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KimberHargroveSecondPaper 6 - 22 Jan 2013 - Main.IanSullivan
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| | | It is strongly recommended that you include your outline in the body of your essay by using the outline as section titles. The headings below are there to remind you how section and subsection titles are formatted. |
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KimberHargroveSecondPaper 5 - 08 Aug 2012 - Main.RumbidzaiMaweni
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It is strongly recommended that you include your outline in the body of your essay by using the outline as section titles. The headings below are there to remind you how section and subsection titles are formatted. | | | -- KimberHargrove | |
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< | Thanks for sharing this with us, Kimber. I really admire the honesty of this paper.
And I do understand your ambivalence with the class structure, and shared it at the very beginning. Despite my other misgivings about the way 1L year is structured, what I did appreciate from my other classes was having a very clear idea of what the topic, page, and sentence under discussion was at any given moment. The macro structure of the class and readings, coupled with the free-flowing exchange of ideas promoted by the Wiki, just felt too ripe for opportunities of self-exposure. After a semester in the competitive, anxiety-inducing, and distrustful intellectual space created by 1L (not to mention having your thought processes probed, dissected, and ridiculed at any given moment via Socratic method), by January, I had learned to avoid self-exposure like the plague.
I wrestle with whether or not I think the way this year was structured, and the way many of us went through it, was worthwhile or useful to us. I find, like yourself, that this summer has so far been so great for me in that I am finally reconnecting with all the issues I cared about coming into law school, and sort of put on the backburner as I tried to navigate the trenches of 1L year. I’m also pleasantly surprised and happy, to realize how much I learned this year, and that I am able to put a lot of it into practice in the area of human rights. I also think law school, and this class, has changed my perspective on how much social good can be facilitated through “law”, and, thus, how much I can do as an individual. While before starting law school, I was frustrated and angry about how little I thought I could be done, and in law school I became frustrated and angry because I felt what I was studying was somewhat divorced from the bigger picture, I’m actually finding joy this summer in conducting legal research for a policy report I know will be widely disseminated or even, if you can believe it, bluebooking. As Moglen said in passing during one of our classes, it's silly to throw up our hands and say, "It's hopeless," simply because social change is slow and incremental, and over the course of our careers most of us will only be able to do a little, not a lot.
Hopefully, if nothing else, this year was useful in challenging us to remember and devote ourselves to our overriding goals and what we thought we could get out of and achieve through this profession, even as we are mired in the mundane, the trivial, and the most minute of details, or else caught up in power structures and social relationships that we find to be problematic (which, I suppose, is what we will be doing for the rest of our careers). I do still wonder if there could have been a less painful and alienating way for me to have come to this conclusion. I am also aware that many of my peers have not, and will not, come to the same conclusion because 1L year seemed very much aimed at straitjacketing us into a very specific role within this profession. I, for one, am thankful for this class because, whereas before, I think I was resigned to accepting law school and the legal profession as it was presented to us this year, Eben and this class have really inspired me to think creatively about how both can be improved, to recognize that our placid acceptance of someone else’s idea of what a legal education or profession should be is a waste of all our talents. We may have gotten here because we’re all reasonably good at “bullshit”, but I’d also like to believe that we also got here because we are capable of doing more than cowing to the status quo.
-- RumbidzaiMaweni | | |
You are entitled to restrict access to your paper if you want to. But we all derive immense benefit from reading one another's work, and I hope you won't feel the need unless the subject matter is personal and its disclosure would be harmful or undesirable.
To restrict access to your paper simply delete the "#" character on the next two lines: |
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KimberHargroveSecondPaper 4 - 29 Jun 2012 - Main.RumbidzaiMaweni
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It is strongly recommended that you include your outline in the body of your essay by using the outline as section titles. The headings below are there to remind you how section and subsection titles are formatted. | | | And I do understand your ambivalence with the class structure, and shared it at the very beginning. Despite my other misgivings about the way 1L year is structured, what I did appreciate from my other classes was having a very clear idea of what the topic, page, and sentence under discussion was at any given moment. The macro structure of the class and readings, coupled with the free-flowing exchange of ideas promoted by the Wiki, just felt too ripe for opportunities of self-exposure. After a semester in the competitive, anxiety-inducing, and distrustful intellectual space created by 1L (not to mention having your thought processes probed, dissected, and ridiculed at any given moment via Socratic method), by January, I had learned to avoid self-exposure like the plague. | |
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< | I wrestle with whether or not I think the way this year was structured, and the way many of us went through it, was worthwhile or useful to us. I find, like yourself, that this summer has so far been so great for me in that I am finally reconnecting with all the issues I cared about coming into law school, and sort of put on the backburner as I tried to navigate the trenches of 1L year. I’m also pleasantly surprised and happy, to realize how much I learned this year, and that I am able to put a lot of it into practice in the area of human rights. I also think law school, and this class, has changed my perspective on how much social good can be facilitated through “law”, and, thus, how much I can do as an individual. While before starting law school, I was frustrated and angry about how little I thought I could be done, and in law school I became frustrated and angry because I felt what I was studying was somewhat divorced from the bigger picture, I’m actually finding joy this summer in conducting legal research for a policy report I know will be widely disseminated or even, if you can believe it, blue-booking. | >
> | I wrestle with whether or not I think the way this year was structured, and the way many of us went through it, was worthwhile or useful to us. I find, like yourself, that this summer has so far been so great for me in that I am finally reconnecting with all the issues I cared about coming into law school, and sort of put on the backburner as I tried to navigate the trenches of 1L year. I’m also pleasantly surprised and happy, to realize how much I learned this year, and that I am able to put a lot of it into practice in the area of human rights. I also think law school, and this class, has changed my perspective on how much social good can be facilitated through “law”, and, thus, how much I can do as an individual. While before starting law school, I was frustrated and angry about how little I thought I could be done, and in law school I became frustrated and angry because I felt what I was studying was somewhat divorced from the bigger picture, I’m actually finding joy this summer in conducting legal research for a policy report I know will be widely disseminated or even, if you can believe it, bluebooking. As Moglen said in passing during one of our classes, it's silly to throw up our hands and say, "It's hopeless," simply because social change is slow and incremental, and over the course of our careers most of us will only be able to do a little, not a lot. | | | Hopefully, if nothing else, this year was useful in challenging us to remember and devote ourselves to our overriding goals and what we thought we could get out of and achieve through this profession, even as we are mired in the mundane, the trivial, and the most minute of details, or else caught up in power structures and social relationships that we find to be problematic (which, I suppose, is what we will be doing for the rest of our careers). I do still wonder if there could have been a less painful and alienating way for me to have come to this conclusion. I am also aware that many of my peers have not, and will not, come to the same conclusion because 1L year seemed very much aimed at straitjacketing us into a very specific role within this profession. I, for one, am thankful for this class because, whereas before, I think I was resigned to accepting law school and the legal profession as it was presented to us this year, Eben and this class have really inspired me to think creatively about how both can be improved, to recognize that our placid acceptance of someone else’s idea of what a legal education or profession should be is a waste of all our talents. We may have gotten here because we’re all reasonably good at “bullshit”, but I’d also like to believe that we also got here because we are capable of doing more than cowing to the status quo. |
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KimberHargroveSecondPaper 3 - 27 Jun 2012 - Main.RumbidzaiMaweni
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It is strongly recommended that you include your outline in the body of your essay by using the outline as section titles. The headings below are there to remind you how section and subsection titles are formatted. | | | As I journeyed through the semester and got more turned of by the idea of Big Law, this class was encouraging in that it encourages us to do whatever the hell we want and ignore the haters. When I do those things, I don't get "A"s and a job offer as a research assistant—I get crappy grades and the popped-balloon dreams of a public interest fellowship. But hopefully, in the grand scheme of things, I think the boiled-down message, “do what makes you happy and screw what other people think of you” is going to be much more useful in life than Contracts or Torts. Especially Torts. | |
>
> | -- KimberHargrove
Thanks for sharing this with us, Kimber. I really admire the honesty of this paper.
And I do understand your ambivalence with the class structure, and shared it at the very beginning. Despite my other misgivings about the way 1L year is structured, what I did appreciate from my other classes was having a very clear idea of what the topic, page, and sentence under discussion was at any given moment. The macro structure of the class and readings, coupled with the free-flowing exchange of ideas promoted by the Wiki, just felt too ripe for opportunities of self-exposure. After a semester in the competitive, anxiety-inducing, and distrustful intellectual space created by 1L (not to mention having your thought processes probed, dissected, and ridiculed at any given moment via Socratic method), by January, I had learned to avoid self-exposure like the plague.
I wrestle with whether or not I think the way this year was structured, and the way many of us went through it, was worthwhile or useful to us. I find, like yourself, that this summer has so far been so great for me in that I am finally reconnecting with all the issues I cared about coming into law school, and sort of put on the backburner as I tried to navigate the trenches of 1L year. I’m also pleasantly surprised and happy, to realize how much I learned this year, and that I am able to put a lot of it into practice in the area of human rights. I also think law school, and this class, has changed my perspective on how much social good can be facilitated through “law”, and, thus, how much I can do as an individual. While before starting law school, I was frustrated and angry about how little I thought I could be done, and in law school I became frustrated and angry because I felt what I was studying was somewhat divorced from the bigger picture, I’m actually finding joy this summer in conducting legal research for a policy report I know will be widely disseminated or even, if you can believe it, blue-booking.
Hopefully, if nothing else, this year was useful in challenging us to remember and devote ourselves to our overriding goals and what we thought we could get out of and achieve through this profession, even as we are mired in the mundane, the trivial, and the most minute of details, or else caught up in power structures and social relationships that we find to be problematic (which, I suppose, is what we will be doing for the rest of our careers). I do still wonder if there could have been a less painful and alienating way for me to have come to this conclusion. I am also aware that many of my peers have not, and will not, come to the same conclusion because 1L year seemed very much aimed at straitjacketing us into a very specific role within this profession. I, for one, am thankful for this class because, whereas before, I think I was resigned to accepting law school and the legal profession as it was presented to us this year, Eben and this class have really inspired me to think creatively about how both can be improved, to recognize that our placid acceptance of someone else’s idea of what a legal education or profession should be is a waste of all our talents. We may have gotten here because we’re all reasonably good at “bullshit”, but I’d also like to believe that we also got here because we are capable of doing more than cowing to the status quo.
-- RumbidzaiMaweni | | |
You are entitled to restrict access to your paper if you want to. But we all derive immense benefit from reading one another's work, and I hope you won't feel the need unless the subject matter is personal and its disclosure would be harmful or undesirable. |
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KimberHargroveSecondPaper 2 - 25 Jun 2012 - Main.KimberHargrove
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< | | | | It is strongly recommended that you include your outline in the body of your essay by using the outline as section titles. The headings below are there to remind you how section and subsection titles are formatted. | | | My own attitude | |
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< | My primary problem was that I did not engage in this class as closely as I could have. I did not post on the wiki, even when a topic was brought up that was interesting to me. The main example of this that comes to mind is when Kipp posted regarding white privilege and how he didn’t want to be seen as part of the problem or one of the enemy. Certainly this is a topic that everyone should reflect on, regardless of race or sex/gender, and institutionalized racism and sexism is something that I could go on at length about. But in the end, I declined to post anything, primarily because I am too tired and lazy to fight the same battle over and over, especially on the internet. If a classmate had come up to me and said, “Hey, let’s talk about institutional preferences towards white men,” I probably would have taken a crack at it. As it was, I couldn’t be roused to comment. | >
> | My primary problem was that I did not engage in this class as closely as I could have. I did not post on the wiki, even when a topic was brought up that was semi-interesting to me. The main example of this that comes to mind is when Kipp posted regarding white privilege and how he didn’t want to be seen as part of the problem or one of the enemy. Certainly this is a topic that everyone should reflect on, regardless of race or sex/gender, and institutionalized racism and sexism is something that I could go on at length about. But in the end, I declined to post anything, primarily because I am too tired and lazy to fight the same battle over and over, especially on the internet. If a classmate had come up to me and said, “Hey, let’s talk about institutional preferences towards white men,” I probably would have taken a crack at it. As it was, I couldn’t be roused to comment. | | | | |
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< | The apathy exhibited above was troubling to me. I came to law school with a specific goal in mind, and apathy towards civil rights issues was not part of the original plan. Now that the semester is over though, I am relived to find that I do still care about those issues and am excited to start my summer internship at MALDEF. | >
> | After further reflection I also realized that the class format simply doesn't work with my personality and that is why I struggled with it so mightily. As an introvert (and someone with a pretty modest amount of self esteem), I really do not want to throw my bullshit ideas out there for my classmates to roll their eyes over. This is of course not an excuse for not engaging in the class—we have all had mind-numbingly dull professors, short-answer tests when we're abysmal at editing, etc. We all know that if a class doesn't work for you, just suck it up and do your best. (I guess you could complain to the Registrar). But I think the mental block of being so cripplingly shy/introverted as to be unable to even think of a worthy idea that interests me is where I really failed in this endeavor. | | | | |
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> | The apathy exhibited above was troubling to me. I came to law school with a specific goal in mind, and apathy towards civil rights issues and an inability to come up with and defend my own ideas was not part of the original plan. Now that the semester is over though, I am relived to find that I do still care about those issues and am excited to start my summer internship at MALDEF. | | | How could I have gotten more out of this class?
This class often left me with the impression that I was taking the easy way out by coming to law school, or that I wasn’t caring enough about the things I care about. But once I take a step back (now that we are out of the trenches of 1L) I realize that I do still care about those issues, and I do still see law school as a means to achieve those goals. For me to get down on myself because I am not doing enough, as a law student, to achieve my goals right now is silly. | |
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< | The takeaway that I should have gotten from this class is not to set limits on myself; the takeaway that I was left with was that I would never be able to do enough. But here I am sitting in a dingy, dirty room in a state that no self-respecting Californian would ever travel to, purely because I wanted to do a job that I “believe” in. Considering that fact, it’s hard to feel that I’m somehow taking the easy way out on this one. | >
> | The takeaway that I should have gotten from this class is not to set limits on myself; the takeaway that I was left with was that I would never be able to do enough. But here I am sitting in a dingy, roach-infested room in a state that no self-respecting Californian would ever travel to, purely because I wanted to do a job that I “believe” in. Considering that fact, it’s hard to feel that I’m somehow taking the easy way out on this one. | | | If I had been able to keep the larger goals in mind while class was in session, I would have gotten more out of it. If I had been in a position to tell myself that law school is something that I have thought about, that I have a plan for my degree that does not include a 2 a.m. realization that I work for the wrong side, and that the next two years are a step towards a future goal (which may or may not work out, but is still important to have so as to prevent the 2 a.m. realization). Instead I got bogged down in the details (Eben completely deconstructed his professor’s exam! I can’t even finish my reading without passing out and drooling on the cases!) and was left feeling disappointed in and sorry for myself. | |
<
< | As I journeyed through the semester and got more turned of by the idea of Big Law, this class was a bit of a bright spot in that it encourages us to do whatever the hell we want and ignore the haters, which is a pick-me-up as I try and not get channeled into a firm right after this summer. In the grand scheme of things, I think the boiled-down message, “do what makes you happy and screw what other people think of you” is going to be much more useful than Contracts or Torts ever was. | >
> | As I journeyed through the semester and got more turned of by the idea of Big Law, this class was encouraging in that it encourages us to do whatever the hell we want and ignore the haters. When I do those things, I don't get "A"s and a job offer as a research assistant—I get crappy grades and the popped-balloon dreams of a public interest fellowship. But hopefully, in the grand scheme of things, I think the boiled-down message, “do what makes you happy and screw what other people think of you” is going to be much more useful in life than Contracts or Torts. Especially Torts. | | |
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KimberHargroveSecondPaper 1 - 21 May 2012 - Main.KimberHargrove
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It is strongly recommended that you include your outline in the body of your essay by using the outline as section titles. The headings below are there to remind you how section and subsection titles are formatted.
Class Reflection
-- By KimberHargrove - 21 May 2012
In this essay I would like to reflect on this class and try to work through why I did not get very much out of it. Originally I had chalked up my indifference to my own bad attitude (which I still find mostly true), but it seems silly to believe that my attitude is independent of external factors.
I did around 90 - 95% of the reading on time (sometimes multiple times, but not often).
My own attitude
My primary problem was that I did not engage in this class as closely as I could have. I did not post on the wiki, even when a topic was brought up that was interesting to me. The main example of this that comes to mind is when Kipp posted regarding white privilege and how he didn’t want to be seen as part of the problem or one of the enemy. Certainly this is a topic that everyone should reflect on, regardless of race or sex/gender, and institutionalized racism and sexism is something that I could go on at length about. But in the end, I declined to post anything, primarily because I am too tired and lazy to fight the same battle over and over, especially on the internet. If a classmate had come up to me and said, “Hey, let’s talk about institutional preferences towards white men,” I probably would have taken a crack at it. As it was, I couldn’t be roused to comment.
The apathy exhibited above was troubling to me. I came to law school with a specific goal in mind, and apathy towards civil rights issues was not part of the original plan. Now that the semester is over though, I am relived to find that I do still care about those issues and am excited to start my summer internship at MALDEF.
How could I have gotten more out of this class?
This class often left me with the impression that I was taking the easy way out by coming to law school, or that I wasn’t caring enough about the things I care about. But once I take a step back (now that we are out of the trenches of 1L) I realize that I do still care about those issues, and I do still see law school as a means to achieve those goals. For me to get down on myself because I am not doing enough, as a law student, to achieve my goals right now is silly.
The takeaway that I should have gotten from this class is not to set limits on myself; the takeaway that I was left with was that I would never be able to do enough. But here I am sitting in a dingy, dirty room in a state that no self-respecting Californian would ever travel to, purely because I wanted to do a job that I “believe” in. Considering that fact, it’s hard to feel that I’m somehow taking the easy way out on this one.
If I had been able to keep the larger goals in mind while class was in session, I would have gotten more out of it. If I had been in a position to tell myself that law school is something that I have thought about, that I have a plan for my degree that does not include a 2 a.m. realization that I work for the wrong side, and that the next two years are a step towards a future goal (which may or may not work out, but is still important to have so as to prevent the 2 a.m. realization). Instead I got bogged down in the details (Eben completely deconstructed his professor’s exam! I can’t even finish my reading without passing out and drooling on the cases!) and was left feeling disappointed in and sorry for myself.
As I journeyed through the semester and got more turned of by the idea of Big Law, this class was a bit of a bright spot in that it encourages us to do whatever the hell we want and ignore the haters, which is a pick-me-up as I try and not get channeled into a firm right after this summer. In the grand scheme of things, I think the boiled-down message, “do what makes you happy and screw what other people think of you” is going to be much more useful than Contracts or Torts ever was.
You are entitled to restrict access to your paper if you want to. But we all derive immense benefit from reading one another's work, and I hope you won't feel the need unless the subject matter is personal and its disclosure would be harmful or undesirable.
To restrict access to your paper simply delete the "#" character on the next two lines:
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