Admitted Student Weekend

There were a lot of "admits" hanging around campus this past weekend. I wasn't on campus. I did some reading at a cafe, went to San Francisco and bought some clothes, had dinner with a disarmingly cool character and mostly minded my own business. Unfortunately, I also slept through a classmate's birthday party. But who starts a wine and cheese party at 6:00 PM on a Saturday? (That's another problem with this whole "small town" scene: people do stuff really early. If I say I'm doing something social at 3:00, I typically mean "3:00 in the morning." But that's a Continental and East Coast thing...I digress...) I did pop into the law library Saturday afternoon and witnessed a bunch of folks wandering around the courtyards. Obviously admits. I didn't talk to any of them.

My advice for those students recently admitted to some of the best law schools in the country and currently trying to decide where to attend:

Are you familiar with the strategy of anti-smoking campaigns in the late 1980s? The pictures of a healthy, pink lung juxtaposed with the brown corroded-looking smoker's lung? Well, think of that lung as your immortal soul. A fellow over at CLS has a blog titled Three Years of Hell to Become the Devil; you should read it. Also, you should have already read a good deal of Milton, Yates and The Bible. We already have enough cultureless bores wandering around here in shitty "California" outfits and visors. (They're all very smart but their tastes and mores reflect poorly on what should, at this level, be a learned profession with members worthy of emulation.)

But quite apart from the cultural issues, I strongly urge you to consider whether there are people in your life whose moral compasses, shall we say, donÂ’t spin. You will have to spend a lot of time explaining things to these people. Likewise, do consider that those with "spinning compasses" will wonder what your problem is when you decide that profit optimizing schemes should typically meet with stern sanction when they predictably endanger life, limb or property. If you're a Bush supporter (I don't know whether you're blind, dumb, or just dishonest, yet here you are), you should be prepared to burst into tears at the abuses done to this country or else die suddenly from the cognitive dissonance.

But to directly address your current predicament as to where to matriculate, I suggest you avoid schools that use or plan to use the quarter system (persons with particularly strong work ethics and LSATs over 175 may ignore this), schools with more that 500 students in the entering class, and schools in rural or suburban areas. Beyond that, just attend the highest ranked of the legal dojo that will abide your presence. You'll get to do plenty of punching.

Good luck. I'm off to start the whole exam-prep thing. Right after I take this shot and...

tags technorati : Culture Law School