Education and Barriers to Entry

NOTE: This post also appears here at Time To Keep Score, a blog to which I'm grateful to have been invited to contribute. There's a good group of writers over there. It's a good read and I recommend it highly. Now to the post...

As I'm neck deep in finals and my eyes are growing dark and hollow in a Gollum-like manner as I've confined myself to the indoors to study, this topic is particularly near and dear to my heart. As I interact more and more with attorneys, it's become clearer and clearer that law school serves two essential purposes to the profession it supposedly prepares students for: 1) give law firms some sort of cheap and easy way of rating applicants by looking at alma mater and GPA therein, and 2) big, fat, yet-sometimes-porous barrier to entry (I saw porous because I don't think I've heard any breaking news lately about the dearth of attorneys).

Almost every attorney I speak with either can't remember much of what they learned, and certainly can't remember the last time they used something they learned, yet we all must go through it. I've heard similar complaints of the medical profession and others, though I get the impression that it's a bit different for you MBA students and the like who pursue advanced education while working.

Certainly, 3 years and countless thousands of dollars is something of a barrier, but I think the largest barrier to entry in any profession is our country's overall education system. Add to those three years the 4 (or 5 for those like me who took their time) years of undergraduate study and to those the years of secondary education that did very little to prepare or motivate me towards my career choice, and we have a system that, in the name of general education (read "liberal arts"), does little to help young people funnel their way into fulfilling and meaningful careers and mostly just prolongs that moment, that very real and frightening moment, when you have to decide what you're going to do with your life.

If you're lucky, you get to have that moment. For many young people, that moment passes them by as they end up working ten years at a job they took after high school, "just to make some money before they figured out what else to do," with a very low ceiling and very few options. Can't we figure out a way to move the process along some?

I'll be 30 when I enter, as I said, the lowest rung of my professional ladder. Couldn't I have been working in a law office during high school summers, reviewing documents, learning the basics of Internet research and the nitty gritty of filing court papers? Couldn't I have bypassed all of that liberal arts education during my undergraduate years that was really just there to hold me over until law school?

Just a thought. And really, it has nothing to do with how sick of my finals I am. I promise.

Good Clip Explaining a Mormon's Experience

Thanks to my friends at timetokeepscore.blogspot.com for bringing this to my attention.

The following video is of a Harvard undergrad from Blackfoot, ID, who was given the opportunity to share her perspectives as a Latter-Day Saint as part of a larger panel discussion series on religion at Harvard.

It's very well done and she's asked some tough questions. She's not speaking officially for the Church in any way, but I feel that she does a very nice job of representing the Church's viewpoints and that her personal take can be useful for anyone who's curious. Enjoy and let me know if you have any questions.


Day of Faith: Personal Quests for a Purpose - 3. Rachel Esplin from Harvard Hillel on Vimeo.

Interesting Situation on Campus

I know I'm not going to get a lot of pity from folks a bit more to the left, but there's an interesting situation on my campus that I find troubling. Of all the student organizations here at the law school, there are four that I would classify as right-leaning: the College Republicans and the Federalist Society on the political side, and the Christian Lawyers and J. Reuben Clark Law Society (Mormon Lawyers) on the at least facially apolitical or moral side.

The school's student organization governing body technically requires that any student organization have a faculty sponsor. Here's the interesting situation: not a single faculty member is willing to support any of those four organizations. Anecdotally, what few faculty members I know to have a rightward lean are unwilling to publicly present themselves as such for fear of peer ostracizing.

That about blew me away.

To a certain point, I'm willing to just cope with the fact that leftish viewpoints will largely dominate the personal persuasions of faculty members at most universities. It only allows faculty members who make objectivity and political neutrality in the name of open ideas that much more worthy of respect. But as more and more academic institutions and private enterprises make diversity a mission and a cause to be won, I'm not sure that this fits the bill. And when a university's career development center offers internship credit for volunteering as a pollwatcher for a specific party (I'll let you all guess which one) with no mention of the other, I'm concerned.

Isn't a university obligated to provide a friendly environment for people of any political persuasion? How far do we need to go to ensure that this happens?

Sports Weekend Wrap and Other Thoughts

May I just say that it's a welcome thing to say hello to the football season? ESPN's Mike Greenburg made the comment that he's pretty certain football season exists when it does to ease the grief of a departing summer. This California boy is struggling to adapt even after 10 years of having actual seasons, and fall appears to have made an early arrival in Colorado. Certainly, I can agree with Greenie's point as I couldn't be happier for football season.

BYU's Cougars overcame an obstacle by logging their first big-game road win in a long time, but it ended with something of an anticlimax. Even after out-performing the Huskies in basically every relevant category, UW's guts and grit (hello, sports cliches!) gave BYU everything it could handle. UW's Jake Locker ended up driving the length of the field to score the potentially game-tying touchdown, and was so happy to do so that he got up from scoring and threw the ball high in the air as he sought out his teammates to celebrate. This was good enough to earn him a 15 yard penalty for unsportsmanlike celebration, which contributed to BYU's defense blocking the PAT and winning the game.

Did BYU deserve to win? Probably. Did the referees call the penalty according to the rules? Yes. The rules explicitly prohibit throwing the ball in the air the way Locker did and the zebras called it accordingly. Should the game have ended that way? Probably not. Look, as a BYU fan, I'm happy enough for the win, but I hate to see it tainted like that. It's sad that the rule exists in such a way as to rob the referees from being able to make a judgment call. Some rules unfairly force the referees to make such a judgment, but in this instance I wish they'd had more discretion. The kid was so stoked to have made a tremendous play. He didn't taunt. He wasn't staring down BYU's defense. He celebrated with his teammates. He seems like a class act. He's a team leader and his actions led to his team losing.

I'll grant that there was still one more play and his PAT unit let them down equally. I'll also point out that I dislike blaming officiating for anything. My limited high school football experience provided coaching that taught us that officiating is part of the game, and if you lose because of a close call you shouldn't have put yourself in a position that one call could make a difference, so suck it up. When it's all said and done, go Cougs, but sorry it had to end that way.

In other football news, I'm having a sports ethical quandary. I'm finding myself smugly satisfied that Tom Brady's out for the season with a knee injury. I recognize how truly evil that is of me. So evil that it must be pronounced "ee-ville; like the froo-its of the de-ville." I just can't help it. I've always hated Tom Brady. I was a Bledsoe supporter. I thought it was royally unfair that Bledsoe lost his job to injury just as he finally had the talent around him to hide his flaws. I hate the Patriots. They are the Yankees. They are a class unto themselves. They contribute to everything I've always hated about Boston sports. I'm using the word hate. And I admit that it's fully rooted in the jealousy that every man feels for good-looking pro athletes. He's too much of a pretty boy and gets too much hype for me to be my hero. Sports heroes need to be chippy, scrappy types, and he's just too good. There. I said it. I'm happy he's hurt. My buddy Bitner says I'm now more evil than anyone who's ever rooted for Barry Bonds, Randy Moss, or TO. That hurts, but I think I can live with it.

To change sports, yes, I shamelessly root for Manny Ramirez now. I hated him when he was part of the rising evil empire that is the Boston Red Sox, I thought it was ridiculous that he shoved a middle-aged traveling secretary to the ground for not being able to respond to an unreasonable request, but now that he's sporting my Dodger blue and going the opposite field against one of the best arms in the National League (not saying much, I know), I'll root for him.

On a note completely unrelated to sports, I'm having the worst time trying to get motivated this semester. During the summer I had the opportunity to work at a great law firm, and now that I've tasted the workplace, school has lost its luster. I just can't get into it. It's shameful how little I feel that my classes are preparing me for legal work when I learn so much more through the work I do at the firm. I'll save my rant for how professional school is just a barrier to entry for another day, but I'm feeling it now. At least there's football to look forward to this weekend.

Prediction for BYU v. UCLA on Saturday: Cougs win 35-26

Rule of Being a Student: After-Class Etiquette

Can we put out a rule right now that, after class, questions to the professor must be kept to a maximum of 30 seconds? I love when students who don't have a subsequent class monopolize the teacher's times with discussions, anecdotes, pontificating, and general ego-massaging that are the very point of professors holding regular office ours at the expense of the 4 or 5 students who have quick administrative questions that don't merit a whole visit to the professor's office.

I suppose a certain degree of the responsibility lies with the professor to moderate conversations and extend the invitation to come to office hours, but come on, fellow-students! Be aware of those around you and of the schedules they keep.

Random note: were I still at BYU this would merit a "shocked and appalled" letter to the editor of the ever-controversial Daily Universe. I take great pride in the three inane entries to that beloved publication I logged in the course of my career. Keep the dumb rants coming, Cougs!