Blog Mirror: Beanies, Brooms and Bother: UW Freshmen Get the Initiation Treatment (and Lex Anteinternet: Freshman Caps? The Wyoming Student, November 2, 1917.)

November of last year (no doubt the result of mining newspapers for entries on World War One and the ongoing crisis with Mexico), I posted this item from the Wyoming Student (today's Branding Iron) regarding Freshman Beanies:

Freshman Caps? The Wyoming Student, November 2, 1917

As noted, I was amazed as I'd never heard of UW having Freshman beanies.  

In trying to look those up, I ended up quoting from materials about other universities as I really couldn't find much in regards to the University of Wyoming and Freshman Beanies.

Well now the American Heritage Center in Laramie has run this item:

Beanies, Brooms and Bother: UW Freshmen Get the Initiation Treatment

That article reveals that at least as late as 1967 UW freshmen still wore beanies. Apparently they wore them, at that time, from the start of school until the first home football game.  The story further reveals:

After the UW Cowboys scored their first touchdown, the students threw their beanies in the air and never had to wear them again. The tradition of beanies apparently goes back to 1908 when male students had to wear green caps and women green stockings. During the 1920s, freshmen had to wear the beanies until Homecoming.

Weird.

And that would have been trouble for me.  I went to the University of Wyoming for a grand total of six years, three as an undergraduate and three as a law student, and I never once saw a UW football game.  I guess I would have, had I gone then, as getting rid of the beanie would really have been a goal.

All that's a form of hazing, of course, but fairly gentle hazing.  It seems absurd now, but almost every outfit that's tight knit in some fashion has rituals of that type, whether it be getting to wear your soft cap in basic training or getting to ditch your beanie at university.  A ritual of belonging.

Now all that has gone away, it seems.  And frankly I wouldn't have lamented the beanie one darned bit.  I'd have hated that.  Of course, in the 1960s I would have been unlikely to endure that as Casper College opened up in the 1940s and I'd have been more likely to have gone there.  Indeed, just knowing myself, if I'd been a high school graduate in 1961, instead of 1981, I'd like have attended CC until 1963 and then graduated with an undergraduate degree in 65 or 66 and in 67. . . I'd have probably been in Vietnam.  A sobering though.

Anyhow, just pondering it, these rituals are gone.  In their place, but only tangentially, are mandatory classes on diversity in the broadest sense.  Changed times, to be sure.

The American Heritage Center article also discusses the hill at UW with a big W on it.  Apparently a custom of white washing the big W started in 1917, but it's long died out as well.  The W can still be seen if you know where to look for it.  The article features a photo from 1953 of the white washing, which is interesting in that its two male students directing two female students in the activity. . .hmmmm.

Casper College also had a hill with a C on it, called appropriately enough "C Hill". The C is long gone.

Well, it's fall, and the students head back.

Not feeling the maternal love for the Ol' Alma Mater. Me and The University of Wyoming

  Cowboy up! 🤠 I will always bleed brown & gold

Comment on a Facebook page. . . I don't feel that way.

In reaction to certain over sensitive, historically ignorant, politically correct faculty members having a snit about UW's new "The World needs more Cowboys" slogan, there is a Facebook thing going around right now where people post something along the lines of "proud to be a Cowboy", in UW colors, showing your support for the slogan, or perhaps more accurately against academic PC idiocy.

In the Governor's debate on Wyoming PBS, at least each of the first tier of candidates were all very careful to say "the World needs more Cowboys" and show where their feelings were in regards to this.  Of the second tier candidates, Foster Freiss called the marketing campaign a ridiculous expenditure, with which I must agree.

Good for all of them.

I graduated from the University of Wyoming twice.  Once in 1986 with a degree in Geology and once in 1990 with a Juris Doctorate.  I first attended UW, in a sense, in the Summer of 1983 when I took a field geomorphology class at UW's Casper extension, which in that case was indistinguishable from being at Casper College as the class was at Casper College and taught by one of my favorite Casper College geology professors.  At that time, however, I'd just graduated from Casper College and was admitted to UW, where I started attending full time in the fall semester that year.

 

Given that, you'd think that I'd be one of those folks with a brown and gold license plate and a member of the Cowboy Joe Club and all that.

I'm not.

It's hard to explain and it may be a mere personality quirk of mine but I've never really warmed up all that much to UW, in spite of spending six years of my life as one of its students, in spite of meeting some really good lifelong friends there, and in spite of sort of passing from very early adulthood to early adulthood, with all the attendant agony that entails, there.  And in spite of having a few really good professors there.

Nope.  It just didn't happen to me.

Now, let me admit this may just be, as already noted, a personality quirk of mine.  I'm not much of a joiner and there's a lot of things other people get really excited by, organization wise, that don't click for me.  For example, I've never become that much of a booster of my old high school even though my father went there, my wife went there, my kids went there, all my father's siblings went there, my wife's siblings went there, and my in laws went there.  Indeed, my family is so well represented there its not funny.  But I'm not really warm and fuzzy about it either (and I don't recall my father being either, for that matter).  Indeed, not until my kids went there did I really start to become that way a little.

But, oddly, I feel differently about Casper College.  I have always remained fond of it, and was while I was there.

 

T-rex at Casper College.  There's an older one at UW.

I also feel that way, perhaps oddly, about the Wyoming Army National Guard, or perhaps more accurately the 3d Bn, 49th FA, Wyoming Army National Guard.

And in recent years I've been fairly miffed and from time to time even disgusted with UW or certain branches of it.

But I'm not wholly sure why.

I suspect that it might date back to the 1970s when a push was on to make Casper College a four year university.  I've written on that before but UW successfully parried that with its outreach program, but its fight back, or rather that of its legislative backers, did leave a lot of wounded feelings here.  Most Natrona County residents felt pretty slighted by UW at the time and for those of us in school who were looking at going through university there the fact that UW was basically telling us that our only option was to go to Laramie at some point or to take a hike out of the state wasn't really received all that well.  I suspect feelings are different now, but for those of us who spent two years in Casper College's geology program, which was fully friendly with UW at all times, our transfer down to Laramie came with a feeling that on our part that we were sort of conscripts in a way, there because we were left with no other realistic in state choice.  Of course, some of us could have gone out of state, and in retrospect UW's geology department was excellent so we really didn't suffer by going there.  Frankly, while Casper College's geology department was great, those of us who did two years at CC and then transferred did have some ground to catch up both in terms of classes we now had to take and were not able to a bit earlier and in regard to catching up with an academic standard that was undoubtedly significantly higher than what we'd previously experienced.  Having said that, I am pretty convinced that if I'd gone straight to UW I would have dropped out after about one year (everyone who knows me really disputes this assertion) so I'm grateful for CC being there.

Maybe that's part of it, as even after two years at CC, UW was a bit of a shock that first semester but I managed to get up and rolling pretty quickly.  I had friends down there as it was, including a couple who had transferred down from CC, as well as those who had entered UW right out of high school, so I wasn't exactly an orphan in a strange land.  I really didn't like Laramie much at first, but I acclimated to it relatively quickly.  My experience as a geology student in that regard, I'll note, was much different than what it is for those in other majors as being a geology student at UW in the 1980s was to be a member of one of the first ranked programs in the nation which, accordingly, kept you buried in study all the time.  It was extremely rigorous and if we went out for a beer on a Friday we really thought that we were living it up.

Indeed, that last fact may have been a little of it as going into the UW geology program at that time, as a transfer student, had a real sink or swim feeling to it.  We hadn't been there from the beginning of our studies and even though there was no hostility to us at all, we were right at the point at which the geology department started weeding students out.  The community colleges didn't do that, but UW sure did.  That first semester I had mineralogy, a required course, which failed 50% of the class as part of its grade curve.  That fact was announced on the first day of class.  If you took the class twice and failed both times, you were out.  And a D, for that matter, was a bar to remaining in the program.  I passed the first time but it was nerve wracking to say the least, particularly as the class contained students who were on their second try who had to make it through or be dropped and, additionally, as the class contained graduate students who had not taken it in their out of state undergraduate programs (one of whom I became very good friends with from the class). 

After getting familiar with the area I came to really like the Laramie Plains, for which I owe a real debt to a close friend of mine from Casper College who is still a close friend of mine.  Later when we added a couple of other guys to our circle of friends we fished and hunted in a great area of the state which remains fond in my memories.  I know more about rural Albany County than I do about any other area of the state other than Natrona County, and its beautiful.  And I learned a fair amount about northern Colorado, and even Denver, in the same time frame.  I really didn't care much for Laramie the town during my undergraduate years as I was a tenant in a town that was expensive to live in, but when I was a graduate student that changed as the graduate students had a different relationship with the town than undergraduates and, by that time, some of them were property owners and somewhat a part of the town themselves.  Moreover, at that time, one of my law school friends was from Laramie and his very nice parents were professors there, which gave me a different impression of the town than I'd had before. By the time I graduated law school I'd come to like Laramie quite a bit and I still do.

Looking back, I enjoyed the geology department a lot more than I did the law school, although what I've said about my time as a geology student is at least partially true of my time as a law student.  I had good friends in law school and some of my geology friends were still there.  I didn't get out to hunt nearly as much as a law student, and in retrospect my slow conversion from an outdoor creature glad to be outdoors to an indoor creature wishing I was outdoors really started, and that has a sense of gloom associated with it.  With two really outstanding exceptions the nature of my friendships changed as well as my friends had always been aboriginal, like myself.  Having said that, two of my law school friends met that definition, one from Laramie and another from Texas, and they remain my good friends (at least one other common friend of ours has simply outright disappeared).  And law school featured intellectual studies of a type that I'd never experienced before in that degree and hugely enjoyed.

So I should be a huge UW fan.

But I'm not.

As I noted above, there's no doubt a variety of reasons for this.  For one thing, just because of the time period in which I went to UW, it was a hugely disorienting and not particularly wonderful period of my life, even though I didn't look on it that way at the time.  For the entire time I was going there my mother was getting increasingly severely ill and that meant my departure left my father to deal with it all on his own, which I felt guilty about.  The oilfield economy was collapsing, followed by a coal collapse (sound familiar?) which meant that what I was working on so hard as an  undergraduate was becoming increasingly a dead end that looked as if it might end up being a non profitable one at that.  Working through university meant that I was working toward a definitive end of my schooling and a definitive launch into the working world and as I was engaged in that my career goals were being hugely, indeed, completely redefined and plans I had, both vague and concrete, when I graduated from high school were evaporating and in fact completely altered.  The entire time there was absolutely nothing available to fall back on career wise whatsoever, except for the National Guard, the latter of which kept me keeping on to an extent, but which also meant that after five years of hard scientific study the only occupation that I found I was qualified to fill was that of an artillery sergeant.  By the time I figured out what I wanted to do I had fallen into the situation of it not really being an option and the immediate fall back didn't pan out either.  It wasn't great.

 

But that's only part of it.  I think the bigger part is that at UW I felt, and I still feel, that I never really belonged for some odd reason, some of which I noted above.

Part of that might be just size.  I've read quite a few times that combat soldiers identify with their small units, rather than their big ones.  When we read of wars, for example, and the views of average soldiers are looked at, it tends to be the case that soldiers think of themselves as belonging to "C Company" or "Headquarters Battery", or maybe as a member of "3d Battalion". Rarely, at the time, do they think of themselves as being part of the "2nd Infantry Division" or even less "The Sixth Army". To an extent they do, but in more immediate terms they don't.  That is, they know that their in the 2nd Infantry Division, but they more closely identify with their company, platoon and squad.

Something like that works with big organizations as well, at least for some people. And maybe that's why at the time I tended to think of myself as being a geology student, rather than a UW student.  Indeed, I spent a lot of time in the geology building as I tended to study there and I used it as a my default during the day study location when I was a geology student.  As a law student I very briefly did the same thing; used the geology department library as a study location, but only very briefly before I switched to the law library.

But most UW grads seem to identify with UW a lot more than I do, and I'm sure that most law school grads identify much more closely with the law school than I do.

Which is all probably due to a personality quirk of mine, mostly.

But jumping back up to it, at UW there was sort of a lost in the crowd feeling, even though a lot of excellent teachers from every department clearly had their students constantly in mind.  And part of that is likely because as a hopelessly rural character the college life, with its focus on the campus and football, etc., never appealed to me very much.

Or maybe its a UW is about UW feeling, which sort of leaves you a part of it, rather than it being a party of you.  It can do just as well without you, is sort of the feeling you get.

Anyhow, something about the University of Wyoming has always been sui generis.  And that I think started being pretty clear in law school.  In the geology department we were pretty tied to the state as geologist are an integral part of Wyoming's economy that's tied to the land itself, much like agriculture in a way.

At the law school it was clear right away that about half or more of the students were there planning on going elsewhere, and that's increased over time.  So the law school was focused on teaching a student body that really wasn't focused on the state. Since that time the law schools support of the Universal Bar Exam has hurt the state's lawyers, showing that it can in fact operate in a fashion that's opposed to the interest of its graduates who remained here while acting in favor of those who departed.  Beyond that, even while I was there, there was one professor who was involved in activities that operated directly against the state's mineral industry.  He's since left, but another professor is a dedicated radical opponent of agriculture.

The fact that the state retains and even supports a university that has individuals who hold some of its key industries in contempt shows how deep, and even blind, support for the University of Wyoming really is in the state.  I'm afraid that sort of thing has reduced my feelings towards it however.  And since that time we've seen other acts, such as disposing of the Y Cross Ranch and now outright contempt for "cowboys" on what amounts to a radical bigoted view of what the world is supposed to be like. . .and that view shares almost nothing in common with the views of almost all actual Wyomingites.

And maybe that gets to it.

A recent study of UW raised some questions about how well it was fulfilling its mission, in a way.   The Equality of Opportunity Project, which studies tax data and converts those into "Mobility Report Cards" shows that UW's students aren't really accomplishing that.  The study concluded:

The report card for University of Wyoming (UW) indicates the majority of students come from higher-income families, while around three percent come from low-income families. And the number of students from middle and low-income families has slowly declined. The report shows that only 16 percent of UW graduates made notable economic gains.

Now, the headline on that might not actually reveal that much in the context of the finding.   What this may simply reveal is that "higher-income families" send their kids to college and, in Wyoming, lower income families send their kids into the oil patch.  Indeed, having deposed a lot of career oilfield workers who didn't even complete high school but who had incomes as high or higher than I do, I can understand exactly why they do that.

Anyhow, this drew some attendion down at US in any event, and that'll tie back in to my comments here.

UW professor Scott Henkel studies higher education’s role in labor and democracy. He said addressing the issues raised by the report card should be top priority for UW because it’s a land grant institution.

It’s written in the DNA of a land-grant institution, the need to serve low-income, first-generation, working-class students,” said Henkel. “Do we always reach that ideal? No, course not. But there are people here working very hard in the service of those ideals.

Okay, I agree wit Henkel in part.

Or actually, I don't.

The point of a land grant college in fact was not to serve low income, first generation, working class students.  A state university should serve low income, first generation, working class students.  Of course, in order to do that, you have to not run around insulting them.  There are going to be very few low income, working class, first generation, students, who come from the real world, who are really going to fall over and feint at the thought of a motto that boosts cowboys, nor are then even going to immediately assume that cowboys are white and that's bad, as some UW profs do.  Indeed, the low income, first generation, working class students in Wyoming are actually made up of the very demographic that those UW professors find to be offensive hideous symbols of oppression.

Which does get back to the point.

Land grant colleges (and at the time, that also included land grant high schools) were supposed to take and educate the common population of a state in fields of education which served the state.  Most early land grant colleges had really strong focuses on agriculture and mining because they were in the Western United States where those were, and to a large degree still are, the major economic engines.  When those same universities branched out into more advanced degrees this was still the focus in a way.  The University of Wyoming College of Law, for example, was established in 1920 with the idea of providing lawyers for Wyoming. . . not for Colorado.

Over time, in almost every upper academic realm, this sort of focus has become really lost.  In the old Ivy League schools that makes sense, although ironically retain elements of their traditional focus.  American universities of the Harvard and Yale type were not ever really focused on graduating individuals for the economic benefit to heir students more than they were providing them with a certain liberal, Protestant, class based, education.*  Later private institutions were modeled on them even where they did not include the religious focus, although having said that a religious association with a four year institution was darned near the rule for most of American history.**  Anyhow, these institutions seem to become all about themselves.  The Ivy League law schools, for example, seem to have become separate institutions for the declaration of what an imaginary "progressive" constitution should hold.  According to one recent book by a recent graduate of an Ivy League school this very liberal focus and the elimination of the old patrician boundaries that applied to these schools has given us the social mess we currently have, although he's optimistic that its self correcting.  I'm much less so.

Indeed, the same evolution has occurred in universities where it never should have. Some large Catholic schools, for example Notre Dame, have become quite non Catholic in practical terms.  Some may wonder why that matters, but as a school founded by the church, it's focus is supposed to relate to that of the churches, or otherwise it has little reason to really exist.

This same thing is true of land grant universities, such as the University of Wyoming. Why is there one? So we can support a football team?  So that we can employ a collection of over sensitive pseudo intellectuals?  No.

It's to support the state.

If it doesn't do that, something is in error.

That doesn't mean slavishly following the political whims of the state.  Not by a long shot. But it does mean that it can't act like an isolated benighted intellectual institution existing on some other plain.  The point at which it becomes irrelevant to the state, and treats its charges that way, is the point at which, when appreciated, the real decline really begins.

_________________________________________________________________________________

*Early on they also were religious schools and most of them retained a very strong Protestant focus up until the 1960s.

**Catholic universities like Notre Dame were actually formed as it was basically impossible for a Catholic to attend a private university and remain loyal to his or her faith.

Road Hazards

Yesterday, on my way to work, I had to divert my Jeep down at a busy intersection in order to drive around Tom the Turkey.

Tom is a local celebrity.  He's a great big tom turkey, a turkey Lothario, and he's mean.  He's also stupid and hangs around on busy streets continually.  I have to drive around him frequently, as to many others.

Only a few minutes before that, I had to slow to a near stop to miss antelope that were down by the college.  They've added the southern part of the college grounds and the municipal golf course to their winter range.

On the way home, I had to nearly come to a screeching halt near the same place as a herd of antelope again crossed the road. By this time the sun was going down and the light poor, and given where they were, they were not easy to see.

When I got home I had to run to the grocery store.  I took one the bypass roads to do it, a very busy one, and was confronted with a buck deer standing in the road.  Just standing there. Again, I missed it, but I was lucky that nothing was behind me as I slowed from 40 mph down to about 20 mph before it moved.

I came back the same way, and antelope bolted across the road.  A pickup barely missed one.

All of this was in town.

I like wildlife, although as a stockman and hunter I don't have the Disney view of wildlife so common amongst the urban naive. But something needs to be done.  This has gone from a few head of antelope that eccentrically hung out near the college to entire large herds.  The antelope are now using a large area as winter range and there are a considerable number.  Deer have penetrated fairly far into the town. 

Somebody is going to get killed.

A Cornucopia of Unsettling Career Advice and Commentary

 Plan for stained glass window depicting the Lamb of God surrounded by depiction of  modern professionals: architect, dentist, typist, housewife, construction worker, doctor, businessman/husband, and psychiatrist.  To what extent this culture places anything more central than money is questionable.

Some of these posts meander, and this one certainly is going to.  But that's in part because I've been experiencing both some unsettling conversations in this arena and experiencing some synchronicity regarding it as well.  So here goes.

Let's start off with a comment I recently heard.

 Lawyer, sitting, at a desk (probably in a law library). Sitting remains a lawyer constant, but trips to the law library have nearly completely vanished due to on line legal research.*`

Recently I was sitting in a deposition when the very bright young lawyer across the table, who no doubt has a bright career in the law ahead of him, commented on how he just couldn't stand to be sedentary indoors.

Eh?

And you're a lawyer?

Lawyers may try to fool themselves about it, but being a lawyer is, always has been, and always will be, a sedentary career.  Indeed, it may be growing slightly more sedentary due to the computer, although it's always been fairly sedentary.  No two ways about it. It so surprised me that I commented "well you picked a funny career then", to which the another lawyer sitting there laughed and the court reporter loudly exclaimed "yeah".  The young lawyer seemed surprised, like maybe that had never occurred to him, and even looked unsettled.

Maybe he should be unsettled, as it wasn't all that long thereafter that I discovered that the Wyoming State Bar Association has a Facebook page.  I checked that Facebook page out as, of course, I'm a member of that association, all lawyers in the state are.  It was a bit of a shock for a peculiar reason. 

Wyoming lawyers have long used a phrase coined by one of our late bar presidents, Gerald Mason, that we're "proud to be a Wyoming lawyer".  Mason was seriously distressed by all the animosity directed at lawyers and thought if we had pride in ourselves it would combat and even reverse this, or at least he said that.  He seemed to be a pretty sincere fellow, based upon what very little I knew of him, so I think he genuinely believed it.  If so, he was highly naive on that score.

Indeed, I'm probably a rarity in that I've always been skeptical of the phrase, although I'll concede that there was and is some merit to it.  If we're proud to be a "Wyoming" lawyer, that means that there's something unique about being a Wyoming lawyer, as opposed to merely being a lawyer.  I think sometimes people using this phrase really mean that they're boosting the concept that lawyers should be proud of being lawyers, and indeed a recent article in our bar association magazine struck me that way.  There may be some merit to that as well, and I've listed an impressive list of lawyers on this website with some famous, and let's be frank, some infamous characters listed on it.  Anyhow, people who says we're "proud to be [Wyoming] lawyers" usually point to all the positive things lawyers do in society.  And there are quite a few.  If we say we're "proud to be a Wyoming lawyer", that ought to point to the unique things about that status, and there are quite a few, including that our state bar has been small enough that it has encouraged collegial behavior among lawyers.  Of course, that fact that the Wyoming Supreme Court forced the Uniform Bar Exam upon the state means that we're now to the lawyer population megalith of Colorado and there's been a flood of Colorado lawyers getting admitted into Wyoming while living in Colorado.  That's changing the practice here, and for those of us who still keep using the "proud to be a Wyoming lawyer" tagline I'll suggest it's now obsolete, and probably ought to be "proud to be a UBE lawyer with a connection to Wyoming", something that is becoming increasingly accurate and which is difficult to get enthused about.*

Anyhow, that isn't really my hope, even though I retain some hope that maybe the committee that overseas the bar exam will act on behalf of the state's citizens and go back to an actual state exam, a diminishing hope, and probably a pipe dream, in which case I have no hope that the UBE won't do a vast amount of damage to the state.  My actual point is this. Mason's comments about being "proud to be a Wyoming lawyer" cutting into the negative views about lawyers were naive, and that's something that those proud folks should probably be aware of.  People hate lawyers.

Chances are, however, that Mason knew that, and his comments really meant that we shouldn't add to the perception by being part of the commentary.  Indeed, if I recall correctly, he didn't approve of lawyers circulating lawyer jokes for that reason, although it's been a long time since I've read that article.

Apparently the Wyoming State Bar is actually aware of that.  That is, that people don't like lawyers so much.  The last issue of the Wyoming Lawyer (do Colorado UBE lawyers guffaw when they get that?) has an article about the perception of lawyers from outside the law, and one of those commenting flat out states that, save for when a person needs to hire a lawyer, in which case they generally like that lawyer.  There's been more and more comments in our bar journal noting that, and also more and more noting that a lot of lawyers are apparently slipping into emotional trouble in the practice.

Which brings me back to the comment about the Wyoming Bar Association's Facebook page.  It's full of articles about lawyers in trouble with their lives and beyond that, even ones that  are really  harsh on the practice in general.  It's almost like a Caution sign for those pondering a legal career, although anyone reading it surely (or mostly) must already be a member of the bar, I'd guess.  It wasn't what I was expecting.

One article that I saw listed on that site was actually called "25 Reasons Most Attorneys Hate the Practice of Law and Go Crazy (and What to Do About it)" by one Harrison Barnes (whom one other blawg refers to as a "windbag").** Wow, that's a pretty surprising thing I think for a bar association to list on their Facebook page.  And it's a pretty surprising title in and of itself.  "Most"?  Hmmm. . . .  I know at least a couple who love their jobs and are pretty open about that, and they don't have odd malignant personalities or anything.  Most has to be an extreme overstatement.  Maybe he was trying to shock.

Still the article made me recall the conversation above, as it listed this as one of the twenty five reasons***:

They are miserable being behind a desk all day. Most attorneys spend the majority of their days trapped behind a desk. There is very little one-on-one interaction and socializing when you are under pressure to bill as many hours as possible. While television shows and movies glamorize the practice of law, most attorneys spend their time in an office, sitting at a desk, staring at a computer monitor.

That's a pretty accurate statement.

 Middle aged lawyer at his desk in 1919. . . something that middle aged, old aged and young lawyers in 2015 are doing just as much, if not more, than the subject of this photograph did.

Of course, a lot of modern professions do that, and I've commented on that on this blog before.  People truly not meant to do that, but we're building a world in which that's what everyone is going to have to do, it seems.  That's a very curious fact, as it isn't really good for us.  And I suppose that a person, in pondering careers, should consider, as my young friend mentioned above, their ability o handle that.  If they really "can't stand" to be in a chair all day, the law, and a lot of other professions, probably should be considered in that context.

Another comment that struck me

One that struck me was this comment:

They are exhausted from the constant conflict (conflict with peers, conflict with clients, and conflict with opposing counsel). The constant conflict attorneys face can take a massive toll on them. This conflict is never ending and something that drains attorneys emotionally and physically.

The same author stated, concerning the rising (or perhaps now simply appreciated for the first time a a real problem) of substance abuse:

If I were to pick you up and drop you in the middle of a war zone in the Middle East, give you a machine gun, and tell you that you had to fight there for the next 30 years, that would screw you up pretty badly. You'd want some liquor and antidepressants, and you'd be pretty sweaty and pissed off. Practicing law often feels the same way. At least in the war zone, you would know who your enemy was, and there would not be so many rules!

That's actually not a bad summary of what litigators do, and of course we should keep in mind that not all lawyers are litigators by any means.  I do think that's a factor in lawyer discontent and substance abuse, however.  Indeed, I was pretty surprised a few years ago when I completed defending a pretty hard deposition of a tough deponent, and jokingly asked the opposing lawyer if that lawyer "would like a beer" only to have that lawyer accept. We actually did have some in the office and that lawyer gladly took it, saying to me "I don't think it would be possible to practice law without beer." 

It ought to be possible to practice law without beer, and of course I know a few lawyers who don't drink at all, including a few litigators who don't.****  Frankly, I haven't known all that many lawyers who really had a substance abuse problem either, although it's apparently a rising problem.  I've written on stress and the law before, and I guess this is part of that scene.

Slipping away from the law, however, but noting that I heard the following at a party of all legal professionals, I've been a bit bothered by the western concept of career once again for a peculiar reason.  I've also written on that before.

This one comes up on a personal level, I'll note.

At this party, a friend of mine made an inquiry as to what my son's career plans are.  Oddly enough (synchronicity?) the same topic was simultaneously being explored by somebody else with my wife, which I know as I could hear her discussing it.

We don't really know what his plans are and perhaps he doesn't as well.  I have to say, at age 18 a lack of a plan worries parents but at the same time can a person rationally be expected to have one?  I'm not so sure that everyone should, and a person ought not to rush to one just because everyone thinks you should have one.

And people do think you should have one, and it turns out that they have ones for you, which is quite surprising.

Now, he tested very well on the ACT. Very well. And without bothering to do any studying for it.  So, when his ACT scores were mentioned by my wife (not me) to the above referenced friend, and it was noted that he may start off at the local community college, he was taken aback.  He was frank that a person with such high ACT scores should not do that, very much not do that, and rather should go to a major university from the onset.  Indeed, he thought about it and determined that my son should go to Georgia Tech to major in engineering.

Maybe he should major in engineering, and maybe he should go to Georgia Tech (about which I know nothing at all), but that raises an interesting aspect of Weltanschauung that hard for almost anyone in this society not to have, including myself. That is, in the western world (and my friend here is a European immigrant from one of the highly ordered European societies) there is a very strong concept that a person should exploit academics and then career to the maximum possible extent, even if that means leaving the place of their birth and all they know.

Why is that?

As far as I can tell, the only thing that's based on is a concept of money.  The general idea seems to be that a person should make as much money as they can.  It's a really primitive instinct and it probably derives from the idea that we need to keep the wolf from the door. But it's a particularly pronounced cultural concept, in my view, in Protestant societies.  By that I do not mean that only Protestants have it, that would be completely and utterly false, but it's a cultural aspect of those societies and generally held by nearly everyone in them, without any question of its correctness whatsoever.*^

And it's not as if its devoid of any rationality. There is some.  It's well proven that money won't make a person happy, but poverty sure doesn't help that situation much either. At least a little monetary surplus helps keep some anxiety at bay, unless a person is irresponsible with money.

But the acquisition of it can lead a person into areas that they would otherwise not naturally go.  Its stated by some that a person can't be a monetary success unless he loves what he's doing but the evidence of that is quite poor, and at least by my historical and personal observation the opposite is true in at least some cases.  A lot of people do well, at least for a time (whether they can indefinitely is another matter) doing things that they would rather not.

Indeed, I'd argue that this is responsible for one of the things that is constantly noted in articles like the one linked in above.  People start to compensate for their discontent, with some of that surplus money, with things that lead them into trouble.  According to Mr. Barnes, whose article is cited above:

Here are some incredible statistics:

• The American Bar Association estimates that 15-20 percent of all attorneys are alcoholics or suffer from substance abuse problems. Jones, D. (2001). Career killers. In B.P. Crowley, & M.L. Winick (Eds.). A guide to the basic law practice. Alliance Press, 180-197
   
• Lawyers have the highest rate of suicide of any profession. Greiner, M. (Sept, 1996). What about me? Texas Bar Journal.
   
• Lawyers have the highest rate of depression of any profession according to a John Hopkins' study of 100 professions. Occupations and the prevalence of major depressive disorder. Journal of Occupational Medicine, 32 (11), 1079-1087.

Pretty grim.  I think, however, that the last two items are statistically incorrect, and actually dentist have a higher rate of depression and suicide than lawyers do.

All the dentist I've every met, and I've known a lot as my father and one of my uncles were dentists, seemed to be a happy lot but obviously not all are.  Indeed, maybe only the upset in any profession draw attention.  However, I will note that dentist do suffer from some of the same liabilities that lawyers do, namely that people are pretty vocal to express their discontent with the entire group of them and at the same time complaint about their fees, etc.  Like lawyers, they make a lot less money than people believe that they do and they tend to have massive overhead.  Oddly, at the same time, it's a profession that, like the law, people from the lower middle class have pushed their children towards for a long time.  My father got into it in his own, like I did with the law, but college in general was something he was reluctant to do but for a big push from my grandmother.  His father owned a meat packing company and died young.  My uncle's father was, I believe, a construction worker.  One of my father's good physician friends, I'd note, came from a farm in Nebraska and other dentist friends had fathers who were, respectively, a railroad worker and a miner.

Which brings me back to community colleges for a moment.

My father attended the local community college, Casper College.  He did so as his mother wanted him to.  He was employed at the post office at the time, after the death of my grandfather, and his basic plan was to stay there.  My grandmother recognized that he undoubtedly had the intelligence to advance in university and she urged him to do so.  He was the single most intelligent man I've ever met and that was obviously apparent to my grandmother.  He started off in engineering and then went right from Casper College to the University of Nebraska, after a brief stop at Creighton which he didn't care for.  So, he did well, as we've been using the term, by Casper College.  And he's not the only one of his generation around here who did.  And who still does.

Indeed, recently I spoke to a lawyer about a decade younger than me who related to me that he'd started off at Casper College, in education.  He related that it was his opinion that if he hadn't have started there, he ultimately would not have graduated from university, in his opinion.  His father was a mechanic, I'll note.

Likewise, I've often suspected that if I hadn't have started off in Casper College I may have not made it far in post high school education.  Indeed, my earlier college career strongly suggests that to me.

I had no plans at all of going to Casper College at the time that I graduated from high school.  When I was in my senior year of high school, my vague thoughts were that I'd go to the University of Wyoming and major in Wildlife Management.  Like my son, I tested well on the ACT and my mother told me I could go anywhere I wanted, which frankly baffled me as I'd never thought of going outside the state.  Indeed, she darned near scared me by suggesting that I could go anywhere, in part because she cited the example of an older cousin who was going to a very prestigious university and whom I thought of as a really good student.  I didn't think of myself that way and probably regarded myself as an indifferent student.  I don't know that I really was, but I didn't have any developed study habits and therefore must muscled through high school on what I liked or what I needed to learn, when I needed to learn it.  I'd become a student, really, in college and university, a habit that became a personal character trait that's never left.*****  Anyhow, I declared then that UW was where I was going, which seemed to disappoint my mother a bit.

Shortly after that, or perhaps before that, I had my ACT scores as noted and also had to take some sort of personality career test, one of the very few and fairly pathetic things the school district did here at that time to attempt to help students find a career.  Wildlife Management was mentioned and my plan was loosely fixed, sort of. My idea was to go to UW and major in that while enrolling in ROTC, as I also wanted to see if a career in the Army, another outdoor profession (I believed) might be for me.  If it was, I figured I could do that for twenty years and then retire, and enter the Game & Fish here.  If it wasn't, I could do four years and come back and work for the Game & Fish. The concept that I wouldn't get hired by the Game & Fish didn't really occur to me, oddly enough.

I mentioned that to my father, who replied that there were a lot of people around here who had Wildlife Management degrees and no jobs.  That was all the more he said about it, but he so rarely gave advice of that type that any time he did, I listened.  Indeed, I don't ever recall ignoring his advice on such topics, which was always very rare.  That was enough to deter me from majoring in Wildlife Management and I decided instead to major in geology, which was an outdoor science that I was good at in high school.  It might be the case that avoiding  a career with the Game & Fish saved me from disappointment as a game warden later told me that he didn't get out hunting much as he was always working during the season, something that would seem self evident I guess, but which didn't occur to me at the time. That same sentiment is contained in an interview by Brett McKay, of the Art of Manliness, of his father Tom McKay, who was a New Mexico and later Federal game warden.  In that interview he relates:

9. What is the biggest misconception people have about the job?

The biggest misconception is that game wardens spend all their time hunting and fishing. The good wardens and agents have no time for this as they are in the field managing the other nimrods out there during hunting season. I hunted and fished much more before I became a game warden, not at all after I became one.

I would have had a hard time with that.

I did make it down to UW and I did obtain a degree in geology, but I didn't go down right away.  I enrolled in UW and went down to orientation.  Something about it turned me off right away.  It might just have been the hugely unfamiliar environment.  We were supposed to stay in the dorms and the crowd of people there, for an only child and solitary introspective personality was too much, and I backed off that very day.*~ I went home and announced I was going to Casper College.*~~ The very next day I went down and enlisted in the Army National Guard as I felt not starting off in ROTC would be disingenuine.  Joining the National Guard was one of the very best post high school decisions I ever made.

 

Me, as a Sergeant in the Wyoming Army National Guard in South Korea.  My parents weren't happy about me joining the Guard, but it was one of the absolute best post high school decisions I ever made and I have no regrets about doing it at all.

Going to Casper College may have saved my entire academic career.  My mother was very ill at the time and I lived at home.  In the afternoons when I didn't have class I went hunting or fishing.  In retrospect it was the freest I have ever been.  I got into the swing of studying at the post high school level and when I went to UW two years later I was ready for it.  In the meantime I'd learned that I didn't think I wanted a career in the military and my desire to experience that had been satisfied by the National Guard, indeed it'd last beyond that as my enlistment period of six years took me all the way though my undergraduate career. 

Would I have made it through university if I hadn't have gone to Casper College?  I don't know. Maybe I would have, but even during that first two years there were times when I wanted to quit pretty badly and acknowledge my desire to do so, although even now I'm not quite sure why I occasionally harbored those feelings.  On one occasion I recall even asking my father to ask a sheep rancher friend of his if they had any jobs, which would have been a turn in a much different direction, had it lasted, to say the least (that ranch long ago sold).*~~~   By the time I went down to UW however the urge to quit was behind me and it never occurred to me again.

Would my father have gone at all if it hadn't been there?  I don't know that either, maybe he would have.  It's hard to say.  But I can't sneeze at community colleges.  Indeed, as earlier mentioned in a post on this blog, at least actor Tom Hanks feels that he wouldn't have made it through university but for starting at a community college first.

 

Casper College geomorphology class, 1983.  This was the last Casper College class I took in my path towards a Bachelors of Science, and I already had just obtained my Associates when I took it. Technically it was a University of Wyoming class.  Of the individuals depicted, three of us I know went on to UW but only one other went on as a geology major, a good friend of mine who I am still in contact with today.  The professor remains at Casper College to this day.

Circling back around, a crash in the oilfield, much like the one we're experiencing right now, left me unemployable without after I graduated with a geology degree and I ended up in law school a year later.  I'd first contemplated the law, however, as far back as Casper College, when it became evident that I'd probably have to go on to grad school in order to find a career in geology.  I did take the Graduate Records Exam as well as the LSAT, and did well in both, and took the law route.*~~~~

 

Classroom in the S.H. Knight Building, the geology building, at the University of Wyoming, 1986.

Which oddly enough brings me back to this topic.  Recently a dental hygienist, asking my son's career plans, suggested that as his father was a "famous" lawyer, he could go on to law school and then capitalize on the last name.

Well, the thought that I'm famous is flattering, but quite inaccurate.  Indeed, if I'm famous I should be getting on television and capitalizing on my fame by hanging out with the people who are famous for being famous.  But that's not going to happen.  And unless you have a really famous lawyer last name, that's just not going to work.

But the thought that this is good advice is interesting.  Being a lawyer, in reality, is really hard, tough, work and anybody who is familiar with it probably ought to pause before recommending it to anyone.  Some lawyers I know have claimed that they'd not recommend it to their own children, although the very few I know whose have a child who is a lawyer are proud of it.  One person I know fits both of these criteria.  Of course the recommendation is based on a misunderstanding, at least in part, as to what we actually do.

 

All of which brings me back to a few points.

First of all, I think the concept that a person must maximize their economic potential deserves some serious reconsideration as part of the culture.  Not that it hasn't always been somewhat criticized.  But the idea that a person must do something as that will generate the highest income for them assumes that a high income is the highest goal, and it's pretty clear that point of view is destructive in more ways than one.  At the bottom line, just because a person can do it and make a high return doesn't mean that would make them happy.  I'd wager that there are plenty of high income people who would have been much happier doing something else, and I've heard plenty of high income people who look back on some earlier low income position as their happiest one.  Guys at their desks look back on working on family farms, or working in construction, or being a soldier in the Army, as their golden days, and not without reason.  Indeed, to at least some extent, perhaps we ought to reassess our views on this topic on a societal basis.

Which isn't to glamorize low income, as you'll sometimes find people do. Or suggest that a person can suddenly just up and have no income at all.  Not hardly.

Secondly, people should be cautious pushing a person towards a career if they aren't really familiar with it.  I have a better idea than most about a lot of careers, so I could probably do that better than most, but I don't think that's universally the case by any means.  Indeed, one of the really neat things about being a lawyer in litigation is that you get to know quite a bit about what a lot of other people do. Even then you sure don't know everything, however.  I would never have thought, for example, about game wardens not getting to do much hunting and fishing.  Some occupations we know a lot better than others, but usually because we have a close personal association with them in some fashion.

Finally, I think people should be pretty cautious about their concepts of ideal schools or institutions.  We have a very pronounced societal tendency to view certain schools almost as if they're Hogwarts institution of magic.  It's true that there are very good, and very poor, schools, but as higher education has spread in the US post war there are, quite frankly, a lot of really good schools that offer individual students an individual advantage.  A lot of people who go on to other schools start off at a community college level and beyond that quite a few graduate from universities that are very good, if not very big names.  In some occupations, in my view, such as law, some schools have acquired an inordinately revered reputation and society in general would benefit if their stars faded a bit.  It may actually be the case, in spite of all the criticism of higher education, that it's gotten so good that there are not all that many Yugos amongst the Mercedes really, except in terms of reputation, which does admittedly mean a lot in terms of later employment.

__________________________________________________________________________________

*`I'll make it the topic of another entry, more appropriate for the supposed focus of this blog, but a different comment I read elsewhere noted how the big firm expectation of a certain  number of billable hours of young associates is irrelevant in the modern context, as electronic legal research has made the practice of that sort of law so much more efficient. That is, a single lawyer can do the work of an entire team of lawyers.  Not only that, but one lawyer can research a topic in half a day that formerly would have taken days.  That person's comment noted that his superiors, all of whom had started off well before electronic research and never really learned it, didn't grasp that in his big firm, and therefore they didn't understand that what was for him a four hour project wouldn't result in 24 hours of billable time.  A very interesting point.

*Wyoming has seen a jump in applicants to its bar, but due to the UBE.

** Barnes seems to be employed as a lawyer recruiter, and the rest of his articles, to the very limited extent I've bothered to look at them, seem rather rah rah to me about the profession, so I don't know what to make of this one.  He notes that he was a drop out from the profession in this one, so its perhaps unusually candid.  If so, I don't know how to reconcile his rah rah posts and his occupation which would amount to recruiting people into something he claims drives people crazy.  Of course, maybe if I read all of them I'd feel differently, but I doubt that I will.

 ***I was going to list the full 25, and then comment on them, but it was too much of a diversionary project. Suffice it to say, I don't think all of them were all that common.

In fairness, Barnes offers solutions to his perceived problems as well, although there aren't many listed.  One of them is just to quit working and figure it out next, which strikes me as something that wouldn't be realistic for a lot of folks.

****The beloved late Gerald Mason, who coined the phrase "Proud to be a Wyoming lawyer", didn't drink and held what was, as far as I know, the only dry State Bar Association Annual Meeting.  I didn't go, but then I only rarely do.  I recall hearing some complaints about it, however.

Which isn't to say that I've witnessed a lot of lawyer drinking abuse.  I'm sure that lawyers drink more than airline pilots, but I really haven't seen a significant number of lawyers boozing it up.  Maybe I'd have to hang out more where that sort of stuff occurs, but I doubt it.  I suspect that this may be one of those areas where a lot of attention is being paid to a particular problem, but that means that attention is being paid, not that its increasing. 

*^It may mean nothing at all, but amongst European societies, it is noticeable that the ones that have not had a significant Protestant influence tend to be much less economic driven and have cultures much less focused on an individuals relationship to work..  Pretty much all of Europe and south of the Rhine would fit this category, and their work behaviors and life focus does tend to be quite a bit different.  The work ethic of France, Italy and Spain tends to drive Americans crazy to some extent.

Hillaire Belloc, I learned after writing this, was so convinced of something similar that he attributed Capitalism to the Protestant Reformation, with his analysis having some merit to it.  Belloc wasn't stating that in a nice way, as he was a Distributist and lived in the era of fairly unrestrained Capitalism.

*****While I didn't know it at the time, my parents feared in my later undergraduate stage that I'd become one of the classic "career students", a fear that was very parental on their part but actually not very well founded.  On the other hand, by becoming a lawyer, maybe that is what happened.

*~According to the same individual above who first is mentioned in this long winded essay, "introspection is my cure to bear".   Maybe.

*~~These struggles must be more common than I suppose.  I just watched the film American Graffiti for the first time in a long time and found, which I'd forgotten, that much of the film's central plot is based upon the central character struggling with whether to leave the next day for university or to attend the local community college.  He goes, his close friend who is going with him stays.

*~~~Indeed, I was practicing law when it sold and it was one of the first experiences for me on how agriculture was now really beyond the means of the common man, something that shocked me at the time, and which was a sad experience to observe.  Some out of state person bought it, something I can't help relive every time I drive through it, which I very frequently to.

*~~~~ I did well on both tests without studying for either.  Indeed, while I understand why a person would study for the GRE, it still baffles me that people actually study for  the LSAT.  The LSAT is just a logic test.  If a person can't do well on the LSAT without studying for it, they probably shouldn't enter law school.

Coming back to the past: Vince Crolla

Coming back to the past

An article on Vince Crolla, who took a different path than most law school graduates and is now the archivist at Casper College's Western History Center.

A very nice fellow, I met him when I gave a talk on my book up there.

I'd note that as archival material, old law books (those are in the CC collection), don't have much value any more, or at least that'd be my view. With everything on Westlaw and Lexus, the need to maintain a library of case books, which is what those are, has pretty much vanished.

Cowboy Ethics Hooey

I commented on this eons ago on our Today In Wyoming's History Blog, here:

Today In Wyoming's History: July 21:

2010  The State Code adopted by the Legislature.

Wyoming, like most states has a set of state symbols.  I think I've listed them all over time, including now this one, the most recent to be adopted.

I've generally abstained from commenting on the symbols, even though a few of them strike me as a bit odd. For example, we have a State Insect, which I don't know that we need.  But so be it.

Here, however, I can't help but comment.

The State Code I guess, is okay enough.  Here's the statute that sets it out:

 8-3-123. State code.

(a) The code of the west, as derived from the book Cowboy Ethics by
James P. Owen, and summarized as follows  is the official state code of
Wyoming. The code includes:

(i) Live each day with courage;

(ii) Take pride in your work;

(iii) Always finish what you start;

(iv) Do what has to be done;

(v) Be tough, but fair;

(vi) When you make a promise, keep it; 

(vii) Ride for the brand; 

(viii) Talk less, say more; 

(ix) Remember that some things are not for sale; 

(x) Know where to draw the line.

There's nothing in here in particular that I disagree with, although that "ride for the brand" item doesn't really reflect a lot of Wyoming's history very accurately.  The central conflict in the state from the 1876 to 1900 time frame really centered around individuals who started out riding for one brand, and then acquired their own brand and quit riding for the Brand No. 1.  Indeed, it might justifiably be argued that Individuals, rather than Ride For The Brand, is the true mark of a Wyomingite.

My greater problem, or perhaps irritation, with the State Code is, I suppose, similar to my comments regarding "state" authors, in that in supposedly finding a "code" that identifies us, we had to copy it from a Wall Street figure and not a Wyomingite.  The code comes from a book that Owens wrote in which he identified what he though were "Cowboy Ethics" and argued that this simple Code of the West could teach the nation something.  I'm not arguing that it couldn't, but I tend to doubt that a Wall Street figures is really capable of capturing the ethics of a class and group so very foreign to his own.

Again, as noted, having been around a lot of cowboys and rural workers, one thing I think is totally missing is that they all tend to have a high degree of independence and its not unusual at all to find actual working cowboys who switch employers a lot.  Perhaps they "ride for the brand", but often only briefly.  The "talk less, say more" item is a nice toss to a certain Gary Cooper view of the cowboy (and Gary Cooper was raised on a Montana ranch) but truth be told, being an isolated group, quite a few cowhands like to talk quite a bit, if given the opportunity to.  One Wyoming politician, the former Senator Simpson, is widely celebrated in Wyoming for his gift of gab at that, which has occasionally gotten him into trouble.  But the general list is not a bad one.  I only think it a bit sad that in order to define what our ethics are, we had to borrow them from a Wall Street figure who wrote what he thinks ours our.  It would seem that we could have defined them ourselves.

I would have thought by now that the bolt would have been shot on this entire Cowboy Ethics as defined by Wall Street guy, but nope, I see where this speaker will present at the 14th Annual Doornbos Agriculture Lecture Series at Casper College later this month.

I've noted in some recent posts here that this locality is a very provincial one, and it is.  But, provincialism is a two sided coin, and the flip side of it is the odd crediting of an outside "expert' in one thing or another.  It's almost like a type of poor self esteem type of problem.

I don't know much, or anything really, about Jim Owens, the author of the State Code, other than that he's not from here.  And yet, he's oddly had a big impact here in the form of the book he wrote.  I have a copy of it myself that was given to me as a gift (I'd never have bought it), and I see it cited here and there as an exemplar of us.

My real problem with this is noted above, in part, but it's somehow galling that a person who has really made his living elsewhere is now thought to have tapped into part of our souls. The simple truth of the matter is that just electing to live here, if you are from here, is normally electing to make considerably less money than you would have elsewhere. We tend to be blisteringly independent here, for good or ill, and many in the state approach libertarian concepts of politics and economics when a dose of distributist ones might actually make more sense in some circumstances.  Anyway you look at it, however, those decisions were ares, and we actually tend to be a bit different from others elsewhere.  Looking towards an outsider, as we so often do, for clues on what we are or are to be, may not be that wise of an approach.