What you want is a machine, &I am flesh.
I know how the entirety of this writing sounds, seemingly, after the fact. Nevertheless, the point of my life is not to make others think what I want them to think about me. I couldn't give two fucks about what other people think of me, etc.
I do not dread that I was not-accepted, because, despite whatever you believe, I actually realized that law school isn't really for me (along with living here in Honolulu) before I even submitted my application. The first feeling I had when I read the rejection email was RELIEF. Facts. I didn't even cry at first. I was smiling, but then, obviously, my ego was butt-hurt, so I cried a bit later. And then I cried again later later, cause I feel useless.
You know that stupid fucking cliche about how it's all about the journey, not the destination, etc., etc., &c.? *barf* Yea, my applying to law school was one of these types of lessons.
A lot of things happened between my deciding to apply to law school and the priority deadline to submit said application, and I learned a lot of things about myself and about, uh, the law school process, which sort of paints a picture of law school people, by extension, lawyers themselves.
I encountered a few issues with the William S. Richardson law school application process itself, early on (&I will not spend the time to outline them as it will all be read simply as a sort of "bashing" of an institution that didn't accept me), with the crescendo being that the law school's financial aid office forced me to create a hawaii.edu email (screen shot available) in order to fill out a two-question GOOGLE FORM. I can still access this email, today. All of this happened one week after I applied, two weeks before finding out I wasn't even accepted. If you do not understand the implications of this, I am not going to explain it to you, because well, I'll just put it this way: Amateur Hour. As aforementioned, this was the final straw of examples like this that made me second-guess myself throughout the entirety of the process. The first few "issues" revolved around the simple photo quality (or lack thereof) of the school's full-color, paper brochure (get yourself one and have a looksy; I still have mine if you want me to send it to you), not to mention the required application questions that asked for my t-shirt size *gross* and my preferred pronouns *vomits* with the last few issues revolving around a general second-rate-ness when interacting with the school through the internet, etc.
Not to mention the current strife within the school itself among its faculty. Google it. The professors involved are of different races, and if you're familiar, at all, with the political state of Hawai'i, well, it's not a good look.
Not to mention the current cowardice being exhibited by the University of Hawai'i as a whole. Google it.
Mostly, however, I knew I didn't perform well on the LSAT, because I knew that I didn't have enough time to study, and the time that I did have to study was strained. I am not of the sort wherein my intellect feels threatened by testing poorly on a standardized test. Standardized tests tell you one thing and one thing only: how much you studied for the standardized test. I job a full-time job, and all of this happened over the holidays. Again, I'm not making excuses, I'm simply outlining the facts, and trying to find some understanding as to why I even applied.
At first, I thought that I wanted to be a lawyer so that I could work as a reader/writer. The journey revealed to me what the reading and writing work would look like, and it's no different than showing up to some job doing menial tasks that totally suck, day after day, week after week, year after year until you are too old to work or die. Being a lawyer is no different than holding down any other job. Don't get it twisted, like, 90% of lawyers are unimportant people.
My goal, our (the bodybuddy/lifemate and my) goal has ALWAYS BEEN to free ourselves from The Job.
At some point I realized that I was simply trading up JOBS, which is not the goal.
Another thing I learned (the bodybuddy/lifemate [the CFO of our company, tkscm, limited] gives me [the CEO of my company] a complete and thorough financial overview of everything from the past year at the end of every year) during this journey between deciding to apply and applying is that I've made the most money I've ever made over the past two years. Not only that, but the bodybuddy/lifemate and I made more money from not-our jobs last year than the bodybuddy/lifemate made doing his job last year, for the first time ever.
The current president was also elected between my deciding to apply and my applying. By the time I had applied, I knew it was a futile attempt when considering my LSAT score. I had some hope, because I do have a lot of things going for me, but I am always aware of the fact that I am a risky candidate in basically everything of which I try to be a part. I get it. Especially in the light of the current presidential administration and the announcement of their pointed focus on various government agencies, and the Department of Education is not immune.
The day the presidential administration announced all of their DEI demands and that they were going to poke around the DOE, I knew that I would not be accepted into law school. Maybe if I had pulled out an amazing test score, I could've slid into this incoming class, but with the Eye of the Government threatening to cut off funding to various institutions that do not comply with its "meritocracy" disguised as Elitism, I was honestly a bit surprised at the swiftness with which UH was so willing to comply. But then, I remembered the other thing about why I had decided that I would not be attending this law school even if I had somehow managed to get in as a "diversity hire."
UH prides itself on its diversity. The thing is that the state, itself, is very diverse. But nobody's looking at the fine print. On a graph of generalities, asians are strongly represented. The raw graph of the specific racial demographic makeup of this city, however, is not reflected in the general graph. If you look at the types of asians that are represented at the school, and then look at the type of asians who are most-represented in this city, UH is an oligarchy, especially when considering that they've somehow managed 40% of their funding from the State of Hawai'i, all while their public education system is so bad it's basically nonexistent.
Also...
Ten days after I took the LSAT, the bodybuddy/lifemate was physically assaulted on the street in broad daylight. It was deemed harassment, and the fucker went to jail for fifteen days, and I'm sure he's back on the streets causing mayhem for reasons beyond his control. I briefly mentioned this in an earlier log, but I'm going to mention one more time how we have lived and been all over the world, and nothing like this has ever happened to us. And he's always been white, and we've always been an interracial couple. Not only that, but my jobplace is an extremely hostile (both stranger/customer and cojobbers alike) environment, the likes of which neither of us have ever experienced before, and then we suffered a verbal assault by an obese Islander while we were minding our own business. This fucker even walked up to us to spew his shit. We were literally just minding our own business on the beach when this fat fucker came up to us, in broad daylight, and cussed out the bodybuddy/lifemate while calling me a bitch. And then he flipped us off from his moped the entire time he rode away.
This was the second time I've been called a bitch since moving here. Months before this, an old asian man customer, at my jobplace, called me a bitch for not letting him ride a rascal around the store because it was charging. There was a second rascal that he could've used, but before I could say this to him, he called me a bitch, so I had him kicked out of the store. Before these two times being called a bitch by some fucking not-white man, I had never been called a bitch to my face by anyone except my older adopted brother. And actually, he's a not-white man, too. Funny. I've only experienced hate from not-white men. Hmmm...I'm literally just now realizing this as I'm writing this. I'm going to have to give this a serious think.
Anyway...
It's nearly impossible to bash the State of Hawai'i when confronted by the "paradisaical" aura of the Islands, but it's a political shit-hole. Everyone who lives here knows this. But the non-indigenous locals, who include all people who have moved to these islands, use the "aura" to do a sort of mental gymnastics to make it seem like it is us, the one's who arrive, who cannot "hack it" here on the Islands, but the reality is that it's such a second-rate city that the "big shots" here on the Islands could never hack it on the Mainland. Just do a quick Google of, like, some investment seminar and note the expected turnout, etc. They try, constantly, to make new arrivals seem like the problem is us, when the reality is that this place is riddled with problems, due to the current (read: the people in power here long before we arrived) leadership in place, the likes of which I have never seen anywhere else we've ever lived. On one hand, like duh, the white man came here and destroyed everything like they do. On the other, the leaders are not leading with any sort of prioritized best-interest of Hawaiian people; it's unbridled amateur hour out here. &I'm the idiot who thought this place was actually a paradise, a place working its ass off to return the land back to its people! Basically the first thing that the local legislative session put up to a vote for this year's session was their pay. They want to be paid more, immediately, and they won a 64% raise, for THEMSELVES.
The only thing I know for a fact about this place, that I assume everyone can agree on, is that anyone who is anybody leaves the Islands, because THERE IS NOTHING HERE FOR THEM. The ones who can hack it on the Mainland, NEVER COME BACK.
The funny thing is that that is exactly what the admissions rejection email suggested. They said that while I was highly recommended, it's too competitive (read: Trumps' going to take away our money if we can't prove that we accepted only the "best" people [read: rich and well-connected {and japanese}]). They literally suggested that I go to some other law school, and that they would be happy to receive me as a transfer. It's hard not to take this as a compliment, because I also know that my ego is a bit bruised and so, is looking for anything to make this not-on me, etc. But also, like, if I were to apply again, I would "do it right" (take the necessary time away from my job to study, etc.), and I would obviously shoot for my dream law school. If I were to be accepted by any law school on the Mainland, it would be a better school than the only law school in this state (remember: local oligarchy). And so, if this were the case, why the fuck would I step down and come back here?
And this is how I know I dodged a seventy-five thousand dollar bullet. Like, what a stupid suggestion. What a lack of institutional self-awareness.
So yea, the other final thing that really nailed not-becoming a lawyer home for me is AI. I had planned on applying for financial aid, but if, for whatever reason, I had to pay out of pocket, we were going to pay for my school outright, in cash. But then, during the application process, I learned that the process does not prohibit the use of AI, even on the application! All they needed you to do was check a box describing to what extent you used AI. And the options were, effectively, "Some," "None," and "All."
BAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
When I read this part on the application, I knew right then and there that anyone who has become a lawyer in the past, maybe, five years or so is already obsolete. And the institution that brought these lawyers into being are the ones leading the charge of their own obsolescence. That's insane.
And so, I sort of had this revelation that if I can afford to go get some degree that will ultimately be useless in the very near future, I might as well just use the money to buy an AI tool, like duh. Why would I spend the painstaking energy to learn all of this stuff that's essentially already figured out by some computer that currently, already does some heavy lifting? Oh, that's right. I am not an AI champion. I'm sane.
And it was this revelation, in particular, that really made me see the LSAC/LSAT/law school pipeline for what it is: A Total Racket. And lawyers are the ultimate cog in a system that services them and them alone.
What is the antithesis of a cog? A creative, aka an artist, the identity I've chosen for myself, so, me.
I am the antithesis of a lawyer.
I soon realized that the thing, the only thing, that attracted me to the school was this thing called The Clinic. It is where students can put in pro bono hours and "work" with real people. I'll just say this, it's a decoy. The Clinic exists as something the school can point to as a way to make it seem like lawyering is about the people, when it is not. Nobody's used The Clinic since it opened. The building was furnished like an office-like space, but nobody uses it beyond what's required to graduate. There were no office supplies. The entire building was void of any evidence of actual work being done. Literally, not a computer, pen or single piece of paper could be seen. And the school even touts itself as "A Legacy of Developing Ethical Leaders," BAHAHAHAHAHA! Remember, the ongoing strife within the school itself among its faculty, etc. And really, a majority, one assumes, of the graduates end up being lawyers, here, in Honolulu, and like I mentioned, this place is a political shit-hole.
At the moment, I've had some of the best sleep and the best poops I've had in years since not-getting in to law school. *sigh* Seriously, it was such a relief. I really thought that this was what I would be doing later this year when I started this whole thing, but the whole point of this writing is to explain how what I learned was that not only do I not-want to be a cog in a system that is absolutely atrocious here in Honolulu, but also, I might just be The Villain of these particular cogs, the lawyer, because really, the entire Racket overlaid on top of our legal system is not your friend. They are the enemy of the every person. They do not fight for you. They fight on behalf of the system.
&I'm here for you, not the system.
I guess I'm the idiot who thought that lawyering was something different than what it is, and that's a shame. I do feel very lucky though, cause if I had been accepted, I don't know if I could've stood firm and not-attended. And then I would've literally flushed $75K down the toilet.
I'm feeling forever grateful for the way that the Time Tide has always worked in my life to nudge me along the path of my life. It literally struck the bodybuddy/lifemate in the face, and we took a hard left. I started this journey because it came together so quickly. The only real hurdle was the letters of recommendation, and so, when those came through so easily, I read the ease as a "go," and so, I did it. Once I was committed, I had to see it though even though, before the end, I found out that this was not the destination for me. I also couldn't not-use the letters. I had asked for them; I had to finish.
Presently, I'm of the mood where I want to indulge the worst of myself. I'm going to only live here the bare minimum of time to own property, otherwise, I'll be off-island. Why not just move? Well, we've been everywhere, and everywhere is terrible. The other thing is that we've only jobbed overnight. So, we're going to transition into day-walkers, at some point, not now, but probably sometime this year, which is going to mean a jobbing switch-up. It's possible that the bodybuddy/lifemate will consider jobbing even less this year after the financial results of last year, but this year is already proving to be much more uncertain than the past few years of more relative stability. We obviously want to give the place a shot, and see if what we know to be the worst parts of this city can be outweighed by whatever we find to be the best parts of this city. If it's a wash, we'll probably stay, as part-timers. If the good outweighs the bad enough to develop the LOPSIII model here, we'll try. If the bad outweighs the good, then we will hopefully be financially independent enough by this point that we won't even really need a "home," so the matter will be more about where we file our location with the bureaucratic entity known as our country's government, etc.
And so, why did I apply? Why did the process of applying flow so easily? And then, why, after completing the last portion required for the application, did we experience the absolute worst of this city? The path took a hard left immediately after I finished everything that I needed to do. Why?!?! Why, Ladybug, why!
&then Ladybug looks at me, and with a disappointed look on its face scoffs, "The why of a thing hardly matters."
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| &i finally got Tiffany Poon's album! whatastunna *heart eyes* i mostly follow her on uTube &she is also on the 'gram |
*i did not find out, today.
