2L, baby!

Man, it's been a...couple of weeks.

Finals ended on a note of triumph for me. I strode out of my constitutional law final with the smugness of a pimp with a solid gold dick. I had the greasy self-satisfaction that can only come from knowing you've passed a class without listening to a full sentence the professor said for at least four months. Solitaire was as close as I came to paying attention; unlike when I was checking my email, blogging, or reading...when I was playing solitaire I wasn't actively trying to block the fucker out.

I'm not (well, normally I am) one of those annoying folks who roll out of bed and into the first and last classes of the semester and, chuckling softly, complete the final with twenty minutes to spare, pausing only to inquire what the actual name of the course and professor are. I dedicated serious time and energy to this awesome feat of not-failure.

I knew I would be ignoring this professor. Whatever shreds of self-regard I still clung to as a 1L were just barely sufficient to keep me from listening to his half-sermonizing, half-self-consciously ironic tone. That, and refrain from eating out of the garbage.

Other than that, the exams were not terribly memorable.

And here I am, starting the first term of my 2L year. I'm taking Corporations, Basic Income Taxation, Intellectual Property, and Evidence. I'd dearly love to pay off my student loans, and thus, am taking anything that I can imagine that might lead down that road. I've even developed a charming justification, with the obligitory thin veneer of moral superiority, for my coming legal prostitution:

You see, despite my passion for subjects in the public interest (affordable housing, reproductive rights), I could never actually work in those fields vocationally. Because, regardless of how deeply you feel about the field, if you're getting paid, you will be advocating for someone else's agenda, someone else's priorities. And I just care too darned much about my interests (affordable housing, reproductive rights) to compromise. The only ethical thing, then, for someone of my deep and abiding moral code, is to work in a field unrelated to my beliefs, with the hope of contributing in a self-directed, avocational way, as time moves on.

Morally consistent, no? And it only took me a year at the "Nation's Premier Public Interest Law School" to develop a nuanced and comprehensive justification for how quickly and thoroughly I hope to sell out after graduation.