Bad Glacier

So, PG is in the Federalist Society. Why not me too? I have liberal views in many areas, but I also have a bit of a libertarian streak. I like being exposed to different viewpoints, and it looks like the HLS Federalists have some pretty interesting events.

At Harvard’s Admitted Students Weekend, I talked with a couple members of the Federalist Society. They seemed quite willing to put up with me, though I forgot to ask whether they tar and feather any liberals who accidentally stumble into their meetings.

Eh, who knows if I’ll actually do it. I’m reluctant to commit to anything until I get settled in with classes and such. It’s just an idea I’ve been kicking around.

Any thoughts?

It’s that time of year again. Pre-law kids are starting to think about their applications, and I’ve been getting more traffic from Google searches for law school admissions info. This is a post for the soon-to-be 0Ls.

Dear pre-law peoples:

Either you’ve already taken the LSAT or you will be soon (here’s my advice on that), and at this point, you can’t really do much to affect your GPA. It’s true (though unfortunate) that these are the most important parts of your application. But they give the admissions committee no view of you as a person. Even your recommendations will focus more on your academic or professional accomplishments. Few schools give interviews to applicants. Most likely, your personal statement will be the only chance you have to personalize your application and differentiate yourself from all the other students. You need to give the admissions committee a reason to pick you instead of other students with similar or better numbers, and a well-written personal statement is, in most cases, your only real chance to do so.

So, for your browsing pleasure, here is some advice I wish I had read when I was working on my personal statement.

Before starting to write:

Figure out what you want your essay to say about you. Why should this school admit you instead of someone else with the same numbers? Don’t repeat information from the rest of your application. Use this space to tell the reader something new. Remember, you only get a couple pages, so come up with a simple theme and stick to it:

• I have a good reason for applying to law school. No, really, I do. (But check out the comments for some dissenting views and further explanation.)
• I’ve overcome considerable difficulties in my life. Because of this, I have become a strong, complex, interesting person.
• There’s a reason for my low LSAT/GPA numbers. Look, here’s some proof that this was a poor measure of my ability. (This was a bad example. Using this theme takes away your chance to show your personality and it’s very hard (impossible?) to avoid sounding like a whiner. Ignore me here.)
• Even though I’m a Computer Science major, I’m not a completely inept writer. No, really. I write good. Scout’s honor.

I didn’t follow this advice very well. I tried to cover too much, wasn’t able to give any of the the space it deserved, and my essay suffered because of it. Remember to do more than just tell the reader about yourself. Show them.

Figure out the tone of your essay. Write down positive adjectives describing it. Now think of some negative adjectives that could describe your essay if you don’t write it well. This makes it easy to keep your objectives in mind while you’re writing and editing. This isn’t hard. Look:

• “dramatic, heart-rending, emotional”, but not “melodramatic, cheesy, fake”
• “funny, intelligent, witty”, but not “offensive, self-congratulatory, pretentious”

After writing the first draft, look over it quickly, cleaning things up as you go. Then put the essay away for a while–at least a day or two. Don’t work on it. Don’t look at it. Then, come back to the essay. Read it like it’s someone else’s paper, and mark which parts work, which need tweaking, and which don’t work at all. The time away from it will give you some distance and make it easier to see what is good and what really isn’t. Keep your theme and tone in mind. Note which objectives need more support in the essay and cut out parts that don’t fit. Be harsh.

Now, work on these problems. Fix them. Polish the writing, make sure grammar is correct. Check spelling. Double-check spelling. Rework the essay again. Give it to someone (or multiple someones) who can be brutally honest with you. Do they think it fits your objectives? If not, keep reworking it.

Eventually, you’ll either run out of time, give up, or come up with something you’re happy with. Send it out with your applications and never look at it again. This last part is very important. Once you’ve sent in your application, your part in the process is over. Go do something fun. Relax. You deserve it.

Note on Yale’s 250-word essay: Um… Good luck. Mine was awful. I didn’t get in. I really have no tips for you here. Sorry.

The Legal Theory Lexicon is a site I’ve been browsing through for a while now. Every week, Lawrence Solum takes a term from legal theory (the site is associated with the Legal Theory Blog) and summarizes it at an easy-to-understand level. Interesting stuff, and I would recommend it to any other 0Ls out there if they’ve ever wondered about the rule of law, originalism, textualism, or any of the other 40-some entries.

They sure make it easy to get loans when you’re going to law school, don’t they? Fill out a short form with your social security number and driver’s license number, enter the amount of loans you want to take out, and bam! You’ve just doubled your debt load.

Just thinking about all this debt makes me nervous. I guess I’d better start work on a budget.

Item number one in Jeremy’s list of advice for 0Ls says, “Come up with a neat little 90-second answer to the question, ‘Why are you in law school?’ ” That sounds like good advice. (Never mind why people ask the question. Just know they’re going to.)

In reality, I decided to go to law school because it looked interesting. I wanted to do something that would have an impact on people’s lives. Computer science wasn’t doing that. I wasn’t good enough to do the cool stuff; I could see myself getting stuck in a rut, writing code that thousands of programmers have written before for a program that no one cares about. And I didn’t want that. Law, at the very least, provides a service that is needed and an opportunity to change things for the better (for your client, if no one else).

But what the hell kind of an answer is that? “It looked interesting and I want to help people.” I’ma get my ass kicked if I actually say that to someone. So I’ve been kicking around a few other answers to the “Why are you in law school?” question:

• “I want to be able to defend myself in traffic court.”
• “My great-grandfather was a lawyer, my grandfather was a lawyer, and my father robs banks.”
• “I hate having free time.”
• “You mean this isn’t the support group meeting?”
• “You know how they say not to fill out multiple-choice tests ‘ABACADABA’? They’re totally full of shit.”
• “I’m bangin’ the admissions office.”
• “Those statutory rape laws are tricky.”
• “To Kill a Mockingbird. I wanna sue the jackass that wrote that damned book.”
• “You know what they say about lawyers: the only thing bigger than their bills is… well, you see where I’m going with this one. Lawyers have large houses.”
• “Do you have any idea how much ass John Paul Stevens gets?”
• “My brother double-dared me.”
• “I want a pair of these golden handcuffs I keep hearing about. Also, maybe a golden whip and some golden nipple clamps.”
• “I’m sure as hell not going to waste those four years of Latin!”
• “I can’t stand the sight of blood, so Clown College wouldn’t take me.”
• “I want to make the world a better place, and I figure the best way to do that is to defend large corporations for 30 years and then donate a few bucks to the ACLU after I retire.”
• “Whales. Effin’ whales.”

Good luck to everyone taking the LSAT tomorrow. My advice to you at this point is to relax. You won’t do yourself any good by stressing out and/or studying all day. Give your brain a rest. Get a good night’s sleep and eat a good breakfast. Don’t forget to bring a timepiece to the test.

Last year, I spent the evening before the LSAT floating in a hot tub. I highly recommend it.

Thing the first: today I got an email from Columbia asking me to fill out an admissions survey. I’ve looked at it, but I haven’t yet decided if I’m going to do it or not. I guess I feel somewhat obligated to, since they let me in and sent me all that stuff and gave me beer when I visited. It’s not a long survey, but I feel uncomfortable giving them the details of my other financial aid awards. It just seems weird.

Thing the second: a few days ago, I got some information from the University of Virginia’s Student Financial Services. They make tuition management easy and fun. I guess they didn’t get the letter saying I wasn’t going to attend their school. Oops.

Thing the third: I’ll get to the unread books meme tomorrow, hopefully. It’s harder than I expected. Probably because people like Noam Chomsky don’t come up in conversations with my friends. Hmm, that might be a good idea for a post. “Stuff my friends will never talk about.” Note to self.

Okay, so I finished Planet Law School II, and I see why people would dislike it. It is not a happy book, and it’s got a bit of a split personality.

First, PLS II aims to be a law school prep book. Mr. Falcon spends a lot of time recommending other books and materials for individual study, preferably before law school even begins. There is a large amount of recommended material here, but surprisingly little actual advice. What is there makes sense to me, however. For instance, he advises students to spend more time making up and thinking about hypotheticals than on the typical activities of briefing cases and preparing for class. When class participation is not graded and the final exam is an issue-spotter, this makes complete sense. Similarly, recommendations to keep main outlines concise and to make and memorize a one- or two-page summary outline seem reasonable.

But PLS is also–and mostly–a rant. Atticus Falcon is pissed. He’s pissed at law professors for hiding the ball, ignoring their teaching responsibilities, tricking students into thinking the wrong things are important, and not teaching them practical lawyering skills. He’s pissed at law schools for allowing the professors to get away with this sham, for raising tuitions to ridiculous levels, for not producing competent attorneys, and for funneling students into corporate law firms. He’s pissed at the ABA for preventing changes to be made to the system. He’s pissed at individual lawyers for being incompetent and immoral. He’s pissed at judges for not understanding the law, and he’s pissed at law students for not caring enough to demand a better education for their money.

The two faces of the book compliment each other, of course. The ranting shows us why Falcon feels such an intensive study regimen is required: in his mind, the system is set up to keep you in the dark, to trick you, along with 90% of your fellow law students into learning the wrong things and to keep you from becoming a competent lawyer. You don’t have any friends out there, so you have to learn it all on your own. In addition, the prep Falcon recommends (especially for legal writing skills and prep for the bar exam) aims to turn you into a good lawyer, hopefully one aware of the problems with the American legal system and maybe in a position to change things.

This isn’t a feel-good book. It makes you uncomfortable. It makes you feel bad about your choice of a career. Most of us are idealistic now. We don’t want to be told that this experience we’re looking forward to is meant to crush our spirits and turn us into immoral (or at least amoral) people. PLS II doesn’t prepare you for law school. It tells you that you will probably fail, and no one is going to care enough to help you. You start feeling like you need to set up a full-time study schedule right away. I picked up PLS to assuage my anxiety about law school. It certainly did not do that.

PLS tells you, emphatically and repeatedly, to buy a lot of other books ($574.50 worth for the first year, to be exact). It’s a hardcore system. Just look at the 12-month, 8-month, 3-month, and 6-week study schedules in Chapter 16 to see for yourself. As such, it seems more realistic than a rainbow highlighter system or other quick fixes touted by law school prep books. It seems right that law school success is complicated and difficult, not something achieved by a trick or method learned in a single book.

Falcon is overly cynical through most of his book. It seems over-the-top. Not all professors are trying to hinder your learning and turn you into a crappy lawyer. (I just can’t see professors moving from neutral, lazy indifference to active sabotage. Does that make me more or less cynical?) Law schools aren’t raising tuitions to force graduates into firm jobs (and there’s also no mention of loan repayment programs, which help counteract the huge debt loads for public interest peoples). I don’t know. Maybe Falcon is trying to convince us it’s better to be unnecessarily wary than to risk being stabbed in the back. I think the hyperbole detracts from the legitimate criticisms, though.

Aside from the (aforementioned) numerous errors and typos in the book, it’s too long and it lacks a coherent flow. Falcon jumps around from subject to subject, and there is no intelligible scheme to indicate main headings, sub-heading, and the like. In short, PLS needs a good editor. Of course, an editor would probably split the ranting off from the prep advice, if not remove it altogether (the chapter on Critical Race/Gender Theory seems to be an especially good candidate for this). I believe part of PLS’s purpose is to incorporate the two. In the guise of an advice book, PLS is an appeal to tomorrow’s lawyers, professors, and judges to think critically about the system they are part of and to maybe change it for the better. The thought is nice, but the execution isn’t quite there.

All in all, if you’re hardcore about preparing for law school, PLS will be useful for its reviews and recommendations of study material. Otherwise, you’ll get much less out of the book, as the cynicism hits ridiculous levels fairly often and there are better-written criticisms of the legal system out there.

I’m in the process of confirming what everyone told me: Planet Law School II is not really that good. Some parts are completely ridiculous. So I’m gonna mock it a little.

I’ll eventually get a post up about the good advice in the book (there is some) and probably a serious one about my complaints with it.

Begin the mockage:

There sure is a lot of italicization in this book. Lots of scare quotes, too. Seriously, man, we got into law school. We’re not idiots. We “get” your “sarcasm”, “homeslice”.

And there’s a lot of scare talk about how law professors try to make their classes confusing and the law difficult to learn. They don’t want students to become competent attorneys! They tell you to read things you don’t need! Sometimes, they’ll give your final on a completely different subject, just to mess with you! And they kick puppies! And they hope your first-born child turns out to be ugly! And dumb! Like you! In fact, the only way you’ll be able to keep up in law school is if you ignore everything law professors say and instead buy the PLS-recommended primers (pricing information included in later chapters). The only way. You don’t want ugly kids, do you? Do you?

In addition to italicizing every other word of his own writing, the author likes to emphasize things in his block quotes, too. Italics get boring, though, so let’s throw some bold in, too! Sometimes he’ll want to really emphasize something. Screw it, let’s give it the boldtalic treatment!

Some of the quotes have underlining by the original author. I’m hoping to run across a little underboldtaliclining, but I haven’t seen any yet. It’s a long book; I’m optimistic.

Maybe he should stick to quoting large chunks of someone else’s material when it is important as a whole, rather than quoting a block and then emphasizing the important parts.

Also, there have been a ridiculous number of typos and spelling errors in my book. Come on, at least run a spell checker over your writing before you send it to the printer!

At one point, Falcon mocks a law professor for misspelling “impostor” as “imposter”, even though dictionary.com says either one works. Considering the above-mentioned point, you might just wanna let that one go, man.

And I hate his font, especially the italics. The italicized capitals and lowercase letters run at different angles. Seriously, it Looks Like This.

Okay, that’s enough for now.

In case you couldn’t tell, my whiny post of a few days ago has been bothering me. I don’t think it came off right. Let me try to clarify.

I had four great choices for law school. It’s been a long time since I’ve had choices like this, and it felt good. I enjoyed feeling somewhat free for the first time in years (ever?), and so I felt a little disappointed that I had to give up that feeling, even though I am incredibly happy with my choice and haven’t had second thoughts about it at all. (I liked all the schools I visited, but Boston/Cambridge just did something for me that NYC, Ann Arbor, and Charlottesville didn’t do.)

I’m happy and excited and looking forward to starting law school in the fall. I dream of hearts and puppies and rainbows and pretty flowers and ice cream cones with candy eyes and sprinkles for hair. I love one of you romantically, the rest of you platonically, and wish nothing but the best for you and yours.

Best Friends Forever,
XOXOXOXO,
Josh

A few days ago, I proclaimed myself Supreme Dictator of Whinyland (heh, I said “tator”). Today, foxes attempts a coup.

Admittedly, he’s got more to complain about than I do. Waitlist purgatory (Chicago and Columbia) can’t be fun. With that in mind, I’ll retract my whining. I had four amazing choices and I picked the place I think will be the best for me. It’s nice to have that settled and know where I’m going in the fall. I’m excited about new experiences and meeting people and all that. I’m even looking forward to being sick of law school. I’m in an amazing situation here. I’m damned lucky, but sometimes I need reminders. A commenter here saying he could die happy with a 165 on the LSAT. A friend of mine not getting a single acceptance this year.

So no more whining. I’m done. Apologies and such.

So I’m kinda bummed about being done with the law school application process. It’s not that I’m unhappy with my choice, though. It’s more that I liked having the options. I liked feeling that I could go to any of those four schools and have a great experience. It’s the first time I’ve had this many options since, well, ever, I think. I had the whole country open to me (well, really only everything east of Ohio, but it felt like the whole country). Now that my choice has been made and the other options have been closed off,
for the next few months I’m on a set path to Boston, which isn’t quite as exciting.

Again, don’t get me wrong. I am excited about Harvard and Boston, and I’m certainly glad the decision process is over. I just think about the places I could have gone and the people I could have met, and I’m a little sad that I won’t be able to have those experiences too. I’m greedy, I suppose.

That’s right, I can even whine about going to Harvard. Beat that, amateurs.

When I applied to Stanford, their admissions office assured me that they make every effort to get decisions to applicants by the end of April. Sure enough, I received a waitlist letter in the mail today.

Apparently my withdrawal didn’t get to California in time. Now I have to waste another stamp to let them know I didn’t want to be on their waitlist in the first place.

I could have bought a jawbreaker with that 37 cents. Or some Runts. Or one of those sticky hand things.

I like Runts.

Not only am I going to law school; I also have a place to live when I get there! I got my housing assignment in the mail a few days ago. Guess I can throw out the refrigerator box now.

Next year, I will be living in the Gropius dorms, which I applied for based on the advice I got during the admitted students weekend. They’re a little small and they don’t look like much, but they’re cheap and I think they’ll make it easier to get to know people. It’ll certainly be a change from the apartment I had been renting in Cleveland for the last couple years of school. I’ll miss the private kitchen and bathroom, but really, during 1L year, how much time will I have for personal hygiene? And food? Psh. I plan to spend the summer fattening myself up in preparation for first semester. Living off my stores of fat, I won’t have to waste valuable study time by eating. I’ll put the time I save to good use re-reading class material, perfecting my outlines, and disguising myself as a sexy cable repairman to steal copies of exams and plant bugs in professors’ offices.

I got the e-mail earlier today: Harvard got my tuition deposit.

I’m going to law school! Yes!

I take terrible pictures. I tend to smile too widely, which makes me look like a coked-up circus clown or an axe murderer who just bought a new griding stone. I spent a good chunk of time yesterday trying to get a decent picture for Harvard’s student directory thing, but eventually I gave up and picked the least terrible one.

So as of this afternoon, my deposit check will be on its way to Boston, along with two pictures of Smiley the Crackhead. Splendid.

On a related note, how screwed will I be when the USPS loses my deposit?

So I guess I’ve had you all (well, some of you, at least) in suspense about my decision for the last couple days. I apologize. I didn’t really mean to leave you in the dark, but, well, I hadn’t really made the decision.

That’s mostly a lie, of course.

I loved all my school visits, and I feel that I would be happy wherever I went. So I guess I’m stuck choosing a school based on other factors, the ones everyone told me were less important than simply choosing the school you like the best. Comparing these other factors, it looks like Harvard is the best place for me.

Michigan has the summer start program, but I really want to get out of the Midwest for a few years. Columbia is in a nice area of New York, but I still felt slightly on edge when I was there. I haven’t been convinced that NYC wouldn’t be too much for me to handle. Boston, on the other hand, was really nice. For some reason, I felt much more comfortable there.

Harvard also seems to be at an advantage for those of us that don’t know what we want to do. Their loan repayment program is amazing and their graduates seem to have a distinct advantage in academic hiring. These advantages seem to make up for Columbia’s slightly better financial aid package. (Michigan’s award was by far the worst of the three.)

So if you want, pretend I’m going to Harvard. Just know that it’s not official yet.

Oh, and technically, I’m still waiting on Stanford. If, in the next few days, they let me in, give me my financial aid, and offer me money to go visit, I’d like to consider them as well. There’s no way I’m sending in two seat deposits, though, so this really isn’t much of a possibility.

I was expecting a bunch of old brick buildings, but for the most part, HLS doesn’t really look “Ivy” like I expected.

Hastings, the dorm pictured above, comes the closest to what I imagined Harvard would be. Not that that’s a bad thing. The buildings were, in general, nice-looking and clean. And there are underground tunnels connecting all the buildings (except the dorms).

Dude, that’s sweet.

Harkness Commons was apparently renovated last year. The cafeteria is in here, and everything looks quite nice inside now.

And then there’s Langdell Hall, the library. Langdell is freaking crazy.

Five-story columns!

Pound Hall isn’t really anything special, but here’s a picture anyway.

Pound Hall

This is a picture of, I think, one of the Gropius dorms. Truthfully, they were kinda old, run-down looking, and bare inside. And the rooms are tiny. And you share bathrooms and kitchens. And that’s where I’d be living if I went to Harvard. So there’s that.

I’m not a terrible photographer; they were all built with a ten-degree tilt. Really.

It was still early when I left Harvard. By this point, I felt pretty comfortable with the subway system, so I decided to check out the rest of the city. Boston Commons seemed as good a place as any to begin from and easier than most to find my way back to, so I took the subway there and started wandering.

As I walked, I took pictures. Some are blurry, and few of them have a level horizon. I only wish I could use extreme drunkenness as an excuse.

The weather was amazing all weekend.

See?

This one is cockeyed and not aiming at anything and obviously an accident, but I kinda like it. Light & shade, etc.

Here are some more (1, 2, 3) that didn’t come out very well.

Eventually, I started working my way toward the tall buildings in the distance. One really cool thing about Boston is that there old buildings like this one…

…right next to huge skyscrapers like this:

Ooh, reflections…

So I walked around for a couple hours until I got tired and the sun started to go down. Boston seems pretty cool. Of course, the great weather helped a lot. I can’t imagine how many Californians were tricked into going to Harvard this weekend. Coincidentally, the weather turned bad that night and the city was cold and grey by morning, when I flew back to Ohio.

Satan watched as the clouds rolled back in. His side of the deal was complete. Now all that remained was to wait, for though their bodies will only be trapped in Cambridge for three years, their souls would soon be somewhere much, much worse.

Monday morning, I decide to sleep in and skip the 9:15 panel (Financial Aid, Career Resources, or Clinical Programs). Instead, I hit the continental breakfast around 10:00, where I talk to a few other admits and a couple students. Highlight of the morning: when I’m told, basically, that my computer science degree will come in handy for using Microsoft Word to take notes in class. Yeah, and your English Literature Ph.D. will be good ’cause you can read and stuff. And the math majors can add up their financial aid packages, and the religion majors can pray for good grades, and… okay, I’m just being a jerk now.

After breakfast, I wander a little more and then head to Professor Meltzer’s Criminal Law class. It’s a solid class, and Professor Meltzer seems like a good teacher, but I get a little antsy before the 85 minutes are up.

Next is lunch. As I walk in, I notice that Professor Dershowitz’s table is completely full. The schmoozing starts already? People must have ran to get their seats. Note to Harvard: stadium seating next year? I sit down with Alexa Shabecoff, the school’s public interest guru. Seriously, Dean Kagan called her a god during the Q&A on Sunday. For my confused ass, she recommends a one-on-one interview/counseling session to help figure out what I want to do. Ms. Shabecoff is quite knowledgeable and convinces me that Harvard does provide a lot of assistance to the public interest-oriented law students.

Eventually, Dean Kagan gets up and talks about how the student body is what really makes Harvard special. She names off a list of important people that were in her graduating class, mentions (for the billionth time this weekend) that half the Supreme Court went to Harvard, and something something blah something else. I’m really tired of listening to people talk by this point. It’s a good thing this is my last school visit.

The mock class with Professor Heather Gerken is really, really good. I had read the case and thought it was interesting, but somewhat clear-cut. Professor Gerken quickly shows us how the decision isn’t as easy as it seemed and how it could lead to all sorts of unintended and counter-intuitive consequences. Cool stuff. I leave impressed.

The Constitutional/Public Law talk turns out to be a waste of time, I skip the last financial aid panel, and Admit Weekend sputters to an end.

[I was actually planning on writing more tonight, but it just isn’t gonna happen. Sorry. I’ll give you pictures tomorrow. Pinkie swear.]