Starting Law School!

I've been negligent posting on here, but I have a passable excuse: moving and settling in at Cambridge.  Jess and I drove 26 hours (not counting dog walks) to get up here, and let me tell you, that drive sucked.  I was driving the U-haul truck, so I've discovered a new respect for truckers. Driving something that big is nerve-racking.

Anyway, we're all moved in and settled down now.  We've explored downtown Boston, visited the planetarium, and today we visited Walden Pond.  Yeah, that Walden Pond.  The transcendentalist one.  It was a big deal for me.  I read Walden when I was 18 and it had a profound influence on me.  I can't say that I've lived up to the ideals that Thoreau espoused, but at least I've got a role model I can believe in.

Class Begins

Thursday is the beginning of Orientation.  The class of 2015 consists of ~560 individuals who are divided into seven sections of 80.  I'm in section 1.  Every one of my classes will be with these 80 people.  So far, I've met four of them at a happy hour down in Central Square.  They were funny, endearing, and exceedingly intelligent.  And not one of them was wearing a smoking jacket or a pipe.  It's a limited sample, but I think section 1 is going to be a lot of fun.

The syllabuses that I've received have scared the hell out of me.  Most of them contain boilerplate stuff like "do your readings" and "come to class".  But they also include terrifying nuggets like, "if you are unprepared for class, you must contact me before so-and-so".  I'm not complaining because I understand that sometimes you have to use fear to make sure that your students are prepared, it's just very intense.  Part of me is perversely pleased about that: if I'm going to Harvard Law I might as well play for keeps.

This fall semester I am taking Torts, Criminal Law, Civil Procedure, and Legislation & Regulation.  Two of my professors have actually written the textbooks that we are using.  Our entire grades are determined by a final that we take in December.  This is insanely stressful.  Which leads me to my random musing.

Stress and Priorities

I'm only 23, so what I think about human nature and reality are probably not worth listening to.  But as a veteran of post-secondary education and childhood poverty, I understand stress.  In fact, I'd go as far as to say that I'm a fine connoisseur of stress.

There's good stress, the kind that motivates you, and there's bad stress, the kind that eats at you.  But what I think is interesting about stress is that it gets addictive.  Stress makes you feel like you're doing something; you're spending so much time worrying that you must be getting something done.  You're not though.  You're just mistaking motion for progress.  This is how you end up in the library at 1am wondering if you've done enough reading.

The human mind is great at figuring out relative priorities.  This is more important than that.  But our minds are not quite as adept at calculating absolute priorities.  The most pressing issue of the day is the biggest deal ever.  So it's easy to find yourself getting super stressed about something trivial one day, and the next day having the same amount of stress about something that's actually important.  I think the only cure to this is to have some really bad things happen, which forces perspective upon you.  Or just become apathetic.

Politics

Since I'm basically on the sidelines during a huge political year, I think I'll try to write frequently about how I see the race developing.

The first fact that everyone needs to understand is that this race is dead even right now.  47% on each side are absolutely committed to their guy.  So any illusion that you harbor about "everyone thinks the way I do" is completely misguided.  There's half a nation that disagrees.

The second observation I have is that individuals on the conservative side of the political spectrum are suffering from a closed-loop problem.  They are surrounded by their own ideas, which creates the false impression that everyone (or at least a substantial majority) agrees with them.  This normally happens after a party wins big in an election cycle.  It happened to the Democrats after 2008.  It's a recurring theme in American politics.  My opinion is that the winning Republican message is that Obama is out of touch and out of his depth.  Let the experienced problem solver take over.  It's pretty simple, and I think it would win.

Unfortunately, the Republicans are doubling down on their small government philosophy.  It's a great philosophy, but it's not a winner for this election year.  Explain how government cuts are going to grow the economy?  It can be done, but people aren't going to buy it, especially when the sequestration layoffs begin.

And then they have to contend with the social conservatives.  You know, the "legitimate rape" crowd.  This is the elephant in the Republican room.  To win, Republicans must carry the white vote by a 2-1 margin, which includes college educated women.  A lot of the traditional views held by conservatives are anathema to those women.  Now, in states like Arkansas and the rest of the South, that won't hurt conservatives because the margins are too small.  But in close states, like Iowa, Florida, Virginia, Wisconsin, Colorado, Ohio- that can (and will) make all the difference.  Especially Florida and Colorado.  

Now for Democrats.  Since Democrats have spectacularly failed to explain basic economics and government policy, they find themselves defending ground that should be sacred.  The basic flow of policy-oriented politics is that you educate the public during off years about public problems and solutions, then you present candidates and campaigns that address those problems.  Democrats are (or at least used to be) the party of the poor and the working middle class.  They should be educating voters every day, not just during election years.  But since they have failed at this, they are taking a page from Republicans: scream about social issues.  

Don't get me wrong, I prefer a Democratic administration that uses negative social campaigning to a squeaky clean Republican one, but it's a sign of abject failure that we've come to this point.  

Still, I'm betting Obama takes Ohio and wins this thing.