I'm such a Hamiltonian

I have always had deep doubts about the democratic process, but those doubts took root this week. My dad has been a City Councilman for 12 years in my hometown. He is dependable and steady. He actually thinks through issues and debates reasonably and logically to reach mutually beneficial outcomes. He's not the fiery, fist-pounding bombastic who makes a scene and gets nothing accomplished. He's also not great at tooting his own horn when he gets something done. In a town where 80% of the population is Democratic and centered around every other district (not going into why--too political) he has managed to make sure the police are there patrolling, the roads are fixed, the drainage system works, and all those myriad aspects of civic life that when they're working, no one notices.

He is the only city councilman to never miss a single town meeting in 12 years. He is the only councilman to be 100% certified in every civic management course the state of Mississippi offers. He is a tireless advocate, and gives so much more to the city than that job ever contemplated.

He was told by the Republican machine this summer that they were tired of Daddy not making a public scene at council meeting to get their agenda through. They then explained that if Daddy wouldn't do what he was told, they'd simply put someone in office who would. Dad declined to act like a fool and scream his way through council meetings and opted to continue to work calmly and courteously with the other council members, knowing that alienating the other controlling majority councilmen with cheap theatrics would likely hurt the cause rather than help it. The Republican Machine found their puppet for the primary. She has lived in my hometown as a house wife for 37 years. She runs an illegal embroidery business in her spare time out of her living room. She has never served on a civic committee or organization. She has never owned/managed a business in town or been part of any commercial organization. Her platform was that she wanted to do more trash pick-up and have better shopping.

On Oct. 5th, this inexperienced, uninformed, uninvolved woman won the Republican primary 4 to 1. After 12 years of dedicated service in the face of rather staggering opposition, my father has been voted out.

I guess this shouldn't surprise me. 6 years ago, the citizenry of this same town voted out a successful mayor who had made marked improvement in the city in favor of a 25-year-old child with no civic experience of any kind because her father is a beloved lawyer in the majority demographic of the community. The town has just slowly collapsed under the weight of her childish whims, and the citizens reelected her.

I suppose the only comfort I can take is that when the Ward starts to slowly crumble under the weight of this woman's inexperience and complete inability to build bridges between parties, Greenville will have gotten precisely what it deserves--to rot.

I am really beginning to wonder if it's possible to get a good candidate into office there or anywhere these days. The country as a whole seems so excited to toss experience and proven track records to the wind in favor of some distant hope of something different--even if that something different is worse.

I guess I just ultimately don't believe in the current democratic process. I'm a must bigger proponent of Alexander Hamilton's view--that the average man has no business voting. I would like there to be some higher standard to which a voter must rise so that the informed majority, not just the numerical majority can control the direction of this country.

So disillusioned.

I'm not 2nd rate anymore!

I was sitting in my Business Associations class, waiting for the prof to start, when a 3L who sits behind me begins to rant about the administration, in particular the Dean being the leader of amateur hour.

In light of today's debacle with the Attorney General visiting campus, he had a point. My Crim Pro professor wanted to have the AG visit our CrimPro class, but, of course, the administration refused to let him give only his students access and opened it up to the whole school. The talk was supposed to be in a big lecture hall at 1:15pm. We got an email at 12:43pm saying, "Whoops! The talk will actually be in one of the smallest rooms we have on the 2nd floor so that security will block off half the lockers and 1/3 of the people planning to come can actually get in. Oh, and we're starting at 1pm now."

So, I was turned away because the room was full at 12:40pm. It was poor planning and even worse execution. I would have been especially pissed had I been one of the night students who took time from work to be here for this and got turned away.

So back to my ranting 3L. He is complaining about how awful the Dean is and how he never follows through on anything...how he just smiles, pays lip service, and goes on with whatever he originally wanted to do. I mentioned that that story was pretty indicative of all law schools that I had any contact with. He began to argue, and I mentioned that the administation at my former school was the same way in much more important areas.

He then says, "Well, this is going to sound insulting, but that's to be expected of a 2nd rate school. But you're one of us now; you should expect more. Their carelessness is what's making us slip in the rankings."

I understand that CUA is a 2nd tier school, but that still puts it in the top 100, so it's not what I would call "2nd rate." I found that comment pretty elitist, especially in light of the fact that every friend I have in a law school ranked higher than GMU has the same sorts of complaints about their administration. Basically, I just marveled at what freely comes out of people's mouths.

I can't decide whether that was the comment of the week or if Monday when a fellow clasmate told me he didn't know where he would ultimately practice law, but it would definitely not be in Virginia because there were not enough white people for him to feel comfortable living there and raising a family. Wow. I'm from Mississippi, and still....Wow.

Maybe this is an excellent time for a vote. Which was the douchey comment of the week?

"That's a 2nd rate school, but you're one of us now so you should expect more."
OR
"I won't practice in Virginia because there aren't enough white people."

Discuss.

The Ego Bites the Dust

O-U-C-H.

I just finished my OCI round (actual OCI interviews, not resume collections). I applied to 17 firms/agencies participating in OCI this fall.

I got 10 screening interviews and ONE callback interview which I had last Friday.
I got my rejection letter from that firm today. I cannot believe how easy it is to make me feel completely worthless as a human being.

What was the point of doing well in 1L--well enough to transfer up a tier--having a great summer internship I worked my butt off both to get and then to do well in, and joining and working my butt off for a journal only to have every single door slammed in my face?

I haven't felt this low in years. I didn't even feel this bad when I got my first legal writing assignment handed back to me. I guess I could blame it on the economy and that DC is a tough market, but that's just not my style. I have to own my failures just as surely as I own my successes, and Dear GOD have I failed.

How awful an interviewer must I be? I'm good enough on paper to get a more than 50% return on my applications, but only good enough in person to get a 10% return, and on closer examination, that drops to 0%. Christ. Maybe I should hire someone else to interview for me from now on.

I just want to go home, pull the covers over my head and cry myself to sleep. What a shitty day, at the culmination of 2 shitty months.

Why am I in this class?

You know, I can put up with all kinds of drains on my time. Even if there's some little nugget of information to be gleaned, I'll wade through the BS to get to it without complaint. But this Journal writing course astounds me for sheer, unapologetic WASTE.

First, I don't need a 2 hour lecture every week on how to write a term paper. I don't to be told what an effective topic sentence looks like. I don't need to look at dozens of excerpts of various student papers to rate their effectiveness. I don't need to be told what plagiarism looks like. My time would be much better spent just dedicating these 2 hours each week to extra research for my paper. What an unbelievable waste of time.

My favorite part of the course is getting grammar advice from someone who clearly knows nothing about grammar. Case in point:

Prof: What is wrong with this paragraph?
Class: Silence
Prof: It's all in past tense!

Well let's decide why no one responded.

First I think we can all clearly see that "is" standing on its own is not past tense. It's pretty clearly present tense.

Second, if he meant passive voice (likely) it's not passive voice either. A form of the verb "to be" and the preposition "by" appears, but that doesn't necessarily make a passive voice sentence. We would still need a past participle which is conspicuously absent. The sentence is in the indicative mood.

So apparently a paragraph is bad for being in the present tense and indicative mood...not because it simply isn't concise.

I'm sure that irritates me only because I spent 5 years as a working editor, but, honestly, what am I gaining by being here? I cannot find one legitimate benefit to spending my Wednesday nights in this course.

Thus, in order to hate the universe less, I have decided to spend my Wed. nights updating this sorely ignored blog. One friend in particular will be very pleased, assuming she ever checks this anymore.

...You may show your pleasure.

It's like riding a bicycle

Well the problem with never forgetting how to ride a bike once you learn is that when you learn in the Mississippi Delta where there isn't even a whisper of a hill for 90 miles in every direction, you have no clue how to ride with hills.

I never understood before what the point of gears on a bike were. I mean I had them when I was younger, but I never moved them because there is no change in the grade of the land.

Now I'm biking in Arlington--thank GOD not the Rosslyn area--and I am learning for the first time how to work the gears and the pain of extreme uphill travel. GOOD GOD, my thighs are still burning from my trek this morning.

I am not giving up though, because today's ride was only half as bad as the same ride on Friday. So maybe in 2 weeks I'll be a pro. It's still worth the trouble as far as I'm concerned. Besides, I'm still so excited about going to GMU, it overshadows any physical pain from biking.

This too shall pass. And then I will have thighs of steel. ;)

It's summertime....when exactly does the livin' get easy?

You know, I was kind of looking forward to the thrill of a 32 hour work week rather than the 24 a day grind of 1L year. As far as the work goes, it is indeed a pleasant respite. I'm writing or observing trial all day, so it's good substantive and occasionally tiring work, but still much less soul killing than law school can be.

If I had just stopped at the job, maybe the living would be easy now, but I think we all know that Michelle just not capable of holding onto a good thing. In addition to my wonderful job, I decided to transfer law schools. Let me tell you about the work, worry, and frustration of getting letters of recommendation written, signed, and sent to the gazillion places law schools want them sent nowadays both via direct mail to the school and to LSAC. I also decided to take a 5 credit class to accompany my internship, which of course now will not transfer, so that's a whole lot of writing, a 30-minute presentation, and $7,000 down the drain.

Add on the personal statements, transcript request run-downs, and constant worrying that goes along with it. Then, magically I get accepted to one of my transfer schools. That starts a whole new cascade of time sinks, the first of which was a second write-on competition of the year. All my hard word getting onto Catholic's Law Review was suddenly useless. I had to start from scratch and write a whole new competition for transfer write-on.

Now I'm finished with that and On Campus Interviews are looming. So I have a whole new school's system for doing that and trying to draft 20+ cover letters to participate with that.

Add onto that trying to figure out which classes to take, getting email accounts set up, and all the other misc. things that accompany changing schools. And I can't really set a schedule either because the transfer credit folks haven't decided what will count from Catholic and what won't. I also will be out of town during their orientation, so I've got to figure all this out for myself before I leave on my trip home. Then let's add back the stress of worrying over whether I was good enough to get a Law Review or Journal Invite.

I'm also going to a law firm 2L reception tonight--just in case I thought I might get 20 minutes to myself.

Where are my f---ing lazy days of summer?!

All Good Things

I am going to George Mason University School of Law!!

I cannot believe I got in with a 30th percentile ranking, but I'm in damnit! I have a feeling my summer job as an intern in Fairfax County Circuit Court where Mason sends its best and brightest probably played a role in that.

I sent in my transfer seat deposit, all my forms, and syllabi of some courses for transfer credit evaluation today. I'm about to head downstairs and continue writing the Transfer Write-On Competition paper.

I'm sure there will be transfer hiccups--there always are, but in one day I've gone from a school rank 94, about to fall out of the 2nd tier, to a Tier 1 school at half the price and infinitely more prestige. This school also has programs that fit my career ambitions in a way that Catholic's curriculum never could.

I am very excited and want nothing more than to obsess all weekend about what classes to take and all the minutiae of starting a new school--but I'm going to stop myself and focus on this writing competition now.

I'm so excited! My dear friend and I both got out and will now be only 4 metro stops from each other, and I can walk to law school now. Things are looking up!