New Kid on the Hallway

Okay, this bugs me a lot for some reason

From the NYT article about McCain's choice of Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska as his running mate:

She is known to religious conservatives for choosing not to have an abortion after learning that she was carrying a child with Down syndrome. “It is almost impossible to exaggerate how important that is to the conservative faith community,” said Ralph Reed, the former head of the Christian Coalition. She gave birth to her son, Trig, in April.

Now, I realize that Palin is, in fact, anti-choice, so that's not my beef here (I mean, I don't agree, but her opinion, whatever). What disgusts me is that the way this is phrased seems to imply somehow that choosing not to abort a fetus with Down syndrome is a remarkable and unusual sacrifice that only someone against abortion rights would choose. Which also seems to imply that pro-choice women, upon finding out that they were carrying a child with Down syndrome, would LEAP to abort. That pro-choice people would all consider it appropriate to abort a fetus with Down syndrome. That Palin is somehow bucking some kind of pressure from abortion-rights supporters to DO AWAY WITH ALL EVEN-SLIGHTLY-DEFECTIVE BABIES!!!!

Horseshit.

As a supporter of choice, I would defend someone's right to abort a fetus with Down syndrome, in the same way that I would defend someone's right to abort a fetus under any circumstances. That's what the law says, folks. You don't get to say, this reason for abortion is valid, and this one isn't.

But at the same time, I don't know anyone who says, Oh, abortion, yay, now I can get rid of that icky Down syndrome baby I don't want to have because it's not ABSOLUTELY PERFECT!!!*

First, that's incredibly insulting to individuals with Down syndrome and the families who love and cherish them. Choosing to keep a Down's baby? OMG the horror!!! As I understand it (which is not especially well, so feel free to correct me, but this is my understanding), people with Down syndrome can have an incredible range of abilities and impairments. So learning that she was going to have a baby with Down syndrome certainly does not mean Palin found out that she was going to be caring for an unresponsive vegetable for the rest of her son's life. I'm sure that any Down syndrome child presents problems that parents of a non-Down's child don't face. But does that mean a Down syndrome child is automatically a greater burden than a non-Down's child? Is caring for a child with Down's somehow qualitatively worse than, say, caring for a child who develops a drug addiction? who breaks his back in a skiing accident and ends up a paraplegic? who turns out, god forbid, to be a sociopathic killer? (I know that sounds awful, but sadly, someone has to give birth to sociopathic killers.) I find insulting the article's assumption that Down syndrome automatically renders a child such a burden as to justify considering abortion, and that Palin's choice not to do so is a noble sacrifice.

Finally, the idea that pro-choicers are leaping to abort Down syndrom children is a red herring. Does anyone have actual statistics to show that there are significant percentages of women who find out they're carrying a Down's baby who abort that child? What I think this article does is conflate aborting a Down syndrome fetus with aborting a fetus with such severe birth defects that it will not survive outside the womb, or, the more difficult situation, aborting a fetus with such severe birth defects that the child will require constant medical care and will never have what we generally recognize as a decent quality of life. I've read a couple of bloggers whose experiences fall into this category, and I can't imagine being in their position. To praise Palin's choice not to abort a fetus with Down syndrome seems to gloss right over the truly serious questions that severe fetal birth defects raise, and the real reason why abortion should remain legal and accessible - not so women can abort a baby that isn't "perfect," but so women have available to them the widest possible range of solutions to the problems that might arise in their pregnancies. To me, the value of keeping those solutions available is far greater than the danger of "selfish" abortions, because I believe that women take pretty damn seriously what's going on in their own bodies and their own lives, and are in the best position to determine what should happen to/in those bodies. (And if a woman does abort because a Down's child isn't "perfect" or "pretty enough" for her? Do you really think that woman should be parenting in the first place?)

I know abortion is a hot-button issue (duh! cliche!), and I don't mean this post as a statement on abortion in the abstract (though I realize that my opinion is pretty clear!). All I'm saying is that the perspective displayed in the quote above seems pretty insulting regardless of how you feel about abortion.**

(Rereading this rant, I should probably make clear that the Times is just reporting religious conservatives' take on Palin's decision, and I should be mad at them, not the paper. Okay. I'm mad at them. Read "article" above as "the article's representation of what religious conservatives think" - that's too long to write every time, anyway.)

*Before anyone can write in with an example: yes, there well may be individual people out there who have said this. But it's not a plank in the support-for-abortion-rights platform. More likely, women who have aborted fetuses they know to have Down syndrome have made hard decisions about what kind of parenting they, personally, are equipped to do both materially and psychologically. A woman who aborts a fetus with Down's because she doesn't have the material resources to give that child what it needs is making a very different decision from a woman who aborts a fetus with Down's because it's not the kind of baby she wants (though I should add that these are moral decisions, not legal ones; legally, both women are in the right, as long as the pregnancy hasn't progressed past a certain point). Assuming that the former is the same as the latter is an insult to women's ability to judge their own circumstances. Besides, there are plenty of people who say, Oh, children, yay, now I can have a child as the perfect accessory for my perfect life!, but you don't see people arguing that because some people have children for crappy reasons, therefore NO ONE SHOULD EVER have children.

**I may perhaps be crankier than usual about this because of being subjected to anti-abortion protesters plastering the bridges over the highway I take to school with posters with graphic photos of the results of late-term abortions. Dude. Totally uncool. And not because I should be confronted with the logical result of my beliefs; I'm cool with my beliefs. Graphic photos are just manipulative and used purely for shock value. I'm cool with appendectomies, too, but I don't want to see pictures of them over the road I have to travel for work.

I am so effing proud of myself

In class today, I identified a question I had about the material,* I asked the prof about it after class,** the prof said it was a good question and got excited about answering (granted, she's an excitable type - in a good way), and I actually understood the answer. I rock.

Tomorrow: conquering the public transit system!

*Seriously, folks, usually I can't do this to save my life - either I don't realize I don't know something, or I can't articulate what it is I don't know. It's amazing I made it through grad school.

**This is recommended as Key to Getting to Know Your Profs, which is a Very Good Thing.

More pathetically obvious symbolism

Aaaaaand last night I dreamed that they were going to close my graduate alma mater.

(Not the snooty rich SLAC I attended as an undergrad; my graduate alma mater. Which, in case you were curious, is NEVER going to happen, unless they actually close the state.)

Oh, and by the way: can I just skip over Barack Obama and vote directly for Michelle?

What have I done??

So, you know the complete-the-sentence meme I did below?

I've been reading people's versions all over the blogosphere, and almost everyone else has completed "If I ever go back to school, I'll..." with some variation of "have to be crazy," "kill myself," and the like.

Right now, it so feels like they're right.

Today was the first day of class (three subjects today), and I feel completely confused, overwhelmed, idiotic, and out of place.

Don't worry, I'm not going to judge how well this is working for me based on the first day. But it's been so long since I've had to learn to do something completely new from scratch - as opposed to just learning more about the same thing, or more generally similar stuff - that it's kind of painful. And it's reminded me of the sad truth that I have always been a really rotten, cranky beginner. (At least at anything I give a shit about.) Seriously, I am the worst student in the world, not in the sense of being bad at stuff, but in the sense of wanting to learn and being open to new things and humility and shit. I want to be the one who KNOWS EVERYTHING. I mean, why the hell else would I become a college professor?

(As an aside, I've already had a couple of people assume I'm going to breeze through this because I have a Ph.D. People, you do realize my Ph.D. has nothing to do with this, right? Okay, we did have an example of a pleading from medieval England in our Civ Pro book last night, and yes, I was probably the only person in the room who's read one of those in the original. Which helps me understand modern Civil Procedure...not at all. Well, maybe a teeny, tiny bit, and it was pretty damn cool to see the medieval stuff. But then I turned the page.)

It's a little unnerving that the people who pipe up in class seem to come up with different answers to a lot of questions than I do, but you know, most of them have had really different experiences than I have, and besides, just because they volunteer answers doesn't mean they're always right.

Okay, gotta go read more cases where someone has done something really bad to someone else and is trying to get out of it, or argues that someone's done something really bad to them, and the like. (Did you know that, according to one case at least, if you swallow a fishbone while eating fish chowder in New England and it injures your throat, you're shit out of luck as far as getting anything from the restaurant that served you the chowder, because it is inherent to the glorious tradition of making New England fish chowder that bones might remain in the finished dish, and if you eat the chowder, you're doing so at your own risk?)

(Oh, and you people totally ROCK. I love all the suggestions and info about schlepping lunches that you gave on the post below - I will definitely go through this well-nourished!)

A food bleg

Not to spammify the internets this morning with a gazillion posts, but: I am looking for advice. What are your favorite things to pack in a bag lunch? (or box lunch, or however you carry it.) I'm particularly looking for things that are yummy, easy to make, and easily carried to and from school. I am determined not to throw money down the drain at the law school cafeteria, so I've resolved to pack lunches this year, but whenever I think about what to bring, my brain immediately goes blank (it's kind of like how NLLDH and I can sit at home and say, "I'd like to see this movie, this movie, this movie, and this movie," but if we ever make it to a video store, we can't remember any of them). So I thought I'd see what kinds of ideas you, my brilliant readers, might have.

(I'd also love suggestions for a good container for schlepping said lunches. I've been pondering this, or a more traditional bento, but it did dawn on me that I might want something insulated. My priorities here are to find something light [because I have HUGE books to haul as it is, which sort of rules out the Mr. Bento], and something that makes carrying lunch feel like fun, not an economy.)

Someone hold me

I dreamed last night that in fact, I hadn't finished my Ph.D. - I still had just a few more revisions to make on the dissertation.

Damn, was I glad to wake up from that one.

(I also dreamed that I left my schoolbag full of all my books, my laptop, and my wallet on the bus so I could get off and go running, barefoot, throughout the town. [Like I can run!] Then when I tried to call home to get NLLDH to help me, I could hear him on the phone talking to his parents, but he couldn't hear me. Not one of my better nights.)

Do-re-meme

1. My uncle once told me that I should be an English major because it would be great preparation for getting a job as a secretary.

2. Never in my life have I wanted to run for political office.

3. When I was five my teacher sent me off to read a story to the first-graders. Come on, who thought THAT was going to be good for my social life?

4. High school was a time full of good times, but which I'm really really REALLY glad is in the past.

5. I will never forget sitting in the shadow of a chateau, eating pizza with NLLDH and trying to convince a snooty little French dog to come over and say hello.

6. Once I met someone who didn't like chocolate. I know, I was horrified, too.

7. There’s this boy I know who's way cooler than he thinks he is.

8. Once, at a bar, I saw a classmate break the bartender's nose.

9. By noon, I’m usually lucky to be showered and dressed. Well, if I don't have to be somewhere.

10. Last night Eldest Cat woke me up AGAIN whining for food.

11. If only I had more willpower.

12. Next time I go to church is not likely to be for a long time.

13. What worries me most is whether or not I'll get a job I like once I finish law school. (Maybe I should begin by worrying about doing well IN law school.)

14. When I turn my head left I see a black wire shelving unit crammed full of stuff I have to organize.

15. When I turn my head right I see NLLDH.

16. You know I’m lying when I say I'd love the middle seat on the plane.

17. What I miss most about the Eighties is big hair.

18. If I were a character in Shakespeare I’d be Polonius, I fear.

19. By this time next year I will ideally have a summer's worth of work in a legal field under my belt.

20. A better name for me would be "OCD about everything but dirt."

21. I have a hard time understanding why people use Windows.

22. If I ever go back to school, I’ll have class at 9 am this Monday.

23. You know I like you if I look you in the eye right away.

24. If I ever won an award, the first person I would thank would be whoever first taught me whatever it was the award was for.

25. Take my advice, never complain about the way people do things in other countries and why can't they do it just like the U.S. does??

26. My ideal breakfast is very ordinary: fresh-squeezed orange juice, scrambled eggs, toast, bacon, and a cinnamon roll.

27. A song I love but do not have is Rick Springfield, Jessie's Girl. What? I love that song!

28. If you visit my hometown, I suggest you go in the fall, and have a high tolerance for WASPs and U.S. colonial history.

29. Why won’t people pay attention to where they're standing in the grocery-store aisle?

30. If you spend a night at my house you will have to sleep on the loveseat and you will be visited by two curious cats during the night (the third will hide from you).

31. I’d stop my wedding for a lot of things (I got married in a judge's office and it took three minutes, so it's not like a delay would screw things up much).

32. The world could do without entitlement.

33. I’d rather lick the belly of a cockroach than listen to Rush Limbaugh.

34. My favorite blondie is my sister.

35. Paper clips are more useful than my students' attempts to hold their papers together by folding/twisting/ripping the corners of the pages.

36. If I do anything well it’s procrastinating.

37. I can’t help but eat the last cookie in the box.

38. I usually cry at "heart-warming" commercials. I'm so easily manipulated.

39. My advice to my nephew/niece is to take grandma with a grain of salt.

40. And by the way, congratulations to NLLDH, who celebrates seven years of sobriety today!

Cognitive dissonance

You get: An e-mail with the subject line, "Last minute course materials for fall."

You think: Crap, something more I have to get/read for class.

You read it and find: A message from a book company rep, addressed to you as "Professor."

Also, it's weird how reluctant you can be to open your mouth in class when you're used to being the one who evaluates what people say, not being (explicitly) evaluated yourself. Okay, we've only had three classes - I'll get used to it. But right now it's weird.

First day down

And I survived! But am brain-dead, so we're going to go with random bullets:

• I am one of four Ph.D.s in my class.
• I am not the oldest person in my class. (Though as an aside: I totally can't tell people's ages. Everyone either looks way younger than me/straight out of undergrad, or way older than me - and the oldest person in the class is not THAT much older than me. I totally read jeans as younger than me and suits as older than me. Yeah, that's effective.) (And I should add that the people who look way older than me probably only look that way to me, because I have no idea how old I actually look - to everyone else we probably all look pretty much the same.)
• Yes, it was really weird to sit in a classroom as the professor went through all the first day kinds of things that I used to go through on my first day of class - often the exact same first-day things. (This was Legal Writing, which is structured differently from the other first-year courses, I think in a way closer to the traditional humanities class.) It kinda makes me want to apologize to my past students, actually. (Not because it was terrible - the prof seems good, the first day stuff was effective as first day stuff. It just reminded me how much I hate first day stuff!)
• It was funny how NOT weird it was to be on a campus again - because I've never actually LEFT campus. And no matter how different each looks, to some extent a campus is a campus is a campus. Yes, my role is really different this time round, but the surrounding culture is still pretty familiar.
• The Legal Writing prof warned us that the (usually humanities) people who come in thinking they have this writing thing down cold frequently have to relearn how to write specifically for law. Great.
• I knew that laptops in the classroom is a contentious issue. I've seen people talk about the pros/cons in the context of undergrad education, I've seen lots of legal folk complain about the ubiquity of surfing/e-mailing/IMing etc. in law classes, I know U of Chicago Law School cut wireless access in its classrooms, and I myself banned laptops in my class last spring. That said, I did not quite realize that meant it would be a big issue at my law school, too. It is. Wow.
• I met lots of cool people and enjoyed speaking to (almost) all of them. And no matter how much the place looked like it was populated with my students from last year, I know I'm not the only older student. I also realized that I have to broaden my definition of non-trad student somewhat, since I'm tending to think, "my age and older," when honestly, people who are ten years younger than I am are still pretty non-traditional. Someone who's 29 probably wouldn't appreciate it if I treated them as if they're no different from someone who just graduated at age 22. (Which is not a knock at people who've just graduated - I don't mean that I plan to treat anyone a particular way based on their age. I just need to recognize that "younger than me" encompasses a pretty wide range of people at this point, and I shouldn't lump them all together!)
• That said, two of the people that I most wanted to hang out with, that I most identified with, were profs on one of the panels. Sigh. Gotta work on that student identity thing.

And saving the best for last:

• A former student of mine is a fellow 1L at my school. In fact, ze's in my Legal Writing class. (Thankfully, ze was a very cool student, so it was a pleasant surprise, but yeah, kind of weird.)

The introvert's lament

So, this is really dumb, but the first day of orientation is tomorrow, and I'm already nervous. I think orientation actually stresses me out more than classes starting, because so much of orientation is social - tomorrow we have a two-hour lunch in which to get to know each other, a bunch of other socializing-type breaks, and I signed up to go to a Fun Social Event in the evening (though I am allowing myself to consider ditching it if by that time I'm feeling completely wiped from being around strangers all day). And then there are two more full days of it!

Dr. Crazy posted today about how  she finds the first few weeks of school intense and draining, because after the relative isolation of the summer you're suddenly dropped in the midst of students! and colleagues! people! people! people! again, and I am SO with her on this one. The only people I've spoken with face to face this summer, besides NLLDH, my mom, and my sister, have been various medical professionals, and one charming blogger who came through town with whom I met up recently. And while I enjoyed the meetup immensely, after two hours of lovely conversation I was both wired and drained (I went home and babbled nonstop at NLLDH). I also came home completely convinced that I have the social skills of a baboon and that I had droned on about myself WAY too much (not that the other blogger made me feel this way, this is just my usual reaction after being around unfamiliar people for the first time in a while).

I mean, I feel relatively confident about my ability to handle classes at this point - I know law school classes will be very different from what I've previously encountered, I don't mean that I'm going to coast through with a 4.0, but the academic arena? Not that intimidating to me by now. The social arena? Please. It still baffles me. (I'm not sure how being an academic has affected this. On the one hand, the common refrain is that academics are people who didn't get asked to dance in high school, and some people seem to wonder if academics have any social skills at all. On the other hand, we have to handle meeting and getting along with classes full of complete strangers at least twice a year, which has to count for something.) I guess it's not surprising that when it comes to Myers-Briggs, I score about as Introverted as you can get.*

Anyway. This whole nervousness thing wouldn't be such a big deal, except I feel like I have a zillion things to do today, but I just can't quite concentrate on any of them because I'm fluttering around like a ditz!

*ISTJ, in case you were curious, which is apparently one of the most common personality types among lawyers.