cornell it is

i've sent my first seat deposit and we have an apartment in ithaca beginning in early august. the tiny (we'll take turns breathing) apartment is in this funky building just four blocks from downtown and two blocks from a bus which runs every 10 minutes to the door of the law school.



the best part is that it is across the street from gimme coffee! yes, that's eric standing there.


orientation is august 25 and classes start august 28.

so now to sell the house we bought during our "delusions of stability" stage in 2006.

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.

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.

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!

how in the &*(^ do we figure this out!?

some pics from ut law:
so nice to spend a few days where it's warm and actually becoming green already my favorite march thing to do!). physically, ut law is like texas in some ways: lots of space and sky.

the world's best tour guide and most tolerant host sits in the library (notice the shorts in mid-march):


also in that pic above, notice the walls of glass, which look like this:


really a lovely place. even the stacks are colorful:


all this cool art everywhere. hard to tell what this is from the pic, but it's an ancient lock (from persia, maybe? -- i've forgotten).
this "where to go" decision really is tough.

first of all, i still don't have all the schools' answers.

three of the answers i have are some form of "maybe" now.

and there's the money -- how important will the level of debt be, considering the great loan repayment stuff for people who do public service law?

is it better to go to a school where i can be at the top of the class, shine, get the good spots and the attention of profs? or is it better to go somewhere where everyone is my level or better?

and how important is the school's ranking or reputation? i tend to blow that off to some extent, as long as it looks like i'll get a good education, since i want to work in death penalty arena -- it's not like i'll be competing for corporate jobs. but as one law prof pointed out, the credentials from top schools can sometimes be important, because they help to legitimize whoever i work for.

and how important is it to study with people who are doing death penalty work? is it better to go to a "better" school?

and how much better is it if i go to a school in the south, where the death penalty is?

big school with more class choices, profs, etc.? or is smaller better?

and how important is it to leave myself open to further Guidance in all this? maybe i'll end up being drawn into international human rights or something else? will the Right school necessarily be the logical one? who knows?

and all this without mentioning the huge question of eric's location preferences and work needs . . .

sigh.

say prayers, hold us in the Light, send good thoughts, whatever is your way . . . thanks!

austin

hello from austin not boston -- and bookpeople, the largest bookstore in texas.

we're here -- unfortunately nick is not! he's on standby for a flight this evening -- we're keeping our fingers crossed.

another visit trip

boston is pretty in the winter:


here's a pic i like:


looks like a walkway, right? but it's really shot straight up the side of the bu law building:


i don't suppose anyone chooses bu law for its lovely facility, but it does have another thing or two to recommend it.

new york . . . well, newark, anyway

in nj, heading into new york tomorrow to check out one of the schools -- pretty exciting to think about visiting a school which has already accepted me.

flight-wise, lots of weather delays and the apparently requisite grumping, demanding, storming about, etc.

i know my trip and schedule didn't have the pressures that others' did, but i really had a good day. a couple of fun little kids and interesting seatmates on the flight. plus! it turned out christine was in the charlotte airport, too, and it was fun to know that -- even if she did choose to get on her flight rather than meet me for tea.

at the moment i'm grateful to:

• one of my seatmates in particular, a biz traveler in a surprisingly pleasant mood despite the fact that he lost his first class seat on a canceled flight and was sitting in the very back row, without even an empty middle seat next to him -- he was just glad to be transported from point a to point b (ok, i'm also grateful to him because he said i didn't look 50!),
  
• the quakers for making a space in which i could learn to be okay with not being in motion,
  
• christine for her advocacy of a complaint-free world -- it makes such a difference in my own life (when i can do it!) not to complain, and i'm sure it makes a difference for those who -- willingly or otherwise -- spend time around me, and
  
• eric for making the trip arrangements, and for making them in such a way that i don't feel intimidated by this whole going-to-the-big-city-alone thing.
  

airports and airplanes are good places to see the difference attitude makes.

risk

i took these on a bus trip in 2002 with members of the educational program of the Trenton Area Soup Kitchen. i think of the risks the immigrants took, and that some of these students took to go on this trip. many of them had never been outside trenton, had never been on a boat, had never been to a place like new york. and the risk involved with going into a g.e.d. program -- when school has never been anything but frustrating and humiliating? and you're not sure you have what it takes -- remember there's math required here! there's some real courage there.



today's theme seems to be willingness to pay the price, or to go through what is truly difficult in order to have a life and relationships that are more real.

• my beloved the expert being willing to be a beginner so that he can learn something that matters,
  
• someone i love being willing to put the conflict on the table so that we can have a more solid relationship when we've worked through it,
  
• a long conversation with a coke addict i really like who is trying to bolster his willingness to go through the flatness and pain to get to a freedom he's not sure he believes in,

. . . and me? i got word yesterday that my top choice school said no. and yes, it was a long shot that they'd say yes, and yes, i'm sure there'll be some sadness when it sinks in good, but i hold onto these things:

• i do believe that i'm being Guided in this process, and something Right will come of all this,
• i already have some really good options, and even financial help -- still hard to believe people will give me money to come to their (very good) schools,
• if no is the answer, i'm glad to have it sooner, so that i can focus on the actual choices, and
  
• this is what we risk by going for the really good stuff instead of just the safe options -- sometimes i won't get what i dream about, and that will hurt, but it's ok to hurt some

just a few months ago, the picture i had put together was a school that is very affordable, but probably not very challenging. since then, (with lots of pushing from the beloved expert) i've allowed myself to consider schools that are exciting -- and well, to get excited. so yes, this is disappointing, but my world is bigger because of it.

i'm thinking about a line in christine kane's song "or just heading home"

i fell in love once
with a boy from wichita
when he left me it broke my heart
but i do not regret it

place pics

ej had a computer problem this weekend that motivated me to try to try to get some digital pics and writing organized. fun to re-discover some on the old ibook.

i haven't decided whether it's a good idea to say which schools have accepted me, but here are some photographic hints:



ah, the city . . . all the universities, languages, theater and . . . just life




and then there's the calm, beautiful, nearer to friends & family option



and then there's the chance to return to sweet familiarity


still several more schools to hear from, so we'll continue to wait for the mail. anticiparcelitis? my eagerness shows so much that the mail carrier has started to congratulate me when the fat envelopes come.

yes, three yes!

yes #3 is official -- the mail just came

three yes?

I am in the waiting phase. Waiting for decisions from the more-than-a-few law schools to which I've applied. (I had no idea how I'd look to them, so I applied to a wide range of schools.) This is an excruciating and fun time.

So the count earlier this week was: 2 yes (both with money) and 2 no (forget 'em, didn't wanna go there anyway, right?) with several still out there.

Word from one financial aid office that they have received word of my acceptance -- but I haven't. Maybe they're just trying to create a new category for themselves in my count: "rumored to be yes" but i think we'll announce the new count as:

~~~~~~~~ 3 yes! ~~~~~~~~