New Kid on the Hallway

That exercise post I mentioned

So, a couple of you expressed interest in a post I mentioned about not liking exercise. Here's what I was thinking: that it's just not acceptable in the modern U.S. not to like exercise.

Seriously. People who don't like to exercise are called "couch potatoes." The popular image is that couch potatoes are fat, unhealthy, and lacking in drive or initiative. They are, god forbid, lazy. It's not acceptable simply not to like to exercise. 

But you know what? I don't really like to exercise. 

I feel better when I exercise regularly, yes. And when I've been exercising semi-regularly, if I go about 3-4 days without any exercise - if I really do spend those days doing nothing but sitting, like during finals, for instance - I do start to feel stiff and creaky and want to get up and move. (If I don't get around to it for a few days, though, that feeling goes away.)

When I do exercise, it's because I know I should, because it's good for me, because it benefits my health - kind of like why I brush my teeth (something exercise is often compared to). I don't brush my teeth because I enjoy it particularly. My mouth feels better after I've done it, but the process itself is pretty boring. Similarly, I don't exercise because I enjoy it. The process is pretty boring.

Thing is, I know not everyone feels this way. Lord knows about 90% of my classmates love exercise, in that they have some kind of physical activity they love to do and rush to do whenever they get the chance. (For many of them this is skiing. But there's also snowboarding, climbing, running, soccer, and basketball.) I remember walking by a soccer game on the law school grounds - so just intramural or even more casual than that, not a varsity sport or anything - and watching everyone rush around, and realizing that they did that because for them, it was fun.

For me, honestly, exercise is not fun, and it never has been. I've never liked exercise. From the time I was a little kid, I liked to read, I liked to write stories and keep a journal, I liked to draw, I loved coloring books. I was in band from middle school on and loved it. I played the piano as a kid, then I played the flute. I was in musicals in high school; in college I took voice lessons and sang in an a capella group. I like to bake. I like to play around with beads to make jewelry. I used to collect fountain pens, vintage and modern, and the ink to go with them; now I collect perfume oils. I've volunteered for humane societies. I even like to make soap. (Notice a theme here? The theme is: not a lot of physical activity involved.)

That's actually kind of a lot of hobbies (not that I engage in them all at the moment, but still). But I regularly feel guilty for being a lazy slacker because I don't like exercise, because when I'm looking for fun I don't go out and do something physical. 

(You should see me in REI. That store gives me anxiety attacks because I feel like an imposter every time I go in. It doesn't help that they don't sell a lot of clothes in my size, so I can't even shop there if I want to. Clearly I am a fat worthless pig with no valuable abilities. Though this may just by my own neuroses talking.)

Anyway, some of this is probably just me, but I really do think, what with all the current scare-rhetoric about the obesity epidemic, that there is a celebration of exercise and a consequent condemnation of people who dislike engaging in it. (This is at the same time that it's perhaps not very easy to get exercise? It's a reversal of the class signifiers in Ye Olden Days - you know, it used to be great for women to be fat, because it meant you had a lot a money and a lot to eat; now, being fat means being poor, because you can't afford to eat healthy food, and being thin means being rich, because you have money and time to take part in all sorts of exotic and expensive activities like skiing and tennis and swimming and so on.)

I was trying to think if there's any kind of equivalent condemnation for people who don't like to engage in other activities. I don't get the sense, for instance, that people who don't know how to play an instrument face the same kind of opprobrium. And while (some) people bemoan their inability to speak any language other than English, I don't sense the same kind of societal condemnation of monolinguality as of couch potatodom.

The closest thing I can come up with is not liking to read. There are regular panic-mongering articles about how OMG JOHNNY/JANIE CAN'T READ, and the world is coming to an END because no one reads books anymore (as opposed to teh evil intertubes), blah blah blah. So I suppose saying "I just don't like to read" might be as looked-down-upon as saying "I just don't like to exercise." Or maybe it just depends on who you hang out with?

life_of_a_fool suggested that it was very acceptable to frown on all forms of physical activity, and that really surprised me - because I've never been in a setting where that was the case. So I'd love to hear more from people about whether the very premise of this post - that it's unacceptable to dislike exercise - is flawed from the start. Am I simply paranoid? Is it possible to view disliking exercise as just an element of one's personality and preferences rather than a moral failing?

Back to school

I'd been thinking about actual semi-profound things to post about here (about body image, the unacceptability of not liking exercise in modern society), but classes start tomorrow and I've started stressing. It's not so much about classes (although I still have to choose between two, and to suppress the impulse to redo my entire schedule that still grips me every day or so), but about GETTING A JOB. I hadn't been stressing at all, but I went to a back-to-school get-together last night, where I found out two of my cohort have clerkships lined up. I'm super happy for them - they're great people who totally deserve the good positions they've lined up - but of course it makes me panic that my future is not yet settled. 

Sigh. Isn't law school great?

Breaking a personal blogging rule here

Usually, I don't directly quote conversations here, going on the theory that not everyone who speaks with me expects or wants their words to end up on the intertubes. 

But I'm making an exception today, just as a kind of word-to-the-wise for all the new 1Ls undergoing orientation right now or very soon.

Here are two questions that got asked at today's orientation Q & A session, which I advise you NOT to ask in your own orientations:

1) "Law review or moot court, or both?"

(Context: law review and moot court are both activities you can't get involved in - at least at my school - until you're a 2L. They also both require going through a competition to participate - that is, you don't just decide that you're going to be on law review or moot court. Now, although you really don't have to worry about either for months and months and months, I could see asking generally about law review and/or moot court - like, when the competitions are, what they entail, what are the benefits of doing them - and I can even see asking whether you can do them both at the same time. Just something about the way this one was worded came across really badly - like the speaker knew zie was going to have that choice.)

2) "So, how hard is it, really, to make top 10%, top ten in the class?" [implying, how hard can it be?]

(Well, dude, 90% of the class don't make the top 10%, and about 160 people aren't in the top 10 in the class. How hard do you THINK it is?)

So, my advice to 1Ls: don't be these guys (using "guy" in a totally gender neutral sense here).

I think I need to stop buying nail polish

Last weekend I bought two lovely Essie polishes - one a kind of murky gray green (Sew Psyched) and one a lovely deep gray-taupe-purple (Merino Cool).*

And then I got a coupon for Barielle polishes, so bought three - Get Mauveing, Putt-E-On-Me, and Belly Dance (they have a buy two, get one free deal).

Then they arrived... 

First, I present to you Putt-E-On-Me v. Merino Cool v. Sally Hansen Commander in Chic (which I already owned):

      

 Obviously, Commander in Chic is a little lighter than the other two, and Putt-E-On-Me may be a teeny bit darker and bluer than Merino Cool (except that Merino Cool pulls darker and bluer than bottle color on my hands). But... yeah. They're kind of all the same color.

Then we have Belly Dance on the left, and Zoya's Pasha on the right (which I already owned):

    
It's a little hard to tell from the promo pic for Belly Dance, but it actually has a lot of silver shimmer in it... just like Pasha.

While I'm at it, I should show you these - Essie Body Language and Color Club Who Are You Wearing?:

   
Yeah. (And I think the Color Club actually looks a bit more lavender than the picture shows.)

So.

On the up side, I clearly know what I like!

But maybe it's time to take a wee break from buying polish until I've identified some other colors I might like.

(Please tell me I'm not the only one who ever does anything like this??)

    

*Of course, the $.99 bottle of grass green polish I bought at the same time was a great investment - I don't own anything else like it, and it looks spectacular on my toes. So much for restraint...**

**Am working on (in my head) a post about the summer and What I Learned On My Summer Vacation Job, but am still too brain dead to do more than goggle at nail polishes.

Really gotta move that last post down the page

I've talked here before about the difference between being a student and being a learner - that student is a social position that subordinates you and creates certain behaviors you wouldn't otherwise engage in. This summer I realized another thing about being a student - it makes you passive. 

When you're sitting in class, the minimum that you have to do is simply sit there and endure until the session is over. Obviously, this isn't the ideal - ideally, a class makes you participate, or you're able to make yourself participate, to stay active and engaged in what's going on. But if worse comes to worst, you just have to sit there. (Part of me even wonders if all the net-surfing and chatting and so on in class isn't a kind of natural response to the enforced passivization of most classes. That might be going a little far, though.)

Now that I've hit my last week at work, I can see this student-ness in myself. Some days, I find myself sitting there twiddling around with something, not really working, just waiting for the day to end. I think of this last week as something, like a class near the end of the semester, that I just have to wait out, and then I'll be done! and free!

Thing is, I have actual projects to do at work. I won't really finish at the end of the week if I don't get the projects done; I can't just wait them out. Plus, time goes much more quickly if I'm actually doing something than if I'm just waiting for it to go by. But it's the end of the summer, and I'm a little tired; and being a student has re-trained me to sit and wait for something to be over, even if that's not really what I should do, and I have to take the consequences later.

(I should add that I have enjoyed my job this summer - it's a great bunch of people with interesting work. But I didn't really take any time off after classes, and last week I decided I might have decided to work just a couple of weeks too long - I kind of need a break; my brain is tired! Plus, as my time comes to an end I start to expect some kind of evaluation or summing up, and it makes me nervous. It's not that I'm worried about getting an offer - this firm doesn't do offers at the end of the summer, for a variety of reasons - but I start to worry that I haven't been meeting their expectations and no one's wanted to bother to tell me before now.)

Random observations from OSCAR

(First, apologies to those who saw a VERY drafty version of this via Google Reader or the like - fiddling last night on my iPhone, I didn't realize the post would post!)

Okay, so as I mentioned, I'm applying for clerkships for after graduation (and for some reason I only ever find the time/get inspired to work on this really late at night, which results in things like posting my half-written observations last night by mistake, or sending an application to one state judge in another state entirely. Oops.)

I'd been doing a lot of state clerkship applications, but in the last couple of nights I've been trawling through OSCAR, deciding to whom I should apply. (OSCAR is the federal government's online application system.) There are a bunch of factors to consider and it causes me some stress, setting my personal and professional goals at odds.

You see, federal clerkships are incredibly competitive. The chances are very good that I won't get one. But I'd really really REALLY love one, so I'm applying anyway. I'm just going into this recognizing that it may not pan out. I am a reasonble-ish candidate for the less competitive district courts (federal trial courts), but there are LOTS of reasonable-ish candidates, as well as lots of really great candidates. I probably don't have a chance in hell for a circuit courtship (federal courts of appeals), but I'm applying for a few anyway on the off chance that something about my resume speaks to someone - mostly to local judges who've actually hired from my school in the past. Besides, it's just postage. But I'm not holding my breath on any of those.^[1]

Anyway, when my school's career office (along with everyone else I've ever seen) talks about applying for clerkships, they emphasize that the best way to have a chance is apply WIDELY. That you have a greater shot at a position if you're willing to apply all over the country, especially to judges in the less popular places to live.

Now, I think part of the reason my law school harps on this is because we are very local, not just by necessity but by choice. People come to my state and never want to leave, so when students are applying to clerkships, they tend to want to work in state only, and I think the career office would love it if they could develop some alumni networks out of state. But it's also true that applying broadly improves your chances of getting a position, and is necessary for probably everyone but those at the top of their classes in the top 5-10 law schools.

Of course, I hear all this, and I feel like I'm back in the damn academic job market, where you have to apply EVERYWHERE and ANYWHERE just to have a chance. This advice makes sense to me, strikes a chord based on my past experience, when I did, in fact, apply ALL OVER the country. So I trawl through OSCAR, and make lists and lists and lists of judges to apply to, and have to stop and remind myself that one of the reasons to go to law school was to end up in a profession that DOESN'T require me to move anywhere in the country just to stay employed. I have to tell myself that if I don't actually WANT to work in Indianapolis, or Akron, it's okay not to apply to judges in those places.^[2] It's very very easy for me to assume that of COURSE I should put career goals (getting a particular kind of job) over personal happiness (living somewhere I like, let alone actually with my husband).

What complicates this all the more is that federal clerkship hiring is on a national timeline, according to which no judges may look at applications from 3Ls until a certain date, and may only contact people for interviews a week later. So it's not like you can easily apply to a few federal judges, see how you do, and then apply to more/different regions based on your level of success; you really have to apply at once to everyone you even think you might want to work for.^[3] 

So, basically, if you're like me (and probably most other clerkship applicants out there), you have a lot to obsess over.

But what I originally meant to write about in this post was some of the things that were amusing me as I trawled through OSCAR last night. Granted, some of them were probably funnier at 2 am than they are now. See, judges list their openings on OSCAR, and the vast majority just say what they want you to send, what class rank they want you to be, that generic kind of thing. But some judges add more specific information about the position, and these are some of my observations last night:

• one judge encourages "current law students, graduates, clerks, and practitioners" to apply. Which is lovely and all, but what I'm wondering is: who does this leave out??
• one judge requires you to be a non-smoker.
• given the demographic of most (especially federal) judges, when I come across someone named "Lynn" or "Kim," I should just go ahead and assume it's a guy.
• one judge warns that "only serious applicants should apply." I see a history of students from Yale-Harvard-Stanford turning down this judge's offers...

But I think this is my favorite:

• Applicant should be "aware of unique [region] culture. CHECK YOUR EGO AT THE DOOR." Allrighty then!

(I love seeing stuff like this. Most judges just list what grades and other honors they want you to have, so someone telling me something else about what they want is incredibly useful. As well as occasionally entertaining.)

^[1]Just in case anyone is curious, this is how I decide on what judges to apply to: I don't even look at anyone in New York, D.C., Los Angeles, or Chicago (and their associated greater metro regions). Judges in those locations get applications from all the top students at all the top schools across the country; they're the most competitive positions around. Whether circuit or district, I don't have a chance.

If a judge is local, e.g. in my federal circuit, I pretty much apply even if I'm not within the class rank they say they prefer. I only pass if they explicitly say they require previous legal experience (that is, as a clerk or actual attorney, NOT as a student). 

If they're outside my federal circuit, and it's a part of the world I have a real connection to (either I've lived there in the past or I have family there), I'll apply if I'm within 5-8% of the class rank they say they prefer, UNLESS they also say they prefer (1) previous legal experience, (2) candidates who have gone to school in the region, or (3) candidates who intend to practice in the region (and I can't make that argument very convincingly). The most prestigious circuit judges probably don't care as much about candidate's connections to the region because, like the top Ivy League schools in the academic market, they're at the top of the food chain and it goes without saying that people are willing to move for those jobs. District court judges, however, are often very committed to their local community and want to see why you are, too.

If they're outside my federal circuit and somewhere I think I'd like to live, I'll probably apply if I'm within 3% of the class rank they prefer. Where I dither is over non-local judges for whom I'm within the class rank they say they prefer but whose location does nothing in particular for me. 

^[2]Which is not remotely meant as an insult to those fine cities. I'm sure they're lovely, and I can think of many WORSE places to live. It's just that I've never set foot in either place, I have no connections to the region, and can't think of anything that would draw me specifically to live there as opposed to many other parts of the country.

^[3]I exaggerate slightly here. There are judges who hire "off-plan," which means whenever the hell they feel like it, and I have applied to some of those. But you don't really know when they're hiring, even if you know they don't adhere to the deadlines, so you still don't get a ton of feedback. Plus, most of the off-plan judges I've appealed to are circuit judges, who are really out of my league, so not hearing from them doesn't tell me very much.