where i'm at

This is something I just wrote in an email to an incoming 1L, my OUTLaw mentee. It's where I'm at, at the end of a too long and too short recuperative summer. I think I've turned into even more of a dullard in my middle age than I had anticipated I would:

And legal studies and practices...yeah, I think everyone goes into law school expecting to specialize in something, but 1) you don't really have to specialize in anything and 2) many public-interesty people change their minds and go the corporate route. Before I came to law school, I was working with LGBT activists and I was all ready to join the movement as a lawyer, but even my friends who were doing LGBT legal stuff were very grim about my chances of escaping law school with my ideals and my decision to work in public interest intact. The reason for this is that law school is, like the army, an institution set up to break down individual difference and to encourage conformity (through hazing rituals like a crazy 1L year, 24-7 contact with your classmates, esp in the dorms, all the same classes, lockers like in high school etc.), and in this case you are expected to cleave to the school's general interest in seeing its students make as much money as possible and donate as much in alumni support as possible. This is true of colleges as well, but law school is much more successful in making you do things you're not sure you want to do. Like when there is a frenzy to sign up for a particular event, like mandatory Early Interview Week preparation meetings, you might find yourself signing up without any real desire to or understanding of why you're doing it. Or at least I find this true of myself, because suddenly it seems like my grim soothsayers were right and I'm gonna do corporate for a couple of years despite my self-professed radicalism and non-corporate interests. Because I have to admit that it's much more attractive to make $150,000 a year than $40,000 a year. The disparity between a corporate and public interest salary is obscene, and even though I disdained what I perceived to be naked greed before I started law school, I find myself a month before the start of my second year ready to wear naked greed like an old, comfortable coat.

And now I'm going to Mexico for two weeks. Mexico City then Zacatecas then San Luis Potosi then Oaxaca then San Cristobal de las Casas then Palenque then Puerto Escondido or something like that. Lots of overnight buses in the jungle. Hope I don't fall over a cliff and die, but if I do, I love you all, except for the ones who done did me wrong.