|
JoeBrunerSecondEssay 2 - 03 Jul 2017 - Main.JoeBruner
|
|
>
> | Revision 2 is unreadable | |
<
< |
| META TOPICPARENT | name="SecondEssay" |
|---|
It is strongly recommended that you include your outline in the body of your essay by using the outline as section titles. The headings below are there to remind you how section and subsection titles are formatted.
The Art of Remembering You're Not Drowning
-- By JoeBruner - 08 Jun 2017
Finding Safe Harbors
I enjoyed the first semester of law school. Having a single-minded focus on a defined area of knowledge is a modality in which I have always been comfortable. I was not sure what I wanted to do and I was jarred by how little feedback I was receiving - whatever the faults of the Oxford system, intense, weekly, direct feedback in everything is something I have come to love and depend upon. However, two people made the first semester of law school remarkably more comfortable. Alexandra and I had a similar sort of interest in the material. Our outlooks overlapped enough for us to relate to one another while being different enough to provoke real thought , despite our surface-level personalities in law school being quite different. I did not have a faculty rabbi assigned, but I secured one. Vince Blasi and I did not discuss Torts hardly at all when I used more than half of the office hours he allocated for the first semester. We discussed freedom. I wanted to be a lawyer who had some kind of practice involving human freedom, even if I also were to be a law professor.
When I didn’t get Blasi’s First Amendment elective, I looked into my second choice. Eben was the only professor here who had videos online advocating his position and explaining concepts he cared about to an audience of people other than law students and professors. I read the material on his webpage. Something appealed to me. After the first two days of class, I found his definition of lawyering - making change happen in society using words.
This definition reminded me of who I was. I came to law school because I thought practicing law was most enjoyable and best way to earn a living while also making inroads towards being able to influence the world. I love counseling people and researching, developing, and presenting arguments well. I taught the latter for four years. However, in the Indian English sense, I never wanted to practice law only. Sean Farhang’s Civil Procedure taught me the power of courts to change the world is limited, worse in bad times. I do not know if politics would suit me - I would have to change - but my dream of being a public intellectual who can speak to the world and be listened to and change things outside of the legal process is a real one. In a future where the poor of Nairobi and Hyderabad,will be connected to a telecommunications network capable of receiving audio and video from anywhere in the world, the potential to be such a person must be higher than ever before if one can figure out how not to get lost in the noise and reach people.
Sailing When The Wind Is Against You
I like to single-mindedly focus because I am paralyzed when allocating effort between multiple objectives. I have only ever found balance by eschewing balance. No more. I now have two objectives. My first objective is to find a practice I can enjoy and make a good living with. My second objective is to become a public intellectual who can make change happen in society by directing words towards large swathes of people.
Anyone who does not think these objectives are realistic can fuck themselves. When I left North Carolina to go to Oxford, I was told it was unrealistic. I knew it was realistic. People had done it. Louis Brandeis and B.R. Ambedkar both did it. They practiced law and found forms of influencing society widely using words. Having goals other than being an associate, working for the government, or working for a public interest outfit fighting oppression on the retail level is considered an arrogant and subversive act in law school. I suppressed my real goals, but I refuse to give them up. It is pointless to keep suppressing them. I am not going to magically transform into a milquetoast married husband who does antitrust litigation at an M&A firm to send his kids to private school. I am not going to lie to myself and pretend I have metamorphosized into that person successfully like I have seen so many people do. Refusing to be miserable in the first year and refusing to consign yourself to one of the allowed outcomes are subversive acts in law school. I did not adequately succeed in doing the former. I am currently working on the latter.
The Saltwater Won't Kill You
I have begun working at Eben's practice. An old mentor I had once told me I am very strongly, potentially self-destructively, motivated by a deep desire not to disappoint anyone. Until last Friday, I had forgotten how much I could let it get to me. I erred by trying too hard to be someone who quietly gets things done without asking the obvious questions, and as a result, spent a lot of time working hard to create things that will probably not be very useful. It is my desire to become a lawyer who can be cautious, avoiding arrogance and rashness, while also avoiding cowardice and timidity. Becoming a timid lawyer is incompatible with my goals.
I have big dreams, perhaps unreasonable, but for some reason I never find anyone except myself who is afraid of me failing.
"If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea."
I haven't forgotten the sea. I'll learn how to build the ship. It is hard right now, but I am pushing myself to become the kind of lawyer who does those things because they are necessary, not one overwhelmed by their fear of sinking. Besides, the only times I don't enjoy it all are the times I'm busy being afraid. I should make sure to play the right song before going to work tomorrow.
You are entitled to restrict access to your paper if you want to. But we all derive immense benefit from reading one another's work, and I hope you won't feel the need unless the subject matter is personal and its disclosure would be harmful or undesirable.
To restrict access to your paper simply delete the "#" character on the next two lines:
Note: TWiki has strict formatting rules for preference declarations. Make sure you preserve the three spaces, asterisk, and extra space at the beginning of these lines. If you wish to give access to any other users simply add them to the comma separated ALLOWTOPICVIEW list. |
|
|
JoeBrunerSecondEssay 1 - 08 Jun 2017 - Main.JoeBruner
|
|
>
> |
| META TOPICPARENT | name="SecondEssay" |
|---|
It is strongly recommended that you include your outline in the body of your essay by using the outline as section titles. The headings below are there to remind you how section and subsection titles are formatted.
The Art of Remembering You're Not Drowning
-- By JoeBruner - 08 Jun 2017
Finding Safe Harbors
I enjoyed the first semester of law school. Having a single-minded focus on a defined area of knowledge is a modality in which I have always been comfortable. I was not sure what I wanted to do and I was jarred by how little feedback I was receiving - whatever the faults of the Oxford system, intense, weekly, direct feedback in everything is something I have come to love and depend upon. However, two people made the first semester of law school remarkably more comfortable. Alexandra and I had a similar sort of interest in the material. Our outlooks overlapped enough for us to relate to one another while being different enough to provoke real thought , despite our surface-level personalities in law school being quite different. I did not have a faculty rabbi assigned, but I secured one. Vince Blasi and I did not discuss Torts hardly at all when I used more than half of the office hours he allocated for the first semester. We discussed freedom. I wanted to be a lawyer who had some kind of practice involving human freedom, even if I also were to be a law professor.
When I didn’t get Blasi’s First Amendment elective, I looked into my second choice. Eben was the only professor here who had videos online advocating his position and explaining concepts he cared about to an audience of people other than law students and professors. I read the material on his webpage. Something appealed to me. After the first two days of class, I found his definition of lawyering - making change happen in society using words.
This definition reminded me of who I was. I came to law school because I thought practicing law was most enjoyable and best way to earn a living while also making inroads towards being able to influence the world. I love counseling people and researching, developing, and presenting arguments well. I taught the latter for four years. However, in the Indian English sense, I never wanted to practice law only. Sean Farhang’s Civil Procedure taught me the power of courts to change the world is limited, worse in bad times. I do not know if politics would suit me - I would have to change - but my dream of being a public intellectual who can speak to the world and be listened to and change things outside of the legal process is a real one. In a future where the poor of Nairobi and Hyderabad,will be connected to a telecommunications network capable of receiving audio and video from anywhere in the world, the potential to be such a person must be higher than ever before if one can figure out how not to get lost in the noise and reach people.
Sailing When The Wind Is Against You
I like to single-mindedly focus because I am paralyzed when allocating effort between multiple objectives. I have only ever found balance by eschewing balance. No more. I now have two objectives. My first objective is to find a practice I can enjoy and make a good living with. My second objective is to become a public intellectual who can make change happen in society by directing words towards large swathes of people.
Anyone who does not think these objectives are realistic can fuck themselves. When I left North Carolina to go to Oxford, I was told it was unrealistic. I knew it was realistic. People had done it. Louis Brandeis and B.R. Ambedkar both did it. They practiced law and found forms of influencing society widely using words. Having goals other than being an associate, working for the government, or working for a public interest outfit fighting oppression on the retail level is considered an arrogant and subversive act in law school. I suppressed my real goals, but I refuse to give them up. It is pointless to keep suppressing them. I am not going to magically transform into a milquetoast married husband who does antitrust litigation at an M&A firm to send his kids to private school. I am not going to lie to myself and pretend I have metamorphosized into that person successfully like I have seen so many people do. Refusing to be miserable in the first year and refusing to consign yourself to one of the allowed outcomes are subversive acts in law school. I did not adequately succeed in doing the former. I am currently working on the latter.
The Saltwater Won't Kill You
I have begun working at Eben's practice. An old mentor I had once told me I am very strongly, potentially self-destructively, motivated by a deep desire not to disappoint anyone. Until last Friday, I had forgotten how much I could let it get to me. I erred by trying too hard to be someone who quietly gets things done without asking the obvious questions, and as a result, spent a lot of time working hard to create things that will probably not be very useful. It is my desire to become a lawyer who can be cautious, avoiding arrogance and rashness, while also avoiding cowardice and timidity. Becoming a timid lawyer is incompatible with my goals.
I have big dreams, perhaps unreasonable, but for some reason I never find anyone except myself who is afraid of me failing.
"If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea."
I haven't forgotten the sea. I'll learn how to build the ship. It is hard right now, but I am pushing myself to become the kind of lawyer who does those things because they are necessary, not one overwhelmed by their fear of sinking. Besides, the only times I don't enjoy it all are the times I'm busy being afraid. I should make sure to play the right song before going to work tomorrow.
You are entitled to restrict access to your paper if you want to. But we all derive immense benefit from reading one another's work, and I hope you won't feel the need unless the subject matter is personal and its disclosure would be harmful or undesirable.
To restrict access to your paper simply delete the "#" character on the next two lines:
Note: TWiki has strict formatting rules for preference declarations. Make sure you preserve the three spaces, asterisk, and extra space at the beginning of these lines. If you wish to give access to any other users simply add them to the comma separated ALLOWTOPICVIEW list. |
|
|
|
|
This site is powered by the TWiki collaboration platform.
All material on this collaboration platform is the property of the contributing authors.
All material marked as authored by Eben Moglen is available under the license terms CC-BY-SA version 4.
|
|