I don't believe in backposting, so anyone reading this site needs to get comfortable with the idea that everything blogged about is unadultered, unproofread verbiage straight from my brain. I mention this because a) I only recently found out that professional bloggers (by which I really mean just Belle de Jour, who has sadly stopped posting about her fascinating career) are backposting hacks, and b) I couldn't think of a grand unifying theme for all the stuff I want to jot down today so it's going to be in list format. Law school seems to be really huge on list formats, by the way, so let's just think of this as me "outlining" my life instead of my courses (as I should be).
1. Illiteracy
Does anyone remember that Reader's Digest article that came out in the mid-nineties that discussed adult illiteracy in North America? I must have read it when I was in elementary school; there was a woman who described how she had lived the entire thirty-something years of her life without being able to read, getting through it all by memorizing what the names of dishes looked like (she was a waitress) and making a squiggle when she couldn't remember (so she would be called by the chef and she could tell him directly), saying she wasn't interested when discussing books or magazines, and so on.
I couldn't believe it. I was a bookworm, in the most literal sense -- I attribute my poor physique mostly to the years I spent on the couch reading Conan Doyle, and anyone who thinks otherwise can talk to me directly. At about the same time, though, I began to develop this deep insecurity that I somehow wasn't fully literate in either of my languages. Maybe this had to do with the way I would pronounce some words wrong, or some vestigial guilt from pushing so hard to quit Chinese school, but I had this fear I would end up like Jean Chretien and be utterly unintelligible to the people around me. At that point in time, most unlike now, I was under the impression that I had ground-shaking insights to share.
The relevance of this digression? I feel pretty darn illiterate here too. Not because of this law school thing -- enough has been made about the "language of the law" -- but a real sense that I'm no longer making myself as clear as I once was. Part of the credit must go to my peers; they're very good at forcing me to justify myself. Part must be that I'm not in Kansas/Vancouver any more. And part probably comes from being in a city where nobody really understands anyone anyway.
When I talk about my past, about my opinions, about current events, it feels like I'm accessing something disconnected to me. I'm like the RAM accessing a hard drive, or a corpus callosum of my past memories, if you will. This might be the flu bug talking, but there are times when I don't feel like I'm even here.
2. Super-Size...someone else
So I watched Super-Size Me on Friday while doing my best to convince myself I really didn't need to go out and make my cold worse, and am now a little more freaked out of restaurants than before. The vegan girlfriend freaked me out a bit too, but it's mostly this entire culture that normalizes food that comes from boxes. Boxes! I had never even seen the inside of a frozen dinner until this year. What's with the law school diet of PB&J and pasta? Power bars? Does nobody here know how to cook?
The movie had a nice follow-up in the NY Times Magazine on Saturday that focused on "America's Eating Disorder", which basically said that 1) the French are all right, and 2) silly Americans, obey your tastebuds. Nutritional information is SO last year. I'm not too sure how I stand on this, actually. Tastebuds are great and all, but that's not to say I'm not worried that the pants to my suit won't fit after Christmas. There are serious practical considerations -- like having to buy a whole new set of pants -- that affect these things, you know?
3. Daydreaming of Ben Stone
I had a surreal moment in Torts today when I heard a police siren go off in the background and had the Law & Order introduction play go off in my head for a good 10 seconds before I started taking notes again.
1. Illiteracy
Does anyone remember that Reader's Digest article that came out in the mid-nineties that discussed adult illiteracy in North America? I must have read it when I was in elementary school; there was a woman who described how she had lived the entire thirty-something years of her life without being able to read, getting through it all by memorizing what the names of dishes looked like (she was a waitress) and making a squiggle when she couldn't remember (so she would be called by the chef and she could tell him directly), saying she wasn't interested when discussing books or magazines, and so on.
I couldn't believe it. I was a bookworm, in the most literal sense -- I attribute my poor physique mostly to the years I spent on the couch reading Conan Doyle, and anyone who thinks otherwise can talk to me directly. At about the same time, though, I began to develop this deep insecurity that I somehow wasn't fully literate in either of my languages. Maybe this had to do with the way I would pronounce some words wrong, or some vestigial guilt from pushing so hard to quit Chinese school, but I had this fear I would end up like Jean Chretien and be utterly unintelligible to the people around me. At that point in time, most unlike now, I was under the impression that I had ground-shaking insights to share.
The relevance of this digression? I feel pretty darn illiterate here too. Not because of this law school thing -- enough has been made about the "language of the law" -- but a real sense that I'm no longer making myself as clear as I once was. Part of the credit must go to my peers; they're very good at forcing me to justify myself. Part must be that I'm not in Kansas/Vancouver any more. And part probably comes from being in a city where nobody really understands anyone anyway.
When I talk about my past, about my opinions, about current events, it feels like I'm accessing something disconnected to me. I'm like the RAM accessing a hard drive, or a corpus callosum of my past memories, if you will. This might be the flu bug talking, but there are times when I don't feel like I'm even here.
2. Super-Size...someone else
So I watched Super-Size Me on Friday while doing my best to convince myself I really didn't need to go out and make my cold worse, and am now a little more freaked out of restaurants than before. The vegan girlfriend freaked me out a bit too, but it's mostly this entire culture that normalizes food that comes from boxes. Boxes! I had never even seen the inside of a frozen dinner until this year. What's with the law school diet of PB&J and pasta? Power bars? Does nobody here know how to cook?
The movie had a nice follow-up in the NY Times Magazine on Saturday that focused on "America's Eating Disorder", which basically said that 1) the French are all right, and 2) silly Americans, obey your tastebuds. Nutritional information is SO last year. I'm not too sure how I stand on this, actually. Tastebuds are great and all, but that's not to say I'm not worried that the pants to my suit won't fit after Christmas. There are serious practical considerations -- like having to buy a whole new set of pants -- that affect these things, you know?
3. Daydreaming of Ben Stone
I had a surreal moment in Torts today when I heard a police siren go off in the background and had the Law & Order introduction play go off in my head for a good 10 seconds before I started taking notes again.
