Week 1
“You come to your new school, and like one comparing a new relationship to a previous one (with a good deal of baggage, like say a transcript), you constantly evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of each. But the problem is, memory erases the flaws of the old, but throws into high relief the flaws of the new. I hate to compare my current school to my old law school, but I have to straight out say it–my old school was much nicer looking. Beautiful even. Modern, but nicely done in brick with nice touches like courtyards and towers. Perhaps a little lower in rank and prestige, but in architecture and layout–totally superior. Especially compared to my new law school.”-Law & Letters
Different context, same feeling. Going to the new school-cum-construction site, one gets the distinct feeling that this place is not ready. Maybe they should have waited till the end of the year to shift. The architechture for one, is jarring. Nestled amongst the quaint, colonial style relics of Federal, ETS and MM is Block B which sticks out like a sore thumb in the quadrangle. And if they don’t build a pathway between Block B and Federal, then there will be a mud path by the end of the year. Plus, the ‘new’ library feels claustophobic and is much smaller than the ‘old’ one.
Past the first week, and the readings are starting to pile up. Trying to read Glenn’s CLT text is like bashing your head against the wall. The material is dense, needlessly grandiloquent and numbingly boring. In fact, here is the first 3 sentences of Glenn’s text, quoted verbatim:
“The notion of tradition, after two or three centuries of neglect and opprobrium in the western world, has recently received renewed attention. This appears due in large measure to circumstances internal to western societies, notably that which a recent social science survey described as a ‘postmodern shift’ in the last twenty-five years from ‘rational-legal authority’ to ’self-expression’. Political and social theory has thus turned to tradition as a possible means of maintaining social coherence and identity in liberal, industrialized societies.”
Does this make any sense to you? It appears to me to be a mumbo-jumbo of words that sounds impressive but don’t actually mean anything. And its only taken from the Preface. Imagine reading 2 chapters of such writing. Your brain may melt by then. Mental Lobotomy would be preferred.
And other developments include the opening of a new law school at SMU. Now, as any economics student can tell you, increase in supply of workers will lead to decrease in wages, all other things being equal. That, however is a simplistic model of wages and assumes no change in demand, ceteris paribus. Given a current shortage of workers due to high barriers of entry, the lowering of barriers will move the labour market towards its natural equilibrium, rather than at its artificially high price level. This may also allow for an increase in demand, which had been previously stifled by lack of human resources. Nevertheless, at the end of the day, 90 additional grads from SMU will probably be lower than the natural attrition rate unless working hours become more humane.
