The Great Change: Turning Cathy into a Lawyer

The extended pause in posts was due to a trip to Points Far Away. It's too long to blog, so you can read about it here.

On Saturday I came through San Francisco International Airport on the way back from Thailand and Cambodia. I had a good trip but I was excited to be back in my home country.

That excitement quickly dissipated when faced with the inquisition going through passport control and customs. It wasn't the first time I'd had my bags searched by customs - in fact the last time I came though it happened as well, but then I was in such a good enough mood that I just shrugged it off - but this was now the second time in as many consecutive trips and it was much more invasive. The customs agent wanted to know all sorts of details that were none of his business, especially since he already got to open the suitcase.

"What do you do?"

Should I answer this? Do I have to? The Constitutional inquiry in my head deferred to expediency. I chose the path of least resistance (presumably) and answered the question.

"I'm a law student."

"What kind of law will you go into?"

"Civil liberties."

He paused a moment, but continued the scrutiny, typing various bits of information about my life into who knows what database. And I took it because I didn't see what choice I had. Perhaps had I raised some sort of search and seizure complaint he would have stopped. Of course, I might have had to spend all day in some room while it all got sorted out.

The irony was that on the way into passport control I saw a Department of Justice poster in English and Arabic saying that it wanted to know if there were any civil liberties violations. Yeah, right. If this is the inquisition that an American traveller gets, I can't imagine the indignities they put foreign travellers through.

I think what set them off was that I had been to Thailand, and on an admittedly short visit (though they didn't seem perturbed about the visit to Cambodia). It seemed like it didn't compute to them that someone might travel to a far off place like that for any purpose non-nefarious. I think in general they can't imagine any non-nefarious reason to travel. What kind of patriotic American would ever even want to leave this great country of ours? I think as a policy this government regards travelers, people who want to see the world to understand it better, with the scrutiny it regards a traitor. Why would you leave if you really loved America?

Of course it's because I love America that I leave it sometimes. America's interests are never promoted by isolating ourselves from the rest of the planet. Only by meeting other people, learning about them and having them learn about us, can we achieve the type of understanding that will allow for peace and security for all on this planet.

Grades are in... yuck.

No failures, not even a C. But an astonishingly high absence of vowels.

What's frustrating is that I threw everything into the finals, and I can't imagine what more I could have done. Clearly something else was required since obviously others included it to get A's. Sort of wish I'd known what that might have been in advance...

At some point I might chase down the finals and figure out where I went wrong. Maybe. I'm mostly tempted to forget about them and just keep moving forward.

I'm inclined to think that what may have hurt me was a certain disorganization to the essays. I felt very rushed and pressured, but not like I didn't know stuff. I'd been advised to spend more time organizing them, but I'm not sure when that time could have been spared from. I did try to make sure, as I was also advised, that each sentence articulated part of the analysis and didn't waste space and time on filler. Or so I thought.

At BU the professors also have discretion to bump up grades for class participation by a notch. Either I didn't get bumped in classes I thought I would, or I did get bumped but apparently had done worse on the finals than I'd thought. Can't figure out which is a more depressing theory.

Of course the stupid thing is that I did learn a lot. Already I've changed, my thinking has changed, and I have insight into legal workings at a depth I didn't have before. Unfortunately there's no way to quickly represent that knowledge to anyone quickly, say, like prospective employers. The grades were supposed to be the proxy, the way this system works.

Something tells me I'm going to have to buck the system, but I was starting to think that already.

Since I'm currently living in Washington, it's been hard to ignore the fanfare over Reagan, though I've certainly tried. The jets that flew over his Capitol procession also flew over my house, and the ceremonies on Friday were on TVs all over the city. DC was also very quiet that day as Bush had given a lot of people the day off. Meanwhile I just held my breath and waited for it to be over.

It's not that I want to jump up and down and spit on his grave - he was a father, a husband, and he leaves behind loved ones and I'm sensitive to their loss. And I agree with what I overheard someone else say, that as a US president his death was due a certain ceremony.

My objection is to the posthumous deifying of the man. I don't want to change the money in his honor, or anything else for that matter. And I don't want to pretend that he was the greatest president ever, although I admit that his presidency did have lasting effects. Whether all of them are effects we'd like to have, though, I'm not so sure.

There are a couple of things that come to mind most strongly when I reflect on Reagan. One, that he gassed the students at the University of California at Berkeley. (He called out the National Guard as governor of California and they gassed the student protestors.) I wasn't there, but I don't need to be - nor do I need to be an alumna of the school (though I am) - in order to feel that it was a violent over-reaction to dissent. Given the degree that he's being feted for having "defeating" the Soviet Union it might be nice if we didn't forget how he acted in such a Soviet style himself.

I also question whether he really did "defeat" the Soviet Union in the Cold War. I remember being terrified when I was in elementary school that he was being so provocative that he was going to get us all blown up. It may have been an oversimplified perception, but as I've gotten older I've noticed that fifth graders, with their less convoluted outlooks, often get things more right than adults who tend to get more lost in complexities.

(Gorbachev, who I do tend to think is more deserving of honor for ending the Cold War, himself credits Reagan for helping to end it. I don't deny that Reagan played a crucial role, but it may have been more to create the political realities that allowed Gorbachev to do what he did. Perhaps if these actions had been part of a flawless design I could congratulate him for it. But my sense of the history was that it was, like so much else, more a fortunate accident.)

The thing that bothers me the most, though, is that in fourth grade he made me cry. There was some nonsense about bringing school prayer back to schools, and for a brief period this directive manifested in a moment of silence after the Pledge of Allegience. It was just a moment of silence, we were told, not a directive to pray. As if that made it ok. I knew its purpose was for a moment of Christian contemplation. I wasn't Christian, I knew it wasn't for me. It was a moment when I became an outcast in my own country. As if the fourth grade wasn't trying enough.

There are some conservatives who have lambasted critics of Reagan as being partisan in refusing to go along with the flow in feting his fictional flawlessness. It's an unfair criticism for the most part because it serves no one's interests if we can't evaluate his presidency thoroughly and honestly, to face down the mistakes if we wish to celebrate the glories.

Lest I be painted with the same critical brush, I also wish to point out that I grew up during the Reagan presidency. That I've become a Democrat is directly due to him because as I gained my political consciousness I looked around and knew there had to be a better way.

Edit 6/15/04: What did happen in 4th grade? An article in today's New York Times says that unlike Bush, Reagan didn't mix religion and politics. That's not my recollection, but perhaps I'm missing something.

The article talked about comments made by his son at the funeral, trying to differentiate Reagan and Bush's invocation of religion into politics. Of course, from my understanding, Ron Reagan Jr., whose views I generally do respect, often didn't see eye-to-eye with his dad. But I admire the son for having tried to bridge the ideological gap between them.

Edit 7/10/04: Here's something I wrote about Reagan during his presidency. I was about 11 when I wrote it.

Intrigue in the nation's capital? The Patriot Act rearing its ugly head?

Actually it's that there's holes in my window screens. At night with the light on bugs invite themselves right in.

The interesting thing is that it's not like a lot of bugs of the same type. No swarms. It's more like one of each species. I have a little bug with disproportionately long grey wings. I had a big bug with a brown body and dark wings. There's been a moth with an unfortunate habit of making itself comfortable on my laundry. There have also been a couple of miscellaneous bugs whose particular exoskeletons I can't quite recall offhand, although some of them have been squished for lack of a better way of ensuring their timely departure from my bedroom. And then there is a really stupid ladybug that keeps flying into the spinning ceiling fan and crashing down on my bed.

Last night the ladybug crashed into the fan again for about the third time. And once again I put it back outside. You'd think it would have learned better by now. I suppose it's possible that maybe it was a different ladybug. To make sure, if it happens again, I'll start counting the spots.

I try to help out the ladybug(s) and not squish it (them) because it's (they're) pretty and aphid-eating. Although if it is in fact the same one every night it is beginning to wear out my patience and I may be no longer able to guarantee safe passage from my room. Still, if it has been a different one every night, why would I only be seeing them one at a time? If I had a horde of ladybugs living in my bedroom, wouldn't I have noticed? Or is it some secret ladybug protocol that they only reveal themselves one at a time?

Of course, WHY would a horde of ladybugs be living in my room? It's not like I have a lot of aphids hanging around. Unless they too only show themselves one at a time...

Travelling is a great way to meet people different from you. With my trip to Cambodia and a trip planned to another developing region later this summer I'm getting to meet people much different from the people I know in America.

But maybe I just don't know the right people in America.

Today I stopped into a Subway near my job to pick up dinner. The place was nearly empty, so neither the sandwich preparer nor I was in a rush. As he made my sandwich he asked me if I wanted American cheese or provolone. This led to a conversation when he asked me what the difference was between them. I was sort of surprised he didn't know his own product, but I went along with it. He seemed to have a subtle foreign accent and it dawned on me that he might really not know too much about cheese.

"Provolone has more flavor than American. American is much more bland."

"Cheese is cheese to me," he said.

"Well, HERE," I said, pointing to the Subway cheese spread, "It may all taste the same, but the Europeans take their cheese very seriously. They have lots of different kinds and wouldn't like a bland cheese like American."

He laughed, finished making my sandwich, and then sat down at a table since there were no other customers. I filled my soda cup and went to put my sandwich in my backpack. "That's a heavy backpack," he marvelled.

"Oh this is nothing. I'm a law student and I've carried much bigger and heavier ones."

This led to a discussion on studying law. Apparently he had taken law class in school -- in Africa. His country was a former British colony - so we presume a common law country - where the legal education, like in many other countries other than the US, happens at the undergraduate level. So we talked for a bit comparing legal systems and education. It was like a mini global exchange.

In a Subway restaurant in DC.

I sort of realized, too late, that when I planned my summer I had neglected to schedule for myself a day at the beach, literally or figuratively. A day where I could do nothing but lie around in a relaxing place. And/or go swimming. Even my trip to Southeast Asia ended up beachless, despite there being some very nice ones in Thailand. And I really could have used it - it's been a marathon going form the semester to the writing competition to the move to the job to travel to the job again and I was craving a mental pit stop.

I finally got the proverbial day at the beach when last weekend my friend and I... spent a day at the beach. We headed out to Ocean City, MD. It was a beach whose geographic proximity mocked us as we fjorded the state highways for three hours to get there, but once there we had a nice time. The beach was pleasant and we had a nice swim. The waves were high enough to not be boringly placid but not so big that swimming became a bruising experience. Initially we were near the boardwalk and walked around eating boardwalk food (which naturally included crab cakes) but then we went up the road to this complex that was sort of a Disney-fied bar on the inlet (Ocean City is a barrier island). It was all done up as a Jamaican oasis, with palm trees and sand and lots of distinct bar areas done up with their own tropical atmosphere. It was sort of nauseating, in a way, although having never seen a place like that it was kind of fun to take in for the first time while it still had some novelty. My concern stemmed from the realization that it was the kind of place where "Girls Gone Wild" videos are probably shot (as the various signs warning us that AV recording was happening at all times suggested), where drunken coeds partake in their unique notion of inebriated "fun," and where, for a place with no walls, the dress code was highly regulated (e.g., no backwards baseball caps). I did think the jetski parking lot for those who approached by sea was an interesting touch though.

Neither my friend nor I had ever jetskied, and although it was a little expensive, we decided to give it a try and rented one for a half an hour. It seems that if I think it's important to take in all sorts of new but foreign experiences, it's also worth taking in new domestic ones as well.

For dinner I'd not yet had my fill of greasy beach food and really wanted fried chicken, so we pulled into the first place that seemed like it might offer it. Big mistake. The service was very slow and poorly prioritized. For instance, my meal came with fries. When the waitress came over mid-meal to see how we were doing she thought to ask THEN if I might like ketchup. She eventually returned with it, after having done about 10 thousand other things first.

The bigger problem that really bothered me, in no small part because my fried chicken fix was absurdly expensive (3 or 4 times the equvilent price at KFC, but hey, it was table service and convenient, right????), I couldn't get the chicken pieces I wanted. It came with 4. I was hungry enough for at least three. I asked for drumsticks, which, as I explained to the waitress, was the only kind I really liked. When she brought my order there was but one. "We can't give you any more, we save those for our kids meals."

After my stunned silence abated I managed to shoot back, "Well would you prefer I act like I'm 12? I'm a paying customer and I asked for drumsticks!" I might have understood if it had been like ordering a half-chicken and you'd need to keep the set of parts together. But since they obviously manipulated the inventory I was flabbergasted that they wouldn't manipulate it for me. Given that white meat is usually more popular it wasn't like I was asking for something I wasn't paying for. She took the plate back to the kitchen and returned but one more. "This was all the chef would do." Fearing I'd never get to eat anything at all at this rate, I took it, and regretted it the whole meal. I'd finished the two and was still hungry and I was increasingly livid that I'd be spending an obscene amount of money to not get what I wanted. It was sort of interesting because as the meal went on I heard her tell another table, "Oh we can't do that," with regard to some request (reasonable, I'd imagine). What kind of restaurant says "no" or "we can't do that" to a customer? Has our notion of hospitality really strayed to such cavalier proportions? There are schools all over the country teaching restaurant and hotel management, and I really doubt they teach their students to say that to their customers. Ever.

When you go to a restaurant, the deal is that for your money (more than you'd spend cooking it for yourself or in a take-away shop) you actually get served satisfactorily. This place was straying from that tacit agreement and then playing, well, chicken with me that I wouldn't get uppity and walk out. So not only was I hungry, and not only was I embittered that I wasn't getting what I was paying for, I felt increasinly resentful that I was being taken advantage of. Had I been alone I might have walked out but it wasn't really a viable choice with my friend there. Plus it would have resulted in the wasting of two full meals which couldn't be reserved, and I really hate waste. But I felt I had to assert myself somehow because I hated feeling so taken advantage of.

I thought about asking to speak to a manager but everyone in the restaurant seemed fairly surly and I doubted that I'd get any satisfaction. So I told my friend that I'd contribute the cost of my meal and tax to the bill but no tip. She let her customer flounder and not get what she ordered, and I wasn't going to reward her for it. It was also the only way of acting that wouldn't potentially result in a loud public argument.

The problem is that my friend didn't have the right denominations of money for his share, and decided (for me) that it wasn't such a big deal and I should still contribute a dollar for my portion. But this really made me angry with him, plus it created an awkward situation. "I'll LEND you the dollar you need to pay the tip on yours, but you need to pay it back to me because I WILL NOT GIVE A TIP." This was very awkward because I normally wouldn't be so petty in making my friend repay the debt of a dollar. But it was the principle of the thing, and I was annoyed that he was minimizing it. I'd picked my battle and sunk my teeth into it, and being told to let go for the sake of expediency did not sit well with me at all.

It's not that I'm so petty that I always get worked up over things like two pieces of chicken. It was more a sense of indignation that the restaurant was taking advantage of its customers' compliance, bullying them into just shutting up and taking what it gave them and then making them pay for it, and that's wrong no matter what the context. I didn't like feeling I was enabling such behavior, and I really hated feeling so runover by it personally. As a result of that it was no longer a fight over chicken and felt like something worth fighting on principle. Stupid things that aren't fair always are. Injustice or bullying don't deserve a fair pass for anything.

But I will acknowledge being a little prickly that evening. The sun and salt sort of suck out all your energy while you are having all your fun, and I had a three-hour drive looming in front of me. I was also not looking forward to passing by the spot where earlier in the day we'd passed by a house in the final stages of burning down to the ground. It was a place of anxiety and trauma, where the sweet sooty smell of someone's life being ruined permeated the car (and was still lingering in the air when we passed by again hours later.) As we were passing by in the morning I foolishly turned my head to see it for just a few seconds and that was enough to etch it forever in my mind. The fire raged with a remorseless thoroughness, immune to any pleading to end its destruction. It's frightening enough when such indifferent destruction is exhibited in something inanimate, like fire. It's even worse when that same sort of unrepentant power is demonstrated by people.