Wherein we plumb the depths of law-student psychosis

I went on a mid-week urban adventure. It was a bad idea; I had a meeting with a professor at 11:00 the next morning. Needless to say, nobody actually plans to go clubbing in San Francisco when they have perfectly good reasons to stay in Palo Alto and attend to very important, very erudite, conversations and tasks.

Anyhow, through an artifice, the details of which I omit to spare the innocent, I found myself in a bar/club in San Francisco accompanied by some very interesting girls with quite divergent personalities who I had never gone out with before. Throughout the evening the character in question remained quiet and subtle, usually signs of the socially competent and conscientious. However, after apparently failing to locate members of our cadre for not more than 15 minutes, she wandered outside in a huff. When we eventually found her, she proceeded to shriek and shove at her girlfriend in a manner very much in keeping with the child-like state in which she entered law school.

Draw whatever conclusions you will from the previous sentence.

As I fled up Castro Street with my friend of many years, desperate to escape the feminine sidewalk carnage in our wake, I wondered: how do people of such emotional fragility survive three years of the most severe mind-fucking devised by the legal academy? What skills could this person possibly have that would convince anyone to both put up with her attitude and pay her US $140,000 per year with virtually guaranteed yearly bonuses and raises? That amount is several times what the typically good-natured American can expect to earn at the apogee of his or her career. Perhaps the typically good-natured American is both pathetic and stupid but that's no excuse for rewarding borderline-psychotics who happen to stumble through a torts outline.

To address the afore-posed questions, perhaps this unfortunate soul, lacking social grace or ability to just suck it up and be an adult, is a victim of the law school. Perhaps the bankruptcy professor yells too much; or the Con-Law guy made too many mean-spirited quips; maybe her partner in negotiations was a hard-ass. Any of these things could explain such bizarre behaviour--and the fact that I find it necessary to write about this. But perhaps I've too much empathy re: the whole law school mind-fucking thing; it's more likely that there's just something fundamentally unreasonable (here I intend a strict legalese usage) about people who start fights with their friends in public and commit other social torts. I suppose that since I can't sue for my evening back, I'll just put it down to a lesson learned and (hopefully) karmic currency for better adventures to grace this space.

As for the ridiculous amount of money this person is going to make, I make no good-faith complaint and only mention it to arouse the gentle reader's outrage. Hell, I've probably got the same package.