Some responses to recent stuff.

A response to Post #21 from the writer of the post referenced therein (Post #14):

I had actually written an e-mail to Jeremy after he had published my post. My post stated, that, among other things, that "there is no middle ground" and "that nobody is happy." I felt bad about it and admitted that it was a little extreme. Obviously there are happy people out there and generally speaking I would like to think of myself as a happy person, albeit a cynical one.

People can be happy but I think it is significantly harder in a capitalistic environment because there is such fierce competition among one another. If you don't have special skills or exceptional intelligence you are stuck in a rat race with everybody else. I think that is something the person who responded to my post missed. This person obviously is very gifted, otherwise a big firm would not have hired her. Furthermore, due to this person's intelligence (and I assume hard work) she has a lot of options, more options to chase her dreams. For the rest of us, who didn't go to a great school or were not in the top 10 percent of our class, we are struggling to get by. We don't have "dreams". We want to survive. We want to get a job (any job). We want to be able to move out of our parents house. I haven't given up on my dreams, but you'll forgive me that if after three years of killing myself in law school I'm a little jaded that its next to impossible to find a decent job.

I'm not just referring to the legal profession. Its incredibly difficult to "break through" and find a profession where you really enjoy your work, be in sync with the people your working with and make a decent amount of money. I see a lot of people stuck in bad, dead end jobs and its very sad. I haven't given up on my dreams but I recognize how exceptionally difficult it is to make it in the good old U.S.A. I read that the US recently overtook Japan as the hardest working country in the world. I don't have an aversion to hard work, but I also don't like the idea of working six in the morning until 8 at night every day like my father worked just to make a half decent living.

I know, again, that this is a bit of a rant. But I just think sometimes that people who are in a terrific situation sometimes forget how difficult it is for people who are trying to find their niche in the professional world.

And a note from one of the displaced Tulane students, about what I posted yesterday, that seems pretty sensible:

Of course I want to support Tulane, and I will gladly go back to New Orleans in January if the school can ensure that it will be a safe, clean place to live. I just don't want to feel like my physical/mental health is being sacrificed to keep the school from losing some tuition money. Also, this situation is not a "back door" into a better school. I do not expect to receive a Harvard Law degree; HLS is just helping me get the credits I need to graduate on time, and I am grateful for that.