I'm studying torts in a dim room in a classroom/office building on campus, and I'm most of the way through a bag of mini chocolate chip cookies tied with a black ribbon with polka dots and sealed with this message:
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We know you're studying,
giving it your all.

Here's a sweet break...
hope to see you next fall!

Jekyll & Hyde Law Firm
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I found it in my student box yesterday. Oh, the recruitment! It's wrong. It's so wrong.

And are Crimson College Law students REALLY all that? I gotta wonder.

I read an interesting law review article for my Famous Minority Professor class (I gotta hand it to her, she at least knows my name) that postulated that one of the reasons why so many Crimson law students end up in corporate law is that the firms want us, and we know it. After a first year of anonymity, blind-grading, single-test-focused measurement of performance, large classes, and (some) ridiculous corner-of-the-eye competitiveness (there's guy in my section who won't share an A answer from last year's test with even his closest friends), the ego-stroking and arched-back purring that accompanies corporate recruitment is a balm to the weary second year's soul. They like us! They want us! Finally, some recognition that there are rewards to this alienating, de-personifying, boring-ass, straining-out-of-emotions-and-morals process!

It's an interesting thought. I get concerned, you know, about being drawn into an environment where the intellectual satisfaction justifies a disheartening lack of concern for social issues. (Oh, Famous Minority Professor! You and your critical legal studies ways have gotten to me!) I'm SO not an activist. And I know there are lots of ways to contribute to the betterment of the world, to the lives of other people: donations, for one. And it's easy to be too simplistic about this, because even the classic "villains" of white collar American society, corporations, provide jobs to people, make the wheels of this capitalist world go 'round, etc. There are all those arguments that capitalism and democracy skip alongside each other, hand in hand.

Eh. I don't know about all that stuff. I just hope I do more good than harm in this world.

And now, it is time for me to go back to studying torts. I got a bad feeling about this test. Me and economic and philosophy don't get along too good. And I left too little time to study -- made the classic mistake of spending too much time on the first topic I studied (crim) AND approached this test the un-smart way: instead of looking at old tests first, I stupidly went through all my notes. ACK. Bluagh. Screwed!

(But I'm gonna get a six-figure salary job as long as I don't fail, so what does it matter?)

(Oh god. Shut UP.)