Month: March 2009

Getting into Character

I just read an interesting post on Kottke.org titled, “Getting into Character.” It talks about how actors, athletes, and business people wear two different hats – a private one and a job one.

Many of us see our parents do this to a degree when we are growing up. There is an added awareness, more than anything, of where they are and what has to be done.

I think back to my time at Ruckus and K12 knowing that I could have cultivated and displayed a more consistent work persona. I worked hard and was attentive, creative and efficient, but these things varied from week to week. (This ties in with the concept of having a defined approach to work.) What I’m trying to say is that I was not always able to get into character and stay there all day.

As a lawyer-to-be, I’ve been thinking about interacting with clients. Regardless of what area of law I end up practicing, one of the most important aspects of both being successful (garnering clients) and being effective (doing good word for my clients) will be getting into a consistently professional, knowledgeable, and compassionate character while working.

Spring Semester: Week 9

I’m doing these “Spring Semester Reviews” more for me than you. Years from now, when I’ve long since outgrown my blogging britches, I hope to be able to revisit these autobiographical entries for a brief chuckle. “Oh, the glory days of FPLC,” I’ll say to anyone who will listen. “Those were the days.”

Classes: Classes are going well, although for the first time I’m finding myself envious, from time to time, of my classmates who have externships. Maybe it’s the “gotta get a job” cloud that’s suddenly set in fast and low. Or maybe it’s the fact that the word “externship” does not exist in most dictionaries. Either way, I’m looking forward to working when the day comes.

  • Business Entities Taxation: Going well, but slow. We started with partnership taxation and are still in the “middle” of the life of partnerships. Our midterm will fall in early April, unusually late. As with most code classes, the weekly struggle here has been to learn how to best navigate the code and recognize when exceptions apply. Once I get a semi-working knowledge of a topic, it’s far more enjoyable.
  • Environmental Law: I don’t know what to think of this class. The material is very dry, and I didn’t see that coming when I registered. We deal mostly with massive federal statutory schemes – National Environmental Police Act, Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act. What I enjoy most about the class are the historical, geographic, and scientific aspects of the cases.
  • Copyright Licensing: This class is nuanced and very hands on. I like it. We are given a hypo going into each class, must review select clauses from a license, and then negotiate with the opposite party (licensor and licensee). I will leave a more capable contract drafter and a more skilled negotiator.
  • Estate Planning: This class was largely review up until last week. We’re finally getting further into taxation issues and more detained trusts. I like this area of law, so I look forward to the three-hour Estate Planing-a-thons.
  • Judicial Opinion Drafting: Drafting orders is a unique writing experience. I’ve quickly learned to be very careful in how I frame the arguments. I’m liking legal writing more and more with each passing day.

Getting to Done: Week nine is coming to a close. Spring Break (week seven) felt like every other week of this semester, except I attended fewer classes. My grand plans – I always have grand plans via lists, emails, and other web applications – were not fulfilled. I failed to apply to hundreds of jobs, read weeks ahead, and start a new business as a side project. The result of this was that I sought and found a more structured way to accomplish tasks. I found a very simple solution: at the beginning of the week, make a list of three things to accomplish each day. This has gone pretty well with one blaring exception – applying to jobs daily. Here’s a sample-list for one day:

Monday P G
1) Read Environmental Law
2) Work on JOD Order
3) Apply to 3 jobs

P = newspaper and G = gym. The three tasks vary daily. I’ve found this is a good way to keep things in check. The downside is that the system is meant for someone who works and has eight solid hours to accomplish their tasks. I’ve excused my failures in accomplishing all three daily tasks each day, yet hope to be more successful in the future.

Donating Blood: I donated blood today at school. The beds were set up in the Jury Box (cafeteria), which seems like an odd place to be performing medical procedures. The woman assured me that lunch was loud and hectic and people were not deterred from eating.

Sleep: I got two hours of sleep on Monday night and it has messed up my entire week. I’ve had to nap, I’ve overslept, and I’ve been living in a fog. This never happened in college, or I didn’t care. I could play poker all night, go to an 8:30am class, sleep during the afternoon and start over without the next four days being a disaster. Now, and this aligns with my “Getting to Done” above, I’m finding consistent sleep invaluable.

The Core Remains

I’ve been reading the Concord Monitor recently. Much of the local news coverage has been about education budget cuts around the state. It’s common knowledge that the arts – art, music, etc. – are often the first classes to be eliminated. But once those are gone, what classes come next? Which teachers, subjects and skills are considered to be the next-most expendable?

I have not hard data, nor do I claim to be an expert. But today I’m reading about foreign language classes being dropped and the blocking of programs for troubled teens. Both of these cuts, however locally limited, trouble me.

It seems that we know now more than ever how to better address learning difficulties. Whether this means specific attention in the form of additional programs or different curriculum in the same classroom, it seems that such a careful approach requires greater resources and more teachers.

Cutting foreign language classes is a slippery slope for a country already of limited international exposure. My impression of aliens is that they are far more likely to be multilingual than a fellow American. Go to France, Mexico, or even China and most likely they’ll say hello before you can say bon jour, buenos dias, or ni hao.

I realize I’m highlighting, not solving, problems here. It’s just disappointing to see the core remains so nakedly exposed as the more expendable classes are dropped left and right. Of course reading, writing, and arithmetic are critical to a well rounded education. And perhaps there are enough artistic stimuli available to students of all ages beyond the walls of their elementary, junior high, or high school. But, I don’t think so.

I just can’t help thinking about how fortunate I was to be afforded the opportunity to learn my numbers and fruits in French from first grade on, to play the recorder in third grade and to mold clay as a ten-year old. Like compound interest that is more beneficial the earlier you start investing, early exposure to the arts, a foreign language or additional help at an early age can significantly realign a student’s life for the better from an early age onward.

BarBri Early Start

I’m about to start the BarBri Early Start program. For some reason the name makes me think of a sober house or clean living – preparing for the bar is quite sobering, albeit less of a health risk.

This is the beginning of my formal bar training. It seems far too early, but there’s a few of us here – the few who have paid at least $1500 out of $3000 due to be re-taught what we’ve learned during the past three years of law school.

These Early Start sessions take place on each of the next five weekends, take about five to six hours each, provide general test-taking advice, and cover broad legal topics often tested on the bar exam such as Torts, Criminal Law, Criminal Procedure, Contracts, Property, Evidence and Constitutional Law.

I arrived early enough to get my seat at the top/back of the tiered classroom and donuts were provided – I got my butternut. Cheers to a fun Sunday of bar prep followed by more work! At least it’s sunny out.

OneWord: Vow, Spaces, Classic, Vulture, Keypad

OneWord.com gives you a random word and 60 seconds to write. Following are my submissions for the past week.

Vow: Dressed in his tux, looking at his beautiful bride, he vowed to love her for the rest of his life – for the rest of her life. Were they now one?

Spaces: The spaces in his teeth made me laugh. I remarked, “Who don’t he get braces for those spaces?” Then I laughed harder. Maybe spaces are endearing. So I’ve been told.

Classic: There’s a classic car in his garage. I couldn’t give you any more detail, except that it was red and well kept. I never got a better look than from my tip toes through the high filthy window. He’d chase me away before…

Vulture: The vulture circled above, waiting to swoop down to the man marooned on the island the instant his life expired. The man eyed the vulture above knowingly.

Keypad: There is no keypad on my cellular! It’s just a flat glass screen. Like looking through a window at a digital world that changes when I want it to.

Book & Movie: Watchmen

My first book & movie review in one post. I finished reading Watchmen on Thursday and saw the movie on Friday. Both were excellent for different reasons.

The book is actually a collection of a twelve-comic series released by DC Comics in 1986 and 1987. Alan Moore was the author, Dave Gibbons was the artist and John Higgins was the colorist.

The story is this: The U.S. has a superhero, Dr. Manhattan, by way of a lab accident. He allowed them to win the Vietnam War and has kept the Russians at bay since. However, the possibility of a nuclear holocaust looms larger with each passing day. Preventing this is what the ultimate arc of the comic is about. On less of a superhero and more of an action hero level, the characters of the comic are seeking the mask killer – an unknown person who, in the first scene, killed the Comedian. Eventually, the two stories come together, though I will spare you the spoilers.

The story is nuanced, insightful and intriguing. It takes a hard look at society as it existed in the 1980s and saw that there was a lot wrong with the way we were living our lives. In one poignant scene on the gang infested filthy streets of New York City:

Dan Dreiberg: What’s happened to the American dream?.

The Comedian: It came true. You’re lookin’ at it.

Watchmen reminds me of Alan Sorkin’s writing for the West Wing. One of the many reasons I like the West Wing is because of the supporting facts, stories, and links between those facts and stories brought into the fiction of the show from reality. Doing so adds a great deal of credibility to the performance. The same is done in Watchmen to an equally effective degree.

The movie is very true to the book, excepting a debatable minor change to the ending. It is long, though entertaining. I would recommend that anyone wanting to see the movie first read the book. The movie will better keep your interest that way and you’ll have a better appreciation for the depth of the comic and the faithful adaptation of the movie.

Go read! Go see!

The Empathy of Critical Thinking

Marissa Mayer, the V.P. of Search Product and User Experience at Google made an interesting point during the last ten minutes of her interview on the Charlie Rose show. (link)

Charlie Rose: Why did you choose computer science at the beginning?

Marissa Mayer: I grew up thinking I was going to be a doctor. And I started off as a biochem double major at Stanford. And at the end of my freshman year, I realized I loved chemistry, was very good at it, but it’s a lot of memorization, right? It’s a lot of memorize this chemical equation. And when I went home, I realized that all my friends who were at other schools studying biology and chemistry were learning the exact same material. In the exact same way. And I thought, well what could I do that would be unique to Stanford, that Stanford does really well and also would teach me not just facts but how to think better, how to be a better critical thinker, how to be a better problem solver. And that’s when computer science came in because in computer science, they have one of the best programs in the country, and you get to working on a new problem every day. So it’s not so of what you know or what you’ve memorized, but it’s more how do you think about problems.

Marissa’s comment regarding wanting to challenge her thoughts struck a nerve with me and made me realize that most of my post-secondary education has been the type that encourages rigorous and critical thinking.

In undergrad, I studied economics – what we do with what we have. That simple summary leaves open many variables and a lot to think about. Beyond understanding the language necessary to be fluent in any field, the study of economics provides a student with a unique method of viewing each and every daily interaction. One of the basic assumptions is that we are rational beings. Moving from that assumption to the next, and trying to solve a problem takes on a step-by-step process. A chain is setup as the student realizes that shifting one variable may have an effect on many others. Once he’s thought long enough like this, it becomes difficult to make decisions because he realizes that everything can be rationalized. It’s just that some outcomes are better than others.

I studied creative writing as well, which was, and still is, to this day, the most challenging task I’ll ever undertake. Nothing is more intimidating than a blank page because it is completely on the writer to fill it. He can draw from his life, the news, stories friends tell, or nothing at all. But when it comes down to it, making something up for others to read is an incredibly frightening thing to do. It’s a narcissistic and selfish thing to do. To think that what he has to say is worth someone else’s time. Yet, writing is the single most freeing thing I do on any given day because it challenges and renews me. It is a way to order my thoughts, my perception of the world, and my understanding of my relationships.

And perhaps now, more than ever, critical thinking is a matter of my daily routine. The appeal of a law degree upon applying to law school was that the degree would have a wide application – law, business, entrepreneurship, teaching, etc. What I underestimated was what exactly would compose that degree. Now that I’m nearly finished with law school, I’ve come to group the value of my expected degree as follows. Primarily, I have learned a critical and logical method of thinking. This is a vague and fleeting tool, but significant nonetheless. Ancillary to the method of thinking is the day to day knowledge and experience – basically, how to find what I’m looking for – that comes with having attended law school for three years. While there is value in each of these things, only from critical thinking do I derive any personal satisfaction.

It’s only now, as I review my education, that I realize why I have pursued my chosen fields of study. Each one has challenged my thinking and opened my eyes to new things. Economics, writing and law have each allowed me to better make sense of the world around me. Not only can I attempt to answer life’s questions, but I can give answers with support and argue for my position. I can understand where others are coming from and empathize with their viewpoint. I can challenge them and be challenged, knowing full well that there may not be a definite answer.