel macho (or insecure—really the same thing), so we want big, tough vehicles to show how powerful we are. Plus, the wars are big advertisements for SUVs (again, mainly Hummers), so we buy more of them, and the cycle continues. Middle-class, SUV-driving America is less safe than ever and all its efforts in this arena to address that problem are only making it worse. Nice.

Sort of reminds me of Michael Moore's thesis about American fear in "Bowling for Columbine." To simplify, Moore argues that white, middle-class fear has driven our nation's violent history from the beginning (from colonial times, through slavery, into our modern urban/suburban divides), and is now a major factor behind gun violence in the U.S. If he's right, then white, middle-class people are buying lots of guns and lots of SUVs because they're deathly afraid of.... something. Perhaps one thing they're afraid of is losing all the material wealth and "security" they've "earned" because somewhere in the back of their minds they know that their privileges come at the expense of other people's suffering. Perhaps they're reminded of this when they drive by the dozen or so homeless people huddled against the buildings as they cruise downtown in their SUVs to buy another gun. You think? Nah...

Posted 07:20 PM | general politics

Decision: Deferred!

The wait is over. Er, I mean, the wait begins, or continues, or something like that. I received a letter today saying that the Committee on Admissions at the Georgetown University Law Center "has chosen to defer your final decision until we have a better sense of the entire applicant pool." Uh, thanks, I guess.

Their explanation for this is that GULC "received over 3,500 early applications this year, an increase of over thirty percent." I wonder if that' 30% increase in applications is happening across the board. I also wonder if I need to start aiming a little lower. I have a foot-tall stack of promotional materials from schools all over the country inviting me to apply. Maybe I should rethink my choices...

Anyway, this is a good thing, really, because I was getting a little too complacent about this law school business—I needed a good reminder that it's all highly competitive and no part of it will be easy and all that. We all need a good kick in the pants—or the gut—once in a while, don't we?

"A Final decision will be mailed no later than Friday, February 28, 2003." Thanks.

Posted 10:27 PM | Comments (2) | law school

More Gift Ideas

I know you probably have your holiday shopping done, but if you're still looking, you might try looking around Cafe Shops from Cafe Press. They have lots of fun t-shirts, sweatshirts, coffee mugs, etc., for the politically interested recipients on your gift list. For example, Modern Humorist offers mp3 propaganda—try a nice t-shirt that says:

When you pirate mp3s, you're downloading communism!

Or how about something from The Quotable Bush, where you'll find great apparel and whatnot with some of our President's greatest bits of wisdom, such as:

I know how hard it is to put food on your family.

And finally, Remixed Propaganda has taken American propaganda posters from previous wars (mostly WWII, I think) and given them an updated twist. Your friends will love a t-shirt that features a smiling GI with a cup of coffee and says:

Help yourself to a piping hot cup of shut your face and you'll feel a whole lot better. After all... You're not a terrorist, right?

Fun for the whole family! Plus, gifts from Cafe Press primarily support small businesses rather than huge corporations (if you care about things like that), and they're offering free upgrades to 2-day shipping until tomorrow (Dec. 17th), so if you order by then your gifts should arrive by you know when. (Note: I am in no way affiliated with Cafe Press; it just seems like a good idea and I really don't want to grade this pile of papers sitting on my desk...)

Posted 10:37 AM | life generally

Chaos Tower

From the random files: If you need to find a gift for the person who has everything, how about a chaos tower? Looks like endless fun for all ages, plus it could easily double as a quirky and interactive addition to your living room furnishings. Just an idear.

Posted 09:47 PM | life generally

Technical Difficulties

If you haven't seen it yet, this short flash animation is a compact little summary of how U.S. rhetoric is completely inconsistent with material reality.

Posted 01:22 PM | general politics

Why is this Illegal?

I heard this morning on Weekend Edition Sunday that domestic distribution of government publications intended for foreign audiences is illegal. Is this true? And if so, what could possibly be the reason for this? The only logic for such a law that I can think of is that our government wants to be able to lie to the rest of the world without worrying that its own citizens will know about it or object to it. If that's the logic, the law seems pretty indefensible.

Anyway, in this case the question may be moot. The NPR piece was about a book called Writers On America and it seems to be all online. Of course, without being able to see the printed copy (which U.S. embassies are distributing around the world), I guess we just have to trust that our government is giving us the same text it's giving to the rest of the world.

Posted 12:30 PM | law school

Two Paths Diverged in the Woods

I went to a party last night where nearly everyone in attendance was an English grad student—most of them further along in the program than I am (or was). In many ways, it's getting harder to hang out with these people who everyday become more dedicated to their profession, while everyday I grow more estranged from it. One of these grads is actually on the job market and just got a call yesterday to set up an interview for MLA. This is an amazing feat; just getting an interview is almost a miracle in a job market like this [thanks to SCW for the link]. According to the Modern Language Association (MLA):

the number of English positions fell to 792 this year, from 983 in 2001, a 19 percent decline. The number of foreign language positions fell to 535 from 675, a 21 percent drop.

I wish all the luck in the world to anyone who is willing to run the gauntlet that is the pursuit of a career in English these days. I admire your tenacity and perseverance, and sometimes I still wonder if going to law school is somehow selling out, or taking the easy way out, or ... something. And there are certainly ways that it is, and ways that it isn't; I've hashed over those pros and cons in this space before, so I won't drag you through them again. Suffice to say here that no matter how bad things get, I hope there will always be people willing to endure the sacrifices and hardships necessary to become an English academic; our world would be a far uglier place without you.

Still no word from Georgetown; maybe tomorrow.

Posted 12:07 PM | Comments (2) | life generally