Right so I felt the past few days not feeling great. But I'm better now. There wasn't a whole lot to report from the depths of my apartment. Aside from The Great Roommate Swap, which is now complete. Ryan, my new roommate, is safely entrenched in his new surroundings. One upside is that I get a new, flashy television for the living room. Another is a fun, new roommate. A third is kitchen items that were lacking like baking sheets and a toaster. I sound so domestic. Like a dog. I just read an article in the New Yorker about Rin Tin Tin (a dog-actor, if you didn't know). See, I have been spending too much time indoors. Rin Tin Tin almost won an Oscar. That would be embarrassing if he had beaten out humans. Come to think of it, that is embarrassing to all the actors who were not Oscar nominees that year.
So school. That's a thing again. My Public Interest Lawyering class was...painful, to put it kindly. It's a 'discussion-based' small class where we will write 'reflection papers.' In other words, let's all talk about our internships and our feelings. Maybe after a good cry together we can change the world for the better. Grow up. The first part of the (2 hour long) class was spent going around the room so people could talk about themselves. Where are they from? Where are they interning? What year are they? And, most annoyingly, why did they want to go to law school? Look, I admire and respect people who work for organizations like Alliance to Help Disabled People With Legal Problems and other such places, but do we really need to get all feelings-y? I also couldn't help but get a slightly anti-corporate vibe from the room. In fact, I'm pretty sure someone made a dig about corporate law firms. More on that in a minute.
I was stuck in a seat at a conference table behind The Incredible Hulk. This guy is maybe 6'3" and 200 pounds. Big guy. That's totally fine. What is not fine is that he spent the entire two hours leaning forward in various positions that blocked me from view entirely. Elbows on the table, head forward, bringing his knees up in his seat, the whole bag. Since he is The Incredible Hulk and not The Invisible Man, I struggled for two hours to catch a glimpse of my professors, seated twenty feet away at the head of the table. Then he got worse. The Incredible Hulk told his story about why he came to law school: He was a campaign manager going door to door and met some woman in a bad neighborhood who begged his help because her son was autistic and she couldn't get the help she needed and the system totally failed her and he felt so bad so he knew he wanted to come to law school to help people. Cry me a freaking river. Yes, it's an unfortunate story. But it's also your law school admissions personal statement. I am not an admissions officer, and I don't give a damn. The classroom is not the appropriate place for you to talk about revelations you had regarding human suffering and inequity. I'm not cold-hearted. I have sympathy for the subject of his story. But in this context, all I have is an eye roll for him. If I could I would have vomited all over the back of his head (which was all I could see at that point). For the cherry on top, when he was asked what he wanted to do as a lawyer, The Incredible Hulk responded that he wanted to be a prosecutor. That...is not a way to this poor lady who apparently made you dedicate your life to helping people. That is a way to put people in jail. You idiot.
The Incredible Hulk's story was by far the most painful/touchy-feely of the bunch. But it turns out that everyone else in the class just works for various nonprofits. Some are pretty cool sounding. Some are not. But inevitably people wanted to work for some bleeding heart cause when they graduated. I wanted to ask the class a question: "How much debt do you have from law school and how do you intend to pay it off? I'm just wondering here. Is that a factor for anyone else?" Honestly and pragmatically, that is a factor for me and for a lot of other people. But no one seemed to give it a thought. So when I said I worked at a firm this summer I got a lot of looks. They ranged from "Oh...your one of those people"-type disdain, to "Oooo interesting"-type curiosity. Either way, I felt out of place. But I should have expected that in Public Interest Lawyering.
Now I don't mean to degrade public interest law. I really don't. I fully support it and I am happy to encourage people who genuinely are dedicated to public interest law and nothing else. And at some point in my career I would love to participate in public interest work. My caution is about people who ignore practicalities and people who are so cliched it makes me sick.
My anger is for...The Incredible Hulk. Learn to sit like a human being! This is a classroom, not your goddamn living room. Sit straight, be a little self-aware, and shut your mouth.
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