Jumping ship
So, I think the entire law school has gotten back grades, and all of us are now busily updating our resumes and GPA and checking out what firms will hire us with our x.xx grades. And for many of us, with our type A competitive personalities, are checking on whether our GPAs will allow us to transfer to a "better" school so as to get a "better" job after school. I've given that topic a little bit of thought, and I came to a decision pretty quickly .
After checking out the various statistics for people who successfully transferred, I determined that my law school grades put in a competitive position (nobody knows for sure what goes on in the dark and smoke filled rooms of law school admissions offices, so that's all I can say). Professors generally like me. And I am also not on law review, so that is one less bind for me to stay here. (And according to several little birdies, one of the reasons Dean Schill made law review institute a limited gradeon was in an effort to keep the people with high GPAs who didn't make the writeon from jumping ship.) And I definitely would be in a more competitive position to get a job from a higher ranked firm, get that 9th or 2nd circuit clerkship, or get a shot at academia. Plus, I'd be able to walk around with a bigger swagger that comes with attending a bigger name school, an important asset in the shallow legal profession. So logically, it would make sense for me to take my GPA and my incredibly good looks elsewhere.
But I'm staying put in Westwood. I spurned many of the same schools the first time around, and it would make little sense for me to go there again. I also absolutely dislike school in New York. I came to the conclusion that the only schools I would even consider are all schools whose names and locations would matter little to me.
The last time I checked, the weather in Palo Alto, Cambridge, and New Haven are all vastly inferior to Southern California. None of those locations can offer both the beach and skiing within short drives. None of those locations are within driving distance to Vegas. And my liberal use of the word "dude" would probably be looked heavily down upon on in these stuffy places. Shorts and flipflops would either not be climatologically feasible or would get me branded as a non-serious law student in these places. Pretty shallow reasons for not transferring and opening myself to a world of increased legal opportunities, some of you might say.
Except, I'm not your typical law student. I have ZERO interest in academia. I have very little interest in clerking and seeing our legal system firsthand. And to me, White, Rich, and Old LLP is the same as Rich, Male, and White LLP, even though one might be higher ranked and more prestigious than the other. Both pay market and both have the same billables, so they are the same for my purposes--I'll put my time in a firm before leaving to be a surf bum. And transferring would also mean paying more in tuition and moving myself from LA.
Palo Alto, Cambridge, and New Haven thus have no tangible benefits for me, which is why I made the personal decision to stay.
After checking out the various statistics for people who successfully transferred, I determined that my law school grades put in a competitive position (nobody knows for sure what goes on in the dark and smoke filled rooms of law school admissions offices, so that's all I can say). Professors generally like me. And I am also not on law review, so that is one less bind for me to stay here. (And according to several little birdies, one of the reasons Dean Schill made law review institute a limited gradeon was in an effort to keep the people with high GPAs who didn't make the writeon from jumping ship.) And I definitely would be in a more competitive position to get a job from a higher ranked firm, get that 9th or 2nd circuit clerkship, or get a shot at academia. Plus, I'd be able to walk around with a bigger swagger that comes with attending a bigger name school, an important asset in the shallow legal profession. So logically, it would make sense for me to take my GPA and my incredibly good looks elsewhere.
But I'm staying put in Westwood. I spurned many of the same schools the first time around, and it would make little sense for me to go there again. I also absolutely dislike school in New York. I came to the conclusion that the only schools I would even consider are all schools whose names and locations would matter little to me.
The last time I checked, the weather in Palo Alto, Cambridge, and New Haven are all vastly inferior to Southern California. None of those locations can offer both the beach and skiing within short drives. None of those locations are within driving distance to Vegas. And my liberal use of the word "dude" would probably be looked heavily down upon on in these stuffy places. Shorts and flipflops would either not be climatologically feasible or would get me branded as a non-serious law student in these places. Pretty shallow reasons for not transferring and opening myself to a world of increased legal opportunities, some of you might say.
Except, I'm not your typical law student. I have ZERO interest in academia. I have very little interest in clerking and seeing our legal system firsthand. And to me, White, Rich, and Old LLP is the same as Rich, Male, and White LLP, even though one might be higher ranked and more prestigious than the other. Both pay market and both have the same billables, so they are the same for my purposes--I'll put my time in a firm before leaving to be a surf bum. And transferring would also mean paying more in tuition and moving myself from LA.
Palo Alto, Cambridge, and New Haven thus have no tangible benefits for me, which is why I made the personal decision to stay.
posted by The Fox at 9:44 AM
1 Comments:
I have to point out that it's not "stuffy" here (the people are really cool), and that we did go around wearing shorts and flipflops a lot in August. Also, the weather in New Haven is not that bad, so far (though I haven't yet survived a winter here).
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