Archive for the ‘Arrogant Slacker’ Category

When I was an undergrad, I thought of law school as this prestigious place filled with professional, collegial people. It’s a stupid thought obviously, as I should have known law school wasn’t going to turn me (or anyone else) into a nice, pleasant person. Law school, unfortunately, is very similar to college and high school.

I attended a speech last week given by one of the preeminent modern economic thinkers in the world. It was well advertised on campus, there were encouragements to attend given in some classes, etc. Despite these efforts, there were less than a dozen people at the speech. It was fucking embarrassing. The speaker was very obviously offended and irritated at the turn out.

A few days later, I attended an event sponsored by one of the big four law school service providers (Lexis, Kaplan, West, Barbri). It was packed; many people had to stand. The presentation was about something relatively trivial, all of the information was regurgitated directly from the company’s promotional material. Why was it so crowded? Free food.

And I have nothing against free food. I was there because an attractive classmate asked if I was going, so obviously I went with her, but I was happy to get a meal out of the deal. My problem is with my classmates and their disgustingly penchant to whore themselves every time a free slice a pizza is waved before their face – all while missing out on the great lectures given on campus.

None of us are starving. Though the economy sucks, everyone at Harvard who looks for a job is going to find one. Spending an hour listening to an uninteresting lecture for $2.50 worth of food is not good time management. Even as 1Ls or 2Ls, our time is worth more than that.

And look, I see why this happens at lesser schools. First, it’s difficult for lesser schools to attract quality speakers – the Lexis rep might be the highlight speaker of the month. And second, nobody at lesser schools is getting work. I have a 2L friend at UCLA who has great grades (or so he says). He’s spending his summer taking classes on campus so that he might be able to graduate a semester early. A free slice of pizza goes a long way for him.

But for us? We can pay for our own food.

Last night, while reading a random case in a random casebook, anxiety struck. I stood up and walked to a mirror, and examined my pale face. Though I had shaved a few hours before, my facial hair follicles were visible through my transparent skin. More than my like of color, I felt as though I didn’t know the man looking back at me. And so began another 1L freakout:

Law school has ripped out my soul. I can’t pick out a single moment during law school when I was truly happy. I don’t like my classmates, I don’t like the work, I don’t care about any of it. In this moment, I realize that I would be a much better and happier person if I quit. Accept that it isn’t the job for me and find something I actually want to do. I could be a police man, a teacher, a car salesman, a corporate drone – anything would be better than spending a lifetime toiling away at something I hate. And for what? Five-to-ten million extra dollars over my lifetime?

Oh right. I went into this for the money and it’s the money that keeps me here. I will make more money my first year out of law school than I could in the three I miss, combined. Despite hating every part of this miserable, vapid profession, I want the money. And at this point, it’s the only reason I’m here.

The people who bother to make friends on campus are the same people I hate. I can’t sustain any decent hobbies because I spend all of my time either dealing with law school or coping with the depression it causes. I get up and watch TV, I go to school and hate my life, I come home and watch TV. It’s a terrible cycle. Occasionally, just as cobwebs form between my thighs and my shriveling manhood, I go to a bar and pick up a girl I would have spoken to as an undergrad. I thought about hiring a hooker the other day, I even browsed some local ads. I’m in a terrible place.

I know I shouldn’t enter the profession, this obviously isn’t for me, but I’m not a quitter and I want to live the life of a six-figure earner. I’ve lost fifteen pounds since starting HLS. I eat shit fast food all the time and I never workout. I have no motivation, no drive. Law school is crushing me.

And it’s not hard. Anyone could comprehend the material. It’s just that nobody wants to. Lawyers leach from the successful businesses and people of our country. We are the middle-men in a useless system that we created. We get to bill $300 an hour because nobody else wants to deal with the bullshit that lawyers encounter every day. There are no happy lawyers, only oblivious nincompoops. I can’t believe I’ve done this to myself.

But what am I complaining about? Nobody likes their job. At least, if I have to miserable, I’ll make a good amount of money. And besides, I can skip class tomorrow and it won’t even matter. I should call up Christina, she seemed pretty cool. Maybe we can go get some food and drinks. Yeah, I would like that.

In high school and college, everyone dated everyone. The term ’slut’ was reserved for only the most egregious offenders. Primarily, females who openly slept with more than ten people or males who openly slept with more than twenty. At Harvard Law School, it seems the number for females is two.

A female HLS 1L has purportedly slept with two other HLS 1Ls. While I think any person who sleeps with two Harvard Law males is an idiot, I’m extremely uncomfortable with the rampant ’slut’ accusations. We are Harvard Law students after all. Quite possibly the most intelligent group of law students and we resort to treating a woman poorly because she slept with two of us? What the fuck guys?

I understand that, in our culture, women are the guardians of sex. According to my crappy college psych textbook, since men require less mental stimuli to enjoy sex, they generally have a smaller emotional investment the act. Because of this disparity, women are socially expected to sleep with less men, as they have to open themselves up emotionally to partake. One would think, given the act’s standard 1:1 ratio, that the same amount of men have slept with the same amount of women.

And personally, I have mixed feelings about the double standard. At this point in my life, I have an urge to sleep with every moderately attractive woman I meet. I’m probably accurately defined as a slut; I’ve certainly slept with more than two HLS females. That said, I’m never going to care about someone who just up and lets me sleep with them. As such, I hold women to a higher standard than men.

Regardless, every single HLS 1L who has called this classmate a slut is a certifiable idiot. I’ll be the first to admit that lawcest is extremely unprofessional and always a mistake, but so is churning a harmless situation until it becomes something that could damage someone’s career.

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On grades, I did better than I anticipated: two HPs. This does not prove that I’m intelligent, it only proves that law school is a gigantic joke. I gave each class a few days but primarily, I just focused on any material that seemed of particular importance to the professor. I already committed my entire summer to one employer but in retrospect, I probably could have done even better if I waited. I hear only about a quarter of the 1Ls will find reputable firm work this summer so I shouldn’t be complaining.

This is a general rant that has been building internally since I started law school. I’ve alluded to it often and maybe even given it a modicum of attention on the blog. I’m speaking, of course, of the hypocritical behavior possessed by nearly all law professors. With slight exception, I’ve found each of the following rules to be true:

1. You hold us to a strict attendance policy where you punish those of us who show up a moment or two late by Socrating our obviously flustered asses, but nobody screams at you and disparages your intelligence when you show up seven minutes late because you lost track of time sitting in your office fucking around on the internet.

2. You continue speaking long after the class period has ended and you know damn well what time it is. You say something like, “I’ll give you back the time next class” – but you that never happens. And because we are all now late to our next class, we will be Socraticly pillaged by our next professor. See Rule 1.

3. Heaven forbid our cell phone goes off in your class. You think it’s funny to harass the student who forgot to silence their phone, but nobody can discipline you when you rudely take a five minute phone call from your fat-ass wife. I’m sure she fucking loves Gargoyles but perhaps you two can discuss this later? At a time when I’m not paying $500 an hour?

4. You are routinely asked basic questions by us that you fail to answer or comprehend yet you lose your shit when we misinterpret your outrageously complex hypotheticals.

5. You didn’t cover the material in class but it’s still on the exam? Remember that first day in class when you told us that we needed you to decipher the oh so complicated cases? Truth is, the material is not difficult and you are extremely overpaid.

Law professors do not respect their students. They get their jollies off treating us like shit. Yet they demand us to show them a huge amount of admiration. I understand that they are the authority and the teacher, but I feel like I would learn much more if I could have a respectful dialog about the issues with my professors.

I’m not engaged in class, I’m assaulted in class. I don’t care about the law, I care about not looking stupid in class.