The Pale King - David Foster Wallace (2011)

Wow.  At first I was guessing this was published in 2014, before I looked into the copyright page.  I thought this was going to be one of the more "up to date" reviews, but I guess I'm four years late.  Law school can do that to you.  Then again, would I have ever even read this book if it weren't for my friend that sent it and suggested we form a "book club" and read it together?

I mean, I own Infinite Jest, but only got through about 400 pages on my first attempt, and maybe 150 on my second.  I will finish that book the next time I try.  I considered picking it up this morning, needing a new book start on, before What I Talk about When I Talk about Running comes in from the CPL.  But I wanted a lighter messenger bag for a change.  This is the 3rd book out of the last 4 topping out over 500 pages.  I picked up Disgrace instead.

Imponderables aside, the thoughtfulness of the gift both impressed and imposed an urgency upon me.   The Pale King will not make the Best Books list of this blog, but it is up near that territory.  I'm not sure it would be there, for me, in its finished form either, just because of the lukewarm feeling I get about Infinite Jest.  It's something I feel I should respect and admire, but just can't really bring myself to enjoy reading.  This is getting to be a loaded topic, because it brings up criticisms of DFW like those of BEE, who said he was a "fraud" or "full of shit" or something, because he read a biography of DFW that discussed how he did not have much love for BEE, but still recognized him as an influence on his own writing.

This would probably be a much better book if DFW were able to complete it, mainly to see what he might do next.  As much as this seems unfinished, at almost 550 pages it seems pretty representative of what the overall quality might have been.  Parts of it seem lop-sided, but on the whole it seems about 80-85% finished to me.  I suppose it all depends on how long DFW intended it to be.

For sure, it is an audacious concept for a book, and a perfect one for him: a paean to boredom.  Make the boredom of the everyday lives of IRS examiners in Peoria, IL in the late 70's and early 80's into fine literature.  I was about to write 1985, but I don't believe this story necessarily takes place in 1985.  It's so impressionistic that the "plot" seems secondary to the background sketches of the other characters.

It's not even clear what the "plot" really consists of, but it may consist of Claude Sylvanshine and David Foster Wallace's orientation to their IRS posts in Peoria.  It's hot and they ride in a bus that is a repossessed and re-purposed ice cream truck.  One person sweats an egregious amount.  There is some idle chatter with two other employees.  They go, and DFW gets mixed up with another David F. Wallace (who is older and much more valuable in terms of skill set) and gets introduced by the "Iranian crisis," who gives him a blow job in a janitor's closet.  He also glimpses the face of Glendenning, who is basically in the highest post there, who looks at him sympathetically or some related way because DFW has a horrible skin condition that causes most people to look away.  And that's pretty much it, though there may be other characters on that bus ride near the beginning of the novel.

DFW is a character in this novel.  Ostensibly, it is a memoir:

"Plus there's the autobiographical fact that, like so many other nerdy, disaffected young people of that time, I dreamed of becoming an 'artist,' i.e., somebody whose adult job was original and creative instead of tedious and dronelike.  My specific dream was of becoming an immortally great fiction writer a la Gaddis or Anderson, Balzac or Perec, &;c.; and many of the notebook entries on which parts of this memoir are based were themselves literarily jazzed up and fractured; it's just the way I saw myself at the time.  In some ways, you could say that my literary ambitions were the chief reason I was on hiatus from college and working at the Midwest REC at all, though most of that whole backstory is tangential and will be addressed only here in the Foreword, and very briefly, to wit:" (73-74)

Here, Wallace describes how he paid off his student loans by writing papers for his classmates, and how his school became aware of it.  This is the first part of the novel that feels truly "great."  It is classic DFW, by which I mean it includes footnotes and his trademark erudition.  So yes, certain sections of The Pale King, I would say, are as good as anything DFW has ever done.

This is a great chapter because Wallace could pretty easily convince a person (that didn't know what year he was really born and couldn't do math) that the story is, in fact, true.  One thing I like about his writing is that it captures the essence of reality.  A reader can identify with it on a different level than anything before.  The details--the minute details and almost paranoid insecurities that we all must worry about from time to time--are so readily evoked that DFW appears God-like.  This one of those books that takes you out of your head a bit, and oddly shapes your life around it.

One part, for me, was extremely touching.  One quick background detail, for exposition: from April 2008 through August 2008, I lived in a small bungalow-like studio in Silver Lake, on a hill just off of Sunset Boulevard.  Across Sunset Blvd. was a foot sign.  My friend (the same one who sent me this book) remarked upon it and I agreed it was strange, funny, cute and iconic in its own way.  It was certainly a landmark.  After I left L.A., he sent me an article once about how this sign had actually influenced several fiction writers, such as Jonathan Lethem and DFW.  I immediately thought, "I am chosen.  I was meant to live there, to know that."

Then came page 163, which will from hereon in be christened the "LSAT test," not unlike the "420 test," except that instead of requiring mention because of some relatively direct reference to pot (and while there is a fair amount of "drug material" in this book, it does not pass that test--though page 420 does detail one of the more sensorily-powerful scenes in the novel), it will need to evoke feelings of my life that might be different if I hadn't taken the LSAT and scored a 163:

"I remember rooming in a high-rise UIC dorm with a very mod, with-it sophomore from Naperville who also wore sideburns and a leather thong and played the guitar.  He saw himself as a nonconformist, and also very unfocused and nihilistic, and deeply into the school's wastoid drug scene, and drove what I have to admit was a very cool-looking 1972 Firebird that it eventually turned out his parents paid the insurance on.  I cannot remember his name, try as I might.  UIC stood for the University of Illinois, Chicago campus, a gigantic urban university.  The dorm we roomed in was right on Roosevelt, and our main windows faced a large downtown podiatric clinic--I can't remember its name, either--which had a huge raised electrified neon sign that rotated on its pole every weekday from 8:00 to 8:00 with the name and mnemonic phone number ending in 3668 on one side and on the other a huge colored outline of a human foot--our best guess was a female foot, from the proportions--and I remember that this roommate and I formulated a kind of ritual in which we'd make sure to try to be at the right spot at our windows at 8:00 each night to watch the foot sign go dark and stop rotating when the clinic closed.  It always went dark at the same time the clinic's windows did and we theorized that everything was on one main breaker.  The sign's rotation didn't stop all at once.  It was more like slowly wound down, with almost a wheel-of-fortune quality about it where it would finally stop.  The ritual was that if the sign stopped with the foot facing away, we would go to the UIC library and study, but if it stopped with the foot or any significant part of it facing our windows, we would take it as a 'sign' (with the incredibly obvious double entendre) and immediately blow off any homework or supposed responsibility we had and go instead to the Hat, which at the time was the currently hip UIC pub and place to hear bands, and would drink beers and play quarters and tell all the other kids whose parents were paying their tuition about the ritual of the rotating foot in a way that we all appeared nihilistically wastoid and hip.  I'm seriously embarrassed to remember things like this...." (163)

This turns out to be a videotaped interview with "Irrelevant" Chris Fogle, and it is one of the standout portions of the text.  His father is employed by the City of Chicago as a "cost Systems supervisor," and dies in a horrific CTA accident.  The description of the ensuing litigation with CTA is very accurately rendered.  He grows up in Libertyville, IL and references a number of other towns on the north shore, including Winnetka (a clothing store--Jack Fagman--which his family had patronized since 1964, and which may or may not have existed).  It is basically about the moment that he discovered his calling in life--to serve the IRS.  It details a chance encounter with an Accounting professor at DePaul, and how it took him off the path of serial college enrollments, drugs, and the "wastoid" lifestyle.  In short, this is classic DFW.

Another notable section near the end focuses on a conversation between Shane Drinion and Meredith Rand, two other IRS employees, at a bar's happy hour on a Friday.  Drinion is cyborg-like in his communications, but Rand is relentlessly confessional.  The subject matter of this scene is also touching and personal to me, as I wrote my second novel in between 2007 and 2008, finishing most of its rough draft shortly before DFW committed suicide.  It is heartening to think that we might have been compelled to write about the same topic for similar reasons:

"'I didn't know why I did it.  I'm still not sure, except he taught me that trying to analyze it or understand all the whys was bullshit--the only important thing was knocking it off, because if I didn't it would land me right back in the psych ward, that the idea I could hide it with bandages or sleeves and keep it a totally private thing that didn't affect anybody else was arrogant bullshit.  And he's right.  No matter where you do it or how carefully you do it, there's always a time when somebody sees something and says something, or when somebody is funking around in the hall and pretending to beg you to cut algebra and go to the park and get stoned and climb on the statue of Lincoln and grabs your arm too hard and some of the cuts open up and you bleed through your long sleeves, even if you've got two shirts on, and somebody sends for the nurse even if you tell them to fuck off and it was an accident and you'll just go home and get it seen to at home.  There always comes a day when somebody sees something in your face that tells them you're lying and then the next thing you know there you are, in a lit room with your arms and legs uncovered, trying to explain yourself to somebody with zero sense of humor, actually a little bit like talking to you right now.' With a quick tight smile." (468-469)

While these chapters--DFW's delayed "foreword," the story of "Irrelevant" Chris Fogle's revelation, and the conversation between Meredith Rand and Shane Drinion--are my personal favorites from this book, I hasten to add the caveat that they also go on too long.  Another similarly great chapter is about a young man (who later rides next to DFW on the way to the Midwest REC) who sweats profusely during periods of anxiety.  It is tremendously entertaining and profound in its sensitivity to human nature, but the situations are truly mined to the depths for details.  This may or may not have been a casualty of the incompleteness of this novel.

This sort of seems to be characteristic of his work in general, though, with another one of his chapters ending in the middle of a sentence.  I am not sure how you could provide appropriate closure for Infinite Jest, though I believe Joyce achieved it with Ulysses, which one really must mention in the same breath.  Because if you subscribe to the belief that Ulysses is the greatest English language novel, then I think you will also enjoy DFW to the max.  I don't always, but I think I can appreciate the generic expectations of a reader that sort of begs for a little bit of "guidance" from the author.  DFW definitely provides that "guidance" at certain points, and it is refreshing.  But other parts of this book are about as difficult as Infinite Jest.

My opinions on this book have been adequately dispatched, I believe, but please feel free to comment below, as this truly is the first post on Flying Houses spurred by participation in a book club.

Negligent Infliction of Emotional Distress #26: Didn't We Deserve a Look at You the Way You Really Are?

For decades, you paraded around like a crazy bitch
Wretchedness, your lucky charm
Hung on a bracelet displayed on your arm

All we saw is not how you are

Caught a glimpse of you
In an unselfconscious smile
Revealing yourself
Didn't we deserve a look at you the way you really are?
-Shellac


Don't judge me for posting Shellac lyrics again.  They were appropriate for #24 and they are appropriate for #26.  There are three interpretations to make of this reference: (1) we deserve a look at the way law schools (and legal jobs) really are; (2) you deserve a look at the way I really am; (3) we deserve a look at the way all the anonymous scam-bloggers really are.
Not for decades, but for nearly a decade, we have all paraded around like crazy bitches, trumpeting inflated employment statistics, selling our desperate souls for a pittance, blacklisting alternative voices.  The time has come to take off the mask.

I have never worn a mask.  But I have taken off my make-up.  Let's see if you can take off yours.

***


BLS was #67 on The List when I accepted.  Now they are #78 (and list their tuition as $1,795 per credit).  This isn't that egregious of a decline, but I've seen a graphic that the median LSAT of incoming students has, in fact, egregiously declined.  I read once that top 50 schools were first tier, schools 50-100 were second tier, and everything after 100 was third tier.  I disagree and think most people know the top 14 schools are first tier, 15-50 are second tier, and everything after 50 is third tier.  But then I have heard the whole tier system has been purged.  Regardless, I like referring to BLS as TT.  So that is the working title for my fourth book.

The book will mostly be about social life, but it is certainly aimed squarely at my debt and the need to relieve myself of it.  So I will not comment on that here, except to say that Pepperdine struck me as being like a high school, when I overheard or observed the students interacting.  I did not want that.  BLS ended up being its own version of high school.  Regardless, while I regret basically everything that happened in my life between the years of 2010 and 2013, I do not regret, for one second, any of my interpersonal relationships from that period.  Ironically I have about two friends in Chicago, so a whole lot of good my BLS friends have done me, updating their status, allowing me to compare myself unfavorably.  I am happy that I will not run into certain classmates in court, but I miss most of them very, very much.  They were all intelligent, open-minded, curious, and inspiring.  I could tell them everything and never feel ashamed.  I feel the need to write TT to honor my love for them and the memories we shared, before any more of us are lost in unfortunate accidents.

Nothing more about BLS, except that their employment statistics are grossly inflated.  I believe they have changed their disclosure: their website now links to an ABA-stamped employment summary.  However, only 44 out of 478 defined themselves as unemployed.  So when they said 91% employment before, it wasn't untrue.  But it was probably highly misleading.  Supposedly, there were only 33 law school funded positions.  All I know is, I filled out that employment survey, and my CTA post-graduate fellowship counted as "employed."  But if you knew what my life was like from November 2013 through May of 2014, you would not feel "employed." (I do have to say though, that these numbers do not look that bad, and that maybe I am unnaturally disappointed because BLS has zero pull in Chicago.)

***

I never had BLS on my radar until they solicited an application from me with the fee-waived.  This was warning sign #1.  Plenty of schools do this, but it is nefarious.  
Oh, you haven't heard of our school?  It's free to apply!  What is it going to hurt?
Inevitably, these schools end up offering tempting scholarship packages.  

I picked BLS over Loyola Law School.  I've written about this before, and I'll be writing about it again.  Neither BLS or LLS would have been a smart decision.  LLS gave me slightly more money, subject to finishing in the top 33% of the 1L class.  BLS gave maybe $6,000 less, but only subject to a top 40% finish.  BLS also coordinated student housing, and this ultimately won the day for them.  LLS has a beautiful campus with beautiful architecture, though it is not in the best neighborhood.  BLS must have one of the ugliest law school buildings in the country, but it is in the fanciest neighborhood in the hippest borough.  I couldn't pay too much attention to the quality of the faculty, but for what it's worth BLS did have a more impressive "sample class" than Pepperdine, DePaul or LLS (though LLS was definitely #2).  If it's not already clear to you, I regret going to BLS.  Given that I live in Chicago, I wish I had gone to DePaul or Loyola University.  I also wish I had gone to LLS, but there it was more apparent to me that I was making a huge financial gamble - I'd have enough to afford first and last month's rent, and a security deposit, but not 12 months of rent, and I was not going to have a job.  A loan, untied to the school's bursar, frightened me.  Of course in retrospect, I would much rather have given government-borrowed money to a landlord than an institution [at least partly] responsible for my demise.

I think that's all we need to say about that.

***

You deserve to know that I work for a wage--not a salary--but if you attend work perfectly, logging the maximum 37.5 hours per week, staying late Tuesday through Friday to make up for the 7.5 hours you can't work on the dozen or so holidays throughout the year, perhaps using your accrued vacation days (1 per month), billing 52 weeks, it would work out to $26,949.  

I'm wary about spilling too many details about my job, except to say I am a crime-fighter and building-doctor.  I do not practice criminal law, but I am put into a position where I have to request that criminal offenders be banned from their place of abode.  It can be pretty unsavory at times, and I'm not really sure it's providing any transferable experience.  What I do is very niche, and the only option might be to "go to the dark side"--i.e. the solo practitioners or bank-funded midsize firms we meet in court and AH.  I could say a lot more about this, but again, do not want to call undue attention to what I do.  Even with all of my frustrations about my job, I mentioned in the previous post that this year felt better than last probably because of my professional situation.  You probably deserve to know how that has changed, too.  But before I get there, let me just say, while I may hate a lot of things about my job, I do not hate my job.  It's a tremendously depressing experience, but it has lent me a certain stability.

I nearly had a job, and I'm not sure I've ever written about this here.  But, to cut to the chase, I pretty much decided to move back to Chicago after spending my 2L summer here in 2012.  Still, I interned at Legal Aid when I got back to Brooklyn that fall, and apparently got my "guaranteed" interview.  Just about two years ago, I went up to the Bronx and delivered a summation in defense of a woman who had been caught shoplifting from a Target, to two attorneys.  It went well, I suppose, because I received an invitation to interview a second time, in lower Manhattan on Water St., across the street from a building I lived in for the first half of the summer, 11 years earlier.  Interviews never go well for me, so this was something.  

The second interview didn't allow me to show off the more dramatic side of myself, and I guess I came across as a dullard.  No offer came.  At that point, I decided to withdraw from the NY Bar Exam.  I was fully refunded, which I will never forget.  Illinois, however, charged me $1,550 to register ($1,450 for "really late" registration, and $100 for the computer fee) at that late date, and I guess that's when I really started feeling the sting for how outrageously Illinois will gouge you on everything, particularly if it has to do with practicing law.  Just curious, but how much is it to renew your bar license in NY?  $395?  Higher?  And now there is all sorts of talk about slapping a sales tax onto legal services, as if the poor people and generally poor attorneys (unless of course there is no exemption for large firms, which would be surprising) that will bear the brunt of this revenue boosting measure can afford that little extra ding.

I put out all the feelers I could when I moved back into my parents' house in August of 2013.  I would only live there a couple months before it would be foreclosed upon and short-sold. Miraculously, the moment I found an apartment, I got offered a short term document review job.  It only lasted six days, but I made over $1000 on it after taxes, and that would cover the rent for the next month and most living expenses.  I would also be starting my post-graduate fellowship at CTA, which would pay $1000 per month for 20 hours per week.  

I do not want to say too much about CTA except that it was a mistake to do the fellowship there.  About a year ago, I interviewed with the Cook County Public Defender.  If I had tried to do my fellowship there, I would still have been an "employee" at the time of that interview, and might have been a more impressive candidate.  I wrote about this when I reviewed Defending the Damned (which technically was before last year's 6th anniversary post, but should now be mentioned as a notable read), but here I wanted to make that clear.  I wanted to do my post-graduate fellowship with an organization that could build on my past experience.  I had worked for New York City Transit Authority as my first internship after my 1L year.  It had been a very positive experience for me, and at one point I was falsely led into the anticipation of a job after law school with them.  They gave me free rides.  I never used them, because the building was three blocks from my apartment, but I could go anywhere that summer for free.  I also got paid $5,000 for three months.  

Compare that to $4,500 for 5 months at CTA.   And despite the fact that law school interns were not only paid directly by CTA, but also given the benefit of free rides, I was not given any such special treatment as a "volunteer attorney."  I asked my fellowship coordinator if she could argue my case to the General Counsel, in light of this disparate treatment.  She said she did, but the decision remained the same.  I still wonder how hard she had advocated for me.  Might it have been better just to knock on the GC's door myself?  

So I was working for a pittance with an end date in sight.  An Assistant FOIA Officer position became available, and I applied immediately and got the interview.  It would have paid $50,000.  I interviewed over the phone on a conference call with a woman who worked on the same floor as me.  Clearly I could have come down in person, but they needed to keep it depersonalized, I guess not to show any favored treatment.  I didn't get it.  Another girl, who had a very similar resume to mine, but had done FOIA work for the Law Dept., got it.  I applied later to be a representative for the labor division, working with grievances from the union, but did not get an interview.  Nor did I get one for the associate attorney position in the torts division.

I started doing part-time work.  One day I worked for a solo attorney in Schaumburg.  She paid me $20 per hour to do minor paralegal type work for 6 hours.  I was in at 9, out by 3, and had a check for $120.  Moreover, she had been cool.  She had given all kinds of insight into what it was like to be a solo attorney, and how some months were good and others were not.  I remember one case she was trying to get a settlement from an insurance company for a client who had broken their tooth on a rock in a yogurt cup.  It was freezing cold that day but I remember driving back the long way from Schaumburg, east through Oak Park into the city, down North Ave, going to the Aldi on Milwaukee Ave. and then to the Citibank there to deposit the check, then going home and having a drink and being very happy.

I also covered cases for a foreclosure defense firm.  They paid $20 per hour too, I think.  Maybe $25.  I had to drive out to Kane County a couple times for that, covered another couple cases at the Daley Center.  I stopped doing it after too long, because my current position prohibits outside representation.  And also ironically because it was only the cases in Kane County that were worth it, since you could bill for commuting time and get $0.50 per mile in gas reimbursement.  100 miles round trip, plus a 15 minute appearance signing, might net $150 or $175.

I also got a job at a small firm, which gave me a place to go when my fellowship ended in late April or early May.  They paid $15 per hour.  I worked there for about a month, and the work environment was less than ideal.  All of my co-workers were very nice, but it was a very disorganized place.  I took a doc review project (I had worked another one, also, from February through April, taking a leave of absence from CTA so I could make the hours) and made decent money, maybe about $6,000 in six weeks.  But it was during that doc review job that I got offered a start date at my current job.  I took it, and was sad I was taking an almost 50% cut from my doc review wage.  But, this job offered health insurance, and paid nominally less than $15 per hour, so I talked with the partner at the small firm, and he agreed it seemed like the best move for me.  I have since seen him in court and prosecuted a case against him.  He's one of my very few "connections" to the legal community of this city, and I will always be grateful that he kept me from fearing homelessness.

There's not much else to say except that I am happy to live in and work for this city.  It's a really terrible place, but it's my really terrible place, and no matter how fucking frustrating it gets, I am going to try to make things better.

My loans are up around $98,000 right now and I have paid $0 back.  I will be renewing PAYE next week with an AGI around $25,500.  I think some people pay about $30 per month on our salary, and it just sucks because you are not even covering the interest at that level.  That's only $360 a year, so it's amazing.  But my interest is going to climb at like $7,000 per year.  So it's just going to escalate, and the only way out is through forgiveness.  If I stay on track, and if Congress doesn't try to fuck even further with our economic "promised-land," I will be debt-free in about 9 years.  I will consider these 9 years to be better than those spent in a prison, but I am not going to stay in my position forever.

Some of my colleagues have stayed more than two years without having a conversation about their future there.  I will go ballistic if I hit that point and the powers that be still feel it's reasonable to ask me to live on this salary.

I have heard one of my colleagues turn down a job offer of $40,000 per year (it may have even been $45,000 per year), because it would change the loan treatment.  I agree that the value of public service, over a long term of loan repayment, is high, but it's difficult to measure.  You have an extra 10 years of payment on the expanded form of PAYE now, and the dreaded "tax bomb."  Still, I would probably go for $40,000.  I can understand not wanting to leave, though, because our positions are relatively more stable and less stressful than those of young associates at small firms.  An extra $1,000 per month in pay would be nice, though.

And I think that's all we need to say about that.

***

We deserve a look at the anonymous bloggers and commentators who have told me to swallow a shotgun, who have called me ugly, who have kicked me while I was down.  I have zero problem with them calling out law school as a ruinous life choice, but when someone personally attacks you for making such a stupid fucking awful decision, it hurts,

In case it is not already crystal-clear, I hereby disavow any pollyannish statements previously made about BLS or other law schools generally.  They are overpriced, and their outcomes are not good.

In the event that you hope to have a claim of negligent infliction of emotional distress against the institution that harmed you, you must prove that you have done everything in your power to achieve a good result.

Did you pass, or even take, the bar exam?
How high was your GPA and class rank?
Did you work for a journal, or moot court?
Did you do internships or externships or clinics (or whatever you want to call them) every semester?

Other questions might be pertinent (i.e. foreign language fluency, previous law firm experience), but there is no talisman for success.  I have known people that were spectacular students at BLS and could not get a job, and people who were mediocre students and still managed to get a decent public interest job.  While I understand that the risk/reward is rarely justifiable, it is not fair to lump everyone else together with you when you just suck, or give up without really trying.

I sucked.  I had a 3.28 and finished in the bottom half (top 65%), no journals, no moot court.  I did do do internships every semester, but after 1L year I had a 3.14, and my Property professor [strongly] suggested that I take a year off and work on my writing, since I said that was what I really wanted to do.  My Constitutional Law professor, by contrast, said he didn't mean to be pollyannish, but he had a student that didn't do so well her first year, and came back and finished near the top of her class (though nothing about her getting a great job).  I remember another reception, early in my 3L year, when our Dean highlighted one particular student from the class of 2012 that finished at the very top--maybe 2nd or 3rd--but still had no job.  It was an alumni reception and he exhorted everyone there to give the student a job, plugging some cute acronym initiative.

So maybe my fate isn't all that unusual.

In summation, while the lawsuit naming BLS claiming negligent misrepresentation was dismissed, and while my claim of negligent infliction of emotional distress may not prevail, this is not a clear case of contributory negligence or culpable conduct.  Numerous bad actors have unwittingly collaborated on my demise.  Blame BLS.  Blame the U.S. government.  Blame my friend who went to Cardozo and planted the seed.  Blame my dad for wanting to tell people his son was an attorney.  Blame Bush and/or Obama and/or greedy Wall St. bankers for the recession.  Blame the ABA for failure to warn.  Blame baby boomers for saying that all you need to do is get your foot in the door.  Blame as many parties as you can name.  But do not blame yourself.

Unless, of course, you suck.

Negligent Infliction of Emotional Distress: The Curve

My second column for BLS Advocate has not yet been posted, so instead I offer you this preview, because I am too anxious to post. It still breaks the limit by about 100 words, but I think it's closer to appropriate. Be sure to check out the next column, which will be on the topic of 1Ls considering dropping out.

As I learned from my column last week, I am limited to 750 words on BLS Advocate so the previously-cited language about the elements of Intentional/Negligent Infliction of Emotional Distress, which I intended to include in every column, will be referred to via re-direction to that article. It is perhaps worth noting that I did not receive “a lot of hate mail” but I did receive a note of concern for my well-being, and a somewhat transcendent comment on my blog. “Thomas Cooley” obviously missed my point. This is not a column about academic success – or rather, that was not a column about academic success. This one is.

For people like “Cooley” that think top 55% at BLS is mediocre, I wish I could challenge them to come into one of our classes and see what they are up against. BLS, like so many schools beneath the top 50 before them, secures the seats in their class by offering merit-based scholarships. That many of these students (myself being one) may lose a significant amount of money by failing to finish in the top 40% is of vague concern to the prospective student. After all, I had the option of going to Loyola Law School, with a scholarship that was some $12,000 higher, but with the requirement of staying in the top 33%. It was a very tough choice between the two—and to this day I’m not sure I made the right one, because who knows, circumstances being different in L.A., I might have done very well during my first year—but ultimately LLS and BLS are practically identical twins on opposite coasts. But this isn’t an article comparing the two – it’s about The Curve.

It is worth noting, however, that Loyola Law School raised all of its students’ GPAs by .3333 starting in the Fall semester of 2010. BLS then did this after Fall semester grades come out for 2010. Loyola said it was done as an indication that their students are so strong and that they deserve a better reflection of that in their GPA. BLS said something to similar effect – but really, this has no effect.

The result of raising the GPA comes with the equal result of raising the cut-off point for scholarships. Recently the 2L class ranks were re-calculated because the transfers had not been included. I moved up 1%. It’s only 1%, but now I’m only 4% away from moving into the next level, which will recover 80% of my scholarship. I need to do the math for that today, to determine what grades I need to get.

I go back to my challenge to “Cooley” and want to mention my friend that transferred to Harvard Law School. First, she was not the only one to transfer to Harvard, nor was she the only one to transfer into a truly prestigious school. Second, at her going away party, I told her, “I am going to friend you on Facebook and I am going to ask you to compare Harvard and BLS after you get your grades. How much harder was Harvard than BLS?”

Her response? None. (Reliability will be the topic of column #4, but if she eventually responds, I will be sure to post a comment to summarize her experience.)

To be sure, The Curve is an instrument by which the institution of law school negligently inflicts emotional distress upon the student. Some schools, such as UC-Berkeley Boalt Hall, only use a system of passes and high passes. I believe there is another law school that has almost done away with grades entirely. A new school like UC-Irvine keeps its class super-small and its student-faculty ratio super-low (the class of 2013 has 83 students; the school employs 35 faculty members). UC-Irvine is the only law school that never sent me a rejection or acceptance letter. I am sure it would have been a rejection. As far as I can tell, they also use The Curve, and their median requirement for each 1st year class is a B+. BLS does not state this outright, but is probably close to the same.

In summary, The Curve is an outdated model that keeps the top 10% going into places like Skadden. The top 10% may be qualified to work at Skadden, but so may someone in the top 65%. The latter person may be the better investment, for it is not always true that the best students make the best attorneys (in the same way that the LSAT is not the most reliable indicator of first year success). Maybe Skadden et. al. should think about offering “bargain basement” salaries of $90,000 a year to non-OCI applicants. I’d take it.

Christopher J. Knorps is a 2L at Brooklyn Law School. He has written two novels, a book of short stories, and a memoir of his 10-month-stint in L.A. None of his creative writings have ever been published in print form. He enjoys studying bankruptcy law. He ranks in the upper 54% of his class. You may find his blog by visiting flyinghouses.blogspot.com. It consists primarily of book reviews, a dozen or so film and music reviews, a few pieces of sports journalism, and a light smattering of “special comments” about the study of law in 2010-2012.

Special Comment - On Using Movie Quotations for Commemoratory Purposes; on “ATL,” on Cyber-bullies, on Entering a “TTT” at a Time of Economic Turmoil

It has been a long time but here is the first new post on Flying Houses since August. This probably isn’t the best time to be doing it, either, as I should be taking down the notes I just wrote on Compulsory Joinder and Intervention, and transcribing them into my computer. But we can only be such machines when it comes to legal work as may be reasonably expected.
This is a not a personal check-up 9/10 of the way through the semester. This is a response to a (now not so recent) post on a popular website for the legal profession. Here is a link to that post: http://abovethelaw.com/2010/11/brooklyn-law-2010-class-gift-is-more-like-a-terrible-high-school-yearbook-quote/.

For those uninitiated, Above the Law is an online legal tabloid that is basically the TMZ or Perez Hilton of the legal profession. It is something to read on a lunch break, something to laugh at, nothing to be taken seriously. However, this post in particular affected me in such a personal way that I seriously wanted to go out and kill myself, and I would entertain a claim against them for negligent infliction of emotional distress, but I know that would probably not be a very good claim (perhaps it would be protected by the first amendment? perhaps I could not prove any direct physical injury?). Why do I have such a “thin skull” you might ask?

The post itself is nothing particularly untoward. It merely claims that the Class of 2010 made a mistake in the quote they decided to put on a plaque in the library. The quote is from A League of Their Own, a film about women in the 1940’s who decided to form a baseball league to counteract the suspension of Major League Baseball and its many players signing up for service in World War II. There are many quotable moments in the film, but the one the Class of 2010 chose happened to be this: “It’s supposed to be hard. If it wasn’t hard, everyone would do it…The hard is what makes it great.” Automatically, this is turned into a sexual reference, which doesn’t really make sense given the second sentence, but this is immaterial. Should quotes from movies be plastered on the walls of law schools? Don’t we have “higher values” than those of popular culture? (Please don't let us start believing that there are better quotes to be found in film than literature--even judicial opinions would be better fodder). The class has asserted that it strove to begin a tradition, whereby students would touch the plaque as they pass under it while coming down from the second floor of the library. I have not seen anyone do this and I am afraid that if someone was seen doing this, they would be laughed at.

However, there were many comments to this post that were certainly untoward, and a source of my emotional distress (one other article on ATL, written by a psychiatrist who had also been through law school, bemoaned the opportunities of those holding J.D.’s but seeking employment apart from the legal field, which also contributed to said distress). The very first one reads “Crooklyn = TTTT.” Now I am not sure what the fourth T signifies (TTT signifies “third-tier toilet,” a derogatory term for a school not ranked in the top 50 in the nation), but the statement itself, posted by someone known as nothing more than “$$$,” certainly sends a harmful message. The next comment, posted by “Wow,” points the reader to Brooklyn’s budget planner page on its website. It reads, “Lulz at the price tag for this dump!!” Is “Lulz” some variant of LOL or is it something more nefarious? BLS is expensive, but so are most law schools. Scholarships are the only way a student can justify the enormous price tag after already having been through so much previous education. The next comment is from Kenny Powers who is a character on the HBO series Eastbound and Down and he offers the prescient wisdom (for those of us walking into final exams as an already uphill struggle), “If at first you don’t succeed then maybe you just suck.” A couple others joke about how much Kenny Powers sucks, then someone makes fun of the “living with parents” column of the budget (taking housing out of the equation) because that is what students will be doing after graduation. From here on in, the comments become more sporadic and less focused. Apparently, “Watch your head,” was another option for the quotation. This would have been sort of eloquent given the state of legal hiring patterns in 2010. Someone brings up a better quote from the same movie: “You know, if I had your job, I’d kill myself. Wait here, I’ll see if I can dig up a pistol.” This would also have been better, but dark, very dark, and law schools should not be propagating dark thoughts, though they inevitably must.

Now comes the painful part—an alum from BLS posts and sticks up for the school, and legal education in general, saying that it will pay off over time, and not amortize or depreciate like a car. They then get taken to task for failing to discern that student loans accrue interest and therefore may be considered technical amortization/depreciation. Another person says the plaque is fitting for BLS students because women baseball players ended up unemployed and broke. Other potential quotes are considered from the movie: “There’s no crying in law school” and “You’re gonna lose. You’re gonna lose.” There is then a discussion of a possible typo on the plaque in the use of the ellipsis. Blue-booking rules are debated. Someone else points out that all of the comments are cynical, and that everyone posting is an a-hole. A very dry reply read “Law students generally are not cynical. You have to graduate and realize the harsh realities of life and being unemployed/underemployed with massive student loan debt before the cynacism (sic) kicks in.” Another person named “<2012>” simply writes, “You are DOOMED.” Another person suggests the school hang a plaque saying, “See 11 U.S.C.A. 523(a)(8).” This was fairly clever as it forced me to use WestLaw to look up what it meant. Here is a quote that seemed particularly appropriate: “Let me sum up what I think of you when I hear you go to Brooklyn Law (particularly class of 2012 or 2013): (1) You weren’t smart enough to get into a better school, and (2) you’re even stupider than I would have thought otherwise because you’re paying an exorbitant amount of tuition. WTF are these people thinking, particularly those who enrolled this year in the middle of a recession?”

The other contenders for the quotation for the plaque are then listed near the end of the thread. (none of which I like very much, except for this one: "The bravest sight in the world is to see a great man struggling against adversity." -Seneca) And there we are. I luckily did not post anything myself on this thread, because then I would know the pain of a direct attack. I have had enough experiences with that on the Speakeasy at PW.org to know better.

I don’t know if a legal education is worth it or not if you go to a TTT school and this post has given me certain doubts. Of course, one can always tell themselves to buck up and give it their best effort regardless, but can you really forget you’ve seen something awful? Or does it pay to not have an “Ostrich problem?” If I am substantially certain that my education is a waste of time, but I insist on pretending that everything is going alright, aren’t I just as guilty of wasting an education? This is like whether or not I wanted to check my Torts midterm grade last week. I could have not looked, and felt better, but because I did look, I know I am in grave danger, and some drastic measures must be implemented if I am to recover and not waste this opportunity I’ve spent years putting together.

Or are cyber-bullies just out to get everyone regardless, to hide behind their computers and make acid-tongue comments in an effort to convince strangers that they are witty or intelligent, when they really just come off as mean. Or is it just a way to blow off steam? I do know one thing. I don’t feel very good about where I am or what I am doing. It’s not the website that made me feel this way, but it certainly didn’t help matters. Assumption of Risk would be their defense in an action. Law students attending less prestigious schools or with poor academic performances should enter ATL at their own risk. If you want to ride “the Flopper,” you should know that you may fall down. You may not sue ATL for NIED because it is on the internet, and the internet should not be able to hurt you physically. Also, cyber-bullies are not within the exclusive control of ATL. They are not employees—they are followers, they are fans.

I have to bring in the personal element and decide whether or not BLS is a good choice or not. There are a few frustrating elements about this school.

#1: The Bookstore. Admittedly a minor issue, but 1Ls had a rude awakening this year when they found that few of the books they ordered would be available from the bookstore until the second or third week of class, forcing us to find the people with the books, xerox assignments, and generally feel that we did not have the tools to properly comprehend the material. However, the bookstore apologized and offered to pay shipping costs incurred from books bought from outside sources.

#2: The Halls, The Claustrophobia: I always preface this complaint with the statement that, for me, the choice came down to Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, or BLS. I do not think Loyola has the same problem as BLS as their campus has nearly a dozen buildings or so and everything is very spread out and aesthetically pleasing. BLS, by contrast, slams more than 1,200 students together in a giant rectangular building, and puts most of the major classes on floors 4, 5, and 6, resulting in bottlenecks at elevators and sometimes stairwells and hallways—not to mention a generally cramped atmosphere inside the actual classrooms. This underscores the fact that we are all competing for a very limited number of positions and that all of this hard work and discipline and struggle may end up as the ultimate nightmare yet.

#3: The Competition. Brooklyn may be ranked #67 in the nation or whatever, and #4 or #5 in New York City in general, but that does not mean that its students are less intelligent. Oh sure, we scored lower on the LSATs, that is probably a given—but I’m sure there’s some of us that didn’t score that low, and are receiving a full ride. I’m guessing the majority of my classmates, however, are in the same position as me, which provides reasonable tuition assistance, with the stipulation that you must finish in the top 40% of your class (roughly a B to B+ overall GPA) to reclaim it in subsequent years. When I put in my seat deposit and signed my promissory note, I thought I’d coast through law school, I thought I’d be a star, I thought I’d get straight A’s and get offered a big law firm job at OCI and pay off my debt in no time and pay $3000 a month in rent, or even buy my own place. A few months later, and reality has given me a swift kick in the rear again. I will say this about my classmates—sometimes, it can be awkward, if you know someone by face, and you maybe even know their name, but you have not introduced yourselves, for whatever awkward reasons you have. And it may be the case at every law school, but my classmates constitute the smartest, most hardworking group of people I have ever been surrounded by, and I thought I could throw down, I thought I could keep up with anyone, but they are a tough group to be scaled against on a curve.

But maybe we aren’t that intelligent, as the one comment that seems particularly more harsh than the others states. Maybe we have truly nebulous reasons for being here in the first place. People ask me what kind of law I want to practice, or what kind of lawyer I want to be, and I have no idea. I think I am going to start saying “any area that will hire me” or “the kind that has a job.” I thought that going to law school would open up more career options, but it has really just opened up one new area—and one that is extremely competitive. I did not fully realize the gravity of this situation until a couple months into the semester, when we started discussing internship applications.

I will apply for internships starting now. My grades will be out January 15th. There is still hope that I could ace all of my exams, have an awesome GPA, get an awesome internship, get on the awesome law journal, keep my awesome scholarship (maybe even get a better one), and live an awesome life in Brooklyn Heights. [Which reminds me that I never pointed out the positive qualities of BLS. I do think it is the best area to go to law school in New York City because of its proximity to the courts in Brooklyn. I do think that the receptions, events, and other school-sponsored activities it hosts are some of the best I have ever attended (but this also has a negative effect—I have personally spread myself thin between the activities, the clubs, the job search, reading assignments, outlining, and all of the other facets that make up a law student’s life). I do think Brooklyn Heights is a great area (though not as “exciting” or “fun” as the Village may be for NYU students).] But there is also the reality that this is a pipe dream, and a dream that will end when my exams are finished and I see my grades, which, if my first midterm is any indication, will prove horribly depressing and provide material for the most difficult period of my life yet. For now, I can grind, and I can hope that I can change my approach, and I can pray that a miracle will occur, and all of my classmates will suddenly become extremely stupid the morning of the exam, and we will all do very poorly, and it will be okay. But experience knows it is not so.

So I will press on, and I will not think about how tenuous this life may be for me, and I will focus, and maybe it will all work out yet. I don’t even want to express a doubt on the matter (!) because it seems like throwing in the towel, or setting yourself up for disappointment. Let me say this: as frustrating as the whole law school thing may be, if you can’t get into a top 14 (or even top 50) school with any kind of funding, it is no more frustrating than any other technical training for any other job. The main difference comes with the price tag, and it’s the element that can cause serious breakdowns. When cyber-bullies know what is at stake, they should think before they post something harmful or injurious. I am sure there have been suicides because someone has posted something mean about someone on Facebook, and maybe this will constitute a tort action. But when the postings are anonymous, other questions of privacy may be raised. I am going to end this long and rambling post by saying that I am very proud that Flying Houses has always had positive, happy comments. If this “special comment” receives any comments, I hope they will engender a real and beneficial discussion, and not a laundry-list of urban dictionary-isms meant to make others “in the know” laugh in appreciation.

One L - Scott Turow

I've been thinking about law school for about three years now. This is finally the time that I'll apply to it. Each year has brought increasing seriousness to the pursuit. It hit its full realization when I applied for a $7.75/hour job at Barnes & Noble and saw an interesting book in the legal section called Lawyer Boy. I read some of that on Google Books and it is about going to DePaul in the early to mid 2000's. I would say it is pretty up-to-date and accurate, and probably a lot more applicable to the majority of applicants than One L. That said, anyone who is considering law school should read One L because apparently all of the pain the book describes is going to happen no matter where you end up.

One L takes place at Harvard Law School (HLS) in 1975 and 1976. It is a memoir by Scott Turow, who now lives in Wilmette, I believe, and works for a loop law firm. He is just about the greatest role model someone from the North Shore who wanted to be a writer and decided that it was too hard without a good back-up option so he decided to be a lawyer instead could have. He writes novels and he practices law, and he seems pretty successful at what he does. If I end up like him in thirty five years, I won't be upset with my accomplishments. However, he is not the greatest role model for two reasons:

1) He was teaching Creative Writing at Stanford before he started law school. If I were doing this, despite its undoubtedly lower pay, I would have stuck with it. Plus I'm assuming he got his MFA from Stanford. Something I tried to do but yeah I wouldn't even have bothered with Stanford and it didn't work out anyways.

2) He went to fucking Harvard.

So, one opens up One L and automatically takes a negative attitude towards its author. He is obviously one of the smartest people in the world, or at least one of the luckiest, but one could hardly claim that he didn't put in hard work to get there. Still, he does well on the LSAT (then scored on a scale of 800) and figures he could go to Harvard, so why not? (For someone that didn't score, oh, 175, it's automatically frustrating too).

Once he is into law school and done with all of the magnanimous introductions, however, the story becomes much more human and relatable. Oh wait, he is also already married and "old" at 26 (if I go, I will be starting at 27, and relentlessly single). He begins by describing his courses, professors, and classmates, and this is the majority of the "action" of the book. This is not a novel--this is a memoir--but the names have been changed. He kept what I have to say is a very detailed and impressive journal during the first year that is the basis of the book. His first classes are in Contracts (a year-long course), Civil Procedure (also year-long), Criminal Law (one term) and Torts (one term). Each of the professors--Perini, Morris, Mann (!), and Zechman--become major characters. So do his wife, Annette, his friends Stephen, Terry, and Aubrey, and Karen Sondergard who is always mentioned in conjunction with crying.

There is a fair amount of suicidal depression that occurs in the context of stress associated with first term exams and judging from what I have heard about present-day practices, it hasn't changed. It makes law school seem downright masochistic. And it may in fact be masochistic. But that doesn't change the fact that Turow is excited by the law and enamored with it. So basically, what this book accomplishes is a fair warning to anyone thinking about the major commitment that is three years of intense scrutiny, endless studying, and what basically amounts to public humiliation. If you still think you want to go after reading it, you have been warned. I personally still want to go. I'm not afraid of it. Especially since certain things seem to have changed in the last 33 years, and certain things would be unique to HLS and not other law schools.

I know that the admission process is insane enough as it is, and the first year is the most "intellectually traumatizing" experience one can have (as one friend described it to me). But One L does take a bit of the mystery out of the law school experience and gives one a better idea of what to expect. However, it is dated. Harvard costs $3,000 a year in 1975. Who knows what that equates to, inflation-wise, but still, thirteen times the price? Law school is one of the most ridiculously expensive things there is in this world (perhaps it is not as bad as a $10,000 bottle of wine). But salaries are also higher, thankfully:

"I was accustomed to teachers' salaries. At Stanford, in the English department, a full professor, well respected, after a lifetime of successful teaching and scholarship might have been earning $22,000. That is the starting salary for Harvard graduates at many firms in New York. (101)

"A poll taken during interview season and published in the law school newspaper showed that the 1Ls responding hoped for an average income of $28,000 in their twentieth year out of law school and a starting salary of $13,000." (102)

Turow does have some intriguing suggestions for law school reform, and the book mainly serves as a soapbox for exploring those incidents that merit consideration in changing certain policies or traditions. One of them that I found intriguing was the practice of grading exams blindly--that is, the student's name is replaced by an ID number while the professor grades them. First of all, I would say that basing a student's entire grade for a year-long course on a single exam is messed up as it is, but that is something that seems fairly established no matter where you look. But doing it blindly, without any consideration to a student's in-class accomplishments seems even more unfair:

"And there were also a number of people who'd demonstrated real insight into legal problems in class but who somehow had not done well on the exams. Ned Cauley was one. In a case like his, I was left wondering if the law school's system of blind grading--with a student's entire mark based on a test identified by a number and not by name--was worth it, or if it forced professors to ignore knowledge obviously relevant to their evaluations." (239)

Turow's most compelling single statement, however, concerns the practice of number-crunching law school applicants and law school students to the degree that the cycle becomes truly vicious, and one might say, unjust:

"But one thing nags which does not bear directly on me anymore, but is worth mention. Right now admissions at most American law schools are based on predictions of how well applicants will do in school, which is to say how high they will rank on exams. Those forecasts, based on statistical formulae that combine LSAT scores and college grades, are often quite accurate. But that amounts only to saying that American law schools admit people who will be good test-takers rather than good attorneys. Correlations between exam success and worthwhile achievements in the practice of law are speculative at best. Until that connection is better established, the narrow and arbitrary nature of exams will continue to dictate a narrow and arbitrary means of selection for training for the bar. And that is a peculiar state of affairs for a profession and an education which claim to concern themselves with rationality, with fairness." (199)

For moments like these, where Turow's rhetoric rises above to the level of a nearly profound articulateness, those in the field of legal education will benefit from a perusal of this text. But this post is probably an unnecessary prescription--it seems as if One L has attained pre-eminent status amongst law school hopefuls and pre-1Lers. But the depictions of classroom conduct by professors, as well as the competitive nature of the classmates (a necessary evil of the system, it seems) will remind the reader what it means to be a decent person in a sea of indecency. Even when Turow himself cracks and claims he doesn't give a damn about anybody else, he wants the advantage on the last exam, the reader may be inclined to agree with him. But not before he comes to his senses and realizes that he may be taking everything just a little too seriously (emphasis on little).

Maybe there are attendant memoirs about going to med school and going to business school and going to a PHD program and an MFA program, but if they are lacking, Turow's accomplishment can point the way for others. This book is occasionally dry, but so is the law, and anyone interested in reading it should be expecting that and so it is obviously forgivable. It's not the greatest book I've ever read, but I haven't read many suspense stories about going to school, and it is probably the best in that genre that I have noticed. But maybe I am just biased and self-serving.

State of the Union Address

My fellow citizens of the world,
We have had a very difficult year in 2008. Our GNP has dropped precipitously. Debt is not yet an issue, but it may become one in the coming months, and this is the reason for this speech. As the proprietor of Flying Houses, I am seeking your advice in order to provide you with the best possible blog-reading experience. You may read that and say, "Well, what do you want my advice for? You're in control of your own life. You know what's best for you. I don't need to comment." Yes, and in a way, the outward motive of this speech is to clarify my position on these issues, and I will not be offended if you fail to leave a comment.
The first issue to be discussed is the Kaplan LSAT prep course. This is the element upon which all other elements depend. That is, the course goes from 8/09 - 9/27. One week after it ends is my registered test date. A little bit of background information is necessary:
The LSAT is hard. True, when one looks at each question individually, and considers the similar guiding principles to each answer, it does not appear quite so hard. However, when one is expected to read and answer 100 questions in a roughly three hour time span, anxiety and pressure enters into the equation. I bought an LSAT Test Prep book in March, back when I was seemingly "on the ball." My unemployment began, (and to update the previous posting on the topic, my appeal for my declared-to-be-ineligible benefits did not go well--another serious factor in this speech) I was not concerned, I was focused on performing well, and I scored a 148 on my first practice test. I scored a 150 on my second practice test, not too long after. Last night, I tried to take the third practice test, because I was going to be starting the course on Saturday, and had a whole new slew of practice tests to attend to, and I didn't want to waste one.
Now, for those of you familiar with the LSAT, the first section on this particular practice test taken last night was Analytical Reasoning. This threw me off terribly and I had an awful time with the clarity of the conditions for the different logic games. Logical reasoning was section two, generally my favorite section, but I found it this time to be unbearably difficult--forgetting to read the question stem first, and then the passage itself. The pressure and anxiety filled me to the brim and I had to stop--I could not complete the practice test. I decided just to use the questions for practice without trying to do them all at once.
I woke up this morning and felt an unbelievable amount of anxiety over the fact that I needed to buy more ziplock bags and Q-tips. Also, I was nearly out of food in the house, and I was going to need to replenish the supply. I reflected upon the fact that I made $1700 a month, had roughly $1000 in monthly expenses, had to pay for gas which was at least $100 a month, which left $600 a month for all other expenses. With a budget of roughly $20 a day to include food and whatever other necessities presented themselves (note: when I first realized $1700 was all I could make in a month, I decided I could no longer afford to buy that illicit flower which is probably responsible for my precipitous financial ruination), this morning I decided that it was no way to live.
It is simply too difficult to live with those kinds of restrictions on one's head 100% of the time. Too difficult to be constantly worried about how much one is able to spend. Since I had a friend visit a couple weeks ago, I have been as big a penny-pincher as ever. No social events are allowed. I could not have brunch twice (despite actually being invited somewhere) because I couldn't afford it. The $1300 for the course is on my credit card, and if I pay it off, I have to take the course, go through with it, and take the LSAT in October, despite little hope that I will be able to score somewhere in the range of 165-170 and have a chance at the schools I most want to attend. They are: NYU, University of Chicago, UCLA, UC-Berkeley (Boalt Hall), Harvard, University of Texas at Austin, Loyola Marymount University, and DePaul University.
To make matters more complicated, I have been told to ask for a raise. I am going to do that tomorrow, and while a raise of several dollars an hour might put me in a more affordable situation, I am extremely doubtful it will happen. Furthermore, a job may be opening up for me at a law firm in the coming months, that would pay slightly more than I make now, probably making it affordable as well. However, I do not know what the timetable is on that position, and it would be downtown, whereas my LSAT course is in Westwood--though there was an option to take one downtown, I preferred to have a class on a Saturday. I was thinking this was all going to be okay, I could work at my current job in Beverly Hills and go to courses on Tuesday and Saturday in Westwood, improve my score drastically, submit applications by Thanksgiving, go home for the holiday feeling somewhat accomplished and proud that I pulled it off.
I didn't even mention what happened on Sunday. But to get a more intriguing picture, I must say what happened on Friday. My neighbor knocked on my door. She told me that her car had been broken into. It was parked in the apartment parking lot, which I never used. There is no security gate, and street parking is always available just as close by. Well, she told me as a "heads up" and I felt so horrible for her. Imagine my surprise when, on Sunday, I glanced out my window and saw an abnormality on the front end of my car. I went outside to inspect closer and found a giant dent in my left front bumper. This was understandably traumatic and I put in the claim with State Farm Insurance (another issue of approaching debt in this speech) today and they told me it would have to be part of the $500 deductible plan to repair it. Now, I am going to stand up for myself in this situation, but it is truly the final straw. Not only was my car keyed by some horrible person in Culver City, but now it has been dented by an extremely rude, either uninsured or irresponsible driver in Silverlake. The price, the idea of being without my car and having to rely on the bus, all the while being near-broke, is just about enough to induce a nervous breakdown.
But I have been able to keep my head about things. This morning at work I told my closest co-worker (who trained me) at the Flavia coffee machine and I told him I might be leaving L.A. He was rather taken aback, but he said he had been in a similar situation before and knew how hard it could get.
The hardest part about leaving will be finding a sublettor. I believe at this point it is prudent to cancel my LSAT course, to cancel my LSAT registration, and hopefully begin anew a year from now with the process, either for law school or potentially a graduate english program, again. While I hate the idea of putting things off another year (as I begin to wonder about how much longer I can live with the shocks to which this body is subject) I feel I am too financially and personally unstable to make my best application effort. It is not impossible to think about still taking the LSATs in December in Chicago, and potentially even taking a Kaplan course there, but I cannot continue to pay rent at this rate. As much as it pains me to say so, my time in Los Angeles must soon come to an end. I regarded the hills of the San Fernando Valley today as I drove home from work and I instantly became sad that my scenery was soon to become so much more mundane and lacking in natural beauty.
There will be a few positives to returning to Chicago, but in general I am not going back because I am unhappy here, but because I have made a series of truly terrible decisions that have landed me in a position of encroaching debt. It is my own fault that I must go. I wish I knew a way I could make it work. I could get a second job, but with LSAT preparation, it would prove unbearably exhausting.
I am ashamed of myself for allowing my life to come to this. The last several nights I have done my usual business of praying to God to let me die in my sleep. I have not been granted my wish, however the first night I did have a roughly two-hour dream that seemed to last an entire weekend in dream-time, and that was a welcome respite from the harsh restrictions and requirements of the waking world. It bears mentioning that it was a beautiful dream, and I would gladly never wake up if I could be assured of living in a world utterly without stress, pain, anxiety, paranoia, and fear of others judgmental attitudes.
I am also scared of focusing so intensely on the LSAT and Law School applications that it would cripple my fiction writing. I would like to finish S/M in October and do the NaNoWriMo or whatever the fuck it's called where you compete with thousands of others (who knows how many) to write a novel in the month of November. Though writing has given me zero monetary gain whatsoever, I am still convinced that it is my duty to fulfill on this Earth. Whether I make my living off of it is another thing entirely. Perhaps I will post the two personal statements I wrote for Law School applications on Flying Houses just for fun. I didn't intend them seriously, but I wrote them as a way to get ideas about what to write about.
My message has been conveyed, and I hope you are satisfied with the wealth of information provided. Citizens, if you believe I should leave, please vote 1. If you believe I should stay please vote 2. If have any commentary to provide on the LSAT/Law School side, please provide as well. The decisions must be made in very short time. I thank you for your patience, and wish you a pleasant day.