Sanity Hearing

The Blame Game

This morning and last night I listened to about 20 to 30 minutes of excerpts from the congressional deposing of former head of FEMA Michael Brown.  The majority of the congressmen, especially Connecticut Republican Christopher Shays were extremely ruthless, essentially blaming Brown personally for the failure to respond to the crisis that resulted from Katrina.

What I find truly unfortunate is that this whole situation stinks of politics.  Republicans seem to want to tack the failure of FEMA onto Brown personally, while we all know that this simply was not a case of gross personal negligence no matter how derelict in his duties Brown was.  The Bush administration supporters seem to want to distract from a larger administrative failure by compartmentalizing the blame on a single man and hanging him out to dry-- which I frankly find despicable.

At the same time, Democrats seem to be missing the larger point (that Brown is just a patsy) and sinking their teeth into any opportunity to blame someone in the administration for the failure to respond to Katrina.  I feel this is a huge mistake, though I recognize why Democrats may simply want to keep the Katrina failure in the news at any costs, if for no other reason than to keep the disaster in the forefront of the public collective mind.

My personal feeling is that Brown is being used as a scapegoat.  The real failure was not one by Brown, or by George W. Bush, or by the various local officials.  Instead, the failure was one on a widespread level that spans much of the executive branch of the government as well as the local officials who had no contingency plan in place to deal with a disaster they better than anyone else knew was possible.  In the end I hope that Brown does not suffer personally, but rather voters end up taking a hard look at the lack of focus on domestic issues that seems characteristic of the Bush administration in addition to state governments realizing that they are responsible for the safety of their citizens and should have plans in place for times of crisis.

Senioritis

In college and high school people often refer to a phenomenon known as "senioritis".  The phenomenon supposedly is manifested in the behavior by seniors in their particular institution no longer working and generally just acting differently than other students because they know they are months away from graduation.

I do not really think this applies to law school at all.  However, I do sense that as a third year, you find yourself looking around law school with a different perspective on things that are unique to the fact that you are a "3L".  I could make a laundry list, but here are a few that have occurred to me recently as things I can no longer tolerate and ask everyone not to do:

Those rolling briefcases:  Seriously.  You are ridiculous for owning one of these unless you are an older woman with back problems.  No self respecting person uses one of these unless they have an absolutely tremendous amount of stuff to carry around and a complete and utter lack of self respect.  If you have any pride at all you have been carrying around your requisite 50 pounds of casebooks and by third year you will enter the legal world with a back of steel that will allow you to eat marketing professionals for breakfast as they walk slowly in the airport under the weight of their palm pilots and croissants.  Either that or you will develop a dull and uncomfortable constant pain and a slight addiction to the pain reliever Advil.  Either way-- the rolling bag sucks.

Being openly competitive:  First year is over striver.  Nothing is worse than showing up in an elective class to over hear first semester second years who didn't make law review trying to overcompensate by announcing they plan to  give  everyone in class the snow job.  Relax.  First of all, most of us are in these electives because we have had the professors before and they know us and we know them.  The whole reason we are there is because we have likely gotten a B from them   before and we are hoping to get another B because we have to take something else that is hard or not interesting.  No one is even slightly impressed with your bold faced ambition and unbeknown to you there are probably about 4 quiet guys sitting in the back of the class room who the rest of us know are on law review/are brilliant/etc.  so do not bother shooting your mouth off.  Instead, lose the attitude and just enjoy the class.  You're finally in a elective where you can study something interesting without worrying about how other people in class are doing, so do not ruin it for me.

Complain about people in law school:  OK, so I used to be as guilty of this as anyone, but that is sooo 2004 now.  Also, I would like to think that my general complaints were about law school in general and it's competitive nature.  Complaining about how it is like high school or how people gossip is about as bad as being the same way you were in high school or gossiping.  Get used to the fact that people are like this everywhere.  On top of the everything else, realize that you in fact are a law student.  There are many types of people in law school who do in fact suck but open your eyes and recognize there is a diverse crowd of people here (including you) and they do not all suck.

Tell me not to make fun of people on Law Review: Even though Matt, plus a few casual acquaintances are on law review, this does not take away my GOD GIVEN RIGHT to mock them.  I am not bitter that I didn't make it at this point, but keep in mind that making fun of law review is like making fun of rich people- it's perfectly OK.  Part of being rich/being on law review is that you have certain perks in life that everyone else doesn't have, thus you have to bear the barbs of those who don't have these perks.  Hopefully if you are on law review you are smart enough to understand how this isn't such a bad deal.  Fascist.

Give me a hard time because I did something other than study this weekend:  Yes, I realize we probably all have to spend a few weekends studying every once and a while-- and most likely should be doing more than that.  However, do not under any circumstances try to make me feel guilty for doing something fun.  Hopefully you have realized at this point that I handle my own affairs and I do not need you being a study snob to me because you do not have any friends and I decided I needed more than an 8 hour period off from reading.

"I'm Planning a Prison Break..."

Depending on whether I have had the chance to speak to you in the last few weeks, you may or may not be aware of the seeming crisis I encountered in terms of financing the final year of law school.  I won't get into the details, but the bottom line is that something has been figured and with the aid of my part time job, I oughta be able to make it out of here alive and on the original plan of graduating in May.

When I met with the various deans at school I came to find I am one of only a small number of people taking seventeen credits and with the addition of a part time job I find myself pretty busy.  In some ways I am flashing back to first year when I was working full time and going to school, but I honestly think I can say I have matured a certain amount and can handle things a bit better now (plus any law student can tell you the psychological difference between first year and any other year is very significant).

I know I've written about this before on here, but I find myself thinking almost every day now that I have only a little less than a year to go now including the bar exam and I just need to get out.  I have no idea if people feel like this with jobs or not-- I've certainly had jobs I really wanted to leave, but this feels very different.  Even though I can honestlysay I  loved my college, when it was time to graduate I wanted to leave-- this feels very different.  There's no savoring going on here, mostly just a strange concoction of anxiety, dread, and impatience that makes little or no rational sense except to say I fear the bar and I fear getting/doing a real job as a lawyer, but at the same time I am indescribably impatient to get out of law school.  Working as much as someone with a full time job but not getting paid for it isn't terribly rewarding on a day to day basis.  Sure, I'll admit that the ability to not have class till 2 or 3 some days or not at all others sounds nice, but the truth of the matter is that I should be doing work during that time-- and more and more I am realizing I am terminally behind when I don't. 

In some ways it is just another learning experience you don't realize you signed up for when you went to law school-- I know I didn't.  In the past when I was busy there was a sense of overwhelming that I couldn't decipher, but now I feel I at least have a sense of how to strike the balance that is necessary to keep my personal life, maintain good grades, do the part time job, and get all the lose ends that seem to come with law school done.