| | |
|
RobinsonAndBrown 12 - 21 Mar 2012 - Main.MeaganBurrows
|
| |
| META TOPICPARENT | name="DecidingInThePresent" |
|---|
Robinson & Brown | | | But then I look at Wiley - who has pursued money and self preservation through attainment of power - and he too is being killed. Drinking wine to obliterate feeling, drinking caffeine to force the body to work at pique level when it would otherwise be incapable of doing so, working under a level of stress that surely eats away at his insides - all of these tactics chip away what used to be "Wiley" and leave in his place a stunted, split personality. Almost everybody I interact with at law school or in law firms has increased their usage of whatever substance (alcohol, caffeine, aderol, marijuana, melatonin, ambien, etc.) they have always used as a way to regulate normal functioning. But regulating bodily functions in this way is not life - it's a slow death. It's a slower death, and thus more concealed, but one of which I realized I should still be afraid.
-- SkylarPolansky - 18 Mar 2012
\ No newline at end of file | |
>
> | I think Leff might be able to shed some light on why Wiley (and lawyers like him) are content to remain in their state of cognitive dissonance, even when they are – as Wiley is – so self-aware and disenchanted. Leff contends that cognitive dissonance and the sunk-cost fallacy cause “the present and actual [to have a] competitive advantage over the future and hypothetical”. Wiley already has sunk costs – decades of them. He has committed to this lifestyle, has pursued it with dedication and has spent time, money and effort to come to terms with the effects it has on his self-perception and the meaning he derives from life. Once you have invested so much in pursuit of a particular objective or travelled so far down a particular path, it is extremely difficult to say ‘to hell with it’ and start from scratch. You become wedded to the stock you have invested in – regardless as to whether you still believe in it, value it, or desire it – and “the possibility of prospering through it seems better than that attending any alternative uses of [your] money [or time]”.
This insight might also be useful in analyzing our own motives at this early stage in our legal careers and help us to fashion ourselves into ‘Robinsonian’ lawyers as opposed to carbon copies of Wiley. Leff notes that the “critical con move was that initial push in the right direction; damping the later impulse to unbuy takes further energy”. Here at Columbia, the Big Law funnel, we have all already been subjected to that initial push in the ‘right’ direction – we are now “partial prisoner[s] in a sort of spatial monopoly”. Some of us came to Columbia to do corporate law. If that is your goal and ambition - I say all the more power to you and go get em’. What really saddens me, however, is those of us here who are averse to Big Law but see no other option. I had a conversation with a friend of mine recently who is questioning her decision to continue with law school. When I asked her why, she said it's because she knows she doesn’t want to do corporate law. I reminded her that although living in the Columbia bubble may make it seem as though the corporate life is the only option upon graduation, this is in no way true. Some of us – myself included – have developed tunnel vision at Columbia, and forgotten about all of the other career alternatives we once imagined. In line with Leff’s analogy, Columbia has us in “a particular store” and now the “universe of choice [has begun] to seem limited to what is there”. With copious firm networking events and email reminders about EIP, we often forget that we have the opportunity to ‘shop around’, and our “contours of choice” are consequently distorted. For those of you with an unnerving feeling that you are being manipulated into “selling wigs door-to-door – something you would never have done if all you could expect to earn were the normal profits from such extraordinarily hard work”, it’s not too late. You have two years to get creative and pass Eben’s imagination test. Any initial costs you may have sunk by attending firm events or lunch panels are minimal, and certainly worth abandoning if you fear the cognitive dissonance that may result from pursuing a career your heart is not in.
-- MeaganBurrows - 21 Mar 2012 | | | \ No newline at end of file |
|
|
|
|
This site is powered by the TWiki collaboration platform.
All material on this collaboration platform is the property of the contributing authors.
All material marked as authored by Eben Moglen is available under the license terms CC-BY-SA version 4.
|
|
| | |