ramblings of a law student with a family history of neurosis

the ramblings of a law student with a family history of neurosis

Sunday, March 20, 2011

The fine gloss a year puts on your undergraduate years


There are a ton of things that are miserable about being in college. ( Not that there are a lot of good things.)  One of the worst things is being told how wonderful and easy it is. (On a side note this is not something you ever hear about law school, people who have finished law school tell you one of two things, law practice is so much better and that they know how you are suffering or get out now it is not worth the miserable suffering.) Being told how easy and fun college is compared to the real world doesn't help anything, It doesn't make a paper write itself or the drama of living with 50 women go away. People who are out of school for a long time forget the misery that comes from being under constant scrutiny, of being judged and maligned at every corner. While there is some of this in the working world the biggest difference is in your job you have time to master your skill, to take charge over your domain. In school everything is new all the time. I think part of the reason you don't hear form lawyers how much better law school is, is that unlike undergraduate education where you put the miserable stuff behind you once you enter the real world (only to take on new and different miseries) the skills you take from law school are much more applicable. Lawyers are given a daily reminder of the ways real practice is better.

I was not happy my last semester in college. The sorority drama seemed especially petty, I wanted to start law school (and despite a lifetime of  being told I was exceptional I knew I wasn't going to Yale) my classes seemed especially esoteric and bogged down in the pedagogy of Ivory Tower academia. My degree, in addition to being in political science, is in Rhetoric and the focus of my degree was narrative as public discourse. It couldn't have gotten much more heady or philosophical. There was a time I lived and breathed the words of dead Russians and longer dead Romans and Greeks. But by my last semester I had very little patience for it. The theory that had once excited me felt too far removed from reality. I just started reading the Idiot by Dostoevsky as my commute book, and I am enjoying it so much. I remember now why I once declared my love for depressing Russian literature. It was nice to discover that the frustrations of undergraduate life didn't squeeze the joy of literature from me.
     
It is easy to look back from the vantage point of twenty years and exclaim how easy everything was and how you wished you had appreciated it more, but that comment is made from the sure footed position of the future. Yes knowing that you passed, graduated and  got a job makes it seem easy, but when you're in school none of that is certain. I am sure there are things I will appreciate more about law school from the vantage point of a job that pays me, and hopefully financial security. I try to recognize that it is a shared experience I have with lawyers across the US and that it shapes our profession and will shape me. It is just hard to remember when you are paying someone to break you down and build you back from the broken pieces.

Saturday, March 19, 2011

Beer... it's not just for breakfast anymore.


So I guess it is going to become tradition for me to write about my baking habits on minor holidays and not much else. (I do promise that there are more exciting and interesting law school related bits coming.) But I have actual pictures for this, and it is about something mildly entertaining that isn't reading and writing for hours. 
Anyway coming from a family that recognizes its Irish roots (probably perceives them as stronger than they are, but thats another story) Saint Patrick's Day was a pretty big deal. I can remember getting into a debate with my cousin about the merits of Kelly v. Emerald green as true green and being pinched in the morning for not wearing green pajamas.
This year was pretty boring, because law school has taken up my life, and somewhere along the way I became responsible i didn't even have a drink. But I did make Guinness cupcakes. Which are amazing. I double the beer in mine so they actually taste like stout and they came out so well. Plus it is really fun to give food away. Anyway...   





  
Grace is a fan of all baked goods, beer not so much.

Friday, March 4, 2011

Sisters...

I have really amazing biological sisters, but I am also lucky to have a group of girlfriends who I get to call sisters. I am not really one for the silliness that sororities seem to be associated with, if someone had asked me as a senior in high school if I would join a sorority I probably would have laughed, or rolled my eyes. If I hadn't gone to a school with a "quirky" Greek system (aka what you would expect from Berkeley) I probably wouldn't have rushed. I was assured that it was lower key at Berkeley than anything you see in the movies or have heard from your cousin in Texas. Joining a house was one of the best decisions I made in college, and this week reminded me why.
Through a weird twist of fate one of my sisters who was a senior when I was a pledge was sitting in the back of my Intellectual Property class this week. When I was nineteen she was so cool and together and amazingly unreachable in the way upper class-men always are. Now, four years later we have all this history, an automatic foundation to start with and stories to tell, even if I was far removed from her influence as she was finishing college.
Then I got an email form one of my favorite sisters from my pledge class, that she is thinking about moving to DC and would I have time to get a drink. Yes please. Oh and by the way she might be interested in subleasing from me for the summer, thank you.
And the sister who when I mentioned that I might be in LA for the summer jumped at the ability to hang out, despite the months since talking.
So because of all the positive sorority energy (forgetting the former president who totally ignored my email- not that I am surprised) I called another sister who I should have caught up with ages earlier. We spent the evening on the phone and she seems so happy and together, she reminded me that we are rapidly becoming adults. But then we laughed so hard at a stupid joke I had to sit down and completely forgot about being grown ups.
And then there is Dip Girl, half way around the world and playing phone tag; but ceaselessly there. 
Now I don't claim to be best friends with all of my sisters. There are some who I flat out dislike. But there is this web of amazing women who I know spreading across the globe. Whenever I think about them I am filled with hope that I will get to be a part of their lives for years to come.