the edmond fitzgerald, salvaged from the briny depths!

i managed to advance to the next round of the moot court appellate advocacy competition. i have decided to proceed without the cool, detached demeanor of the cautious optimist. no no, not me. i am flinging myself with wild abandon into this whole exercise, and not just so i'll have something good to talk about in my next callback. i am just genuinely nerdy enough to really want to knock this out of the park. and i thrive on feedback, so i think i can really craft a relatively seamless, persuasive approach to this whole thing based on my critiques. i go first tomorrow, early evening.

i should take this opportunity to address those who would continue to question my choice to not compete in the law review write on competition in favor of heavy moot court participation. at this point, i could not be more at peace with the way my 2L year is going (okay, that's a lie...i would like to have one job offer under my belt so that knot in my stomach would relax a little, but what can you do). any vestigial conflict i was feeling about my decision to compete my little ass off in moot court instead of attmepting law review has disappeared. i am good at this; i have some skills and am improving. and i am actually enjoying it.

i have crossed a very important threshold, i have passed some sort of test. faced with two opportunities, one which i knew was money in the bank for job searching, and one which i knew i would excell at and enjoy a lot more but lacking that same resume oomph, i chose the latter. and i am happy to say that i chose to seek out the work that i wanted to do, that gave me a sense of fulfillment rather than the endless drudgery of the "better" choice.

i am also at the crossroads of academia and practice. do i want to be someone who helps to navigate the direction of legal scholarship? do i want to be a law professor? i thought i might, but at this point, i have decided otherwise. i am at peace with the fact that i chose law school while my two best friends chose graduate school in english. they are both already incredible writers and will make inspiring professors, and i envy their students tremendously. but i chose a different path. i chose a professional school, almost a trade school really. i view law school as learning and honing a set of skills, more than anything else, which i will take out into the world to make a comfortable existence for me and my family and to do some good. hopefully the two will not be mutually exclusive.