As the 1980s turned into the 1990s, I felt dissatisfied with my career as an applications programmer. Surely, I felt, I with my brilliance could do greater things. In retrospect, I see that the issue was not so much raw intelligence but my reticent yet stubborn personality, but at the time I figured I was in the wrong profession.
It was at a party at the house of Mary Bernard that I heard her brother Joe tell someone that at law school, one learned a different way of thinking. This sounded good to me; with a new way of thinking, I had a new way of succeeding. The story I tell about law school is that I had watched too much “L.A. Law”, learned that lawyers make a lot of money solving problems for interesting people and wrapping things up in an hour … not all of which came to fruition for me … and I wanted that. Perhaps both motivations were true.
I had a mortgage on a condo in downtown Springfield, so I felt I could not move; the only available law school would be Western New England College (WNEC) School of Law. Perhaps this limitation saved me from the frustration of applying to greater schools across the country and being rejected; one thing I learned from law school was the mechanics of verbal persuasion and which I definitely did not have at the time.
At any rate, WNEC it was. I put some thought into how I might succeed. Perhaps participation in Student Government would build skills, make connections and pump up my resume, so I ran for the Student Bar Association (the student governing association with a more pretentious name) without much opposition. The big project for the SBA was re-writing its bylaws (or constitution) so that changes could be made more easily; as written, changes required a majority (or perhaps a supermajority) not of those voting, but of those eligible to vote. Apparently this had stymied every attempt to update the bylaws since it was uncommon to get a majority of those eligible to even vote.
Undaunted, the SBA representatives pressed on. A session to finalize the language started around dinnertime, allowing for a couple of hours to wrap things up. However, every word was a struggle and these lawyers-in-training eagerly disputed their meaning, purpose and intent. At 9 o’clock we were far from adjournment. 10 o’clock. 11 o’clock. I realized to my horror that the full-time students had nothing better to do, but I and the other night students had jobs the next day. I may have left around midnight, having briefly bonded with a blonde woman who worked for an insurance company.
I am given to udnerstand that language was finalized before the sun rose. It went to a vote of the study body, and as usual, while a large majority of those voting favored the measure, it failed because not enough had voted.
This was a valuable lesson indeed about putting your fate into the hands of eager students with little life experience.
