I don't think I fully realized in the bustle of a big exciting move that starting over was just that, starting over. And, while there have been many moments of excitement over this move, there are also parts that really suck. Like today. We had our IKEA stuff delivered (thanks to Sweden for creating such an organized, efficient, cool store) and put it together. But getting my study room together just reminded me of all the other things we need. I look around this apartment that I love for its sparsness and it seems so, well, sparse. Is this what a thirty-two year old's home is supposed to look like? And then I remember, we sold all our assets. And another wave of hopeless despair sweeps over. Like? Did I forget I'm adult for the past seven years? What do I have to show for my life? A new desk from IKEA? I don't even have a car. What did I do to myself?
Next week, I start my first week of law school and I am already exhausted. M. is leaving next week to work in the States for awhile and I'll be all alone here. Alone with these bare white walls and a blow up bed. Ugh. I'm not happy with myself right now. I wish we had more savings. I wish we invested in stocks earlier. I wish we had assets. [A few months ago, my newly-come-into-her-very-flush-inheritence mother asked me what assets we had and was shocked, shocked, when I told her, 'well, none.'] Except, M's ability to work. And my ability to study, which won't pay off for years.
I know that by the time I'm 40, we'll have assets. Hell, we'll be swimming in them. Right. But I can't help but feel so hopeless about where I am right now: in a small apartment in the middle of a big city with no washer and dryer.
Thursday, August 30, 2007
Monday, August 27, 2007
Why I'm a Feminist
In all fairness to this young girl, the question was quite a difficult one to answer on the spot. Especially hard to give the 'right' canned, answer. You know, the one that doesn't criticize the American educational system. But what makes this clip interesting to me is the play it gets on the Web and how quickly the chatter came up that this girl was a 'dumb blonde.' No, she's a dumb kid. As she grows older and more experienced in life, her vocabulary and ability to articulate will increase. While I am generally against beauty pagents, I do see the entertainment value they offer. On the other hand, I wonder how many misogynists look to these kinds of shows to re-enforce their view that all women are dumb, and the pretty ones even dumber. Many men, especially, love to see a woman trip up so they can feel superior and sneer.
Thursday, August 23, 2007
To My Husband
Maybe I'm Amazed
Baby, I'm amazed at the way you love me all the time,
And maybe I'm afraid of the way I love you.
Maybe I'm amazed at the way you pulled me out of time,
You hung me on the line.
Maybe I'm amazed at the way I really need you.
Baby, I'm a [girl], maybe I'm a lonely [girl]
Who's in the middle of something
That [s]he doesn't really understand.
Maybe I'm a [girl],
Maybe you're the only [man] who could ever help me.
Baby, won't you help me to understand?
Baby, I'm a [girl], maybe I'm a lonely [girl]
Who's in the middle of something
That [s]he doesn't really understand.
Baby, I'm a [girl],
And maybe you're the only [man] who could ever help me.
Baby, won't you help me to understand?
Maybe I'm amazed at the way you're with me all the time,
And maybe I'm afraid of the way I leave you.
Maybe I'm amazed at the way you help me sing my song,
You right me when I'm wrong-
Maybe I'm amazed at the way I really need you.
Maybe I'm a [girl], maybe I'm a lonely [girl]
Who's in the middle of something
That [s]he doesn't really understand.
Baby, I'm a [girl],
You're the only [man] who could ever help me.
Won't you help me to understand?
Oh, maybe I'm amazed,
Maybe I'm amazed,
Yeah, maybe I'm amazed,
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, maybe I'm amazed,
I'm amazed with you.
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
Dedicated to My Sister B.
A long time ago, I started to dedicate specific posts to each of my sisters and I never finished. Now to B: She was a wonderful little girl, so adorable and I loved to dress her up, play around with exotic styles in her hair and she always sat still for me, even if it took an hour or more to craft a new 'do.
As she got older and I was frequently away for months at a time, she would always cry as I said goodbye and made me feel so loved. She also made quite a bundle on me, as there were also many times I had to bribe her not to tell on me. A smart businesswoman already!
Once she became a young woman, our relationship changed from sisters to friends and she came to party with me in Miami, stayed with me for a week in Oxford, and has spent hours on the phone with me over the years.
Now, we are finally living in the same city and she has been the most helpful friend in my new situation. Not only did she pick us up from the airport when we arrived in Vancouver, she's also let us stay with her for days on end, found a bunch of free stuff to fill our apartment, and even drove the gigantic rental truck home so we wouldn't have to.
She's a capable, smart career woman who has thrived in a mostly-male field and has pursued her career advancement with courage and determination. She is finishing up a four year drafting degree and has already networked her way to being noticed by some of the business names in the business here in Vancouver.
During the riots of my wedding, we couldn't pick up my flowers anymore. I put B. in charge of getting more and, without me even being there, she was able to find exactly what I wanted and nix any I wouldn't.
It will be exciting to share this city with her in the years ahead.
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
Arrested and Booked for Wearing Protest T-Shirts
Another Dahlia Lithwick masterpiece. Read it and...weep.
Article URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2172500/
jurisprudence
Sic 'em With the Rally Squad
And other tips for dealing with demonstrators from the Presidential Advance Manual.
By Dahlia Lithwick
Posted Monday, Aug. 20, 2007, at 6:36 PM ET
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Late last week, the federal government settled a lawsuit with a pair of Texans who were arrested in 2004 for wearing anti-Bush T-shirts at a Fourth of July event in Charleston, W.Va. That's right, friends, $80,000 (of your taxpayer dollars) will be paid out to Jeff and Nicole Rank, whose suit against Gregory J. Jenkins—former deputy assistant to the president and director of the White House Office of Presidential Advance—has been dismissed.
White House spokesman Blair Jones managed to turn lemons into lemonade with the statement last week that "the parties understand that this settlement is a compromise of disputed claims to avoid the expenses and risks of litigation and is not an admission of fault, liability, or wrongful conduct." This is, of course, vintage Bush, gloriously reminiscent of that Simpsons episode in which Homer arrives late to collect Bart in the pouring rain after soccer practice, then lectures: "I know you're mad at me right now, and I'm kinda mad, too. I mean, we could sit here and try to figure out who forgot to pick up who till the cows come home. But let's just say we're both wrong, and that'll be that."
Because, you see, what the Ranks did wrong was attend an open-to-the-public, taxpayer-sponsored Independence Day speech by the president on the grounds of the state capitol, sporting homemade anti-Bush T-shirts. Their shirts had a red circle and a diagonal bar covering the word Bush. (His said, "Regime change starts at home," on the back; hers said, "Love America, Hate Bush.") The Ranks neither said nor did anything to disrupt the speech, but when they refused to remove their T-shirts, they were, at the direction of White House event staff, handcuffed, booked, photographed, and fingerprinted, charged with trespassing, and held for several hours in jail. (The charges were subsequently dismissed, and the city of Charleston has apologized.) Nicole Rank was also temporarily suspended from her job with FEMA.
The White House suggestion that, hey, both sides did something bad here, distorts one obvious truth: The only bad thing these citizens did was peacefully disagree with the president in an open political forum. And while Rush Limbaugh and Angelina Jolie may be able to get away with talking exclusively to people who worship them, the president should not.
The details of the Rank lawsuit and the cases involving similarly harassed folks are always fascinating: citizens removed from a Bush event in Denver because of an offensive bumper sticker on their car outside ("No More Blood For Oil"); a Tucson student barred from a Bush event for sporting a Young Democrats T-shirt; Wisconsin citizens forced to unbutton their shirts before attending a Bush speech, only to have an attendee wearing an anti-Bush T-shirt ejected from the event. But the best thing to have emerged from the Rank litigation was the official—if heavily redacted—Presidential Advance Manual (dated October 2002), which, although stamped "SENSITIVE" and not to be "duplicated ... replicated ... photocopied or released to anyone outside of the Executive Office of the President, White House Military Office or United States Secret Service," is now posted right here at the ACLU's Web site.
There is so much that is entertaining in the Advance Manual, it's hard to know where to begin. Sure, it's not a surprise anymore that it is official White House policy to use staff to foster "a well-balanced crowd," with well-balanced evidently defined as a subtle melange of those citizens who adore the president and those who revere him. The key to achieving such a balance, according to the manual, lies in "deterring potential protesters from attending events" and "preventing demonstrators." Nor should anyone be surprised that the president is to be shielded from dissent at taxpayer-funded presidential appearances and at "rallies, roundtables and tours" in equal measure. Only those individuals and groups that are "extremely supportive of the Administration" (emphasis theirs) will be seated in the area between the stage and the main camera platform.
The manual cautions that event staff "must decide if the solution would cause more negative publicity than if the demonstrators were simply left alone," but it's also full of ingenious ideas for dealing with a flare-up of dissent. Among the White House tactics are the subcontracting of censorship to event "rally squads" composed of helpful "college/young republican organizations, local athletic teams, and fraternities/sororities." (What, no mathletes?) These obliging rally squads can then "use their signs and banners as shields between the demonstrators and the main press platform." The use of a "long sheet banner ... in strategic areas around the site" is similarly smiled upon. Lest you believe that the Big Brother sheet represents the full extent of the speech suppression, however, the manual provides that, "As a last resort, security should remove the demonstrators from the event."
The Advance Manual's finest moments come in its urgent, earnest drive to protect not just the television cameras but also the president himself from the ugliness of the dread "demonstrators." Certainly, "if it is determined that the media will not see or hear" demonstrators, event staff can ignore them. But event staff must involve themselves in "designating a protest area preferably not in view of the event site or motorcade route." In other words, all this suppression of dissent isn't just to create a puppet show for the cameras. It's also about sock puppets for the president, who—if he could just be shielded from the mean T-shirts—might still believe his approval ratings soar into the mid-90s. The Ranks' peaceful protest at the West Virginia state capitol somehow became an act of "trespassing" only because the president was there.
It's disturbing enough to learn from the Advance Manual that the White House has adopted an official policy of shouting down or covering up dissenting viewpoints with large sheets in order to deceive Americans at home into believing the president is universally adored. But that this official policy also exists to protect the tender sensitivities of the president himself is beyond belief.
George W. Bush is certainly entitled to choose his White House advisers, attorneys general, counselors, friends, and pets based solely on the their inability to tell him no. The rest of us have increasingly come to question the wisdom of such insularity. We just can't do it in his presence.
Dahlia Lithwick is a Slate senior editor.
Article URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2172500/
jurisprudence
Sic 'em With the Rally Squad
And other tips for dealing with demonstrators from the Presidential Advance Manual.
By Dahlia Lithwick
Posted Monday, Aug. 20, 2007, at 6:36 PM ET
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Late last week, the federal government settled a lawsuit with a pair of Texans who were arrested in 2004 for wearing anti-Bush T-shirts at a Fourth of July event in Charleston, W.Va. That's right, friends, $80,000 (of your taxpayer dollars) will be paid out to Jeff and Nicole Rank, whose suit against Gregory J. Jenkins—former deputy assistant to the president and director of the White House Office of Presidential Advance—has been dismissed.
White House spokesman Blair Jones managed to turn lemons into lemonade with the statement last week that "the parties understand that this settlement is a compromise of disputed claims to avoid the expenses and risks of litigation and is not an admission of fault, liability, or wrongful conduct." This is, of course, vintage Bush, gloriously reminiscent of that Simpsons episode in which Homer arrives late to collect Bart in the pouring rain after soccer practice, then lectures: "I know you're mad at me right now, and I'm kinda mad, too. I mean, we could sit here and try to figure out who forgot to pick up who till the cows come home. But let's just say we're both wrong, and that'll be that."
Because, you see, what the Ranks did wrong was attend an open-to-the-public, taxpayer-sponsored Independence Day speech by the president on the grounds of the state capitol, sporting homemade anti-Bush T-shirts. Their shirts had a red circle and a diagonal bar covering the word Bush. (His said, "Regime change starts at home," on the back; hers said, "Love America, Hate Bush.") The Ranks neither said nor did anything to disrupt the speech, but when they refused to remove their T-shirts, they were, at the direction of White House event staff, handcuffed, booked, photographed, and fingerprinted, charged with trespassing, and held for several hours in jail. (The charges were subsequently dismissed, and the city of Charleston has apologized.) Nicole Rank was also temporarily suspended from her job with FEMA.
The White House suggestion that, hey, both sides did something bad here, distorts one obvious truth: The only bad thing these citizens did was peacefully disagree with the president in an open political forum. And while Rush Limbaugh and Angelina Jolie may be able to get away with talking exclusively to people who worship them, the president should not.
The details of the Rank lawsuit and the cases involving similarly harassed folks are always fascinating: citizens removed from a Bush event in Denver because of an offensive bumper sticker on their car outside ("No More Blood For Oil"); a Tucson student barred from a Bush event for sporting a Young Democrats T-shirt; Wisconsin citizens forced to unbutton their shirts before attending a Bush speech, only to have an attendee wearing an anti-Bush T-shirt ejected from the event. But the best thing to have emerged from the Rank litigation was the official—if heavily redacted—Presidential Advance Manual (dated October 2002), which, although stamped "SENSITIVE" and not to be "duplicated ... replicated ... photocopied or released to anyone outside of the Executive Office of the President, White House Military Office or United States Secret Service," is now posted right here at the ACLU's Web site.
There is so much that is entertaining in the Advance Manual, it's hard to know where to begin. Sure, it's not a surprise anymore that it is official White House policy to use staff to foster "a well-balanced crowd," with well-balanced evidently defined as a subtle melange of those citizens who adore the president and those who revere him. The key to achieving such a balance, according to the manual, lies in "deterring potential protesters from attending events" and "preventing demonstrators." Nor should anyone be surprised that the president is to be shielded from dissent at taxpayer-funded presidential appearances and at "rallies, roundtables and tours" in equal measure. Only those individuals and groups that are "extremely supportive of the Administration" (emphasis theirs) will be seated in the area between the stage and the main camera platform.
The manual cautions that event staff "must decide if the solution would cause more negative publicity than if the demonstrators were simply left alone," but it's also full of ingenious ideas for dealing with a flare-up of dissent. Among the White House tactics are the subcontracting of censorship to event "rally squads" composed of helpful "college/young republican organizations, local athletic teams, and fraternities/sororities." (What, no mathletes?) These obliging rally squads can then "use their signs and banners as shields between the demonstrators and the main press platform." The use of a "long sheet banner ... in strategic areas around the site" is similarly smiled upon. Lest you believe that the Big Brother sheet represents the full extent of the speech suppression, however, the manual provides that, "As a last resort, security should remove the demonstrators from the event."
The Advance Manual's finest moments come in its urgent, earnest drive to protect not just the television cameras but also the president himself from the ugliness of the dread "demonstrators." Certainly, "if it is determined that the media will not see or hear" demonstrators, event staff can ignore them. But event staff must involve themselves in "designating a protest area preferably not in view of the event site or motorcade route." In other words, all this suppression of dissent isn't just to create a puppet show for the cameras. It's also about sock puppets for the president, who—if he could just be shielded from the mean T-shirts—might still believe his approval ratings soar into the mid-90s. The Ranks' peaceful protest at the West Virginia state capitol somehow became an act of "trespassing" only because the president was there.
It's disturbing enough to learn from the Advance Manual that the White House has adopted an official policy of shouting down or covering up dissenting viewpoints with large sheets in order to deceive Americans at home into believing the president is universally adored. But that this official policy also exists to protect the tender sensitivities of the president himself is beyond belief.
George W. Bush is certainly entitled to choose his White House advisers, attorneys general, counselors, friends, and pets based solely on the their inability to tell him no. The rest of us have increasingly come to question the wisdom of such insularity. We just can't do it in his presence.
Dahlia Lithwick is a Slate senior editor.
Sunday, August 19, 2007
Goodbye, Serina
“What if I should fall right through the center of the earth... oh, and come out the other side, where people walk upside down?”--Lewis Carroll, Alice In Wonderland
Saturday, August 18, 2007
Dahlia Lithwick is My Hero
Three years ago, I read this archieved article from Slate. Since then, I have printed it out, passed it along to others, countless times. Truly good advice. And, in a few weeks, I'll have an opportunity to really use it.
Letter to a Young Law Student
Don't go to law school: But if you must, take my advice.
By Dahlia Lithwick
Posted Thursday, Aug. 15, 2002, at 4:54 PM ET
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Article URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2069512/
I started law school 10 years ago this week. While you may be aware that I consider the law to be mostly very funny, I take law school pretty seriously. When I started law school I had no idea what I was in for: maybe some hybrid of debate camp and LA Law. In actual fact, for me, law school was a cross between boot camp and a cave.
Some small fraction of every incoming One-L class is comprised of people destined to take the legal world by storm. These are the people who intend to get straight A's, outline every case, make law review, clerk for a Reagan appointee, and spend the rest of their days in a leviathan corporate law firm where they will do whatever it is that's done in such places. These are the people law school was built for: people who think in zero-sum terms about everything—grades, jobs, and salaries. I wish them the very best of luck for the next three years. This advice is not for them.
This advice for the rest of you—who applied to law school simply because you took the LSATs, and who took the LSATs simply because the MCATs were too hard. This advice is for the people who graduated college with the generalized sense that they ought to be doing good works on this planet but were uncertain how to go about it. In short, this advice is for those of you who, like me, went to law school hoping that the experience would be stimulating and/or mind-expanding; a liberal-arts grad school for political people. Because you are doubtless trying to memorize the "blue book" this week, this advice is pre-outlined for your convenience.
A. Know Why You Are Going
As noted, the majority of people who get swept up into the law schools of North America are there as a result of inertia, career confusion, or some combination of both, and not a searing passion for drafting complex discovery motions. But that same inertia that swept you into law school may just sweep you into a corporate career in which you never had any interest. If you're at law school because you burn to work at a big firm, or because teaching torts cranks you beyond all imagining, have at it. But if you're there because your dad dressed you in Michigan Law footie-pajamas, or you love writing, or you vaguely hope to do something about the rainforest, you'll want to work hard to avoid being sucked into the screaming centripetal force that is the corporate law firm.
So, write yourself a letter. Quick, while you still can write. Write it, seal it, and then open it at graduation. Tell your post-law-school self what you'd hoped to do with that J.D. Acknowledge that you'll leave law school with huge loans, but you knew that going in. Tell yourself that if you take a job you hate in three years to pay off loans that don't exist until now, you'll emerge in 10 years in the same place you are today. Only balding.
B. Know Why You Are Not Going
If there is one law of law-school thinking it's this: "If everyone else wants something, I must want it, too." Not since the days of the Tonka backhoe and Malibu Skipper will you have so lunged for stuff in which you have no real interest, just because everyone else is lunging. Law school manages to impose odd new values on virtually everyone. And each step of the way, law students make choices—to interview with certain firms, take certain classes, apply for certain clerkships—based on an impoverished sense of other options and the fear that other people will get all the good stuff if you don't grab it. This is hard advice to give and harder, I expect, to take. Fear and conformity dig some pretty deep paths at law school. Don't just follow because they are there.
Ignore your grades. I mean it. Recognize that you will take some class pass/fail, study from the Nutshell the night before the test, and get an A, whereas you will outline some other class to within an inch of your life, teach a clinic on it, create an outline used by students for the next 70 years, and still get a C+ on the final. Why are all laws of intellectual physics so utterly upended at law school? Hell if I know. Something to do with forests and trees. But my advice is to just ignore the grades. Send 'em home and have your parents call you if you failed something. You will get a job. They don't matter. (Warning: If you don't look at your grades for two years, do not go back after graduation and ask that your con law professor change that C+ to an A. She will laugh very hard and tell you it's a "badge of honor.")
C. Have a Life
Someone in my One-L class rendered me semi-autistic in the first semester of law school by suggesting that I'd probably flunk out because I used an orange highlighter. The only person stupider than the moron who said that was me—I changed highlighters. No matter what your original values and habits would dictate, within a matter of weeks you'll be convinced that outlining every case, sucking up to every professor, and spending every non-class hour in the library are the only ways to survive, and that suffering is somehow rewarding and character-building. Mmm. Maybe if you're a pilgrim.
I had, for the first six months of law school, only one vector. I traveled from the dorms to the law school. After breakfast in the dorms I went to class in the law library, and from there I went to dinner in the dorms, which led inexorably to an evening in the law library. Another trench—leading from my bed to the law buildings—from which I was too freaked out to climb out. Somehow one night I ended up in some courtyard in the pouring rain, and then there was a Rodin sculpture and after that, the moon, and I went home and read some Shelley. The next day I felt like I'd gone on a three-week crack bender. Or like I'd had the best conjugal visit ever. Get out. Go to movies. Volunteer someplace. Make friends with the people at Starbucks. Get drunk but kiss someone when you're actually sober. Do anything to remind yourself that there is a life out there, and that missing one night of reading will not turn you into someone who lives in a garment box under the freeway.
All this advice is probably extreme and excessive. Your parents will probably set my house on fire for providing it. But read it anyhow. And think about it. Life is short. Misery is overrated. If law school is what you really want, then do it as yourself and not as if you were in a movie about Harvard men in the 1920s. Learn, question, make a precious lifelong friend, ignore the guy in the bow tie, and smile at the people hunger-striking for the ninth consecutive cause. Use an orange highlighter. Dig your own path. You may pop out in the moonlight. You'll probably be a better lawyer for it.
Dahlia Lithwick is a Slate senior editor.
Letter to a Young Law Student
Don't go to law school: But if you must, take my advice.
By Dahlia Lithwick
Posted Thursday, Aug. 15, 2002, at 4:54 PM ET
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Article URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2069512/
I started law school 10 years ago this week. While you may be aware that I consider the law to be mostly very funny, I take law school pretty seriously. When I started law school I had no idea what I was in for: maybe some hybrid of debate camp and LA Law. In actual fact, for me, law school was a cross between boot camp and a cave.
Some small fraction of every incoming One-L class is comprised of people destined to take the legal world by storm. These are the people who intend to get straight A's, outline every case, make law review, clerk for a Reagan appointee, and spend the rest of their days in a leviathan corporate law firm where they will do whatever it is that's done in such places. These are the people law school was built for: people who think in zero-sum terms about everything—grades, jobs, and salaries. I wish them the very best of luck for the next three years. This advice is not for them.
This advice for the rest of you—who applied to law school simply because you took the LSATs, and who took the LSATs simply because the MCATs were too hard. This advice is for the people who graduated college with the generalized sense that they ought to be doing good works on this planet but were uncertain how to go about it. In short, this advice is for those of you who, like me, went to law school hoping that the experience would be stimulating and/or mind-expanding; a liberal-arts grad school for political people. Because you are doubtless trying to memorize the "blue book" this week, this advice is pre-outlined for your convenience.
A. Know Why You Are Going
As noted, the majority of people who get swept up into the law schools of North America are there as a result of inertia, career confusion, or some combination of both, and not a searing passion for drafting complex discovery motions. But that same inertia that swept you into law school may just sweep you into a corporate career in which you never had any interest. If you're at law school because you burn to work at a big firm, or because teaching torts cranks you beyond all imagining, have at it. But if you're there because your dad dressed you in Michigan Law footie-pajamas, or you love writing, or you vaguely hope to do something about the rainforest, you'll want to work hard to avoid being sucked into the screaming centripetal force that is the corporate law firm.
So, write yourself a letter. Quick, while you still can write. Write it, seal it, and then open it at graduation. Tell your post-law-school self what you'd hoped to do with that J.D. Acknowledge that you'll leave law school with huge loans, but you knew that going in. Tell yourself that if you take a job you hate in three years to pay off loans that don't exist until now, you'll emerge in 10 years in the same place you are today. Only balding.
B. Know Why You Are Not Going
If there is one law of law-school thinking it's this: "If everyone else wants something, I must want it, too." Not since the days of the Tonka backhoe and Malibu Skipper will you have so lunged for stuff in which you have no real interest, just because everyone else is lunging. Law school manages to impose odd new values on virtually everyone. And each step of the way, law students make choices—to interview with certain firms, take certain classes, apply for certain clerkships—based on an impoverished sense of other options and the fear that other people will get all the good stuff if you don't grab it. This is hard advice to give and harder, I expect, to take. Fear and conformity dig some pretty deep paths at law school. Don't just follow because they are there.
Ignore your grades. I mean it. Recognize that you will take some class pass/fail, study from the Nutshell the night before the test, and get an A, whereas you will outline some other class to within an inch of your life, teach a clinic on it, create an outline used by students for the next 70 years, and still get a C+ on the final. Why are all laws of intellectual physics so utterly upended at law school? Hell if I know. Something to do with forests and trees. But my advice is to just ignore the grades. Send 'em home and have your parents call you if you failed something. You will get a job. They don't matter. (Warning: If you don't look at your grades for two years, do not go back after graduation and ask that your con law professor change that C+ to an A. She will laugh very hard and tell you it's a "badge of honor.")
C. Have a Life
Someone in my One-L class rendered me semi-autistic in the first semester of law school by suggesting that I'd probably flunk out because I used an orange highlighter. The only person stupider than the moron who said that was me—I changed highlighters. No matter what your original values and habits would dictate, within a matter of weeks you'll be convinced that outlining every case, sucking up to every professor, and spending every non-class hour in the library are the only ways to survive, and that suffering is somehow rewarding and character-building. Mmm. Maybe if you're a pilgrim.
I had, for the first six months of law school, only one vector. I traveled from the dorms to the law school. After breakfast in the dorms I went to class in the law library, and from there I went to dinner in the dorms, which led inexorably to an evening in the law library. Another trench—leading from my bed to the law buildings—from which I was too freaked out to climb out. Somehow one night I ended up in some courtyard in the pouring rain, and then there was a Rodin sculpture and after that, the moon, and I went home and read some Shelley. The next day I felt like I'd gone on a three-week crack bender. Or like I'd had the best conjugal visit ever. Get out. Go to movies. Volunteer someplace. Make friends with the people at Starbucks. Get drunk but kiss someone when you're actually sober. Do anything to remind yourself that there is a life out there, and that missing one night of reading will not turn you into someone who lives in a garment box under the freeway.
All this advice is probably extreme and excessive. Your parents will probably set my house on fire for providing it. But read it anyhow. And think about it. Life is short. Misery is overrated. If law school is what you really want, then do it as yourself and not as if you were in a movie about Harvard men in the 1920s. Learn, question, make a precious lifelong friend, ignore the guy in the bow tie, and smile at the people hunger-striking for the ninth consecutive cause. Use an orange highlighter. Dig your own path. You may pop out in the moonlight. You'll probably be a better lawyer for it.
Dahlia Lithwick is a Slate senior editor.
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
Thursday, August 09, 2007
On my way back to the States today
I'm going to see my girlfriend T., her husband and three kiddos. She's visiting from London and we are meeting in Vegas and then traveling to the Grand Canyon for two days, staying in rustic cabins and exploring. On Sunday, I travel back to Vegas and fly back to Vancouver on Monday. It will be so wonderful to see the kids as they get bigger. And this is my last chance to have a mini-vacay before law school begins and my nose is two inches from the books!
Wednesday, August 08, 2007
What If?
'Every step that you take
Could be your biggest mistake
It could bend or it could break
But that's the risk that you take.'
--CM
Could be your biggest mistake
It could bend or it could break
But that's the risk that you take.'
--CM
Tuesday, August 07, 2007
This is What we Call the Muppet Show!
It's time to...come home from the Island. M. and I were staying with our parents this weekend to celebrate various sisters' birthdays and our arrival. The first night was so cozy; all five of us visiting (my next-eldest sister is in Quebec working) spent the night with our husband and boyfriends in tow. We ate kabobs, chicken and ribs off the bbq and enjoyed the 10 PM sunset (yes, that's how late it sets in these parts in summer!) over glasses of wine and tequila mixer. After taking shifts cleaning up the kitchen ("I call unloading the dishwasher!") we settled in downstaires to watch a movie. But the best part was each of us taking to a room for the night, knowing we had a big breakfast together ahead in the morning. Having so many sisters as an adult is such a treat! We all enjoy each other and love each other's company. It's like having a best friend to the 10th degree, because you know each other in and out, you know you will stay in each other's lives for the duration and there is such a rich history and understanding.
Monday we went tubing down the river together (again with our sweeties in tow) for about four hours. I wish I took pictures, but my camera was dead. Anyway, imagine ten people floating down the river, drinking and laughing and occasionally getting flipped. I was sad to see the weekend end.
Monday we went tubing down the river together (again with our sweeties in tow) for about four hours. I wish I took pictures, but my camera was dead. Anyway, imagine ten people floating down the river, drinking and laughing and occasionally getting flipped. I was sad to see the weekend end.
Thursday, August 02, 2007
Home Again, Home Again Giggity Gig
We got up at 6:30 this morning to get our rental van. It feels good to get back onto a more normal schedule. No more of this sleeping in 'til 10 that we were doing at my parents' place. Instead, we caught the bus all the way to North Van where we met Becca, picked up various furniture products (our friends seem to all be going through moves themselves at the moment and we've been lucky enuff to get a lot of cool stuff for free) and then bought our table. The History of Our New Dining Room Table: you would think for so simple a task as entering a store, picking out a table and then paying, there would not be a long back story. But there is! For as long as we've been together, Matt has had his eye on one particular table design: a bar-type table in solid wood with a medium finish. But every table we saw took an executive income and...no way. Then, upon arrival in the Land of Fresh Air and Freedom, we spot the very table my hubby has been eyeing...brand new for very, very cheap. So we got it. And it's a little thing, but bring home this table into our new apartment has been a treat for us. A 'marker' that we are indeed on the right path and the risks we took (and are taking) will be rewarded in big and small ways.
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