| | After discussing John Brown’s life and the thoughts of Martha Thauraud, it has become increasingly clear that we need to be more introspective and perceptive. Law students learn to ignore the fact that their quality of life has plummeted and they are spending countless hours and huge sums of money on an intangible and unknown goal. Afraid to break the mold for fear of falling below the curve, we mindlessly follow.
We have the option of taking the route of Mr. Wiley—numbing our minds with substances to keep billable hours up and emotions down. Work is good. Money is good. Comfort and acceptance are paramount. However, we have the other option of learning what we really want to do by developing a purpose and redirecting our enthusiasm toward it for a life of genuine, long-term fulfillment. | | | Austen, I think if you had to boil it down to a few words, then yes I would agree that all it takes to move in the right direction is to open your eyes to humanity. Based on our discussion about Bartleby, if we do a meaningful reflection of what we wanted and, as AJ points out, recognize that this institution has jaded our perception about what it really means to be stress and what it really means to feel pressure, then we’d see that there is no shortage of Bartleby-like ghosts right outside of JG. The path toward finding our purpose takes a different shape for everyone, but I think the first step is by starting to ask the right questions – about other people, about yourself, about relationships between people. I’m realizing now that I’m just starting to do that and getting really uncomfortable with how much I don’t know about myself. It’s an interesting revelation for me in particular because I actually felt oddly prepared for EIP before this class. In other words, I wasn’t fearful at all about doing interviews. Most the part, I actually feel really comfortable during interviews. (And just to confirm that I really don’t have too big of a head, I am terribly shy when I have speak up in big groups or in class). I thought I mostly performed well in interviews because I knew myself and what I wanted. I made sure that before heading into an interview that I could anticipate any question an interviewer had about me. But the reality is, is that I know myself exceptionally well…on paper. You can shoot anything at me as long as it’s something that I was prepared to reveal on paper. I realized quickly this semester that there are a lot of things about myself that I am deathly scared of revealing – all things that you would never see on my resume, of course. I used to feel really proud of how well I could perform under this kind of pressure, but now I see really how much of it was a performance and how much of it was fear.
-- LizzieGomez - 29 Mar 2012 | |
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> | Austen, I really appreciate you starting this thread. Indeed, Thauraud calls for sobriety; she does not accept the state of suspended sensibility which many of us have experienced as we tumble down the law school trajectory. In doing so, she generates what a mentor of mine used to call "productive discomfort". Yes, we are at risk of remaining dim until its too late. No, it is not inevitable. Yes, it will take hard work--personal and professional--to avoid the "thick-headedness" of which Thauraud warns. If we harness this productive discomfort, though, our future may still yet be brighter than it seems right now.
You asked how we begin this process. How do we take the lessons emanating from Lawyerland and apply them? Aj and Lizzie have offered advice that I believe is really helpful. To open our eyes to the circumstances, relationships, communities, and societies in which we participate, whether deliberately or inadvertently, is an important step. I would only add that before being able to look outwardly and actually see, we need to learn to be present in our own minds. By this, I mean that we need to stop thinking ahead to the next task, application, or career and ensure that we are capable of feeling alert.
The late David Foster Wallace offers a helpful story in a speech he gave at Kenyon College: "There are these two young fish swimming along, and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, 'Morning, boys, how's the water?' And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, 'What the hell is water?'" In this speech, he discusses how challenging it is to be "present". Wallace posits that many of us go through much of life automatically--on a default setting--and instead we should go through life intentionally and consciously. How? To be present, I think it is important to make some of the lifestyle changes which Eben has suggested (meditation, sleep, etc.). This means making concerted effort to keep our brains from drifting too far into the future and out of the now. Wallace claims that if we are able to be present, alert, aware, conscious and deliberate, we will be able to see, to really see, what is out there and where we can help.
-- TomaLivshiz - 06 April 2012 |
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