October 29, 2007
"Let's talk about the fact that with a 160 on the LSATs, Wurtzel was much better suited for Northeastern than Northwestern, let alone YLS...."
"... which raises serious questions as to their admissions standards." Adam Bonin seems kind of irked at all the attention Elizabeth Wurtzel has gotten and continues to get. I mean, really, the LSAT is not the only factor. Yale gets all the high LSATs. High LSATs should mean nothing to them. Get some interesting people. Why should Yale care if they'll fit in law firms or have problems passing character requirements for the bar? The key is to get something interesting going in the classroom. Yale had every reason to think Wurtzel would spice up the mix.
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78 comments:
Ann...
Do you think Wurtzel should be admitted to the NY bar (given she passes the exam, of course).
Ex-cocaine addict
Ex-heroin addict
Multiple suicide attempts
Battled depression
Fired for plagiarism.
Posed nude for book cover
Wrote boring book with shocking title
(Sez Wiki)
Who besides Andy Warhol would want this person as their attorney?
"Who besides Andy Warhol would want this person as their attorney?"
The better question is, who will be "lucky enough" to get this human dreg forcibly appointed to represent them, and have no choice but to accept them, when the only job this moron can get is a $35,900 a year public defender gig in Omaha, Neb?
I don't think it's problematic. Good for Wurtzel. I was a little puzzled to see the NYT quote her as saying that "I had not the slightest emotional reaction [to 9/11]. I thought, ‘This is a really strange art project’” ... I just felt, like, everyone was overreacting,” followed within bare lines with this: "The events of 9/11, [Wurtzel] sa[ys], left her paralyzed with fear and largely unable to write. 'I really had the feeling that the whole world had gone crazy, ... I felt very powerless. If I’d been a lawyer, I would have known what to do.'" That seemed contradictory.
Don't be so judgemental.
It's amazing she has enough brain cells and newly-found self-discipline to get through law school anywhere. Perhaps she overdramatized her life, like that other drunk author.
George, do you think that having screwed up in your early life ought to bar getting back on the rails? I think people who are willing to try and to work hard to get their life together ought to have as much of a shot as anyone else, and so far as the story says, once Wurtzel got over an attitude problem in the first year (her reported uninterest in CivPro strikes me as being far more likely to change my opinion on her as an attorney than because she "[b]attled depression" or took drugs when she was younger.
I think I would worry more about the fact that the woman seems to suffer from some kind of antisocial disorder is a bigger deal than her LSAT scores. This is the wikipedia definition of antisocial personality disorder.
"Antisocial personality disorder (APD) is a psychiatric condition characterized by an individual's common disregard for social rules, norms, and cultural codes, as well as impulsive behavior, and indifference to the rights and feelings of others."
Read that and then read the NYT article and consider her reaction to the world trade center attacks as well as her indifference to the rules of Yale Law School and make your own conclusions. It seems to fit pretty well.
This woman is a circus freak and a vanity hire. She was a vanity admit to Yale and she is a vanity hire to whatever law firm hired her. People are obsessed with notoriety and celebrity. Her admittance and subsequent hiring allow Yale and the big Manhattan law firm to pat themselves on the back for having a famous person around. The only good news is that she will be in the bowels of a large law firm where she will receive the necessary adult supervision and be put in a place where she really can't harm anyone beyond herself. I would be worried if she had gone to a third tier law school and gotten a workaday job like DA or Public defender or family lawyer where she would actually have to practice law and could real damage to people's lives. As it is, why should I care if she wasted a spot at Yale and will now be stealing the legal fees of large corporations?
What would David Savage say about her as a lawyer for (or opposed to) freak shows? Don't they need representation on the highest court of the land?
Simon--
Yes, I agree that everyone deserves a second (or even third) chance in life.
Nonetheless, I think she's a self-promoting values hack.
She is her illness.
Pavarotti would love her, if he weren't dead.
George said...
"She is her illness."
Being so, isn't it somewhat commendable for her to go to law school to try and become something more than her illness?
Have to agree with John... I don't think she's interesting, I think she sounds bipolar. When almost everything someone says or does is for dramatic effect, they quickly become boring.
The only good news is that she will be in the bowels of a large law firm where she will receive the necessary adult supervision and be put in a place where she really can't harm anyone beyond herself.
It seems kind of odd to imagine Wurtzel sitting in a windowless conference room doing document review for 14 hours a day. Is she going to a normal firm to do normal transactional or litigation work?
When almost everything someone says or does is for dramatic effect, they quickly become boring.
The problem with some bloggers.
Well I see irony. Most people start out at Wilmer Hale all happy and optimistic, and only after working there for a while, they lose their soul and become depressed. See, with Wurtzel, she's fast-tracked. No soul to sell. No sunny disposition to readjust. Just abject misery, day one.
Whatever Wurtzel's history may reveal about her character, I have a bit of trouble valuing a such a critical assessment by a person who so shamelessly trashes her LSAT score (160! gasp!), not to mention the elitist crap about what law schools she's good enough for.
Simon, I think a lot of people's reactions to 9/11 were nonsensical, inexplicable, extreme, detached, contradictory.
It is most difficult for someone used to being the sun to bear becoming a mere planet, or some reflective moon.
Character shamracter. Yale found her personal life a trifle, why should the bar say different? Anyway, she's the sun dammit. Just get outta her way and let shine her radiant wonderfulness. Though you may live to regret it, it'll be a good show.
Unless you're personally involved.
I think Ann made the ultimate politically correct diversity argument: Why should Yale care if they'll fit in law firms or have problems passing character requirements for the bar? The key is to get something interesting going in the classroom. Yale had every reason to think Wurtzel would spice up the mix. who cares whether she can pass the bar, or is morally qualified, or can perform in a firm, she's entertaining :) She'll be diverse. Criminal Drug addicts are always interesting.
as for her getting a real job, maybe entertainment law in a boutique in LA. Certainly no large firm is going to have any illusions that this gal is going to slog through contracts and bill 200 hours a month for 1 month, much less 84 months.
Joseph Hovsep said...
"Simon, I think a lot of people's reactions to 9/11 were nonsensical, inexplicable, extreme, detached, contradictory."
Doubtless. I don't see how anyone who lived through that day can still regard George Bush as the enemy, which seems at least nonsensical, inexplicable, extreme and detached to me (the contradictory part, I suppose, comes when the same people who detest the Constitution ordinarily start bleating about how Bush is violating it all while themselves advocating and sponsoring flagrantly unconstitutional bills) but quite a few people in this country seem to believe that, and a non inconsequential subset of them think he was responsible for it.
Harvard honors graduate, author of a book that captured the zeitgeist -- shouldn't that outweigh the result of one standardized test?
Of course the world is full of white males who think Merit = high score on standardized test, while not having left any accomplishment more enduring than a shit smear in a toilet bowl.
The Drill SGT said...
"I think Ann made the ultimate politically correct diversity argument: Why should Yale care if they'll fit in law firms or have problems passing character requirements for the bar?"
So "plays well with others" ought to be one of a law schools admissions critera? I mean, if you're going to accuse Ann of, in essence, peddling touchy-feely-squishy PC diversity-speak, which seems to me to be the upshot of your comment, how is this any better? And as to the bar, even if we assume that all people with a law degree will and must seek to be members of a bar, the New York bar asks only if a candidate "possesses" -- present tense, mind you -- "the good moral character and general fitness requisite for an attorney and counselor-at-law" (emphasis added) vel non., which some wags might point out (not me, of course) might not necessarily be a high bar to clear.
[Gosh, I mention Lino Graglia once this morning and suddenly I'm chanelling him, what's up with that?]
"Of course the world is full of white males who think Merit = high score on standardized test, while not having left any accomplishment more enduring than a shit smear in a toilet bowl."
I thought Wurtzel wrote "Prozac Nation" not some white male because that pretty much describes that book. I am sorry you wasted your time reading it.
The issues facing Yale and WilmerHale are different. While it might be good at Yale to have a student who is a "bomb thrower," that is usually not viewed as an asset in a new associate.
I'm trying to imagine the firm's malpractice insurer, asking whether she is a good risk. There are many, many minor details that can be overlooked and cause serious prejudice to a client's case, and it is not wise to have someone who has a significant history of not being able to handle stress in the high-stress job of big-firm lawyer.
...the world is full of white males...
Who still talks like this? The whole "dead white male" line was fashionable around the time Prozac Nation first came out! I guess it explains why this commenter thinks the book is actually a significant work. I could only get through the first quarter or so... I think the *title* might have captured the zeitgeist, but the book itself, bluh.
Getting something interesting going in a day time law school classroom? Please.
The last thing I remember interesting from law school was some 23 year old twit asking the professor in our business organizations class, "What's a mortgage bond?" and thinking, "I'm getting an A in this class."
Or my contracts professor, who really didn't like my assertion that employment at will is a good thing, even when you get the short end of it. When he stated to me in front of the whole class that, "So they fired you because you were a boob?", I replied, "They did, sir, and they gave me six months pay on the way out the door. I had a new job in seven weeks and collected unemployment all the while. If I could do that twice a year, I wouldn't have to work. Would you like to hire me, sir?" The howls of the assembled oldsters in night school put the blowhard professor back in his box, not to return for some time. After you've been fired from a job, getting called on in law school class doesn't seem like the scariest thing in the world that can happen to you.
What makes law school class interesting is having students that have actually worked someplace at a real job or similar experience (meaning there were material consequences to the person for getting fired like not being able to pay the mortgage) and led generally useful, law abiding, productive lives. As in, what does all this stuff have to do with ordinary people who play by the rules and work hard. How to they get screwed for trivial and insubstantial acts, or worse, through no fault of theirs? How does fixing the damage affect the people responsible for the damage? Yer average undergrad with litle or no work experience doesn't have that kind of experience base, and it seems neither did Ms. Wurtzel.
If the "life of the law is experience" then the average law student, Yale or otherwise, really doesn't have much.
If Ms. Wurtzel decided to really chuck all the sociopathic behavior and do the work, more power to her. The rest of her experience adds little of value to the classroom discussion.
Not having read any of her books, I'm curious to know if she was still on high doses of antidepressants on 9/11. It'd be an extreme example of something I've heard of often from people on that sort of medication. The meds, at certain doses, make it difficult to feel, difficult to have a normal emotional reaction. Particularly to something so tragic, where the normal reaction is exactly the sort of emotional swing the drugs are designed to prevent.
"After you've been fired from a job, getting called on in law school class doesn't seem like the scariest thing in the world that can happen to you."
"What makes law school class interesting is having students that have actually worked someplace at a real job or similar experience (meaning there were material consequences to the person for getting fired like not being able to pay the mortgage) and led generally useful, law abiding, productive lives."
A good friend of mine in the Army who had been through OCS and Ranger school before he went to law school used to laugh at all of his classmates when they talked about how high pressure law school was. His response was "why don't we make a rule that everytime someone hasn't read for class and is called on or gives a wrong answer, the entire class has to go out and take a two mile run and do 100 pushups while being yelled at by the professor and anyone who falls out of the run or can't do the pushups fails the class."
A 160 isn't unbearably low. It is the cut-off for a good law school.
That said, at least a 165 would be appropriate for YLS. The argument is her other accomplishments and her viewpoint compensate for the 5 points. But, what are those accomplishments? And what is the value of her viewpoint?
Now I know I'm smarter than Elizabeth Wurtzel! What a great day! Of course if I did some smack I could have went to Yale instead of Wash U. Maybe I could still write some pompous, boring non-fiction.
P.S. Man does she look rough.
When almost everything someone says or does is for dramatic effect, they quickly become boring.
The problem with some bloggers.
True. And amazingly predictable at that.
Who still talks like this?
The people whingeing about low LSAT scorers getting into elite schools are pretty much all white males. But, because you were confused, next time I will say "live white males."
Do you think that having screwed up in your early life ought to bar getting back on the rails?
Good question. If she had been a child molester instead of a drug addict would you say the same thing?
If Ms. Wurtzel decided to really chuck all the sociopathic behavior...
Wurtzel was not a sociopath. I do hope that in your law briefs you are more careful in your choice of terms.
She is "interesting" in the same way the Yale Taliban was "interesting."
It's their school and they can admit who they want, but this smacks of provocation rather than critical thought or ethics or respect for the rule of law. There you go again, Yale!
"Who still talks like this?
The people whingeing about low LSAT scorers getting into elite schools are pretty much all white males. But, because you were confused, next time I will say "live white males."
Well, I guess we know who wasn't very happy with their LSAT score now don't we? Let me guess you are a "former lawstudent" meaning you never actually managed to graduate much less pass the bar and can't forgive all those evil white males who did. Let it go man. Let it go.
In the World According to Law & Order (my experience of the outside world), child molesters aren't reformable. Drug addicts can stay on the wagon, if their name isn't Courtney or Lindsay or any name ending in "y".
whingeing
who talks like this?
"If Ms. Wurtzel decided to really chuck all the sociopathic behavior...
Wurtzel was not a sociopath. I do hope that in your law briefs you are more careful in your choice of terms."
Exhibiting sociopathic behavior is not the same as being a sociopath. A lot of people exhibit such behaviors in small ways or isolated instances but never do so with such consistency as to warrant being considered a sociopath. Certainly, Wurtzel's reaction to the World Trade Center bombings counts as sociopathic behavior. It her reaction was due to her medication or just an isolated instance, she in no way could be considered a sociopath even though she clearly at least on that occasion exhibited sociopathic behavior.
It is a fine distinction but a valid one. Perhaps you should be a little more careful yourself before throwing stones at others.
Well, I guess we know who wasn't very happy with their LSAT score now don't we?
yes, apparently -- YOU.
More power to Ms. Wurtzel, say I. Good for her for getting into yls.
As for what a person who cannot meet character and fitness requirements can do with a law degree: they can always become a law professor, like former terrorist Bernardine Dohrn: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernardine_Dohrn#Early_Life_and_Career
Certainly, Wurtzel's reaction to the World Trade Center bombings counts as sociopathic behavior.
I hate to be picky about this, but you're wrong. Her reaction may have been reckless and foolish, but it wasn't sociopathic.
I would define sociopath as a person incapable of experiencing empathy for other human beings...a person who has no regard for the rights of others. Sociopaths are incapable of feeling remorse. Sociopaths are individuals who often commit horrid and depraved acts of violence. Well-known sociopaths include Theodore Bundy, John Wayne Gacy and Gary Ridgeway, the Green River killer.
Wurtzel's public comments after 9/11 were reprehensible. She either had a terrible lack of judgment or she was intoxicated and incapable of making a sober-minded statement. The fact that she described herself "paralyzed with fear...unable to write...powerless" is not indicative of a sociopathic personality, and is not sociopathic behavior.
Exhibiting sociopathic behavior is not the same as being a sociopath.
You wouldn't make that statement in a courtroom, would you?
I didn't think so.
The people whingeing about low LSAT scorers getting into elite schools are pretty much all white males.
I'd have thought that's really more an Asian thing than a White thing. After all, what with the Jews and all, those Whites had to bring in references and application essays and extracurriculars and so on to keep the number of Jewish students down. "Character." The Whites face the same problem with Asians. I mean, the British already confronted the problem in the nineteenth century when they instituted what I think was the first standardised civil service examination in the West -- the examination for the Indian Civil Service. The Indians, especially the Bengalis, performed so much better on the exams than the native British that they had to institute quotas to keep the Indians' numbers down.
"I hate to be picky about this, but you're wrong. Her reaction may have been reckless and foolish, but it wasn't sociopathic. "
Well lets look at the facts. Her reaction to 9-11 was.
“I had not the slightest emotional reaction. I thought, ‘This is a really strange art project.’” She also said: “I just felt, like, everyone was overreacting.”
The clinical definition of a sociopath is someone who has antisocial personality disorder which is
"Antisocial personality disorder (APD) is a psychiatric condition characterized by an individual's common disregard for social rules, norms, and cultural codes, as well as impulsive behavior, and indifference to the rights and feelings of others."
I think being unmoved by the death of 2,800 people right in front of your eyes counts as "indifference to the rights and feeling of others".
The woman certainly exhibited sociopathic behavior in her reaction to 9-11. To be fair that doesn't mean she is a full blown sociopath. Interesting how you are trying to defend her yet you seem to be slandering her by calling her a sociopath.
Either she'll be able to do the work or she won't. Yale might be interested in the name appeal of a celebrity student, but law firms are in it for the money.
Personally, I hope she does well.
Why should Yale care if they'll fit in law firms or have problems passing character requirements for the bar? The key is to get something interesting going in the classroom.
Well, yeah. And not everyone goes to law school to become a lawyer. But what they don't tell you when you're entering law school is how rigorous the "character and fitness" screening is before you can sit for the bar exam. It's espeically rough on older students who have a whole lifetime to go back over. If they allowed people to be screened before they're 2 years invested in law school it would spare some people a lot of wasted money/time.
Simon: the New York bar asks only if a candidate "possesses" -- present tense, mind you -- "the good moral character and general fitness requisite for an attorney and counselor-at-law" (emphasis added) vel non., which some wags might point out (not me, of course) might not necessarily be a high bar to clear.
Yeah, but they ask you that in a hella long and detailed application plus personal interview. The Ohio screening for character and fitness was kinda intimidating and a pain in the rear. They go over your whole life with a fine-toothed comb. I didn't have any mental health or drug abuse issues, which was a relief because those were two pretty big sections of the application I could thankfully skip. At the very least you'll have some explaining to do.
But, yeah, all that means is you have to convince them that you're fit to practice law in the present tense. Rumor had it someone who had killed another person and done time in prison passed the character review in Ohio, though I don't know the details. What will really kill you is if you don't disclose everything candidly. They ask you a million questions and see if you're dumb enough to try and hide something from them.
john,
Emotional numbness and an inability to connect with what's happening are entirely normal reactions during a disaster, especially a disaster on a scale beyond what humans normally have to deal with (such as, for example, the deaths of thousands of people in an act of incredible destruction). Read personal accounts of soldiers who've been in firefights; people think weird stuff when stress.
If she had remained unable to emotionally connect, that would signal a mental disorder. But that doesn't appear to have been the case.
How weird to be applying for work and have not just your resume' but your Google-trail to promote or defend.
She could be a great worker and team player for all I know. But on Google, it's yellow tape all over.
I think being unmoved by the death of 2,800 people right in front of your eyes counts as "indifference to the rights and feeling of others".
Oh please. Your use of the word only serves to render the term meaningless. Who doesn't at times feel "indifferent to the rights and feeling of others"? Does this mean we all act like sociopaths now and then? Nonsense. To use another psychological term, that's just plain nuts.
I think it's fair to say you're using the term in order to demonize Wurtzel. No sociopath should ever be admitted to the bar, and since you don't like Wurtzel, and think she's unworthy to join your profession, you characterize her using perhaps the most damning epithet imaginable. After all, the most depraved of our criminals are sociopaths, the Ted Bundys and the John Gacys, and we all know none of those fellows could ever have been admitted to the New York bar.
someone hasn't read for class and is called on or gives a wrong answer
Everyone calms down halfway through the first semester. Before that, people are funny - saying they felt like puking before class. It's okay to give a wrong answer as long as you give the prof confidence you read. Even if you didn't read, just don't admit it. Act like you found it a confusing case and bluff your way through. They like to see ya struggling. It tells them they are teaching an especially complex and difficult area of the law, which they all warned us about on the first day of class in every class. :)
LoafingOaf said...
"They go over your whole life with a fine-toothed comb. I didn't have any mental health or drug abuse issues, which was a relief because those were two pretty big sections of the application I could thankfully skip. At the very least you'll have some explaining to do." (Emphasis added.)
Only if a benign crush on a federal jurisdiction professor (and an even more benign tendency to venerate a Supreme Court Justice) is considered a red flag by the bar association.
Revenant said...
"Emotional numbness and an inability to connect with what's happening are entirely normal reactions during a disaster, especially a disaster on a scale beyond what humans normally have to deal with...."
I'd have to say that that was my experience of 9/11.
Notwithstanding the Bundys, there are sociopaths who simply skate through life, acting in their own self-interest, aren't there? (paging Dr. Helen!) I assume they don't necessarily all run around chopping off heads, or even breaking the law. Isn't it possible they'd never be detected or diagnosed? I honestly don't know the answer to this.
I think there's a difference between feeling temporary "numbness" after an event like 9/11, and having no feeling about it, ever--we need to know which one applies to Wurtzel before we could even begin to say if she's sociopathic or not.
In John's defense, I have to say that Wurtzel is not an individual who needs to be demonized--she worked pretty hard to do it all by herself.
Consider this hypothetical: Student X graduates from Harvard, joins a Christian fundamentalist church, writes a book defending Intelligent Design, enlists in the Army Rangers after 9/11, after service in Iraq takes the LSAT and gets a 160, and then applies to YLS. As between student X and Wurtzel, who is Yale more likely to admit?
My guess it would be Wurtzel hands down. Why? Because the kind of "diversity" that law schools like Yale find compelling is diversity that illustrates cutting-edge lifestyles and values.
Wurtzel's counter-cultural experiences outweigh anything that student X might bring to the YLS.
I honestly don't know the answer to this.
You are correct in wondering, for they do exist and are often rewarded despite (or maybe for) their sociopathy.
An excellent read on that very question is The Sociopath Next Door by Martha Stout.
mtrobertsattorney said...
Wurtzel's counter-cultural experiences outweigh anything that student X might bring to the YLS.
The irony of course is that student x would bring far more diversity to YLS.
having been a student returning to UC after a combat tour in Vietnam, I can vouch for how un-diverse and unforgiving a college can be when it opposes a war.
"Diversity" has always meant diverse but "with the right sort of people".
Wurtzel's counter-cultural experiences outweigh anything that student X might bring to the YLS.
Well, maybe, if you're comparing "more likely" statistics. But Wurtzel is famous, in her own way, and in a way that they would be likely to recognise (I suspect admissions officers at Yale Law are unlikely to be acquainted with Intelligent Design tracts, whereas they may have at least heard of whiney GenX memoirs, that being the kind of stuff that gets reviewed in periodicals they might actually read). So the bias to Wurtzel is, if it is real, a product more of milieu than intent or active prejudice.
But in fairness, I know that in my class at Columbia, there were a number of military and ex-military students, and at least one student who graduated from Bob Jones University. That may not be the kind of superficial diversity elite schools like to trumpet in their brag sheets, and I've never seen them go to any effort to attract it, but it is there.
Re: knoxwhirled
"whingeing "
who talks like this?
I do. I am also fond of words like "mewling," "puling," "malingering," and "hornswoggle," and use them every chance I get. Life is short, art is long, so why not use the purple words while we're at it?
my fave anagram for elizabeth wurtzel is
letter buzz awhile
I'd have thought that's really more an Asian thing than a White thing.
Are you kidding? Asians just suck it up and move on. They define stoic. No one can bitch and moan like a white guy.
Althouse makes the diversity argument. But how many neurotic, smart, "heroin-chic" sexy, rich, self-obsessed Jewish women with rampant narcissistic tendencies are already represented in the limited spots at Yale Law? Lots? The case for more?
Aren't such Jewish American Princess creatures already well overrepresented at Yale Law as a function of their actual population percentage? With Polish, Italian, Filipino, Scots-Irish, Chinese ethnicity Americans plus Vets and non-minorities from poor, middle class, and rural American families significantly underrepresented as a function of their actual population percentage?
OK, so add LSATs slightly below cutoff, being fired for plagarism, multiple drug addictions, suicide attempts, and dark compulsions. And fired from the "Guardian" for persistant inability to meet publisher's deadlines?
Enough to get that elite spot?
How about if we add she is pushing 40 and will never attain the accumulation of experience and work needed to validate her potential to be prominent in private practice or government legal practice - given her remaining worklife that a younger person getting her spot has the potential to??
Has Yale Law now become solicitous of "age diversity" and seeks an even distribution of students from age prodigy teens to 70 year old housewives?
And what about, errr....ummm..her many distractions and hours of work required - simply arising from the glory of being Elizabeth Wurtzel Herself and Her Pain? Does the fact that she is as smart as 13,000 other applicants vying for under 1,000 spots trump that? If so, what flaws do the 12,000 rejects have?
OK, how about the fact she is a famous one-book writer, though in 10-year decline on sales and work product? There you go! What makes her diverse is her celebrity. Its the NY Times! The many Manhattan Glitterati Parties! Celebrity Detox stories! Her 9/11 vignettes! She is a vanity hire that makes her "the right sort of diversity" despite her drawbacks - to add another spot for an already overrepresented group.
see if you can figure this anagram out--
jaws forced red
Are you kidding? Asians just suck it up and move on. They define stoic. No one can bitch and moan like a white guy.
Oh, please. If you ever have three hours to kill, just try raising the topic of "white guys dating Asian women" within earshot of a Chinese-American guy.
On a serious note, in my experience Asians here in California are quite bitter about affirmative action. Colleges officials out here -- usually white or Hispanic, and basically always left-wing -- are pretty open about feeling that they have "too many Asians" and not enough of the "right" minorities. You know, the "disadvantaged" kind, who had to face horrible hardship of the "felt isolated in their mostly-white class" variety, rather than trivial difficulties like "being robbed by pirates while fleeing Vietnam in a leaky boat".
So how about that? Elizabeth Wurtzel is M.O.T.! I had no idea.
And now that I think about it . . .
You know what? I think we might have had sex a bunch of times in the early 90’s.
If that was her, the sex was a lot better when she was doing cocaine than when she was doing heroin.
Just saying.
And remember, kids, just say no to drugs or someday you might end up at Yale Law School.
Or what's worse, having sex with Bissage.
Yuk!
(Just ask Mrs. Bissage.)
Argh...
This is a helluva thread.
Two points:
1) #'s (LSAT) etc. don't mean an awful lot when applying to a professional school. It's a crap shoot after a certain point. I remember some whining and complaining after a student got into medschool many years ago with pretty crappy grades and MCATs. Turned out the kid had served as a medical missionary (gasp!) and had done things like amputations without anesthesia...
2) What is this crap about how old you are and taking up the slot of a younger person? I thought this had gone out with the dark ages. Practicing lawyers (and Supreme Court Justices) seem to have a pretty long shelf life.
Ciao,
Bonzo
i wonder what ms. wurtzel has amputated...
probably lots of anesthesia around though
What is this crap about how old you are and taking up the slot of a younger person? I thought this had gone out with the dark ages. Practicing lawyers (and Supreme Court Justices) seem to have a pretty long shelf life.
The really common waste of a legal education is young people who practice for a couple of years, decide they hate it, and do something else for the rest of their lives.
Are you kidding? Asians just suck it up and move on. They define stoic. No one can bitch and moan like a white guy.
Ah, as someone who is half Asian, with Asian friends and especially Asian family, that . . . isn't really my experience.
balfegor, come on, don't stop the stereotyping, it's fun.
Are you kidding? Asians just suck it up and move on. They define stoic. No one can bitch and moan like a white guy.
Ah, as someone who is half Asian, with Asian friends and especially Asian family, that . . . isn't really my experience.
Congratulations are in order, I guess -- they are now fully Americanized.
I'm sorry. I had the silly idea that law schools were supposed to produce lawyers and that admissions should be based on that. I see now that the object is to admit interesting people to amuse the professors.
Sorry
Ken, that actually is a silly idea. Law schools make a big deal out of the different things you can do with a law degree besides being a lawyer. You might go into writing about law as a journalist or author, for example, something Wurtzel might be well suited for. You could also go into business or teaching. There's also government. Hillary Clinton, Rudy Giuliani, etc., etc., they're law school grads.
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