Sep
5
Week 1 Survived
September 5, 2008 | 2 Comments
So Week 1 at Harvard Law has come and gone for this Texan beaner and I must say that it’s… a bit different from what I expected. In a good way though. That’s not to say that it’s spectacularly fun and I never want to leave, but just that it’s better than the dreadful image that most outsiders have of the Harvard Law student life.
1. My professors all seem to be very sensible people; some more than others though. Some are simultaneously hilarious, congenial, and brilliant, while others fall closer to but still far from the caricature of the professor who lives and breathes law. None, however, are aggressive enough to put the fear of God in you.
2. The Socratic Method is what it is. Extremely effective at having you make sure that you understand the reading assignments, while frustrating for someone who much rather be given a reasonable amount of time to articulate his thoughts on paper. There’s no point in criticizing it and I’m well aware of the numerous reasons why it is relevant for people expecting to some day become attorneys. Still, no matter how comfortable I might become with speaking my thoughts to a large group of people, and I have a lot of work to do in that area, I don’t see myself becoming a litigator.
3. The big surprise this week has to do with the student body, or at least that portion of it that I’ve interacted with in my section. Coming from a school where maybe two or three students out of forty had any intellectual interest in the material that they were studying beyond getting through it and finding a job, I expected to just be blasted away by dozens of super-cerebral and aggressive overachievers on my first day here. Truth is my section consists of mostly amiable and laid-back, although clearly intelligent people. Yes, there are the aggressive types who seem as if they’d allocate time for sleep, food, and family based on the probability of each activity’s furthering them along towards a Supreme Court clerkship. They make up only a small portion of the class though and, while I admire their dedication and am slightly envious of their speaking abilities, it’s quite clear to me that I simply don’t belong on that track. Life to me is a mosaic of many valuable and necessary pieces, with a successful career being only one of them. There comes a point at which you must say that enough is enough, or your ambition will strip you of all that can add meaning to this competitive, conditional world of ours.
I think that’s an interesting topic to close this post on: conditionality. I’ve always been a very close-knit person who prefers having a few very personal relationships over befriending lots of people. I’m not going to claim that it’s the right way to be, but I will say this: we need more unconditionality in the world. Cynical as it may sound, the odds are that 99% of the people with whom you associate have a calculated reason for why they interact with you, completely independent of who you are. If the incentives were to be taken away, so would their ‘friendship’. I think that part of growing up involves learning to accept this conditionality and working with it (networking), something which I need to grow more comfortable with, but part of being wise and human involves not losing sight of what unconditional friendship and respect truly means. I think this explains a lot of why, no matter how much society advances in many areas and you start seeing all kinds of new thoughts about how to live and who to be, religion and family remain the core of mainstream society. We are humans and we know how to work, we know how to reason, and we know how to ‘network’, at least most of us do… but we can’t survive on those alone for very long. I couldn’t survive without the love of my wife and my family, or the true respect and friendship that, every now and then, I run into.
Comments
2 Comments so far
Hey Jose!
I just discovered your blog, and me likes. Although I for some reason had no idea you were married. Congrats! (I have no idea how belated this is). Anyway, I just wanted to stop by and say hi, and I look forward to these next three years!
-Mithun
Interesting comments on this first week Jose, A bit philosophical yet I’ve enjoyed your openness.
I perceive a bit of negativism in your comment “the odds are that 99% of the people with whom you associate have a calculated reason for why they interact with you, completely independent of who you are”. And hope that your future encounters refute this.
I concur with your realization that this new transition in your life at Harvard must not deviate your thoughts of what truly matters. Sophistication, superior education nor financial freedom is the true goal yet but means to acquire longer lasting happiness, via health,love,prosperity and family