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< | Academia Bulimia | >
> | My Wily Mission | | | -- By BrianMaida - 01 Apr 2016 | |
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> | On the first day of Law in Contemporary Society, the course was described as “theatre.” Of all the characters in this comedy/drama/tragedy, professor and fellow students included, I identified most with Carl Wylie. | | | | |
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< | My Disorder | >
> | This should be a concerning realization. Wylie is a manic-depressive, Epicurean speed-balling lawyer that “really don’t care” what the law is. But the similarities are striking. For example, when dealing with the Yale lawyer, he refused to satisfy him and ask about the lawyer’s practice in return. I never reply with a follow-up question to “what undergrad did you go to?” or, even better, “how did you do in [insert course here]?” Wylie has his go-to crime story and I have mine. In fact, I’ve told the story of getting mugged on my 21st birthday twice in the past week. The similarities go on: I’m actively resisting the urge to pour a glass of whiskey to go with my iced coffee. | | | | |
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< | The Mayo Clinic defines bulimia nervosa as an emotional eating disorder; effected persons binge, eating large amounts of food, and subsequently purge, trying to get rid of extra calories in an unhealthy way. | >
> | Perhaps the greatest similarity between us is cramming. | | | | |
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< | Since graduation from college, my friends have spread across the country achieving more and more impressive feats: George took a job at SpaceX? , Matias got promoted at General Motors, Charlie is one of the lead engineers supervising Columbia’s new building project on 125th Street. Meanwhile, I sit in the Arthur W. Diamond Library of Jerome Greene Hall and read. Torts, contracts, property, crim, it’s all a blur. Every few months the four of us get together at McSorley? ’s, our old stomping ground, right across the street from our alma mater. The night plays out the same each time: we drink, quickly update each other on new developments and then we reminisce. Without fail, the story gets told of my finest and worst cramming moment. I slept through my alarm and showed up at 8:15AM for a 9AM Quantum Physics final, without even knowing what topics I was about to be tested on. The three of them sat with me for a few minutes and showed me the “important stuff.” I was a nervous, emotional wreck... so I ate a large amount of physics, and subsequently purged it into a bluebook, trying to get my A in an unhealthy way. | >
> | "Twenty-seven years—trillions of details! You ask me a month from now what the deal I’ve just done was about, I won’t be able to tell you. Don’t think it doesn’t make me stop and wonder what its done to my brain, either." | | | | |
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< | My Sister | >
> | Thus far in my life, I have successfully crammed for almost every exam. Quantum Physics, Organic Chemistry, Torts, Contracts: the content never mattered, it’s always been the same process. I even identify with the manner in which Wylie crammed, using espresso as his PED, timing “when it hits” to “speed up the thought process” and “make everything glow.” This sounds a lot like taking Adderall as a study aide. Luckily, I gave that up after college. [Concerned with what it’d done to my brain, maybe?] I thought the cramming might need to stop for law school, but I was wrong. This no longer surprises me, as the conclusion that law school is like high school has been hiding in plain sight for a year. | | | | |
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< | My sister Lauren is a patent lawyer at a boutique firm in New York, having moved on from Cravath to work [slightly] fewer hours, for similar pay, with the added bonus of actually seeing her son. Lauren and I have a lot in common: same NYC public schools, majored in engineering at the same college, worked for four years and then attended law school. She likes to joke that she worked her ass of to blaze a trail in life and I just followed her. | >
> | So I realized that I have a strong skillset to one day become a Wylie, perhaps only temporarily missing the “corruption, arrogance and pretentiousness.” Now what? Well, regardless of the fact that Carl Wylie is a successful, well-paid partner who, I’m sure, mommy and daddy constantly brag about, I don’t want to become him. As an engineer, I was supposedly taught to be an “expert problem solver” [I probably forgot that detail since college]. Last semester, I developed a “Wellness Program” for myself, involving exercise, diet, family, faith and fun to counteract the misery I witnessed other students suffer from due to overwork. Using my measurements, it worked. For this summer, I have developed a three-pronged, productivity-based approach to counteract the effects of cramming. | | | | |
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< | When Lauren would come over the house and talk about work, it seemed like she was constantly switching careers. At one dinner she gave me an in-depth explanation about the process for making steel; the next month it was a banking app; following that, she was a coffee connoisseur. Seemingly every few months, Lauren would have to learn some aspect of a completely new field, apply it to the case, and potentially never use it again. I mean, she doesn’t even drink coffee. | | | | |
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< | While she would certainly dispute this, in my opinion, my sister is a professional crammer. | >
> | "Pressure’s really not the right word for it, either. It’s the concentration. That painful kind of fastidiousness, attentiveness." | | | | |
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< | My Concern | >
> | Extended cramming must have some lasting consequences on the brain. But can concentration truly become “painful?” I’ve realized that, outside of work and school, I rarely use my brain to concentrate on anything other than music, sports and television. This probably stems from how I was raised: as the last of three children, my parents had a hands-off, get-good-grades-and-do-whatever-else-you-want mentality. Combine that with my most common childhood punishment being reading a book, my lack of productive leisure isn’t shocking. | | | | |
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< | Thus far in my life, I can say, somewhat depressingly, that I crammed successfully for every exam in my academic career, with the exception of the LSAT (I tried and failed; those LSAC writers know what they’re doing). Up until recently, I thought this was a good thing. But since I met Carl Wylie, I find myself asking... | >
> | I want my plan to be realistic, so I’ll start slow. Every weekday I spend approximately two hours on the subway commuting to EDNY for my internship. That’s two hours per day that I unnecessarily waste listening to rap music and sports podcasts. However, for the seven remaining weeks of my internship, I will spend my commute reading, but perhaps more importantly, concentrating on something that I don’t plan to excrete into a bluebook. | | | | |
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< | Is cramming really a good thing? | >
> | "The trade-off is, to get there I’ve got to work – there’s absolutely no comparison – much harder than partners of my stature worked when I began." | | | | |
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< | Cramming requires the ability to absorb information very quickly and then apply it. Cramming is a skill and I would argue, vehemently, a valuable skill. For starters, in today’s education-focused society, being a good crammer can ensure that you won’t end up like Richard Parker. But cramming is a double-edged sword because it is accompanied, inevitably, by the added consequence of retaining, in my unscientific, untested opinion, well less than 50% of the material. There are situations in the context of being a law student, which have nothing to do with exams, where this double-edged sword can feel like Excalibur. Over winter break, I went to interview with a judge for a summer internship. However, the interview was on very short notice, and I needed to be at least conversational regarding his recent opinions. So, on the 1-train, I did a WestLaw? search for his recent opinions and regurgitated them during the interview. Do I remember them now? I think one of them was about personal jurisdiction. A month after? A week after? An hour after? Nope. But I believe this was a perfectly appropriate cram; I’ll never need to discuss his opinions again. The same goes for torts. If the real world really does require me to know the difference between an invitee and a licensee, I’ll look it up. | >
> | When I turned fourteen, old enough to get working papers, my father told me I should [and could] no longer ask him for money to go out and have fun. I like affording fun so I developed a strong work ethic. In the four years between college and law school, I held at least two jobs at any given time. Even this summer I’m working a second job, teaching an LSAT course after my internship. But I know I can “work much harder.” Three weeks into my internship and I haven’t even completed the “Facts” section of my draft opinion; I should probably be done with the whole exercise already. They told me the average intern writes one opinion per summer. I bet the average intern doesn’t work very hard [I’m Exhibit A]. My new goal for the summer is to complete three opinions. You talked about getting through entire records in one night, so I’ll give myself a fair handicap: two weeks each. | | | | |
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< | My Wily Mission
But recently, I met Carl Wylie.
“Twenty-seven years—trillions of details! You ask me a month from now what the deal I’ve just done was about, I won’t be able to tell you. Don’t think it doesn’t make me stop and wonder what its done to my brain, either.”
By some outward measures, Carl Wylie is a success; after all, he is a hard-working partner at a law firm. At the same time, it would be difficult for me to believe that any one would want to be Carl Wylie; he’s a mildly manic-depressant, schizophrenic lawyer that “really don’t care” what the law is. However, he did make me reflect on my life.
About a year ago, I realized that my once great memory was eroding. At least a dozen times since I have started law school, I met someone and then saw them at a later date and began the conversation with “Nice to meet you, I’m Brian.” I’ve just altogether stopped telling people that it’s nice to meet them. Cramming isn’t learning. I have trained my brain to forget.
The only way I have noticed to counteract the forgetfulness is with a concerted effort typically sparked by an interest. If the person I meet is interesting, I don’t start the next conversation with “Nice to meet you.” Finals are six weeks away and the cramming needs to stop, but man... I really hate Property.
Carl Wylie has given me a mission: I need to find something, with long-term viability, that interests me, because I don’t want to end up like Carl Wylie. But if it doesn’t work out, at least I love espresso.
The bulimia metaphor is
unnecessary. It adds nothing analytically and consumes space. You
are a gifted learner, but you have wasted the gift in a fashion that
has become habitual, imposed not by external resource constraints
but by temperament failures. They have reduced your productivity by
an order of magnitude. You invent reasons why this is okay. One of
them is that you're just like your sister, which either is true or
isn't, but in either event is not even a small shit's worth of an
argument. You are correct that if you turn this self-limiting habit
into a way of life, as Wylie has, you will eventually become
unhealthily distressed. But the essay draft before us is not about
recognizing and dealing with that. It's intellectually lazy, again,
satisfied to have characterized the problem without actually
determining the failing component.
You are blaming the tools, which is not the position of the good
mechanic. Your first essay is an attempt to show that when it comes
to judging, experience and long dedication are bad things,
ostensibly because they belong to the old. Your second is an
introspective effort to explain how an attachment failure in your
relation to work has severely limited the productivity of a superbly
gifted young learner. The relation between the two efforts is
clear, I think. You are trying to make the right turn. You need to
deal, constructively, with the parts of yourself that actually get
in your way. | >
> | "Money is a social institution. Chaos. That’s what interests me. Chaos." | | | | |
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> | In my experience, passion and a true interest in the material are the cramming antidote. I need to find an interest in the law and I now have at least two hours of reading on the subway to begin my search. I plan to read about a variety of topics in the law, but I’m going to begin with patents. The only time in law school that something truly sparked my interest was the discussion of fighting pharmaceutical patents. My hometown, Staten Island, has been ravaged by abuse of pharmaceutical drugs. I would constantly wonder: “how hard can it be to stop this?” But there’s a difference between not being capable of solving a problem and not wanting to; big companies are making big money. I’m going to read about it and see where it takes me; there’s got to be something I can do to help with a law license. Either way, I need to figure out what interests me. Hopefully, I’ll find a reason to come back for my second year. | | |
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