So, I'm down in D.C. this weekend -- or maybe I should say stuck in D.C. this weekend -- visiting a (1L) friend at Georgetown Law, and I've had a couple of conversations with both him and a few of his fellow students about fear and anxiety in law school. And the interesting thing is that they don't seem to have much -- at least of a certain kind. Most of their anxiety is concentrated on the present, not the future -- and though what misery they have that stems from grades and the curve seems to bear a close relation to ours, it is by no means of the same degree as some of us seem to be experiencing. They are, as far as I can tell, much more chill.

Regarding jobs, my friend related a story from the first day of his constitutional law class, when the professor asked how many people intended to pursue public interest careers. About 100 of the 110 or so students present raised their hands.

The students I talked to were worried about finding summer jobs, but not overly so. And none of them had given much thought to their actual career opportunities -- by this I mean real jobs they might apply to -- aside from gesturing towards things like national security, criminal prosecution and defense, policy think tanks, etc. Nor were they particularly worried about the demise of firms, because, by and large, they had no interest in working for them.

Now, Georgetown's a big school, and by no means was this a representative sampling. And of course its location in D.C. lends itself to a certain appreciation of the possibilities of government and public interest work that, to an extent, we perhaps miss out on in New York. In many ways its probably on the opposite end of the spectrum from Columbia Law.

This is by no means a well thought-out post, but I guess I'm not so much trying to assert anything as I'm wondering to what extent New York in general -- or maybe I should say Manhattan -- and Columbia Law's culture in particular, are responsible for fostering the neuroses that seem to be plaguing several of us. How much of this is law school, and how much of this is this law school, in this place? I think probably a lot. And so it helps to get out occasionally and realize that not everyone, and not everywhere, is so crazy, and that in many respects we spend our days in a pretty parochial place.

-- GloverWright - 06 Feb 2010