Failure is not an option...

When I was about nine or ten my dad brought back a t-shirt from a business trip in Florida. It is a quote from Gene Kranz, the NASA flight director on Apollo 13. While it is exactly what I would want to hear from a flight director if I was an astronaut, I think as a child I would have been better served by the words of Edison "I have not failed. I have just found 10,000 ways that don't work."

While "failure is not an option" works reasonably well as a stance for the parents of a bright (if sometimes lazy) child living in a town where teachers were told not to use red pens, everyone had to be given valentines, birthday party invitations and end of the year trophies, at some point we will all fail. Success isn't about never failing, it is about learning to fail well. This has been the toughest lesson of law school. One of the secrets of the law, which is actually painfully obvious, is that you are going to lose half of the time, and if you define winning as getting exactly what you client wants well then that number is considerably lower. So law school is the excruciating experience of failing a lot, of breaking you down to very small painful parts and building you back up in a way that makes failure less personal so you can learn from losing, so that even the worst sort of day isn't really a failure.

This isn't compatible with "failure is not an option" and it has isolated me. I have created an infallible facade in front of a very human girl. When I am less than perfect there is no one to share that with because it doesn't fit with who I was created to be. There is nothing to success if it wasn't fought for and in exposing our wounds we are allowed to learn from them rather than letting them fester in the dark.

     

An amazon in a hipster bar

A couple weeks ago I went out for one of my friend's birthday. I had a good time, but I was also reminded why I don't go out all that often. My friend picked a great place, with a good DJ and without a cover, although I could tell immediately it wasn't my scene. Maybe it is DC, but I always feel overdressed if I put in the smallest effort into getting ready. The staggering number of people in hoodies and sneakers made me feel ridiculous. More so because I was in heels, I could look over the heads of everyone in the crowd. If that wasn't enough one of the girls who can grate on me begins the evening by saying "oh my god you're huge!"
Yes I am tall, but huge? Way to start a girls night off on the right foot. This girl in particular seems to bring out all my childish insecurities. Whenever I am around her I feel like my twelve-year-old self, and our interactions always seem to turn petty.
I was hoping law school would temper my interactions with superficial girls. That once we began our "professional lives" as they like to tell us, that we would all try to act like grown-ups. Boy was I wrong.
As an undergrad I developed a distaste for the subcategory of these girls who acted dumb to get men. I went to school whith some of the most fiercely intelligent women in my generation. Women who spent their days working on cures for blindness and doing research for Nobel laureates (not an exaggeration) and who would then turn around and act like idiots because when they acted like themselves they were ignored by our male counterparts. They were threatening, and boys don't buy drinks for girls who threaten their masculinity. I can't even begin to count the number of times I was told by smart, amazing women that if I just "acted dumb" that I could have a boyfriend.
And it continues, I don't think it will ever end. As long as men (on the whole)are threatened by women and more attracted to women who seem vulnerable, it won't change and the dating scene will continue to be miserable for everyone. (For women because they are changing themselves to be attractive and for men because they are ending up with girls who are either supercritical or insecure in who they are.)
The party was mostly really fun. I was having a great time aside from the occasional comments about how tall I was for most of the evening. One of my friends, not a superficial girl, was spending some quality time with her crush. The rest of us were giggling like gossipy teenagers. The crush, being either a nice guy or a typical guy who sees an opportunity noticed one of our classmates (definately a silly girl-pretty and more than that, adorable, but also willing to say and do the dumbest stuff for attention.) Like drink in obscene quantities. Anyway, crush goes to help her, gets her water encourages her to stop drinking. The bar closes and we are outside waiting for cabs and superfical girl is puking everywhere. Crush is being kind, holding her hair back. Silly girl finishes the exorcist routine, Crush tries to put her in a cab asks he what her address is to give the driver. She stands up, wipes her mouth, says, "I just want to go back to your place" then caresses his chest and it works. I wanted to throw up. My friend is miserable, I give her a "typical" and an eye roll and we go back to her apartment to watch chick flicks and drink more. And I never want to go to bar again. Which is why this week my roommate and I stayed in watched sitcoms and drank boozy smoothies.

Q: So dumb guys go for dumb girls and smart guys go for dumb girls.

Then what do the smart girls get?

A: Cats mostly

-Modern Family on discovering what it means to be a smart girl

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.

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.

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.

I can't believe I am giving him this much energy.

Aka Pot meet out of touch kettle.

I have never liked Rush Limbaugh. There are many reasons but I won't get into them. But this week he said something that really upset me, not because I am liberal but because I am a woman who lives in modern America. This week he implied Michelle Obama is fat and unhealthy. Like her or not  agree or not he can go ahead and say what he wants about her she is a public figure. 
This is what he said: 
"The problem is, and dare I say this, it doesn't look like Michelle Obama follows her own nutritionary, dietary advice. ...I'm trying to say that our First Lady does not project the image of women that you might see on the cover of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue[.]"
Now the part of that statement that upsets me the most is the part that people aren't talking about. It doesn't have anything to do with Michelle Obama, I would like to think I would be just as upset if he had substituted Sarah Palin or Christine O'Donnell . The part that is upsetting is that he implies that healthy women look like the women on the cover of Sports Illustrated. They don't, the average BMI in last years Sports Illustrated swimsuit addition was under 17. (For those of you that don't know that is underweight bordering on dangerously so. So you know the opposite of Mr. Limbaugh.) This is what makes me ill. That men anywhere, especially those with a microphone are that out of touch with reality. Men in fashion who object to having to put *gasp* women with healthy BMI's in their clothes don't claim they are healthy, they claim it is art. Mr Limbaugh is not claiming that these models are beautiful, or that they wear a swimsuit well, he is claiming that they should be held up as a model of health. Living with fifty other women you see what eating disorders do to people and if the image of health is a woman who is starving herself what are we telling girls we are going to continue to do this to generation after generation.
I am frustrated with myself that I am not more articulate, because I feel as if I could write pages about sexism and image and media and the way women see themselves. But I am so upset that some big fat jerk thinks that anyone who doesn't look like a swimsuit model is fat and therefore that I am fat makes me want to scream "shut up lard butt" like some eight year old. I know for him it is just one more thing to get people riled up about. But to me it is the sorority sisters who was addicted to drugs (mostly legal) to stay thin, the friend who planned meals around purging, the women with lung cancer who couldn't quit smoking because they were afraid to gain weight, the girl down the hall who had a heart attack because of anorexia, the sister who defines herself in beauty, the gym addicts and girls who fear food. And me who could never live up to what sports illustrated thought was beautiful so I took it out on myself and those scars won't fade. For us we see a woman with a healthy attitude towards food, who exercises, who has had two children  and who is lauded as beautiful by designers.   
I know Rush probably didn't think about this when he was making these statements. He probably didn't mean to imply that ninety percent of women are unattractive. But that is why he doesn't deserve consideration when it comes to women's beauty or health. I have never been so happy not to have a radio.

Plus I think most women would prefer vogue anyway.

 

Oh and what I wouldn't give for her arms.

   

If cupcakes don't have frosting they're automatically breakfast food.

Breakfast...

Today was one of the best Valentine's days I have ever had. Mostly because no one cared that it was Valentine's day. I got cards and candy from home which made me feel loved and appreciated but that was about the extent of it. (Including a box of see's which has been throughly appreciated, especially by the dog who dragged it off the counter and ate a significant portion of it. She is still in trouble but we were glad it was just toffee and not the dark chocolate foil covered hearts because that might have done real damage. Those she buried in our beds- it was really a thoughtful gift.)The thing about Valentine's Day is that mostly I don't care. Some people love it- probably because they are in a relationship, and some people hate it. It is amazing the passion some people put into hating this day, and the thing is they always come off jealous, like if they were in a relationship they would be in the other camp with hearts and flowers sending cupid grams to people. My feelings about Valentine's day has a lot of similarities to my feelings about the Valentine's bouquets you see at grocery stores: anyone can do it and it takes no thought, it is there out of obligation not real love; but I understand the purpose.

Valentines day in law school
Chocolate is always good
and no worse from Grace's ware

Yesterday I make coco-pink cuplets, which are a family recipe for chocolate cake that isn't too sweet which you then top with nuts and chocolate chips instead of frosting. This makes them faster, easier, better to transport and (in my humble non-frosting liking opinion better) plus as my roommate likes to say without frosting they are just muffins and therefore breakfast food.
So my day dawned with coffee and "muffins" for breakfast. Then I step outside and the sun is shining and it is in the 60's. I laughed with glee at the warmth. I had to call people to share my joy. (Honestly this is what makes east coast winters livable, there is a day in the spring where you feel warm again and you actually appreciate the sun. Living in California  you never really marvel in how wonderful it is to have a sunny day.) Then after class I got empanads and gossiped with Hotlanta. We appreciated that point in the semester where you know what you are doing and what to expect but life hasn't become too crazy.
 Really a wonderful day.