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PerspectivesinLaw 26 - 03 Feb 2008 - Main.BarbPitman
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| | I’ve been having a hard time in this class, and would like others’ input. While this class is by far my favorite, it is also the most frustrating. I’m not sure how to look at what I consider to be stereotyping, judgmental views, and bifurcated ways of thinking: Good law versus bad law, pink skin versus non-pink skin, complacency and greed versus (what I assume is meant) altruism and righteousness. I’m probably not the most articulate person to be making the points I’m about to make, but please understand I mean no offense – I’m only trying to understand and be understood, and, through this classroom experience, to learn some non-academic things along the way.
Do I like money? You’re damned right I do. Why? Because, in this society, it opens up options and is the main instrument that one is forced to use in order to produce resources that one needs and prefers (in other words, those things that make life a heck of a lot easier). I don’t care about status, social position, or wealth per se (despite what may be unintentionally implied by the sentence about being a secretary as opposed to a lawyer in the profile at http://www.law.columbia.edu/media_inquiries/news_events/2007/December07/2010profiles.) The reason I applied to Columbia instead of law schools in my state is because I assumed (and I think rightly so) that on balance, there is too good a chance I will be unemployed after law school if I’m not able to tell prospective employers that I went to what this society considers a “top” law school. If I had chosen to go to a law school in my state (in my case, Indiana University), I would be paying $15,784 in tuition this year; at Columbia, I am paying $42,024. Yes, I’m paying up-front almost three times per year in tuition what I could be paying. But I, employers, and the law schools know that my chance of recouping that financial outlay is by far greater if I have the Latin equivalent of “Columbia” at the top of my diploma instead of “Indiana.” Frustrating, but real. | | | | |
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“More importantly, to write about the personal and speak face to face about the impersonal inverts the emotional structure for the benefit of psychic defenses--shows of virtue, avoidance of confrontation, levying of accusations--which deprives us of the reality of the way human beings actually talk.”
I’m not sure that talking on-line in one way deprives us of the opportunity to talk another way in class – what am I missing here?
"The wiki--with the exception of the papers-- should be about the intellectual structure and content of our investigation. About the readings and what they mean, about the inferences and questions that come out of them, about the "and" (and not so much of the "but") of what we learn from what we read."
Thanks for sharing what your priorities are, because it was (seriously) unclear to me up to this point.
"Your decision to invert the priority here, and then your show of self-confidence shading into arrogance in issuing instructions to me for the implementation of your decision, were bad judgments. My firm, as the lawyers who work there will tell you, is a quantum level lower in hierarchy than the traditional law firm. But we don't forget that every team has a leader, and nobody does there what you think it's ok to do here."
*I agree; having been in firm structure, I fully understand team spirit and the value of various roles, including the values of leadership. I did not think that my asking you to address me in this medium was a way of challenging authority or your leadership. If I inverted priorities, and caused you to interpret my intentions in this way, then, as I said above, I was unaware. I apologize for my ignorance.
I am more than happy to sit out.*
-- BarbPitman - 03 Feb 2008 | | | |
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