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This is version two of the blog, which currently contains 136 published posts. To some extent, this blog represents the creative excesses of a design enthusiast who is somewhere in the process of applying to grad school, working at a law firm and resides in the Financial District of New York City.
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That last post was kind of a downer, so to change up the tone a bit, here’s what’s going on. Vienna was amazing, and I came home and immediately started planning my post-bar trip in 2013. I’m thinking of doing Spain and Italy, since I haven’t been to either.
I’m also looking for an apartment in Palo Alto, California right now. I can’t believe summer will be here in just six weeks! I’ve started making tentative plans with the other UChicago Bay Area kids so hopefully I’ll have stuff to do, and I want to spend a decent chunk of time in San Francisco since I’ve never been there before. Also, at the end of my gig, I’ll be going to Lake Tahoe in late July for the Wheel reunion. We’re renting a huge lake house so that should be a blast.
Afterwards, it’s to Texas for a week or so, and on the way back I’ll drive up my car so that I can embark on the Ultimate Midwest Roadtrip that I’m planning with a friend from school. Two weeks, close to 4,000 miles of road to cover. The main points of interest are camping out in Yellowstone for a few nights and seeing Mt. Rushmore. But we also want to go horseback riding, do the whole B&B thing, see Amish country, visit ghost towns, go fishing or ziplining, hiking, etc. I’m excited. We’ll be traversing Wisconsin, Minnesota, South Dakota, Wyoming, Montana, and North Dakota. I’ve never been to any of those states, so it should be an adventure.
That’ll bring me to late August, and school doesn’t start until late September. I’m definitely going to visit my sister and Dan in Houston at some point, and depending on the money situation I’m thinking a trip to New York or Boston (or both) is in order.
So, yeah. Lots of traveling ahead. Last quarter was fun with musical and Vis Moot activities, but I’m a little exhausted with it all, so I’m just going to focus on knocking out these last few weeks, and then it’ll be all travel, travel, travel.
EDIT: I wrote this post last week, remembered that I had thought I’d left something out, and I realized I didn’t even mention that I’m going to China in September! So, yeah. I’ve never been to China, so yay for new experiences.
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I’m Asian. I grew up in Texas with mostly white kids. I did not fit in when I was in elementary school. We had a day in first grade where all the right-handed people put their hand-print on one side of the chalkboard and all the left-handed people did the same on the other. I was the only left-handed person. For a while after that, I hated that I was left-handed because I thought that if I was right-handed I would be like everyone else and everything would be better.
Back in my working days, there was a girl who made a point of reminding my coworker, Beth, and I (Beth being black and myself being Asian) constantly of the “American ideal of beauty” which in her view consisted of “blond hair and blue eyes.” That, among a host of other instances, led to Beth and I having this running joke at work: whenever something happened relating to the fact that either she or I were minorities, we’d laugh and call it a “minority day.” After a while, the joke became “every day is minority day” because these things seemed to come up constantly and sometimes you have to just laugh because its so depressing it makes you want to cry.
Racism, discrimination, bigotry…whatever you want to call it, is probably the one topic I have the hardest time talking about, but I’ve been wanting to write about this for a while since it’s been coming up frequently. Being a minority has probably been the single most determinative factor in my personality — not because of being Asian, but because of how people view and treat Asian people. I know many people view being Asian as being one of the “good” minorities; I admit there were many times I’ve been given the benefit of the doubt or a free pass when I’ve gotten in trouble that probably had to do with my being Asian. That said, it comes with strings — being viewed as an outsider, being judged by your affiliation with a group instead of as an individual, having to fight against each person’s pre-conceived notions of what you’re like, etc. For whatever benefits being Asian might confer, being a minority in general is just often a very isolating and frustrating thing.
A difficult reality is that even people who you like and who genuinely care about you often just don’t “get” it and can’t empathize. My white friends honestly just don’t quite understand, and even my Asian friends who have resorted to just being around only other Asian people don’t entirely understand either. Adding to the issue is that being a minority is different depending on what type of minority you are. Therefore, someone who is gay or black has had to deal with certain very different sets of issues and therefore still can’t entirely empathize with someone who is Asian and vice versa. As a result, being a minority can often be incredibly isolating and alienating.
Discrimination can be very subtle and insidious and many people truly believe that it’s just in your head. I go back and forth on this all the time — I’ve been told by people who know nothing about my work experiences that I just “seem” like someone who works very hard, but that leadership is “probably not your thing.” It’s not true, and I’ve had to convince myself that people viewing me in that light is not related to stereotypes about Asian people, but deep down I know they are.
And just when you think you’re going crazy, someone pulls you aside and that someone tells you that you’re right — that some group of people who you’ve never felt accepted by, who seemed to judge you the second they saw you — is entirely, completely, terribly, bat-shit racist and says horrible things about Asian people when others aren’t around.
This happened recently, and I didn’t know how to feel about this at first. I think I mostly feel relieved to know it wasn’t just in my head and that there is nothing I can do about it. Fact is, if you’re in your mid-twenties and at one of the best law schools in the country and are still openly bigoted around your other openly bigoted friends, there’s probably not much anyone can do for you or them at this point. Still, that people like that exist is terrifying, demoralizing and sad to me.
The fact that these people and the girl I mentioned at the beginning of this post are all people who come from areas with very few minorities and went to colleges that were white-heavy (probably around 90%) reinforces my view that affirmative action is truly the only way to combat racism. Humans are wired to identify patterns, even subconsciously, and they require education to make them actively think about whether the “patterns” they think they are seeing are the result of a combination of societal, historical and cultural circumstances, and they have to actively consider whether they’re subconsciously inadvertently placing a disproportionate amount of emphasis on physical traits (e.g. skin color) to categorize people and the patterns they think they see. The urge to simplify may be natural. I think it’s often useless to be angry about it; it is an inherent drive that causes us to use very visible and easily identifiable physical characteristics (such as race) to categorize people — it’s theorized to be a result of evolution and need to simplify an overload of information in a complicated world — but it doesn’t mean that it’s right or that we shouldn’t fight it.
Fighting that inherent urge to stereotype requires that people actively assess and force themselves to view people as individuals as opposed to members of a group. Unfortunately, most people don’t do this and don’t have proper education on minority issues. As a result, affirmative action — putting them in contact with enough minorities that it breaks the mold somewhat of what they think they know — is the only other real solution to a problem that is still very alive today, even among the well-educated.
I was teased a little by friends for jumping on the Jeremy Lin bandwagon, especially given my often vocal lack of interest in sports, but I’m sticking to my guns. Unlike many Asian celebrities who are only half-Asian or who seem to have distanced themselves completely from typically Asian characteristics, the guy was a role model for the many, many people who have had the typical second-generation Asian experience, who aren’t self-hating Asians, who have had to contend with similar stereotyping and jeers that he experienced, and who want to be successful and accepted on their own terms. He represents a very visible example of facing the world to view Asians in a different light and to reconsider their preconceptions, and I will never be embarrassed that I find this to be uplifting and that it gives me hope.
“Ignorance and prejudice are the handmaidens of propaganda. Our mission, therefore, is to confront ignorance with knowledge, bigotry with tolerance, and isolation with the outstretched hand of generosity. Racism can, will, and must be defeated.” — Kofi Annan
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So, I’m officially half-way through law school as of a few weeks ago. We had our Midway Dinner, which marks the halfway point in our law school “careers” earlier this month. The name is a play on the fact that the Midway Plaisance runs through campus.
I’ve actually been blogging a lot recently, just not here. Instead, I’ve been writing posts once a week for my Technology Policy class over here. It’s easily one of my favorite classes in school thus far since all we do is read about and talk about and write about techie stuff with other people who live/eat/breathe this type of thing — what’s not to love?
We also had the law school musical last weekend which may be one of my favorite things ever and which has landed me on the front page of our school’s website! Yay, even if I look silly! (Screenshot here.) There’s also a gallery here.
So, things have been busy, but good. I’m going to start guitar lessons next quarter, and my trip to Vienna, Austria for the Vis Moot International Commerical Arbitration competition will be in the beginning of next quarter, too.
Most of all, I’m excited for the upcoming summer in Palo Alto! Though, I still need to figure out living arrangements and whatnot, and I really want to plan a Napa Valley weekend! Luckily, a lot of the stuff I’ve done this year has reaffirmed that my summer gig was the right choice — such as my IP-based Finance class, Tech Policy class and the corporate venture capital project I’ve been working on for corporate lab (which got a shout-out in this article). So, yeah. Things are copacetic.
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The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think-tank, recently released a report depicting the luxurious lives of our nation’s poor — not surprising, considering the current debate over welfare programs and the national debt.
The general gist of the report is that while 1 in 7 households are considered poor (e.g. living on under $11,161 for a single person or $21,954 for a family of four), the poor in America don’t have it so bad — they often have “luxuries” such as refrigerators or cars. Furthermore, other media outlets reporting on the data have thought fit to compare these statistics to global statistics on poverty which make our poor seem almost wealthy in comparison.
There is no question that the welfare system in America is far from perfect. Without a doubt, there are abuses of the system, people who still fall through the cracks, etc. etc. — but just as we don’t simply abolish laws that are imperfect or we don’t scrap tax provisions that don’t entirely accurately capture their goals, the answer should in no case be to get rid of or cripple these programs that so many people depend upon. From John Henry Newman: “A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault. ”
For starters, crippling welfare programs is extremely short sighted. The problem for many of these people is that they have no safety net. For almost anyone I know, there were times when they have to borrow a few hundred or a few thousand dollars from mom and dad to help get them to a better place or to ward off an emergency which would leave them much worse off. By taking away the measly safety net that the poor have would be to introduce more people to disease, death and crime. Furthermore, the lives that the poor live tend to be extremely precarious. For someone who is employed at minimum wage and with a cheap apartment and a car, for example, an emergency leads to losing your car, leads to not going to work, leads to unemployment and by the time you get another job you’ve missed three paychecks so now you’re evicted and you end up finding a place to sleep with a voucher except the place is (almost always) unsafe so now your stuff is stolen and the problems accumulate even more from there.
Even for those that don’t end up running into emergencies, having a refrigerator and microwave is a necessity when eating out is not an option. Having a car is a necessity in order to have a job when you have to take whatever job you can get and you need to find a way to get to that job so you don’t get fired — especially when many cities and residents of those cities insist upon finding ways to separate low-income housing into the far reaches of the city so that it’s far away from where they work and live, even though they need the services of the people who can only afford that type of housing. Having a cell phone is a necessity nowadays given that there are no pay phones and if you don’t have stable housing it makes more sense than trying to set up a land line, and many things such as applying to jobs or to welfare programs or anything else really have people who need to be able to reach you somehow. Why do we want to wait until people don’t have the basic necessities to be fit to hold jobs in order to qualify them as being poor and in need of welfare? Isn’t it socially beneficial to assist them before they hit that point so they don’t simply become solely a drain on society and more likely turn to crime?
Furthermore, simply having a few non-essential possessions does not mean that their lives are not extremely difficult. For many, they’ve had ups and downs and, again, the problem is that they don’t have a safety net to catch them when they are down. So, to the extent that they have accumulated something that is non-essential (news reports go on and on about how some percentage have Xboxes — what is that worth, like $5-20?) does not mean that when they hit a low that they don’t need help, and furthermore it does not mean that it wouldn’t be socially ideal to provide welfare assistance.
For those that are unemployed, judging them is unfair. I know plenty of people with college degrees and no jobs; can’t even imagine how tough it could be if you have no degree, haven’t graduated from high school or have a criminal record of any sort. Even with a college degree and work experience, last year I spent some time applying to retail jobs (long story) and came up empty. The main thing that separates the unemployed on welfare from the unemployed with a fancy car and LV bag is the safety net that your parents and family provide.
Embracing the idea that not all our poor are homeless and living in rags means that they are not poor enough to bother with is simply a bad idea — we should be glad that we have been able to ward off abject poverty that would be even more draining on society and lead to more crime. Preventing problems is almost always less expensive than fixing problems that have already happened. Insurance companies know this which is why preventative care is almost always covered at a higher rate than other types of care — so why would we not apply basic business principles to our economy? It’s a common problem with any type of programs with a preventative component that critics will use any successes — however small — to attack the existence of the program. Environmental protection laws, rules regarding vaccines, and so on and so forth all are met with these criticisms. Still, it’s shocking that even as homelessness and unemployment rises steadily that people have the gall to depict poverty as being less of a problem.
I should also add that the comparison with global poverty is disingenuous. It costs more to live in America, duh. To the extent that our poor have “luxuries” such as clean water, it certainly does not mean that they are living it up nor does it mean that our welfare programs are generous beyond a point that is socially ideal.
Mostly, I just think it’s one thing to believe that it’s okay to live the best life you can even when others have it worse off and A WHOLE OTHER THING to live that type of life and then point to people who are so much worse off than you and make assumptions about how luxurious their life must be.
I had no problem with Professor Todd Henderson’s argument earlier this year that it should not be assumed that a household making over $400,000 a year would not have to make cuts if they were taxed at a higher rate. While the way he made the argument made a lot of people angry (e.g. making it personal), I thought it was worth introducing into the debate on taxes, even if I don’t think it should be determinative. In other words, I think it’s a legitimate concerns, but there are other legitimate concerns that may be and are likely greater.
I also had no problem with people in my classes making arguments about how “fairness” shouldn’t matter and that distributive justice should play no part in policy discussions — I only had a problem when those same people created a big fuss later about how it was “unfair” that they did not get free sandwiches at lunch and when they decried the free-food-giving mechanisms of the law school that resulted in their not being one of the 50 or so people to get free Jamba Juice. You would think that “unfairness” of that situation would make them realize why it is problematic that people born into a low socio-economic status or are discriminated against have disadvantages that we might want to correct, but I guess not.
Anyway, things are going well in general, but sometimes I read things and they make me sad.
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As always, I’m not able to discuss my internship. Surprisingly, the place I’m at now has even stricter rules about this sort of thing than the law firm I was working at before. Go figure. But it’s good, the work is good, the people are good. And we’ll leave it at that.
Instead, I’ll talk about Los Angeles in general. The weather is so perfect it almost makes me wish I’d chosen another law school. Almost. Also, I had a celebrity sighting the first weekend I was here — it was Paul Dano at Katsuya in Studio City. It was actually Harry and his friend who recognized him; I had no clue but whatever. Oh, and I live a street away from a Jamba Juice, which is one of my favorite things. Yay.
Mostly, I’ve been reading a lot now that all law school stuff is completely done. I first read some fluffy stuff such as Mini-Shopaholic and some mysteries, but now that my brain feels rested again I’m reading Robert Graves’ I, Claudius, Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle, and I’m almost done with The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield. I was recommended Thirteenth by a roommate of mine four years ago and haven’t had a chance to get to it until now. So far I like it a lot. It’s definitely a book for book lovers.
Oh, one of the head honchos in my office mentioned to everyone that he really excited to go see Neil Gaiman talk — the co-author of Good Omens, which is in my top 5 of books and is the book I recommend to people the most — and I really wanted to commiserate with him about how awesome the book is since it’s not often I find people who have read it, but couldn’t without sounding like a total suck-up to everyone else. That crushed my spirit a little.
Still, all in all, things are good. The biggest gripe I have about my life here thus far is that I don’t have internet at my place since it’s still getting fixed and it sucks and is making my life difficult.
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Being friends with Ali may very well be one of the best things that has ever happened to my life given that I now have access both to the Google Music beta and, more importantly, the Google+ beta.
My first thought about Google Plus is that I like the privacy options more than Facebook. Facebook is sort of inscrutable in that you’re never quite sure if your privacy is going to appear the way you want it to unless you do a lot of checking — I actually have an extra account I use specifically to check to make sure my privacy settings are the way that I want them to be, which really shouldn’t be necessary — and Google+ does a better job of giving you options at the right places and telling you upfront who’s able to view what. No surprises about privacy and what’s being shown to whom is definitely the way to go.
Secondly, I like the interface more than I thought it would. It runs smoother and is easier to navigate than Facebook. It’s very user friendly, and dragging and dropping existing contacts into your circles is fun. Given that no one uses it yet (it was given a limited outside release just today), I’ll have to hold off on commenting on some of the functionality since I haven’t really fully seen it in action yet. I’m hesitant to post anything such as photos or whatnot since they make very clear that the beta is susceptible to hiccups, and especially given how searchable anything associated with Google is, I’m not looking to have my random photos strewn across the internet.
Other random thoughts — so far the Sparks functionality does nothing for me (info about subjects you’re interested in) since it’s too general as is to want to get that info from there. I really like their incorporation of the +1 thing however (similar to “liking” on Facebook except I like that it all appears in one “tab” as opposed to being incorporated into your profile) and I’m interested to see what they end up doing with it.
One minus for the service may end up being that it doesn’t require reciprocal adding of people. Meaning that I can add you to my circle of people and you can just ignore me. I’m not sure if the friend count is going to appear somewhere at some point, but if it’s anything like how twitter has played out, it seems to indicate there’s going to be a lot of people that become very preoccupied with having a good following to followers ratio (good meaning that a lower ratio is better). This could potentially lead people to want to stick to Facebook for their social media needs.
I think part of the reason Facebook has grown so rapidly is precisely because “friending” people is mutually beneficial to both parties — e.g. both have more “friends” and more access to information and a bigger network. To the extent that you give people incentives not to friend people, it’s probably a bad thing with regards to growth of the product. While this is offset by the fact that most people are already in the Google network, I still think if I have two options and in one of them I have more limited access to people and information, I’d be inclined to use the larger network more. I also think finding out you have mutual friends with someone — even if it’s just an acquaintance — is one of the best parts of Facebook, and a smaller network would serve to lessen that benefit.
I think the biggest plus for Google+ is that I have a lot of faith in their programming abilities and in their ability to grow Google+ more effectively than Facebook has done. Google is much better at providing options and functionality than Facebook, I think. There’s some obvious things that would make a transition easier such as importing your account from Facebook (I hope Facebook doesn’t de-activate the option that lets you download your information in response) which I assume will eventually be incorporated. Anyway, these are my thoughts. I’ll update as it goes along.
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So, in their latest advertising for the new version of the nook, Barnes & Noble is employing a David and Goliath reference wherein they are David and Amazon’s Kindle is supposedly Goliath — really, guys?? David and Goliath? Considering the number of times they’ve put small, independent bookstores out of business, this smacks of some pretty cold, hard irony.
Personally, I like Barnes & Noble and have no moral qualms with large companies so long as their business practices do not edge on outright coercion or unfairly anti-competitive behaviors. That being said, I really do think Barnes & Noble is one of the last companies that should be using such allusions. I mean, I get that it’s also about the size of the devices, but it just sounds silly.
Anyway, I’ll chalk this up to an advertising fail. But I just had to point this out because seeing the ad first thing this morning literally made me laugh and get water all over the place.
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It occurs to me that my last few posts have largely consisted of me criticizing things, which is unpleasant, which is why I should note that despite it being the final stretch and despite being ridiculously stressed out and busy and studying in 8-to-12-hour stretches, I still love my law school and my 1L class, which says a lot about UChicago, I think.
The students in my class, despite also being stressed and busy, are still supportive and even fun to be around. We had a great first exec board meeting for the Intellectual Property Law Society where we discussed all the events we wanted to plan for next year. My 1L section this year easily had the best Bigelow fellow (a couple other sections claim the same thing, but unlike me they’re wrong). And while I may be biased, I do think that UChicago’s general way of teaching law is almost precisely the right balance of theory and practicality. I had an amazing group lunch with Professor Nussbaum, a woman who was a pioneer in her field, earlier this week. And Professors Strahilevitz and Levmore — I am definitely looking forward to taking more classes with them.
On our last day, Strahilevitz told us that if he had billions of dollars he would still teach 1L property which was just about the cutest thing ever and it made me feel all sniffly (I then imagined him teaching our class with a pimp hat, fur coat and gold chains, so that helped). I really don’t think you’ll find a class of kids who are fonder of their professors than us, even as these same people are in the process of crushing our souls and depriving us of our ability to function properly, thanks to finals. And I’m not saying this just because I’m some great mood. Let me be clear about this: finals blow. I’m subsisting on popsicle sticks, gum, granola bars and weird combinations of whatever is left in my refrigerator, as in: eggs + mustard + a hot-dog bun? I’ll take it!
But in all seriousness, I think the main thing I like about the professors and students is that the common view I hold about people is that I don’t agree with all their views, but I like hearing what they have to say. In fact, I’ve found that I have some fundamental points of dissension in different capacities with everyone, but I still love talking to them and it has easily made this experience worthwhile. I mean, having a job at graduation would also be key, but I’ll worry about that when the time comes closer.
It’s been a stressful year, for sure. And I’ve definitely had my fair share of set-backs and frustrations. But a lot of the stuff that guidebooks and stuff mention when you’re looking at schools — e.g. worrying about the quarter system, transportation, amenities — really are trivial when you like and are learning from the people around you. I think if I could give prospective students one piece of advice in choosing between similar school is that you should just try to get a feel for if you like the people and trust your gut. (I say similar schools because rankings/grants/job opportunities matter, unfortunately.) I spent a lot of time debating and making extensive excel spread sheets to compare schools, but I think I always knew I’d end up here because I liked the people I’d met from UChicago, and I liked the ideas the school embodied.
Speaking of the quarter system, it means that we finish later than almost everyone and reading these “I’m done!!!” posts on facebook for the past few weeks has been brutal. I wish I could filter them because they are killing me. I am happy for you, but I’d be happier if we were both done.
Oh, one final “also”, I hoped the ABA would just do something, but as a backup then it’s probably good that someone finally sued one of the many law schools that give false or intentionally misleading employment statistics. I wish you all the best, and I will think of your class action as I outline Rule 23 tomorrow. Back to work.
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