Second year student malaise has spread like wildfire, taking with it some of my best mates and colleagues. I too have found myself adrift from time to time. I know very little, but I know enough to appreciate that I can do what ever it is lawyers do. That said, I’m vaguely aware that my time is nigh. I’ve got amazing opportunities ahead of me, the summer and fall will see me back in the city that never sleeps with an adrenaline high from the palpable electricity of being home, finally.
New York feels like home in a different way than it ever has. My father passed away ten months ago and living through that, in law school has changed the air I breathe. I’m almost positive that a study of my biorhythms would reveal that I now parse oxygen from water at a different rate than that of more normal folks. I’m no authority on such things but can confidently claim the mantle of savant of the self, and I belong in a city with an underground life force of twenty four hour transit.
That said, Vermont charm has often healed and invigorated me. I have read things that made me want to run straight into the atmosphere and rage against atrocity, see the loss of habeas corpus and the redefinition of navigable waters. I have seen deer in abundance, or rather more abundance than the concrete jungle yields in a decade. I have taken picnics in the grass and learned to love dogs bigger than a purse. In short, it’s gotten in a little, and I like it, I really do like Vermont.
Second year means that I’m halfway home and halfway here. I’m straddling my future with a grimace, because I’ve just gotten the hang of the tubing phenomenon and the three season per day weather cycle. The school bit is blissful for the most part. Mondays mean Environmental Dispute Resolution and Estates with Dean Wilbanks and each put a unique spin on the rest of the world. The education on offer at VLS is as intoxicating as the views. For the most part culture clashes are interpersonal at worst and superficial best.
As an example of the culture clash lets look at blue jeans. Jeans serve different purposes in Vermont than NYC. In the city a pair of jeans cost as much as an outfit and speak louder than a city cop, as identifiers of group personality, values and style. In Vermont, jeans are pants, full stop. Hopefully, they cover your hindparts and sometimes they keep the mud off of your shins. World-view on review in a nutshell.
I’m a job seeker on August 1, 2008, a dot connector trying to present my whole self to the world with the expectation of employment if not acceptance. I will be on the edge of the overhanging place, with my urban environmentalist sentiments and a resume in tow.
See you there.
TDT
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