Going to Jupiter to get stupider (fn1)
I have long believed that law school is causing my brain to rot. I am almost certainly less intelligent and less mentally capable now than I was two years ago when I started this process of legal education.
Of course, it is unfair to blame this problem entirely on law school. My mental acuity has been declining for a number of years. I can't pinpoint the exact time when I peaked, but I think it was probably around my junior year in college. Up until that time, I was progressively learning more and more about a variety of subjects. I was still capable in a wide variety of fields, including science and math. Statistics and econometrics kept calculus fresh in my mind. I was somewhat conversational in Spanish. I was studying early English lit. My writing abilities had steadily improved.
Since then, it's all been down hill. I have forgotten massive quantities of knowledge I once had. My math skills, particularly anything more than simple algebra, are gone. I couldn't FOIL to save my life. My knowledge of literature is pretty much limited to knowing how to spell Shakespeare's name correctly. I don't remember science or Spanish.
Don't get me wrong -- part of this decline is due to the brain rot I suffered while making Excel spreadsheets for Accenture. But don't worry, all the well-rounded knowledge of a liberal arts education has been replaced by the killer skill of being able to prepare a 7.14 - Business Capabilities Readiness Testing deliverable (both plan and script) under the Dow consolidated implementation strategy model. Yeah, that's doing me a hell of a lot of good right now.
But whatever damage was done by Accenture, it's nothing compared to what's happened since starting law school. Not only have I learned little in law school, but I've also forgotten everything I knew before I started.
What's the most clear evidence of this? My blog, of course.
This summer, I was away from law school, and my brain flourished. I posted constantly. Some of the posts were even intelligent, or clever. fn2. The best part was that I didn't even have to think about posts -- posts just came to me. I had more ideas for posts than I could put in writing. And certainly more than my limited audience would ever read.
Language was always coming to me. Words were at play in my head, forming fragments while I was in the shower, or on the train. The writing process was fun, because there was so much in my mind just waiting to come out.
That's over now. Look back in the archives, starting at the beginning of September. Is there one truly interesting post? No. I'm even bored reading my own crap. There are a few posts about friends, featuring pictures, etc. That's fine. Nothing wrong with those. The rest of it is a bunch of random, completely uninteresting notes to myself. A little rant about my diet (or lack thereof) here, a complaint about rain or slow buses there. Throw in some musings on music where I pretend to be a critic but have nothing valuable to add, and you've pretty much got the last two months of my blog.
Even this post is really more of the same. It's just self-loathing that is perhaps written in a slightly more humorous way. Oh, and I am pretty proud of the title. It was the first bit of inspiration I've had in awhile -- so much so that I got out of bed just to write this post when I really should be sound asleep.
So that's what's going on with me. I'm in school, my brain is mush, and I no longer have anything interesting to say. Damn you law school.
1. The title is based on a playground rhyme I heard as a child: "Girls go to Jupiter to get stupider, boys go to Mars to get more candy bars." (Naturally, the gender could be switched, depending on who was throwing the "insult.")
Now beyond the obvious nonsensical nature of the rhyme -- why does going to Jupiter make one more stupid, other than the fact that "stupider" rhymes with "Jupiter"? -- it appears that the girls may have gotten the better end of this bargain regardless. After all, avoiding all the sugar and saturated fat in candy bars was saving them from obesity, diabetes, and heart disease, not to mention cavities.
2. Others were boring drivel. Uh....sorry about that.
Of course, it is unfair to blame this problem entirely on law school. My mental acuity has been declining for a number of years. I can't pinpoint the exact time when I peaked, but I think it was probably around my junior year in college. Up until that time, I was progressively learning more and more about a variety of subjects. I was still capable in a wide variety of fields, including science and math. Statistics and econometrics kept calculus fresh in my mind. I was somewhat conversational in Spanish. I was studying early English lit. My writing abilities had steadily improved.
Since then, it's all been down hill. I have forgotten massive quantities of knowledge I once had. My math skills, particularly anything more than simple algebra, are gone. I couldn't FOIL to save my life. My knowledge of literature is pretty much limited to knowing how to spell Shakespeare's name correctly. I don't remember science or Spanish.
Don't get me wrong -- part of this decline is due to the brain rot I suffered while making Excel spreadsheets for Accenture. But don't worry, all the well-rounded knowledge of a liberal arts education has been replaced by the killer skill of being able to prepare a 7.14 - Business Capabilities Readiness Testing deliverable (both plan and script) under the Dow consolidated implementation strategy model. Yeah, that's doing me a hell of a lot of good right now.
But whatever damage was done by Accenture, it's nothing compared to what's happened since starting law school. Not only have I learned little in law school, but I've also forgotten everything I knew before I started.
What's the most clear evidence of this? My blog, of course.
This summer, I was away from law school, and my brain flourished. I posted constantly. Some of the posts were even intelligent, or clever. fn2. The best part was that I didn't even have to think about posts -- posts just came to me. I had more ideas for posts than I could put in writing. And certainly more than my limited audience would ever read.
Language was always coming to me. Words were at play in my head, forming fragments while I was in the shower, or on the train. The writing process was fun, because there was so much in my mind just waiting to come out.
That's over now. Look back in the archives, starting at the beginning of September. Is there one truly interesting post? No. I'm even bored reading my own crap. There are a few posts about friends, featuring pictures, etc. That's fine. Nothing wrong with those. The rest of it is a bunch of random, completely uninteresting notes to myself. A little rant about my diet (or lack thereof) here, a complaint about rain or slow buses there. Throw in some musings on music where I pretend to be a critic but have nothing valuable to add, and you've pretty much got the last two months of my blog.
Even this post is really more of the same. It's just self-loathing that is perhaps written in a slightly more humorous way. Oh, and I am pretty proud of the title. It was the first bit of inspiration I've had in awhile -- so much so that I got out of bed just to write this post when I really should be sound asleep.
So that's what's going on with me. I'm in school, my brain is mush, and I no longer have anything interesting to say. Damn you law school.
1. The title is based on a playground rhyme I heard as a child: "Girls go to Jupiter to get stupider, boys go to Mars to get more candy bars." (Naturally, the gender could be switched, depending on who was throwing the "insult.")
Now beyond the obvious nonsensical nature of the rhyme -- why does going to Jupiter make one more stupid, other than the fact that "stupider" rhymes with "Jupiter"? -- it appears that the girls may have gotten the better end of this bargain regardless. After all, avoiding all the sugar and saturated fat in candy bars was saving them from obesity, diabetes, and heart disease, not to mention cavities.
2. Others were boring drivel. Uh....sorry about that.
posted by N at 2:17 AM
1 Comments:
First of all, I don't even know what FOILing is. Secondly, I think you're worrying too much about your supposed decline of knowledge...after all, imagine how we'll be in 20 years? Thirdly, I offer an almost nonsensical solution: go back to school as a music student, shun studying in favor of practicing your instrument, and then go to Teachers College where they tell you that you're brilliant constantly!
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