| I’m not sure why this topic turned sour. My intention in sharing my newfound sense of empowerment was that it would rub off, not rub people the wrong way.
The patronizing tone of the comments (save Leslie’s) reminded me again of what I find to be the most unfortunate aspect of law school: The assumption that we are all the same. That we want to work at big firms, just graduated from Yale, have well educated parents, are Type As, and don’t know ourselves. I saw this class as a break from that – I thought that in “Crazy Man’s Class” I would be taken for what I said and wrote.
But instead, this class has been a bit like a high-school relationship: A lot of games. Only instead of “I really like him but I pretend that I don’t” there is “you say you don’t care about grades but we know you do” and “do you think I’d criticize the hell out of your essay if I didn’t think it was good?” So much game playing; it’s exhausting. When I said that I decided that the Rule Against Perpetuities was not worth my time, I meant it. I wasn’t looking for reassurance, and I certainly did not go add flow charts to my outline. Why did Will, Molissa and Eben’s comments all make this about me? Who cares how I feel about property? Why did Will ponder the probable nature of my reaction to a bad grade, rather than his own?
Is this not the mindset that we have been decrying all semester? For months, we have been criticizing the system that turns us into a herd of sheep, jumping through an insane series of hoops – writing competitions, student organization boards, EIP – because everybody else does. The other day, at the CLS International Advisory Board luncheon, the CLS alumna next to me readily admitted that she never wanted to be a big-firm lawyer but just went with the flow and this is what happened. She made partner, but she is still unhappy. Yet I can’t feel compassion for her. Just like I can’t feel bad about people who stress out about competition in law school. It’s a choice.
We can all choose to march to our own drum. So if you decide not to, stop complaining about other people imposing demands on you. Stop complaining about the competition. It’s your choice to compete. Every day, we wake up and choose to go to school. So I chose to ignore the Rule Against Perpetuities and go for a run in Central Park. I shared it on the wiki because I thought that maybe my “bright idealism” would give someone else a dose of perspective.
We are all individuals, and we should not assume anything about the people we are surrounded by. Molissa may choose a color-coded outline and shoot for an A, but that does not preclude me from choosing to read a novel instead and get a B. If that means I cannot clerk at the Supreme Court, then I don’t want to clerk at the Supreme Court.
We live once (I think) and what we do with that one shot is for us to decide. For each of us, it is what we make it. There is no such thing as “have to” or “should.” You do what you choose to do.
-- AnjaHavedal? - 07 May 2009 |