cornell

i'm in binghamton at the airport, heading back to nc. pretty exhausted.

here are some thoughts on cornell law, edited from an email i just sent to meg:

i really love the law school. compared to cardozo, all the other schools which accepted me were better for me in certain ways but not others, or were better but not enough better to justify the cost, or whatever. so cardozo remained my top choice until cornell said yes last week.

cornell has it all for me: good program, good students, the ivy tickets which may actually help in launching me, and people here who are actually doing capital defense work in all phases. this means that i can learn on actual cases but also make the human connections that will be so good once i'm out and working. in addition to the death penalty focus, there is a professor who is focused on the issue of race in capital work, and another who is doing empirical studies which might make use of the math way back there in my background. cornell's loan repayment assistance program will make it doable, even though i'll officially take on an impossible debt.

eric is being unbelievably supportive. he is so excited that i have the option of going to a great school that i have fallen in love with. we're not sure what this means for him -- whether he can make it work in ithaca or will need to spend some/all of his time in the city, with us both doing some back&forth. too soon to know yet.

there are lots of little bonus things: a pottery studio just across the way, a moosewood lunch cafe right inside anabel taylor, the chance to spend a semester or year elsewhere, which may help with the eric calculations -- they say lots of folks go to nyu, which was another school with which i fell in love. of course most surely go for the corporate stuff, but i don't see why i couldn't go for the death penalty stuff. of course, ithaca feels a lot like the parts of asheville i love, all crunchy-granola.

it's a relief to be allowed to put this process down, and get to work on the next phase!

there are still a few good schools which haven't responded, but i think i've sent my regrets to all but one of the schools which admitted me. that one deserves a thoughtful letter.

another school & why i need to do this work

hard to believe i've been admitted to an ivy league law school and wait-listed at another. what feels posible has changed so much in these last few months. i'm in binghamton, ny, heading over for a look at cornell law.

stray word thought: why are we under various circumstances?

if you have a few minutes for something really compelling, watch this news clip of glen edward chapman, just released after spending 15+ years on nc death row for one murder he did not commit and another which may not have even happened. apparently a police officer who testified has just been suspended during a perjury investigation. chapman was deeply wronged by the state, and may not receive any compensation for it, but check him out. especially under the circumstances, his attitude is amazing.

my guys

eric bought me a yummy lunch today as we bounced past each other -- he's headed to boston for a few days. i think he did this so i wouldn't get food-jealous. boston is a fun place to eat -- and not just donuts. when we lived there, we momentarily considered trying to eat in every indian restaurant in town, but quickly gave up on that.


ain't technology great? if it weren't for email, instant messaging and cell phones (we even text!) how would we do these relationships? right now, even this blog is figuring in. i tried to tell eric something over lunch, but had the feeling i'd already told him, when he said "i read it in your blog." oh my.

and here's a guy who has always taken pride in whatever work he's done, and who has always done work of which he can be proud. he gave me a fun tour of his shop when i picked up a gorgeous hand-made 9-foot+ metal curtain rod, complete with finials he designed and welded. (uh, no, this is not the curtain rod -- the curtain rod is black.)

more driving!

from duke, i drove up to roanoke to see friends and get loved on by my little boy, michael. where does the time go? (where does the hair go?!)

got word that dad's younger brother, eddie, had died doing one of his favorite things: lounging around in bed reading. that's a good way to go, i think.

on the way to atlanta for the funeral, the radio played dr. king's drum major sermon in which he gives some thought to his own funeral. he lists several things he does not want mentioned, his nobel prize, for example, and says "I'd like for somebody to say that day that Martin Luther King, Jr., tried to love somebody."

always good to be reminded that life is short and we must live the way we'd like to be remembered.

shedding jobs

why do so many headlines, e.g., here, today use the wording that the u.s. economy shed 80,000 jobs? makes me think of what dogs and people do to unwanted hair and pounds, respectively, when the weather warms.

and isn't it just a weird way to describe this? doesn't it sound like sort of a good thing? oh, shedding -- we must have had too many.

interviewee: yes, i was employed there until the economy shed my job.

and why do they all use the same word? did they all just think of that at the same time? i'm just sayin'. without going into any intention, is this the effect of cutbacks and mergers in the free press, that they all use the same absurd phrase?

duke law

some pics from duke law -- first, a classroom:


by this fall, the entire law school facility will have been renovated.

this next is a shot of a clinic office (nice! most schools keep clinics in the dungeon). in law school, "clinic" means working under supervision on real cases with "live clients" which is always a little jarring when the particular clinic i'm interested in is the death penalty clinic.



what a treat to meet professor james coleman and -- an unexpected bonus! -- professor ernie young, just arrived from ut (that's texas, for all y'all thinking tennessee) law, who happened to be sitting near me, observing the con law class, and was quite generous when i pounced on him for advice about law schools. of course he had some good things to say about both duke and ut. i'm having such fun collecting opinions about this decision process, and am impressed with the overall generosity of faculty everywhere.

at each school, i try to identify one prof in particular with whom i'd love to study. at duke, that's coleman -- his bio makes him sound interesting, every course he teaches looks fascinating -- and he didn't disappoint in person. in the classroom, he was laid back and clearly having a good time, one of those natural teachers who can keep everyone's attention, keep everyone participating, keep things moving, raise issues and respond well to questions, knowing just how far to push. it took me several minutes to figure out what was so different about his class -- no computers! profs at duke have the option to allow or ban them in class. at 8:45 a.m., his class was more lively and students were more engaged than in any other (non-seminar) class i've visited. probably just a coincidence. (ok, remember that when i was last in school, the computer was a mainframe somewhere else, accessible through the teletype console, and we were proud to have advanced past punchcards.)

then i went to a constitutional law class taught by professor neil siegel, who was lecturing and leading discussion on race and equality under the constitution, specifically focusing on the famous cases of plessy and brown v. bd of ed. this stuff is so fascinating -- i can hardly wait to get going . . . but going where?!?! =)

so duke has lots of advantages: it's a great school -- very highly ranked and recognized nationally (and particularly in the south, where the death penalty is), it's actually in a death penalty state so i might be able to do internships with places like the center for death penalty litigation, fair trial initiative or the office of the appellate defender, etc., it's small (an advantage in some ways), it's much nearer to family here, etc.

itch

what is the evolutionary purpose of (or, if you prefer, why did God create) itching? i mean, i understand pain -- we learn not to do that again. but itching?

two more

i'm in durham to check out duke. got two more answers -- another wait-list (for a total of four) and a yes from a school which has made such a bad impression at every turn that i had decided a good while back that i would not go.

some people/schools/businesses seem to fail to understand that when they are interacting with the public, they are always marketing -- always putting impressions out there which are not part of their official marketing efforts. schools are marketing (big time) through their admissions departments, often the primary contact prospective students have, and i really do wonder if the dean in this particular case is aware of the tone of correspondence.

now that i'm admitted, maybe i'll make an effort to tell him.

i assume this school, like most, would like to climb in the rankings. this means, among other things, attracting more strong students, since lsat scores and gpas are a big part of the comparison. in attracting strong students, as eric says, some things are hard to fix, but others are easy. to get the easy ones right, you have to know about them.

on the other hand, maybe admissions' job is just to accurately portray the school, and maybe this is what it is like, in which case, i guess i should leave the dean alone, for the sake of future students . . . ?



at the moment, i've got fun stuff to do. i'm off to get a tour of duke and see a couple of classes. i wonder if i can get credit toward my degree for all these classes!