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October 19, 2004

Comments

also a 1L at yale

Fellow Yalie,

Infatuation with Yale? From where does one get this idea? Professor Calabresi's birthday was last week; he is a member of the Federal judiciary; the present blog is expressly committed to the lives of members of the Federal judiciary. The Guido birthday post is within the non-YLS-based purview of what one would expect on this site... The elitism and crudeness latent (and I would argue patent) in your post is offensive; it discredits the institution to which we both belong.

YLS Grad

Article 3 Groupie,

With regret, I have come to the unfortunate conclusion that you are not a Yalie (despite the frequent references to Yale Law School in your blog). Your latest post re: Guido contains several errors (in addition to the one pointed out by yls 1l):

1. Guido's estate is known as "Guidacre" (a play on "Blackacre").

2. Getting a "bad grade" in Guido's torts class is a near impossibility, given that it's a pass/fail course taken in the fall semester of your first year.

My theory: As demonstrated by your fixation on Supreme Court clerkships, you are an overachiever and a perfectionist. You are obsessed with being "number one"; Yale is, and has been for several years running, the "number one" law school in America (at least according to USNWR, for whatever that's worth). It's certainly the hardest school to get into.

You didn't get into YLS--and now you're obsessed with it, just as you're obsessed with the Supreme Court clerkships that slipped out of your well-manicured fingers. You have a masochistic tendency to obsess over things that you want but can't have. This armchair psychology also explains your fixation on Guido, who represents everything that you're not. Guido is a YLS grad, the former dean of YLS, a former Supreme Court clerk, and a top feeder judge.

Although you may not be a Yalie, look on the bright side; you probably learned more law wherever you ended up going...

--YLS Grad

yls 1l

portraits at the yale law school are on not just in the library but in classrooms, offices and various lounges as well.

Ted

As a fellow member of the Unimportant coming to terms with his own mediocrity, I recommend Alain de Botton's "Status Anxiety".

One place where I disagree with you, however, is the idea that "Life is a never-ending parade of triumphs and joys" for the Important. I know far too many dissatisfied Important people to agree with that statement; I've long believed that a failure to be satisfied with great success, while devastating to one's happiness, is key to spectacular achievement. My favorite personal example is John Adams. Adams--a Revolutionary War hero, a man who laid the foundations for the greatest and most successful written Constitution in the history of the world, a man who not only was President but who saved many lives by keeping us out of war at great personal political cost, a father of a president, and a man who was lovingly married to perhaps the greatest female mind of his generation--went to his deathbed utterly devastated by the idea that he would be overshadowed in history by Thomas Jefferson.

Dylan

I applaude your healthy response to the (correct) realizaiton of how pointless most of our lives are. But don't forget, crime is always an alternate route to achieving importance, and you shouldn't entirely discount it if this effort to cope fails. John Wilkes Booth made a difference!

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