Somehow, my whole freaking family managed to get bronchitis. I’m going on vacation in less than a week, and I really don’t want to spend it with a hacking cough, so I’ve been spending even more time than usual hiding up in my bedroom.
I swear, if they get me sick for my spring break, people are gonna be making their own noodle soup from now on.
Following through with my promise to comment on other parts of Jeremy’s tips for prelaw kids, here’s Jeremy’s advice on law school preparation:
3. Stop imagining that law school is so different from everything else you’ve ever done before. If you’re going to law school, you probably didn’t completely screw up college. Law school’s a lot more like college than, say, a job is. If you survived college, you’ll survive law school. Heck, if you enjoyed college, you’ll probably even enjoy law school. Yes, you need to read a bunch of stuff every week. No, this will not be the most grueling three years you’ve ever experienced, it will not require you cut off contact with your family and friends, it will not require you radically change your lifestyle and force yourself into a miserable existence because you don’t think you’ll pass Torts otherwise. It’s school, you know how to do school, just put in the hours you end up needing to out in, which will probably be fewer than you fear, and you’ll be fine. This is not some sort of radically different paradigm.
8. Ignore anyone who tries to tell you that some sort of week-long law school preparatory class is going to be anything more than a waste of money. That includes ignoring the voices inside your own head that are telling you to go. You won’t get a “leg up” and, at worst, you’ll be the jackass who keeps raising his hand because he knows the answer and everyone will hate you. If you really want to get a head start, find a 3-page summary on the Internet of all of your classes, and read it. You’ll be more prepared than you need to be, but it won’t turn you into “one of those people.”
In my head, these are related. If you feel that law school is going to be something completely different from undergrad, you’re more inclined to think a prep course will be worth the time and money. Of course, some people take prep classes because they’re ultra-competitive. I’m just saying that’s not me.
I won’t be taking a law school prep class, but I will be reading a bunch of law-related things between now and September. My goal is not to get a leg up on my classmates. I’ll read about law because I’m interested in it, I’m excited about starting school, and I’m just nerdy like that. It won’t be work; it’ll be fun. Once classes start and the reading assignments start piling up, my enthusiasm will quickly fade. There’s no need to smother it prematurely.
Law school will definitely not be like my undergraduate experience. I didn’t have to read much for my classes. And by “much”, I mean, “at all”. Sure, we had books, but for the most part no one, not even the professors, expected you to read them. Computer science books are, generally, reference materials. You look up the programming language syntax, the algorithm, whatever, and then you go back to coding. There were a few classes with reading assignments, but in these cases, the reading was more like a mathematics textbook. But I had a few humanities/social science classes. I did alright, and I like reading in general, so I don’t think law school is something I can’t handle. I may not be appointed Chief Justice when I graduate, but I’ll get over it. Eventually.
I haven’t received any new information from law schools lately. No letters, no phone calls, certainly not any delicious baked goods. Maybe Columbia knows I haven’t finished reading through the box they sent me a while back. Hmm. I’ll finish that up today, I promise.
Truthfully, though, I don’t really mind the lack of new info. By this point, everything looks the same. The students are all happy, the deans are all excited, the tuitions are all ridiculously expensive… Don’t get me wrong; I like to pore over law library statistics as much as the next guy, but pictures and words just aren’t doing it for me any more.
School visits and financial aid packages are much more exciting. And they’re coming up in a few weeks. A few weeks… Ugh, it sounds like forever. I’m in the no-man’s-land of law school applications. Everyone’s just waiting for the admit weekends. Just waiting…
Maybe I should take up a hobby, like whining about it on my blog. Yeah, that’ll take my mind off it.
I just realized that Bad Glacier has been running for a month now. Hot damn! I should throw a party. With techno music and black lights and nachos.
Party. Nachos. I rule.
After a little urging/reminder from ambimb, I’ve added my e-mail address to the sidebar. This, of course, is the first step towards the well-loved Request Day. Bloggers love a chance to put up a few posts without having to come up with the ideas on our own.
I see no reason to stop there, though. Why not have a Reader Response Day, where the readers comment on a topic of my choice? It’s like Request Day, but for the times when I have a topic and don’t feel like writing about it.
After a while, I’ll just put the two ideas together. And then I’ll go to the bar.
I finally got around to reading the Ninth Circuit’s decision in MGM v. Grokster (pdf file here). It’s not long and fairly straightforward, but here’s my short summary anyways. A longer summary is “below the fold”, as they say “in the biz”, as they say… well… no one actually says that.
Short version: Unlike Napster, which used its own servers to keep track of users and to store lists of the files being shared, Grokster and StreamCast don’t have the ability to block users or to monitor the files being traded on their networks. Because of this, they cannot be held contributorily or vicariously liable for copyright infringement by users of their software. The court then tells MGM to stop crying or the court will give them something to cry about.
Long version below:
(more…)
Last night’s episode of The Simpsons was prefaced by a warning: “This episode discusses same-sex marriage. Viewer discretion is advised.”
Because in Ohio, we’re scared of gay people. I hear it’s contagious. The gay, I mean.
Just a warning: this post is going to get painfully nerdy in a few seconds.
I should have known, especially since I’m currently re-reading the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series. I can’t believe I didn’t see it coming. The answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and which laptop should I buy for law school is, of course, forty-two. IBM ThinkPad T42, I mean. (Ha! I crack myself up.) I’ll be ordering it on Monday.
I just need to figure out how much the fingerprint scanner option is worth to me. I’m thinking not enough to justify the moneys, but I really like my gadgets, so we’ll see what happens.
I’ve spent a good part of the last few days looking at laptops. I was going to wait ’til summer to get the best deal. However, my parents’ computer has started the death rattle (y’know, when the hard drive gets so loud you know it’s gotta be destroying important data). Since I was going to give them my desktop when I left anyways, I figure I’ll accelerate the process and buy a laptop now.
Ugh.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m excited about getting a laptop. It’s just a pain in the ass to buy one.
I started out looking at the thin-and-light models (under 6 pounds, 14″ screen). My parents, who thought I should get something bigger, put my mom’s purse on the scale and found it weighed eight pounds. That’s when the mocking began.
So I’m now looking for something bigger, preferably with a 15.4″ wide screen. But I’m having trouble finding one with the features I want and very little extra stuff tacked on. Basically, I want the wide screen, a DVD burner, bluetooth, decent battery life, a 3-year warranty, and a magical genie that grants all my wishes. And the whole thing should weigh less than 7 pounds.
Is that too much to ask for?
Very Unnecessary and foxes for now recently posted (VU here, foxes here) about the importance of GPA and LSAT in the admissions process. foxes decries the emphasis on numbers, but Janine (VU) defends the LSAT as an opportunity to make up for other parts of her application hurt by extenuating circumstances. Without the personality or eloquence of either, here are my thoughts.
Most parts of a law school application are based on performance over a relatively long period of time. Achieving good grades, taking part in extracurriculars, and getting to know someone who can write a letter of recommendation all require a certain time commitment. For cases like Janine’s, where family crises and degree changes hurt these aspects of her application, some measure of an applicant’s ability at a particular moment in time is certainly needed. The LSAT and personal statement serve this purpose.
The problem is that GPA and LSAT score are such a big part of the decision to admit or deny someone. Some people will be overlooked because they don’t perform well on standardized tests, because they had a bad test day, or because they didn’t find a field they were passionate about until their third change of major, despite significant involvement in extracurriculars, glowing recommendations, or great writing ability. A de-emphasis on GPA and LSAT would help these applicants and wouldn’t necessarily hurt applicants like Janine. If admissions counselors were, instead of looking for scores in a certain range, trying to find proof of intelligence, writing ability, and perseverance, they could read her personal statement and look at her application in light of the things she had to work through to find perseverance in her family troubles, writing ability in her personal statement, and intelligence in her LSAT score.
Since GPA and LSAT score are reasonably good predictors of law school performance, many people feel the heavy reliance on them in admissions is justified. I think this is slightly off. Of course schools want students that will do well in classes, but a school’s reputation is more important than the quality of its students. Law schools aren’t looking for students that will succeed in law school; they’re looking for people who will succeed after law school. Having alumni in highly visible, important positions makes and preserves a school’s reputation. Schools should select the students they think would be the most successful lawyers. Since the practice of law requires more than just test-taking skills, such things as perseverance, personality, and writing ability would become more important to admissions counselors.
This doesn’t seem like a bad way to go about things. Unfortunately, the prestige-based nature of law screws up this whole process. Since the US News rankings have such a strong effect on prestige, schools admit students with high GPAs and LSAT scores to keep or improve their rank. Students from highly-ranked schools have better opportunities (in general) than other students. These alumni have a better chance of ending up in important positions that improve the school’s reputation. As GPA and LSAT percentiles go up, so does the school’s rank, which improves the career opportunities for graduates. So now GPA and LSAT seem to be reasonable predictors of post-law school success.
The current system is pathetic. Admissions decisions shouldn’t be based predominantly on an applicant’s numbers. It’s hard to blame the schools for not wanting to drop in the rankings. It’s hard to blame the students for going to the schools that give them the best opportunities. But as long as law is so ridiculously prestige-based, I can’t see things changing.
Will I be able to look past the numbers, as I wish the schools would do, and choose the school that’s best for me, regardless of its place in the rankings? Will I refuse to look down on students at lower-ranked schools? If I’m ever in the position to hire fellow lawyers, will I choose them based on their competence rather than their alma mater? I sure hope so.
Will I change anything? Probably not.
Update!: Kristine’s take on things. And here’s a post I was looking for earlier about Northwestern bagging on the LSAT scores of past classes.
My financial aid application process is over! FAFSA and Need Access are now just a bad memory.
Now I get to worry about my financial aid awards in addition to my last two applications. Great.
Over at Why Law, there’s a post about the question “Why Law?” and wonders why people ask it so often.
First, the reason the question doesn’t really work so well for other graduate/professional programs is that the answer is fairly obvious.
“Why medical/graduate/business school?”
“So I can cure diseases/become a professor/crush the souls of my underlings.”
“Oh. Yeah.”
There are many different paths people can take from law school: corporate, criminal, patent law, politics, and academia, for a few. It’s not as clear-cut as other careers. Of course, I realize there are other things people can do with advanced degrees. I’m simplifying somewhat. But still.
Of course, not everyone cares about you and what you want to do with the rest of your life. Like menagerie said in the comments, some are wondering about their own plans/dreams/thoughts of some kind of graduate school or change of occupation. Other people hear “lawyer” and by default think “ambulance chaser”; they want to understand why you didn’t choose an honorable job like “prostitute”, “crack dealer”, or “repo man”. Personally, I want to know what leads a person to choose law given the relatively high chances of ending up a dissatisfied associate too afraid of a pay cut to leave his job and the 80 hour weeks that accompany it. It makes me feel good when I find someone who sincerely wants to make the world a better place, it gives me hope when I find someone who has a well thought-out plan to become a happy, well-adjusted lawyer, and it helps me feel less alone when I find someone like me, someone who thinks law looks interesting, hopes to find an enjoyable, challenging, reasonably well-paying job, and has absolutely no idea how to go about finding it.
Ever since I started using Bloglines, my blog reading has been getting out of control. It’s just so easy to add a blog to the list, and then I feel I have to check a site whenever there’s a new post. I just can’t help myself. Does anyone else have this problem?
I guess the best solution would be to organize the links into groups based on how often I want to check them (weekly, daily, hourly, etc.) and then force myself to stick to my schedule. Unless someone else has a better solution to this problem.
Anyone?
In honor of Charles Darwin’s birthday, the Cleveland Museum of Natural History (with various groups from Case Western) sponsored a public lecture/discussion on Saturday titled “Defending Darwin: Why Creationists Persist in Attacking Evolution Education.” It looked interesting, and as Ohio is a hot area for intelligent design stupidity, the girlfriend and I decided to check it out.
Oops.
As far as we could tell, Brian Alters, the “distinguished expert in science education” from McGill University and Harvard had no real point. His talk consisted of a few statistics showing that about 50% of the U.S. and Canada are at best confused and at worst ignorant about evolution, a few pictures of himself at creationist museums, and a few quotes from Stephen Jay Gould. His main idea, best as I could tell, was that belief in a creator and the theory of evolution are not mutually exclusive; if creationists just thought a little harder or listened to the many religious leaders that have no problem with evolution, they’d stop trying to attack it.
I’m not sure I agree with Mr. Alters. It seems like the goal is not so much to stop the teaching of evolution, but to include the teaching of Intelligent Design (or some variation of it), regardless of the fact that Intelligent Design is, by its very nature, unfalsifiable and therefore completely unfit for inclusion in a science class. Evolution is only a target because it’s a barrier to the introduction of religion into public school curricula. Of course, Mr. Alters’s proposal to teach comparative religion alongside traditional high school classes is interesting, but similarly, I don’t think it’ll satisfy Intelligent Design proponents. They don’t want kids to learn about several different Gods that could have started the process of evolution; that would just turn the kids into militant Muslims, stingy Hollywood-loving Jews, or stupid Buddhists (sorry, I ran out of the really hateful religious stereotypes).
Regardless of the title of his lecture, Mr. Alters didn’t seem to have any ideas on how to actually “Defend Darwin” except to beg teachers to cover evolution in their classrooms. In my opinion, this is a better way to go about things. It’s not really a defense of evolution (it doesn’t need defending so much as people need to learn what science actually is) as much as it’s a takedown of a NY Times op-ed advocating Intelligent Design, but it’s well-done. PZ Myers at Pharyngula has been doing lot of this lately (here, here, and here, for example), as is EvolutionBlog. Also, Left2Right has a nice post here.
As we all know, the key when writing to potential students is to skip around negative information whenever possible. Someone in the Harvard Housing department doesn’t know this. He desperately needs to be kept away from 0Ls.
Regarding off-campus housing:
“Apartments in Cambridge are scarce and, by most standards, expensive…. Small one-family dwellings, for sale or rent, virtually do not exist.”
Harvard University Affiliated Housing:
“These … are very much in demand by both single and married students. Prices are high for some units in Harvard Housing…. [I]t is common to have a waiting list as early as ten months before occupancy.”
Well, I appreciate the candor, but there’s got to be some reason to be optimistic… (I mean, even Columbia managed to frame their housing situation in a good light.)
“Although obtaining housing requires a combination of thought, effort and luck, people generally manage to find satisfactory quarters by the beginning of the school term.”
Too bad I’ve used up my luck for the year just getting into their damned school. Oh well. Maybe they’ll let me make a nest in the corner of the library out of coffee cups and discarded pizza boxes.
From LawDork and Neo Tokyo Times, commentary on Democrats being jackasses.
I’m trying to keep this site from being too political, but this pisses me off to no end. I consider myself a Democrat, even though my political preferences are sometimes at odds with the party’s platform, because… well, Neo Tokyo times says it better than I can:
And that, I think, is the meaning of progressive. It’s not a collection of ideas and political positions. It’s not a list. It’s a mindset. It’s a willingness and eagerness to expand yourself, and your conceptions of what’s right. It’s a movement toward a better system, and a better way of living, and a better understanding of yourself and your society.
I can make concessions on some policy issues because the Democrats and I are working towards the same general goal. But I can’t justify things like this. I don’t want a party that will put aside their ideals for political gain (not that I think this will help at all). I refuse to put up with that much cognitive dissonance. Jackasses.
No real posting today. My brain is dead from Need Access and looking at laptops. Y’all are just gonna have to deal.
Until next time, check out Lifehacker. It’s a bunch of random tips and tricks to help you out in life, supposedly. I learned how to fold shirts awesomely.
…and I’m out.
“In the middle we stay calm; we just drop bombs.” — Outkast
Over on Law School Numbers, it looks like the Stanford (here) and Yale (here) rejections are coming in for the early/mid-November applicants. That means I should get mine any day now. I just wish they’d hurry up. I’m tired of waiting for acceptances. I want to wait on financial aid and start visiting schools instead.
I really dislike the people who designed the Need Access Application. I don’t see how they could have come up with a less user-friendly site design or a worse layout for the actual application. You’d think they’d keep all the loan-related questions together, rather than asking slight variations of “how much did you borrow to pay for school?” on each of five different pages.
And they charge $15 per school for the privilege of applying for need-based financial aid? Hmm, this seems oddly familiar… From the “About Access Group” page (emphasis added):
The history and growth of Access Group revolve around one basic idea: make affordable financing more accessible to graduate students.
This idea first took shape as the “Law Assured Access Program.” Under the direction of the Law School Admission Council (LSAC), this program initially provided financial access to ABA-approved law schools, offering two federally-guaranteed educational loans. (This is now known as the Federal Stafford Loan program.)
I knew it!
Screw law, we should go into the “monopolize an aspect of graduate education” business like LSAC and Access Group. (Yes, I realize both LSAC and Access Group are nonprofit, but with the amount of money we have to give them, I can’t imagine they’re spending money wisely.)
Bonus points to UVa for being the only school I’ve applied to that doesn’t use the Need Access form. Sure, they have their own form, so information doesn’t automatically transfer to other schools’ applications, but at least I don’t have to pay $15 to send it out.
I’ve been listening to A Grand Don’t Come for Free, the new(ish) album by The Streets. If you know The Streets, you know Mike Skinner has a distinctive style. If you don’t know The Streets, read “distinctive style” as “absolutely no flow”. None at all. I actually think it’s worse than on his first album. It seriously hurts to listen to. Now, don’t get me wrong; I like the record. It’s a well-done concept album that tracks a relationship birth-to-death. I just wish Mike would be less “distinctive” and more “good”. I don’t need Jay-Z-quality flow. Just more like, say, early Fresh Prince.
It’s not just the English accent, either. The accent is strange to listen to at first, but it doesn’t preclude flow. Dizzee Rascal is proof of that. Speaking of Dizzee Rascal, I just ordered his new(ish) album, Showtime, and it’s on its way here as we speak. Maybe I’ll write about that in a couple weeks.
Update! - I’ve been told this post “sucks,” for “some reason. I don’t know why.” So in an effort to please my loyal reader, I’ll try to explain a little better.
Mike Skinner is a terrible emcee, but that doesn’t mean The Streets is bad music. A Grand Don’t Come for Free is good because of the music and the lyrics. The lyrics, mostly introspective, but perceptive when focused on others’ actions or body language, are sharply written; he seems to always use the right word or phrase. If that means his flow is awkward and jerky, so be it. The beats are fairly minimal and seem to fall into one of two camps: the beats that I didn’t really care for that work quite well with the lyrical content, and the beats I loved that work quite well with the lyrical content.
So that’s why I liked the album, despite the lurpy flow.
When I first posted this, I didn’t want to write a review of the album. Other people do that kind of thing much better than I can. I just wanted to comment on something I was listening to and a thought I had about it. I’m kinda random like that.