Going To Law School

What is it about spending 12 hours a day with law books that turns people (including me) into cranky, hateful bastards?

i was already that way

turned me into a straight b*tch

Either

A) I have become paranoid or
B) Ever since I did well and also got this judicial internship, this one kid is out to get me.
Yesterday he climbed over me and banged into my laptop, today he practically yelled -- in earshot of the professor after class -- that I was gchatting during class.

He might just think he's doing a little friendly ribbing.

Either way I'm having strong visions of breaking his nose and it's making me a little uneasy.

Also my patience for everything is very low.

um that's insane. i try to avoid the building as much as possible. like i know you can't when you have class and stuff but it's full of horrible, shitty people who will drive you nutz on purpose

(xp)

my patience is low too. sometimes i feel so hateful about school people my stomach hurts. other times it doesn't bother me. i dunno.

um that's insane. i try to avoid the building as much as possible. like i know you can't when you have class and stuff but it's full of horrible, shitty people who will drive you nutz on purpose

― straight b*tch (harbl), Tuesday, February 3, 2009 9:22 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark

Yeah. I'm also avoiding law school people for the most part except for a select few. I'm lucky to be married to someone in a completely different field -- hearing about elementary school is my only sanity.

I think I need to take up boxing or something.

it's not just their meanness or competitiveness even, i just get tired of how shockingly dumb and boring and shallow most of them are sometimes

Yeah, that too. There's a lot of petty gossip, a lot of dull talk about luxury items and vacations (that, ironically, many of them will never actually afford, though they think they will), a lot of the same thing said over and over again about the same classes.

Are you a 3L harbl? I forget.

I also wrote a rather scathing complaint about a professor to a dean (which I have NEVER done before, though, admittedly, this guy is horrendous) and have already written a couple of bitchy e-mails to my con-law prof about really minor things.

haha, wow, that is some straight bullshit, Hurting. What does that guy even think he could accomplish by that behavior?

I'm making some good friends out of law school, but they're only good outside of the law school context and while doing non law school related things. During school hours I want to ram my head through the drywall.

yeah, so 12 weeks left or something? i don't actually count. xp

I've also written my share of bitchy letters. In order to get funding for summer internships we have to do this stupid auction. I was literally -minutes- late in handing in my item and they rejected it and denied me funding for the summer based on that; I argued with people in the room about how ridiculous it was to not let me hand in the item that was in my hands that was literally minutes late, and now I'm in trouble for doing -that-(god forbid, a future lawyer is argumentative!). I just finished writing a 2 page letter of appeal to the supervisor explaining why I should get funding, and apologizing for my past conduct.

These people are just lovely. I told the situation to everyone I know and they said, "why the hell would they not accept it?" It's obviously because they want to find easy ways to deny people funding, but apparently they don't appreciate hearing that easy inference out loud.

Perhaps we should have gone to real schools. :[]

burt i don't know what a "real school" is but i'm 100% sure it's no different

People at better schools get funding for sitting on their butts, because they're established and have money. If Columbia nickle and dimes their students with ridiculous traps and then punishes students when they get upset over that and other veiled acts of sleaziness, then fine.

Yeah, but people at top schools are probably even more naturally competitive because they had to be that way in college already to get the GPAs they needed.

My "real school" issue was with nickle and diming. Top school top students are probably weird and emotionally dead, but in a useful way.

yeah i wouldn't even want to know what it's like there, to be honest. i'm just glad i'm almost out.

another thing i'm tired of is patronizing people and sexists but they're everywhere. still why do they have to be in my classes?

Harvard Law financial aid was the most awful and demeaning of ANY institution I have ever had the displeasure of working with, and I have woked with many of them. I have heard very different stories from graduates of NYU, Yale, and Chicago, however. HLS had its share of trainwrecks and morons, but was big enough that there were more different types of people slightly less godawful than the majority of law students.

It's weird hearing these stories, the people at my school are so friendly and nice. Of course I'm nobody's competition, so that may be it.

yeah i think institutions are going to treat people like shit just because they can, doesn't really matter who they are xp

Which is worse - studying on a friday night or doing nothing on a friday night? Those are my options right now.

Studying on a Friday night is worse. Get out a movie/get a six-pack/go to bed early. Pick it up tomorrow.

Doing nothing is one of my fave things nowadays.

u right

getting a beer from the fridge.

Ditched. Feels like highschool again, except I do more drugs now.

ok, not ditched but spaced out on. I'm stoned anyway so I'm not going anywhere.

Burt, have you given any thought to ditching the Halfling's Leaf for a semester or so?

I ask, not out of a tsk-tsk place, but from experience - I smoked a good bit prior to school, but tended to not do so during the semester. It helped me feel...I don't know. Sharper? Less likely to make excuses for myself? I mean, something like weed is something that everyone who uses it has a very personal relationship with, so you may find that you can function perfectly well with it as a presence in your life.

Tell me to fuck off, if need be. Just trying to help. You've got a good handle on things, and I think you've got a good chance of doing well this semester, and bring your GPA up to summer associate levels. Damn the torpedoes, dude. Fuck the gunners.

I don't really do it that much. My life is neither healthy nor well functioning, so better that than other alternatives.

I don't know, I just don't seem to get this law stuff. Especially legal writing. Man.

Burt, your writing here indicates that you can do it, and do it well. The idea is just to grind out an understanding.

A HUGE hurdle for people (myself included) is the concept that the only way to become a great legal mind is to be a scholar. A great deal of people (myself included) arrive at law school used to being one of the smartest people in class and able to get by with minimal study. Law is simply a different animal. You have to put in the time, learn all the different doctrines and iterations thereof, and then learn how to apply something through it.

Think of it this way:

Each body/area of law is like a maze.

At the law student level, you are learning very basic mazes, but a lot of very different mazes.

At exam time, you need to run your facts through those basic mazes.

Once you're out in the big, bad world, you begin to learn larger and larger and more complex and subtle mazes through which you will run your facts.

The one consistency is the need to take time to learn the maze.

Don't fight it, Burt. Seriously. The biggest hurdle is the one you set up for yourself.

I'm here to help as I can, man. Seriously. I wish I had started a thread like this early my first year.

Reading this Property stuff, I think we need to give feudalism another try.

hey, there's a Cardozo talent show coming up. should I do an interpretive dance to the UCC?

(UCC = Uniform Commercial Code, for those of you in the lay)

Feeling kind of regretful about law school in spite of everything. Don't really have a clear picture of why I'm doing it or what I want. I miss having a lot of time to practice and play in bands. I'm bored out of my mind with Contracts and Con Law. No interest in the prestigious biglaw jobs, no interest in govt or public interest.

Welcome to the next 15 years of your life. You've earned it.

yay!

15 years?

I think that sentiment represents a good 90% of our fellow law students up there. Contracts is pretty interesting, but I also found accounting to be really something special.

Con Law is painful, though. The cases ... they take forever!

"15 years?"

You think this shit ends when you're out of school?

i don't think you've given ENOUGH time

what is he, retiring at 40?

guess u cd retire at 40 if you make partner pretty early (32?) but good luck w.that

if you make partner generally you stay there until you are 92 and they wheel you out

No. I think he's going to default into a bigfirm job and hate his life and still feel compelled to succeed, and drift out of the job at around 40 years of age.