Au revoirs, mes amis!

I promised I would come back to UK law interviews and I will here. I also want to give some final words about why I chose to go to a US school instead of a UK school, even though I got into one of each.

The major reason why I decided to go to The University of Pomorum instead of University College London is that it’s just a better situation for me, for reasons which I have enumerated elsewhere. They are good reasons and basically decisive in this decision. But there are other reasons why I might have chosen not to go the UCL anyway. It’s certainly a wonderful school with a great law faculty especially. But practicing in the US is difficult when you have a law degree from overseas. That would have limited my freedom significantly whenever we decided to come back; we would certainly have come back to the US—we never intended to stay in the UK indefinitely. I did not want to have the additional burden of meeting bar requirements for overseas lawyers when I came back to the US in addition to the difficulty of finding work in this economy. The UK legal job market is very limited, particularly among barristers. I was told many times that the Crown Prosecution Service (which is where I would have worked eventually) is a very good place to work with regard to life-work balance. However, I felt overall there wouldn’t be as much opportunity or variety for me in the UK.

With regard to the job market, I suspect and feared that hiring in the UK would revolve around certain social barriers. There are certain socio-cultural aspects of British society that I find difficult to deal with. Britain is an extremely classist society in a way which is repugnant to the American sensibility. In the US, we don’t really have a class system that operates along the same lines as here. Class in the US refers almost exclusively to economic status. People can move between classes simply by virtue of the amount of money they have or are thought to have. In Britain, there is really very little social mobility, especially so when you look in immigrant communities. Class in the UK is about where you’re from, who your family is, what kind of accent you have, where you went to school. It’s something intangible and irrevocable about your innate self that doesn’t depend on your own merits or success.

All of those previous factors feed into the one factor that separates Britons into two types: Oxbridge graduates and everyone else. Take a look at a list of Members of Parliament, or government ministers, or newpaper editors, or judges, or any other category of prominent members of society and you’ll notice that graduates from two British universities prevail. This is no accident. Oxbridge graduates are favored in many ways in British society (for example: in a friend’s workplace, when sorting through resumes, only Oxbridge graduates are considered, without regard to any other factor).

There are people who would argue that Oxford and Cambridge are two of the best universities in the world and being accepted to them reflects a level of intelligence and competence that makes one an excellent candidate for any number of positions. That would be fine with me, if I had any clear idea of what Oxbridge admissions officers are even looking for when they make their admissions decisions.

Part of the problem is that Oxbridge really do take only the highest qualified candidates. For people who don’t know, British high school students have to take exams called A-levels for entry to university. The minimum grades for entry to Oxbridge have been three As in A-levels. However, due to various factors (including grade inflation, dumbed down exams and intense competition at the high levels) Oxbridge colleges routinely reject candidates that have these marks because they have so many applicants who meet those requirements. Because grades are no longer an objective measurement for university admissions, Oxbridge has been falling back on more subjective assessments. Therein lies my biggest problem. Different degree programs are subjectively assessed differently. For law, for example, Cambridge has the Cambridge Law Test (they stopped using the LNAT a few years ago, I think for very good reasons). But the biggest subjective assessment tool is the interview.

The interview baffles me basically because I don’t see the point of it. It is too short and too subject oriented. The decisions made as a result of interviews are too opaque. It isn’t clear what the interviewers are looking for and how your answers affect their admissions decisions. I don’t see how spending 20 minutes with a person can tell you much about them personally. Even less informative, in my opinion, is the subject interview where, for law, you are expected to exercise legal reasoning to answer various interview questions in relation to a certain situation, comparing a situation with a bit of a statute, or something along this line.

I think it is unrealistic for interviewers to expect students who have never studied law to be able to make strong or correct legal arguments after such a short acquaintance with the law. It is almost as if they are trying to detect an innate ‘sense’ for the law. I imagine that some very clever people can demonstrate that and some give the right answers by accident. But I would think that most people don’t have that until they start studying law. Isn’t learning this and developing those skills the point of law school? If someone doesn’t have this skill, does it mean they can’t acquire it? I don’t think so.

I don’t think that anyone can effectively prepare for this type of interview. And I don’t think that just because a person cannot give you the ‘correct’ legal answer means they will not make a good law student. How can you test for skills or an ability or for knowledge which is to be learned in the course for which the student is applying? What is the best preparation for an Oxbridge law interview? The answer seems to be: learn as much law as you can. Seriously, substantive law. That is the only thing that I think can help someone who doesn’t have an innate sense of the law.

Beyond subject answers, what are interviewers looking for? Supposedly it’s about the ability to reason and express ideas well on your feet. The opacity of the interview process raises the suspicion that what interviewers are ultimately looking for or, more generously, are ultimately attracted to in candidates is a certain manner, a certain presentation, a forthrightness, a self-confidence—in short, ‘poshness’ which is synonymous with class. This is the kind of thing that is taught in expensive private schools which cater to the ‘posh’ classes. Private schools also help students through the Oxbridge admissions process much more than public schools are able to do. For example, they can provide interview training to help their candidates get in. Public schools can’t hope to do the same amount to help their students get into Oxbridge and it is no wonder that so few of them do get into Oxbridge.

One concrete piece of advice I can offer to law candidates is something my friend who went to Oxford told me. I did not employ it well in my interviews, partially because I didn’t quite understand what they were asking at the time. I was asked about my goals and why I would want to do another degree to achieve them. I guess in my head I always assumed I’d go to law school after my undergrad degree and master’s degree, simply because that’s how it worked out. I also always felt that I wanted to be a lawyer. That was basically the answer I gave, that I wanted to be a lawyer. But looking back, what they were really asking was, ‘If you do this course, do you just want a degree at the end that will let you be a lawyer or do you want to do this course for its own sake?’ What I should have said, in my most chirpy voice, was, ‘My master’s course was interdisciplinary and I always loved the law classes the most. I took as many law classes as I could simply because I enjoy studying it. That’s why I want to do a law course now.’ The professors who are interviewing you want to know that you are going to be a keen and engaged student for them to teach—if not, they don’t want to teach you. You have to express your enthusiasm for the subject, and I think, for the actual day-to-day work.

You should think of Oxbridge (or any university) as a place that offers a service, i.e. teaching you for a number of years and then awarding you a degree. They want to know that you’re not just in for the degree at the end, but that you are going to enjoy the course as a whole all along. And to be honest, if you don’t anticipate you’re going to enjoy your course of study, you probably shouldn’t do it. Now, it might take some time to find the enjoyment in it, but if you’re dreading it and hate the work, you’re going to have a hard time. I suppose that is fairly obvious.

This is the last thing I have to say about my law school admissions process. I wish you the best of luck with yours.

Sassafrass

Dear friends and readers, and random Googlers,

I have decided to end this blog. Originally I meant it to serve as an aid for people who were trying to navigate between the British and US law application systems. I wanted to talk about an unusual situation which others might encounter and try to give people an idea of what the other side was like. Now that I'm in law school, I feel I have nothing unique to add to the already rich law student blogosphere. I've taken more advice from it than I've put in and most of my advice echos what has come before. I have also realized that internet anonymity is very fragile and I have to serve my career first and my online persona... somewhere much further down the list of my personal priorities. As much as I have enjoyed keeping a record of my experience, I can do that just as well without publishing it publicly. There is one last post I am going to make about the British applications process, a post I have been meaning to finish and put up for some time. That will be my last word here. Lots of luck and happiness to you all.

Eunomia Horae

Orientation Week--Humiliation , Experimentation and Vindication!

What a week this has been.

My school has students take a class during orientation week, an introduction to law and legal reasoning. It sort of operates as a mini-class, giving you an idea of what a full-length class is like. We have reading to prepare, we are examined under the Socratic method in class, we learn some substantive and some procedural law (as well as a bit of legal history and a bit about American and British legal structures) and we take an abbreviated exam at the end of it, part multiple choice, part legal essay/short answer.

I am so glad they have us do this. It has given me some time to sort out exactly how I want to learn this year—because it is not like anything I have done previously. We’re students and, of course, we read and study written material. But from here on out, our reading is pretty much going to be confined to case law. There will not be a lot of exposition and we will have to derive principles of law from the cases themselves—they will not be laid out for us. This class has been essential in giving us a conception of what that’s like. It has also been crucial for sorting out the mechanics of how I’m going to work. I mentioned earlier how I’ve been using OneNote. At first I was loving it and I loved that you could make lecture recordings right alongside your note-taking. Now that I’ve finished this little class, I’ve decided I probably won’t use OneNote anymore. (There are certain inconveniences about it that mean it would be easier to just use Word. And... like anyone is going to want to listen to their lectures one more time, right?) But at least I’ve decided definitely to use the computer for note taking. I also think I have a strategy for how to prepare for exams, which is the most important thing. Everything depends on exams in law school, so you’ve got to get your strategies down. I’m glad I had this small class to experiment with before the real classes start.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

We did our volunteering one afternoon early in the week; it had rained all morning. A group of 40 of us got bussed out to a nature trail where there were some park rangers waiting for us in the parking lot. They told us that they had cut down a bunch of baby trees from the forest—because they take nutrients and light from other trees?—they had all been piled up about a quarter mile down the trail. We were to bring them up to the wood chipper parked in the parking lot. Pretty simple. So we just did trip after trip after trip. Of course what happens when 40 people march up and down in a moderate rain on a woodland path—oh—by the way—dragging trees behind them? It turns into a mudslide and everything gets filthy, including the people moving the trees. Despite which it was actually kind of fun. My mood was significantly elevated by a particular circumstance, which I will relate now!

The dean of admissions was in our group (also getting filthy, he’s a nice guy) and, seeing my name tag, he told me that he was sorry if I had suffered some distress over the confusion with the deposit because, in fact, the IT people had looked into and it turned out that I had NOT made a mistake! The online program logs people off after 30 minutes without their knowing it. They have since fixed this problem. And there was actually one other person whom this defect effected. He said that if it had been just one person who reported this problem they might not have believed the story and they might not have looked into it. So I must thank that poor other person who went through the terrible time I went through. I wouldn’t normally wish it on anyone else but thank goodness it happened to just one other person!

Oh sweet, sweet, delicious VINDICATION!

I hope that takes me off the shit list, but I don’t think it does because all the admin people seem to know my name, and not in a good way.

Moving right along...

My class has been really interesting. I made some serious studying mistakes, which I will not make again, thanks to this class. (More on that later.) I have been really enjoying the material and the work—the mental processes are... I hesitate to say it because it’s so nerdy... but it’s fun. After taking this exam, I was embarrassingly thinking, I wish I could write more! I may not think that if it turns out I did really poorly. I don’t know what it is. I’ve always enjoyed studying law.

In class, I felt I should sit tight for the first few days and not try to volunteer, lest I make a fool of myself early on and develop a reputation as a dolt. But on the second day, I did volunteer. HINT: If you don’t want to get called on, just volunteer when you have something worth saying. I thought I had this whole case figured out and I was thinking no one else was getting it but me, and I’d just sort them out by stating the obvious. So I volunteered. And I was promptly shut down. My cheeks burned for a moment, but then I decided others had said dumber things and that we would all say some dumb things this year. And if anyone was thinking I was stupid, well they were stupid! Let’s just give everyone a break, shall we?

Anyway, the next day I said something really smart that no one else knew and felt totally awesome, until I got over confident, volunteered again and said something sort of moderately stupid. I do not think I am one to go on the law school emotional roller coaster, so I’m letting these roll off my back and will just do the very best I can and hope everyone else does the same

There are those who are making nuisances of themselves in class... yes—the gunners have announced themselves. Now, how do you know if you’re a gunner? It seems that gunners don’t really seem to know they are gunners, so here is a little checklist:

1.) If you are quoting Kant and no one asked you to, you’re a gunner.
2.) If you are asking questions about substantive due process, and we’re working on ‘what is a statute?’, you’re a gunner.
3.) If you think you’re at the head of the class because you were a philosophy major and did pretty well on the LSAT, and you want everyone to know it, you’re a gunner, and you’re an idiot.

We had an orientation session with upperclassmen with no professors or administrators around, for the really candid questions. The best piece of advice was, ‘Just calm the fuck down.’ So much of law school stress is self-induced and really, you must just calm the fuck down. This was also the primary message I got from Scott Turow’s book, One L. I meant to post a proper review of One L but, heck, I don’t have time to do that anymore. So I’ll just say that One L was really interesting. He talks a lot about the stress and the oppressive workload, but he never explains how he got through it. It would have been useful to learn how one person managed to handle the law school workload, especially at Harvard Law School. So don’t go to One L looking for study tips. Do look at 1L of a Ride by McClurg (can’t remember the first name). It’s full of useful information, and I think it even helped me during the introductory class and certainly on the exam. So many people at the law school don’t seem to have a clue what is going on. Do some research before you go to school, because you don’t always have to learn as you go, especially when that has such high-stakes consequences.

Other random tips I learned this week:

--Read footnotes—they’re interesting and sometimes hold key information.
--Brief every case, but brief it keeping in mind what you’re looking for—know what you’re supposed to be getting out of it by contextualizing it. I went to bed the night before the exam feeling okay about how I reviewed. Then, at some point in the night, I realized that I had been studying all the wrong things. I had been studying the substantive law, when actually this course was about and I should have been studying the legal reasoning and basic legal principles in the judgments. I woke up early in the morning (as I had been doing all week actually) and made a quick cheat sheet (open book exam) of some basic legal principles and the development of some legal reasoning in lines of litigation. And this cheat sheet was absolutely crucial for me in the exam. Of course, I could not rely heavily on it, it was just to have the exact language laid out and in one place. But it was crucial.
--DON’T just highlight in your book without going back immediately and extracting the main points in a note format. I read and highlighted everything for my introductory class the week before and it was a complete waste of time because I did not retain any of it and I had to go back and take actual computerized notes on it anyway. It was annoying. Particularly with cases, because they’re so dense, highlighting just will not do. You have to extract the facts and rules and, very important, put them in your own words as much as possible.

I think it’s going to be a difficult but rewarding three years.

Orientation: Day One

I want to say a quick word about my first day of orientation. Why does the strategy of law school socialization mean you just throw 200 students into a room and say, 'okay, go make friends'? It's so awkward and uncomfortable. If they just got down to classes, people would eventually get to know each other and I wouldn't have had to hang out with a bunch of people today who I'll probably never speak to again.

I had forgotten how obsessed people are with football. I shouldn't be surprised, it is the Midwest after all. But damn, people, develop some other interests will you? Still, this is law school, so maybe appearances are deceiving. These are serious people, so maybe the football talk is just the ice breaker conversation topic for the first few days. I was, however, the oldest person I met all day. I am also well past my clubbing days, so I felt quite old and lame while everyone else talked about how hung over they were this morning. I did not meet any other married people, but there must be some, because at the cookout, some people brought their children.

With regard to the cookout--yes, I ate. I had a burger--and it was damn good too. They also served these gigantic bratwursts that looked ludicrously phallic, but the girls in the group I sat with were digging in, so, I lost my inhibitions. Plus, the grilling just smelled so good, I could not resist.

I also got the very welcome news that the orientation Intro to Law course has a much heavier workload than the term-time classes. I don't know if that means per class or overall. If it means overall, I will be extremely pleased, but I felt I could definitely handle that amount of work. Yet I suspect it is the former rather than the latter.

I did not get switched into the section I requested. Another person in my orientation section randomly got switched into my preferred section without even asking for it. I'm telling you, I'm on someone's shit list somewhere.

In the welcoming remarks, the dean of the school said something very interesting. She said that there are no law prodigies--good lawyers are not born, they are made. Ojala.

Finally, a word on dress: I don't want to go too far off topic, but I dressed up a bit for the first day of orientation on the advice of several people including Denis Jansen, whose advice I usually rely upon, without hiccup. I was one of the best dressed people there. I wore a pencil skirt of dress fabric, a GAP t-shirt and a black cardigan on top. I think I struck the right balance between professionalism and casual ease. Apparently not many other people felt that was necessary. I think it reflects poorly on them, and I'm going to keep dressing in a way that makes me feel comfortable. I want in every respect to put my best foot forward since this is the beginning of my career. Special thanks to Huma.

Tomorrow is our first class and our first exposure to Socratic method. I'm staying cool though. No sweat.

OL Crazy and Mandatory Volunteerism

It's only 1.5 days until the star of my law school career and I am putting everything in order so that I can be ready to study with minimal drama and distraction. Almost everything is in place, except for minor, completely unimportant things like my health insurance. I've realized through this preparation that I am maybe a tiny bit obsessive (but not always compulsive).

I have bought some new clothes in all neutral colors so that they can all go together and so that I do not display any unseemly personality, god forbid. Orientation starts with a cookout, which I am dreading. I am dreading trying to make friends in a big group of people I don't know. I am horrified at the thought of actually SPEAKING to professors outside of class! And I am terrified of having to attempt to eat and talk at the same time. How does anyone manage this without looking like a gaping idiot, or dribble food down your front, or ending up with green stuff in your teeth? This is all starting to sound a little crazy.

I read a horror story somewhere (I can't remember where) about a 1L student dropping a whole PLATE full of food on a professor's clothes. I do not have the greatest track record of being impressive and poised in front of people I actually want to impress, so I am actually kind of worried about this. I think the only solution is to not eat at this thing. I'll be too nervous and I am actually just scared to look stupid and embarrass myself on the first day of law school. Call me whatever names you wish. I may turn out to be this person.

I'm also being pretty obsessive about my work space. I'm trying to keep as many potentially distracting items off my desk as possible. Smart, right? My desk (from IKEA, but I love it) is about 2000 square feet of empty real estate and it's kind of cold most of the time. When I start working, though, I have a system and my desk ends up being completely cluttered by all the things I need to have within a hand's reach while I'm studying. And everything needs to be in its proper place. My pencil case must be open and placed on the top right corner of the desk. I need three items--a pen, a highlighter and pad of post-it notes--to my immediate right. My subject binder must be open to the syllabus and placed in the top left hand corner of the desk. My planner must be opened and place just below the binder. My computer, if I am using it must be directly in front of me and slightly more than halfway up the desk. The desk lamp(s) must be placed at a 45 degree angle, pointing directly at my work. Obviously this means my things are sprawled all over the place, which makes my husband nervous because he only has one desk at his place. I imagine he wants to be the one to use it.

I've also been a little obsessive about my study statistics ever since I started reading for my intro class at the beginning of the week. I set myself a number of pages per day and I've been keeping track of how much time it takes me to read them, including how much time I spend faffing. Faffing is a fantastic British word for procrastinating and otherwise wasting time. I have a little three-channel timer and I kept track of things down to the minute. The first day I was reading, I read at the rate of 11 minutes per page--awful! I think that was mostly attributable to excessive amounts of faff. About 30% of my time spent 'working' was actually just faffing. Not good. However, by Friday I took only 3 minutes per page, and spent only 10% of my time faffing, so I'd say that's some good improvement. Did I understand much of what I was reading? Well, I certainly didn't learn it. I think that will require a second reading and some note taking. I have no idea how I'm supposed to do this in the number of hours available in the day!

Finally, one last piece of law school crazy. The 1Ls are going to spend one afternoon of the orientation doing a community volunteering project. I got a list of all the possible assignments, which included volunteering at the public library, etc, generally indoor things. Me? I'm going to be doing trail maintenance at a local park. I generally don't do outdoors in the summer, but come orientation, I will be hot and sweaty, maintaining some trails with 40 other 1Ls and the Dean of Admissions. Voluntarily.

Admin Ladies

Why are admin ladies at universities so bitchy!? And totally unhelpful? I mean, I know they must get a million stupid calls and emails from self-important, entitled students every day, but seriously--they're not nice. Why is that? Do they hate their jobs?

In more upbeat news, a good friend of mine is going to apply to go to law school and she wants to practice immigration law. She lives in Arizona--chronically screwed up Arizona. I'm going to keep up my boycott of Coldstone Creamery no matter how delicious and creamy it is.

Further Prepping for Law School

I have been engaged in further preparing my world for the onslaught that is one L.

I have received notification of my loans. This is the first time I have had to take out loans and it is a scary process.

I am also fully engaged in covering my readings for my Intro to Law class. I have no problem reading the material, I can do that in a couple of hours a day. The problem is taking notes on it such that I have actually learned the material. It's just too huge a volume of information to get by just highlighting. I've started using OneNote, which I am loving, but note-taking in outline form is exhausting. My system is that I read the material once, highlighting important parts (which, for a lot of the reading, is every single word in ever single sentence of many sections). Then I go back and take detailed notes in outline form. It is taking forever--I have to find a better system--any suggestions out there?

Speaking of OneNote, if you haven't tried it you should. I think it is a fantastic way to organize all your notes in one place where they are easy to navigate but, more importantly, also much easier to amend, revise, edit, and expand. If you are going to use OneNote or another computer program to keep all your notes though, for god's sake, please back everything up. I am going to sign up for an online automatic backing up service that backs your harddrive up remotely over the internet on a continuous basis.

The material I am reading is really interesting. Of course, it is only the basics of law, but I am finding it so fascinating. This is helped by the fact that law is a subject that revolves around human behavior and human conduct. The hypothetical and real-life cases make it easy to connect with the material. I really love engaging mentally with the legal issues in the judgments as well, thinking along, 'Oh I agree with that' or 'That's not right!' or 'I disagree!' or, as when I read a judgment by Justice Scalia, 'Oooh, this is so persuasive... but.. must... resist agreeing!'. Also, I know it's totally juvenile, but I was reading a judgment where a woman sued a defendant over negligent acts that resulted in her husband becoming sexually impotent and it was called Cox v Haworth. Tee hee. Forgive me.

I also had the opportunity to meet two of my potential future law professors because they are friends with my in-laws and we all had dinner over at another family's house. I've realized that knowing law professors personally or semi-personally is a double-edge sword. On one hand, they're much easier to approach if you need advice or help with something. On the other hand, they are your professional contacts and you have to keep that in mind even in a personal social setting. I had been complaining to my mother-in-law about how I have a test in the first week of law school, only joking about it. But she must have mentioned it to one of the law professors, who then gave me the whole justification for why it had to be done, why we have to start school so early; she also told me in a somewhat exasperated tone (because she has probably had to deal with a lot of 1Ls panicking over this ONE credit hour, PASS/FAIL class) that the casebook is easy to read, that the exam isn't a big deal and that I should not worry so much about it.

Well, reader, I had not been worrying about it so much. I think my little joke just got misconstrued as it passed through the grapevine, and now I fear one of my future law professors thinks I've already started complaining about the workload of law school. Not the first impression I wanted to give to this lady. Am I being paranoid?

I have also requested a section transfer so I can be in the other prof's class. Is that inappropriate? Is that tacky? Is that allowed? I don't know. I just know that I will find him approachable if and when I need help in class. Plus, it puts me in the class of another law professor whom I have not met, but who sounds like a one of those law whiz kids. He's relatively young and he did several degrees at Cambridge, so we can laugh hysterically about the British and really bond and basically become best friends. I also wanted to switch sections because it would give me a more compacted schedule with no awkward 1-2hr waits between classes. More compact schedule = more study time = more time for the FABULOUS new gym on campus. I've already got my deluxe, clubhouse locker.

Oh my but this year is going to be amazing. If you're thinking these are famous last words, don't disillusion me yet.

Things are picking up around here, although orientation is still two and a half weeks away. I am helping The Economist move to Cowville at the end of this week, then I may spend some time in Cowville while he is in a pre-orientation math camp (hello--so elementary school). I will spend the time decorating and fitting out his new apartment and hopefully doing some studying of my own. At some point I will then come back down and start preparing for my orientation and for classes to start. Once orientation starts, all my down time will be devoted to full on study for the first week of classes, then on and on and on. Soon it will be final exams, then Christmas, then back into it.

I have picked up some materials for the first class we have to take, Intro to Law. I'm ridiculously excited to start. But I'm holding off though and just reading 1L prep books from my summer reading list (in between running errands--I've gone to Target a million times since I've been back in town). The one I'm reading now, '1L of a Ride' by Andrew J. McClurg, is quite easy reading, written in a colloquial language and giving good advice.

I also got a law school locker today, along with my locker combination (hello--so high school).

I have a little advantage in that I'm living in town, am here before most of the other students, already have my ID card, etc. so I can do things before other people can. I love how well I already know this town and the university.

I also had to submit my loan papers--I'm definitely taking out loans all three years. Tuition went up $6000 from two years ago! Thank goodness I'm an in-stater.

What's Next

As my favorite TV president, Jed Bartlett, would say, ‘What’s next?’

I got a big packet today of law things including my first semester schedule, and my reading syllubus for orientation. We’re taking a short introduction to law class during orientation week and then... we have to take an exam at the end of it! What the hell is this? It’s August and I’m already taking a law exam???!!! Now that I know I’m actually still going to law school, all this stuff is starting to make me nervous. Still, I was looking at that syllabus, which including such topic headings as stare decisis and retroactivity, and I was getting really excited. That’s a good sign, isn’t it?

Now I’ve got a series of posts to write and publish which will be coming soon, and which I will hopefully finish before the real work of law school starts.

I’m so fricking happy I’m still a law student.

My Living Nightmare

I have been living out a nightmare for the last few days. Has anyone had a nightmare that you were accepted to law school, but you are then told by the dean that, because you forgot to do some fiddly little insignificant thing, your admission has been revoked and you’re not going to law school?

I guess things have just been going too freaking well for me then, because THIS IS WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO ME!!!

I came home from several weeks of traveling to find a letter from the University of Pomorum saying they never received my deposit payment of $250 and assumed that I had made other plans and consequently my admission had been cancelled.

It was after office hours, so I sent an email to the admissions office. I spent the rest of the night in a tearing blind panic, waiting for the admissions office to open the next morning so I could call and explain what happened and try to work it out so that I could be readmitted.

What happened was that I definitely went onto the online system and paid the deposit. In fact I paid the whole deposit of $400 at once rather than waiting to pay incrementally. The Economist was there the whole time I made the payment and recalled my doing it as well because he fed me our bank account numbers. I did it through our online school forum (most schools have something similar). But for some reason, the payment did not go through and I never noticed that the money did not leave my bank account. (This is because only my husband has online access to our banking—which is completely foolish because you should never leave only one person in charge of two peoples’ finances.) Around the same time I also submitted a transcript request. This request too apparently did not ever go through. I never received any confirmation that the payment had gone through, nor did I receive any indication that the payment had failed. I kept receiving things from the Pomorum Law School (PLS) including that request for transcripts. I sent one from undergrad off of the online forum, the one that never went through, and one from my London Master’s University, via paper request. I had no idea whatsoever why the payment had not gone through.

I called the minute the office was open the next morning and explained what happened. The lady seemed to think there was nothing to be done about it! She was so desperately unhelpful and unsympathetic; she did not seem to understand that this was KIND OF IMPORTANT to me.

Finally she said what I could do was write a letter explaining what happened and see if the admissions committee would change their mind. After I got off the phone with her, I called all the IT people at the U of P, billing and admissions, and could produce no evidence that I had attempted to make that payment in the first place. I started working on my letter to the admissions committee and waiting for The Economist to come home from a doctor’s appointment he had that morning. When he got back, I had to explain the situation to him out loud. I think this was probably the lowest moment I have experienced in a long time and I just lost it for a while. Then I pulled myself together, wrote the damn letter and emailed it in. I also consulted the U of P law professor with whom I had spoken some time before. He was very encouraging, saying that he would be very surprised indeed if the committee allowed this sort of mistake to be the basis for rejecting an admitted student. But, he said, he really had no idea how this process worked. He said I should write the letter and hand deliver it to both the admin lady and the Dean of Admissions, along with a check for the full amount of the deposit.

I wrote, frankly, a stellar letter outlining what happened. I emphasized that I thought I had done the necessary action and although I could not explain why the payment had not gone through, in every other respect, I had been planning and intending to attend the PLS in the fall, including moving back to the United States, passing up other opportunities in the UK, submitting transcripts as requested even after the payment was due, and otherwise completely rearranging me and my husband’s lives in order to go to this school. I felt I laid everything out there, made a strong argument and could add nothing else. All I could do was hope the committee believed me.

The Economist and I delivered the letter by hand, almost getting into an accident on the way, we were both so distracted. When I got to the office, I had already put the check into the envelope I was delivering to the Dean of Admissions. I had hoped to be able to talk to him about it—‘bring it to his attention’ as they say—unfortunately he was not in and would not be back until next Monday. So I spoke to the admin lady, who seemed almost angry that I had chosen to hand deliver the letters, and to give a copy to the Dean of Admissions. She did not want me to give him the check either, so I had to take it out of the envelope. I was really worried about not including the check so I tried to sneak it back in, but she caught me. Oh well, I tried. Anyway, I left it in her hands and walked out feeling like the biggest idiot in the world. The problem was that I felt I had not done anything wrong but I couldn’t prove it. I also felt stupid about the fact that, if I was not readmitted, I would just reapply next year, they’d probably accept me, and I’d start the following fall, having wasted another year doing nothing, all because of a stupid mistake I didn’t really make.

After that, The Economist and I didn’t really know what to do with ourselves. We had meant to spend part of the day in our favorite coffee shop, reading and working on things. But we weren’t settled enough in our minds to do that. There were all kinds of things we needed to do to prepare for law school and grad school, but I didn’t want to do any of it until we knew one way or the other what was going to happen. I’m not the kind of person who can just go on faith that the right outcome will just happen.

We went to my future grocery store to look around and see if the things we’ve gotten used to eating in Britain were available in the US. Then we went to The Economist’s grandma’s house to drop off some Baileys Truffles we bought in Ireland for her husband who is undergoing chemotherapy and radiation therapy for the second time. That put things sharply in perspective. TE and I are young, healthy and we have each other through thick and thin. I knew then that I could handle the worst case scenario of having the wait until next year. It would be awful, but there are worse things in this world and talking to TE’s saint-like grandma made me realize that.

We were supposed to leave the next day to visit my brother-in-law, a 5-hour drive away, and we briefly considered not going in case the PLS needed me for anything but we decided since the Dean of Admissions was gone until Monday, we couldn’t expect to hear anything (and the admin lady said next week was the earliest we could expect to hear anything) so we decided to go anyway and try to enjoy ourselves.

It was unbelievably painful to have to explain the situation to everyone we encountered who asked about my plans or when I started at school. I felt anxious all the time. I tried to think about it as little as possible.

On the drive down, we were relayed a message via TE’s family that the admin lady had called, but again it was out of office hours, so I had to wait over an agonizingly anxious night to call.

In the morning I did call. She told me that the IT people had confirmed that I had signed onto the forum system on the date I said I did and that I was being readmitted.

...

...

...

After the last four years, and especially the last one year, I did not need this one more roller coaster ride. I was not even as relieved to be readmitted as I thought I should be because I always felt I had done nothing wrong in the first place. And it completely killed any thrill I had felt about being back home because of the pulse-quickening anxiety I felt every time I thought about it.

If I believed in an intelligent omniscient and omnipotent creator, I’d say that creator wanted to make me to really, really, REALLY appreciate my acceptance to law school.

I know there are more lessons here but I need some time to process this.

Also, I know for sure that I've been admitted because I now have a $12,000 university bill.

What I'm Doing to Prepare for Law School

Now that I’m a 0L, I’ve been getting full swing into the 0L thing. What am I doing to prepare for 1L?

I have been advised over and over and over again that the summer before 1L should not be spent trying to learn law because

a.) You won’t understand anything anyway and

b.) The first year of law school is a very brief and intense period before which you should rest, relax and gird yourself for the forthcoming work.

The advice from a British book called Letters to a Law Student by Nicholas J. McBridge is that if you get your books and can study the first few chapters of each, you’ll be a little bit ahead when school starts.

A friend of mine who just graduated from the University of Pomorum Law School this past year has also advised me that I should just try to enjoy myself. He said that once school starts, things will not be bad, just different.

I told him I was only worried about wearing myself out enjoying myself this summer. For one I’m going on a million vacations. I just came back from Scotland. In a few days, I’m going to go to Ireland. Then I’m going to Boston for a family reunion. After that I’m going to visit my brother-in-law where he and his fiancé live. I won’t say where, but I will say it will include a beer brewery tour and a fancy new modern art museum.

After that I’m helping The Economist move to Cowville, then returning to Pomorum City for the briefest of moments before the school year actually starts!

McBride has a few more pieces of advice. First, he suggests that although you shouldn’t read law, you should read a lot to get used to the volume of material. Second, he suggests you should read things you won’t have time to read in school, particularly about different subjects to law. He also suggests that you read a study skills book well before school starts. Third, he thinks you should cultivate an interest in politics and economics. Scott Turow also has an interesting take on this issue, which I will write about later.

Following that advice, here is my reading list for sliz-ummer 2010:

One L—Scott Turow DONE

Never Let Me Go—Kazao Ishiguro DONE

King Leopold’s Ghost—Adam Hochschild ALMOST done

Infidel—Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Gilead—Marilynne Robinson

Moby Dick—Herman Melville

The Rule of Law—Tom Bingham

1000 Days to the Bar—Tonsing

1L of a Ride—McClurg

Succeeding in Law School—Ramy

I might also add a straight study skills book to the mix because I seem never to have developed those myself.

I’ve also been reading from the blogs, such as this post by Dennis Jansen, about what law students should be wearing to orientation and beyond. I’ve realized that my wardrobe is not suited to a semi-professional environment and that I will have to remedy this once I get back to Pomorum City. I do not want to veer too far into a non-law related subject, but I do think that the way you dress is important to the way you are viewed as a professional. It sucks, but there it is.

I feel the following is a delicate issue.

I have always had difficulty finding clothes that fit well and this is especially problematic when it comes to professional dress. You don’t want to look sloppy, or unkempt, or vulgar. The way I see it is that, far from being fashionable, you should try to look so effortlessly well-maintained and well-groomed that your clothes become a non-issue. There should be nothing positive or negative that stands out about your clothes, so that your work and your manner come through as the strongest impression left upon people. Office politics being what they are I know it is impossible to completely escape scrutiny of one’s clothing, especially if one happens to be a woman who works with other women. I want to stick, so far as it is possible, to my ‘ethic’ or philosophy of workplace clothing.

Consequently I’ve realized that I have to lose some weight. I am about to say something controversial, without apology; it’s just what I think at the moment:

You can be a fat man and still be viewed as a professional. It is harder for a fat woman to be viewed as professional.

Women’s clothing always affects the way they are perceived professionally more than men’s. I will see in time if this opinion in correct.

Anyway, I have to get into shape. Since appearances are so important, I’m just going to take this as part of my ongoing professional development. It wouldn’t hurt to be a bit healthier too.

I also got some pre-orientation reading in the mail from Pomorum. I had to fill out the FAFSA for the first time as an independent. It turns out I am eligible for the low-interest student loans, but I think for the first year, I will be able to pay from my savings. And since I will not be paying rent, my living expenses are going to be quite small. I want to delay taking out loans for as long as possible. Luckily, The Economist has full funding and a stipend at Cow College, so we will keep our debt load relatively low. Still, we will end up at least $100,000 in debt between us. This is an amount of money I cannot possibly conceptualize right now, so I won’t try. I think, like most people my age, I’ll just think about it later. What else can we do?

I’m off to continue ‘preparing for law school’ by enjoying the crap out of myself.

Leaving London

We are leaving London tomorrow. I have been ambivalent and unemotional about it until tonight when we had farewell drinks with some close friends. Saying goodbye was not hard because I had it in my head that I was just going home and I'd probably see them again soon--we'd meet up at a pub for the next big World Cup match or something. We took a taxi home and, watching the places where I lived my life for the last three years, I began to feel sad that these fond memories and this 'love of place' I seem to have developed would start to fade the minute I left London behind.

Then for some reason I began to think about those ads all over London about how you shouldn't take an unlicensed taxi cab or you might end up being robbed, raped or murdered. I looked at the none-too-friendly cab driver and briefly thought, 'We'll be lucky to get out of London alive!' And then realized I was probably doing what I have been doing--avoiding my real feelings about leaving. I have been really unhappy in London and really desperate to get back to the States, but now that I know I'm going to law school, I realize I was unhappy with my situation rather than my location. London is a pretty rad place. I'm really glad I had the opportunity to live here.

The significance of this move has also begun to dawn on me. There is a line (is it Ecclesiastes?) about putting childish things behind you. I think I've come to that moment in my life. I think I have finally become an adult (or at least, have got my foot firmly planted in adult territory) after spending all my childhood trying to be one. I think I've also realized now that I was not seeking adulthood--I was seeking liberty and independence, the freedom to do what I wanted, as I wanted. Now, as I think about what my life will be for the next three years and all the years that follow, I am grieving a little bit for that freedom of youth that comes with little responsibility. I think I will probably look back and think of these London years as some of the best of my life.

The 5-step method to calm yourself down

I like relaxation mechanisms for when you face a moment of intense stress/confusion/frustration. I really like JE's 5-step method for calming yourself down when something happens that sets you atwitter. It's fairly similar to what I do, but more rigorous and more results-oriented.

Anonymity: Busted

It looks like I Don't Wear Skinny Jeans' anonymity has been busted... or slowly leeched out. He did give the little detail of exactly which law school he goes to, and from there it must be pretty easy for the blogosphere to identify you. Especially when so many people read you (clearly not a problem for me).

The Isle of Skye, Scotland: A Photo Essay

The Isle of Skye is AMAZING.

Skye spits waterfalls...

...farts rainbows...

...and generally craps awesomeness.

Judgment for the Plaintiff in the Amount of One Career

See previous post if you are confused about place and person names.

On the train to Edinburgh (pronounce it ed-in-brrrrrrra; roll the ‘r’).

My husband (who needs a name in this drama-tragedy, so from now on he will be called The Economist) and I are going to spend a few days in Scotland on the Isle of Skye. We have gone to Scotland every summer since we have lived in Britain (except the first, but that’s a story for another time); we absolutely love it—if I could live anywhere in the world I would live in the northern Highlands. The landscape is so beautiful, rugged and spectacular as to make you doubt your eyes. In the summer the sun stays out until 11:30 at night. It is not overly warm and you have to have clear weather to really get the full enjoyment of it, but we have always been lucky in that respect. Plus, when we come to Scotland, it is always to go walking (or hiking as we might say in the US) and the cooler weather is ideally suited for strenuous outdoor activity. We are also very fond of Edinburgh (whence came many illustrious personages including Adam Smith and J.K. Rowling). It is out of the way, calm and relaxed, unlike London, yet still very cosmopolitan.

This year, we are taking the train to Edinburgh and renting a car to drive to Skye. Our route will take us through the extraordinary region of Glen Coe, along the western coast and across to the western isles. We rented a cottage on Skye and we’ll use that as a base for walking trips during the days, augmented with time for reading and relaxation. In addition, probably a good amount of time will be spent in the local pubs watching World Cup action.

I love a long train trip dearly and I will miss these times when we’re back in the US.

Still, there are other reasons to look forward to it. Now that I have been accepted to law school, I have gone from Total Failure to ambitious go-getter overnight. I return home in semi-triumph.

I do recognise that my life is about to change in significant ways. (For one, I have to stop using British spellings for everything.) I am moving back to the town where I grew up and where I went to college. I have deeply missed it in the times when England was kicking my butt. I wanted nothing more than to get into law school at The University of Pomorum and immerse myself in law study without the distractions of a big city. Now that it has happened, I’ve discovered the truth in the adage ‘Be careful what you wish for’.

There are so many good things about this situation. I’m going to a well-regarded, 1^st tier law school, paying in-state tuition. I will be living at my in-law’s house (they will not be living there during this time) so I will not be paying rent, not to mention that it is a really nice house. I will have a dishwasher (live in Britain for 4 years and you will be left in no doubt of how much a dishwasher adds to your quality of life). The combination of in-state tuition and not paying rent will mean that I will graduate with much less debt than most people and will therefore have more options when I graduate. Not to mention the amelioration of the burden of repaying the loans. I will, as I said, be able to immerse myself in the study of law without the distractions of big city life. This includes the fact that I will no longer have an outrageous commute to get anywhere—one of the prime benefits of small-town life. I will have a car (or at least access to one) which means greater independence, always a good thing. This being my hometown, I will have no learning curves when it comes to orientation. I know exactly where to go, where to shop, where to get books, where to get coffee, where to go to the gym, what traffic is like at various times of the day, and any number of other tidbits about living in a town with which my intimacy was forged in infancy. I will also know that access to the law school is hopeless on football Saturdays. I believe that my comfort with the town itself will help me get my feet under me when it comes to studying.

I used to work in the research laboratory of a very famous professor who had repeatedly been given offers from the most prestigious institutions in the country to move his lab there, but he chose to remain in my home state for more than 20 years now because he felt the other places were located in cities which would prove too distracting to his employees. I think there is a lot of sense in that notion (although his employees seemed to get up to a lot of mischief anyway). I hope that in the quiet and the calm tranquility of my hometown, I will be able to focus myself fully on school, achieving perhaps a state of one-ness with the law, absorbing the law, and otherwise learning to love the law with all my meek little heart!

Since this is my hometown and I plan to live here for a while I will also be able to work on the dreaded networking. The fact that you can be helped in your career just because of the people you know is completely distasteful and repellant to me, but apparently, as I am constantly told, it’s the way the world works. So who am I to fight it? (Secretly I’m going to destroy the system from within.)

One more thing: going home means that I can finally use all the wonderful gifts I got from my wedding four years ago which have been sitting in my in-law’s storage room, collecting dust and running out their warranties. My husband and I are the types of people who really enjoy things—not expensive things, not things that demonstrate wealth or status, but things that have sentimental value: that remind us of great trips we’ve taken or that make us think of the friends who gave them to us. Sometimes, like when we are home for Christmas, I like to just go visit my wedding things in the basement, thinking of the day when I will finally be able to use them and start making my own home. That day is coming soon!

Another benefit in my new life is that it will truly feel like life, or at least the next step, rather than a holding pattern, which is how England has felt for the last 2 years. Being a law student makes me feel like an adult—because only serious adults go the law school, right? Right?

You see, I have a 15 year plan which I will elucidate at another time. If I didn’t get into law school this year, it would have thrown my whole plan off. Disaster averted!

So you see, this situation is almost ideal and I know it is exactly what I need to do, what I should do; it is nearly the best possible outcome that was within the realm of possibility for me. But in my state of depression and longing for home, I did not give much thought to some of the downsides.

Unfortunately this does mean that I will not be living in the same place as The Economist.However, we realized some time ago that this was inevitable, considering that we only overlapped in applications on two schools, and neither of us got into either one. A lot of people have advised us that career-oriented couples often have to spend some time apart from each other, especially during grad school. We always viewed it as a last resort, and unfortunately it has come to just that. The good news is that we are only 2 hours’ drive apart which is not bad, considering that the other available option was for The Economist to stay in London and for me to be in the Midwest. We prefer this. We will both have a car and will alternate driving on the weekends. If we’re lucky one or both of us will avoid classes Friday or Monday. It is the best we can do. The Economist has applied to take a 1-bedroom apartment in Cowville, where he is doing his PhD. I am really delighted that I will have a roommate, my husband’s cousin, who is doing her MBA. She is a lovely girl I have always gotten along with and it will be nice to have a roommate.

Another negative to which I had not given much thought is the fact that my home state of Pomorum gets damn cold in the winter. Having lived in the highly temperate Britain for four winters, I’m scared I have become a real wimp about the cold. It troubles me because I am a Midwestern girl with cold, ice, snow, rain, tornadoes, humidity, thunderstorms and heat in my bones and I’m worried I’ve gone soft. I always love the bracing cold and the snow when I go home for Christmas, but I’ve only had it in small doses for the last four years. What will it be like to have months of it on end? Now that I’ll be living in a house, will I be expected to shovel snow?!!? This horrifies me, I always hated shoveling snow.

Plus, I’ve always found British winters to be much worse than Pomorum winters. In the UK, it never gets below freezing, so although it’s cold you never get snow. It’s just cold rain.Consequently, everything feels cold and clammy and wet rather than bone-chilling but dry. Plus, in the UK, you can go weeks without seeing a single ray of sunshine. Between the grey of the sky and the grey of the wet concrete, it can be pretty depressing. In Pomorum you get clear skies even in the winter with a layer of snow that reflects light all around and is, frankly, beautiful. I am counting on those sunny days to sustain me in the long cold winter months.

Another semi-con/semi-pro is the fact that we will be closer to our families. I put this in the overall con column because I am feeling wary about this at the moment. We love our families of course but we have really enjoyed our total freedom and independence these last few years. I am someone who particularly prizes liberty and independence, having seen too little of them as a child, and I am concerned what being so near family will do to my sanity.

Finally, I mentioned before that there isn’t much to distract in my hometown. Neither is there much to entertain. I will truly miss the big city arts of London: world-class museums, theatre, music, dance, etc. In my hometown, there isn’t much to do beyond going to the mall, seeing movies, going drinking and going bowling. It is a good study environment but not very exciting.Yet, I seriously doubt this will be a problem as my life will be consumed with school and little else.

So do the pros outweigh the cons in this situation?

Overall my judgment is for the plaintiff. The Isle of Skye notwithstanding, I cannot wait to begin my new life as a University of Pomorum law student.