I am perturbed...

So some d-bag, sniveling NY lawyer told me I should transfer from this school to a NY school if I had any hopes of getting a job in NY. I am too harsh –he apologized profusely for seeming cynical. And I told him I completely understood what he said –I knew it when I left NY. It scares me that I may never be able to return home or to my beloved city. I cried on my way out of Brooklyn.

But I say sniveling because there’s something to be said for the individual. This experience just emphasizes that I need to develop myself, just as I am doing but even more so. I need to attend every conference, make sure that I sleep so I can talk to every person I need to, read and study civpro to make sure I am at the top of my class, review my notes and work on my outline after class, maximize my time, work on my art and my blog.

There’s also a lot of room for personal action to make sure that this school gets its name up there in the international law arena. This is a good pitch –they would get more students and more recognition if they developed their already strong IL program. This is something I can do personally but also for this school. So this school offers me opportunities to be a leader in my field that a school with a more established program would not. If I was around all these amazing international law students, I would be poor in comparison. But here, I have an opportunity to leave my mark. This school’s IL students are also not obnoxious.

It makes me really sad and I just want to document that this will be a period of intense self-reflection, option-considering, and growth. Is this where I really want to be? And if it is, what do I have to do to ensure that my options for the future are still open? I have to talk to Professor G, to Professor N, to my fellow students, to the admissions office and anyone else at the International school, to dual-degree contacts, to my professional mentors and anyone else I can meet in this city’s legal community that can tell me about IL opportunities in the city, to IIE, to the Peace Corps crowd, maybe to other ILS members.

And is NY where I want to end up?

The one thing I do have to say that is legit is that I definitely felt out of place among the NY crowd. Whether this has to do with me, or them, is important to distinguish as opposed to whether or not this is a real situation and what I have to do about it. Is it me? Have I not spent the appropriate amount of time learning about the ICC, the other tribunals, international criminal cases, histories of conflict, history in general, current events, the Arab spring, Arab and Islamic culture, Islamic law, movers and shakers in IL, etc.? Should I know more at this point in my career or did the other students just know more because they were 2Ls and 3Ls? How do I know that this is even what I want to do or is it another situation like development where I have an idealistic view and once I actually practice I will figure out its not what I want to do? No matter what the answer is, I know that if I want to be competitive, I need to step up my game and start researching in my free time. I need the internet.

Is it them? Are they typical gunners in that they make themselves appear to know more than they actually do? Are they wrong for their relative sneering or blank looks of boredom when I tell them I am from here and not from NYU or Columbia? (Am I even imagining their reactions…or is my overly-cheerful answer indicative that there is some problem, that they’re reacting to?)

Or is it real? I feel like NYU and Columbia students are surrounded by an environment of incredibly unbelievable students –the best students with the most insight, working the hardest, with the best experiences from around the world. The international mix at the conference worried me –we don’t have a lot of international, or even diverse, students at this school. I think we are disadvantaged because of that. They also get the most amazing teachers –retired members of the ICC, of the U.S. gov, of the UN, etc. Impassioned teachers, with excellent classroom presence, unlike some of our teachers here. Should I tolerate subpar teachers? They also get a lot more opportunities, both through their school, and through being in NY. Events, visitors, conferences, etc.  Can I do enough personal work to keep up with what just comes to them effortlessly? (Their effort already being previously exerted on the LSATs.) Oh, why couldn’t I have done well on the LSATs? And was senior year worth it? Damn climatology.

Anyway, in the coming days/weeks/months as I sort through this in my head, I have decided to compile the following list about the benefits of this city over NY. I will continue to add as I go along. This I think will be a fun project for readers from here, readers from the ponderance of the meaning of life, etc., but also useful to me in deciding where I belong.