"You have nothing better to do but to hang on my every word and bitch about it."

Well, you've got me there, it HAS been such a slow night I've had to stoop to following your trite, convoluted, smug posts and point them out as such because, hey, gotta have something to do...

"You long ago ceased making sense with your constant flipping out over everything I say."

Because thinking for yourself and NOT along party lines and changing your mind according to new evidence presented and NOT clinging to old ideas in the face of new evidence and arguments...you're right!

That's not thinking or growing or changing at all, FAR better to repeat the same manifesto-set of beliefs again and again and not even deign to hear a word against my set of views...because, hey! I'm SURE all your answers at roughly-my-age, Putin, are all correct, and you'll NEVER need to adapt and change your views in your LIFE!

Oh, and this just in--

Apparently, all those who in the 1980s were afraid AIDS was a disease perpetrated by gays and that there was something wrong with them are hereby ordered to maintain their previous level of hysteria and NOT shift their position to treat and view gays better and...well, like actual PEOPLE.

" If you don't like what I say, join the long line of reactionaries who blocked me."

Said it before, and I'll say it again--

I block NO ONE, Putin, not even you...see, I believe in giving even someone as repellent and disgustingly-arrogant and, I believe, wrong as yourself the chance to make your argument.

(Though I WILL say that it speaks to that "repellent" aspect when you mention that it's a "long line" of folks that blocked you...but then again, with your over-inflated ego and sense of rebellion for following EXACTLY what the Manifesto says, that probably plays right into your hand.)

Now, I'm sorry, before that little bit of indulging an over-grown child...

Invictus you were saying--

You really do want to be a lawyer?

What kind? And what about the law intrigues you so?

If somebody can translate what on earth Obi is babbling about, PM me.

"evil, depraved, and morally bankrupt secret societies with bizarre and humiliating hazing rituals."

Evil? I mean, evil? Jeffrey Dahmer was evil. You're a silly goose.


If you don't want to join then don't. Those who do, will. It's called freedom of association.

@obi, Invictus is right though. Law school is not very fun if you don't want to be a lawyer. As for career prospects based on different percentiles in your class, that depends entirely on the law school.

"wanna-be-proletariat elitist junk fresh off your latest Zamyatin work--not Orwell, goodness no"

ROFL, why would I like Zamyatin, again? I'm a dogmatist who adores anti-communist traitors who inspired ever tired, poorly written dystopian screed written against the USSR?

joining and being a member of a Social Fraternity was a great experience. Knock it all you want. Doesn't mean what you are saying is true for the majority of fraternity chapters.

Putin, if you can't figure that out for yourself...YOU, really, are the one in need of reading comprehension help...

On the other hand, when you lobby insult after insult in a thread geared toward talking about different career paths...

And you first insult econ majors and their field, THEN go after fraternities and Invictus and become a passive-aggressive punk...

Really, at this point, I'm not even sure you comprehend all of what you say anyway, it's just a load of nice jargon you think sounds nice and intellectual and rebellious, because, hey! who doesn't love a rebel, right?

Maritime law might be neat, but I'd probably have to live in New York or New Orleans or San Fransisco to do it. Basically what will keep me in work and isn't a trap to get tens years of associate slave labor out of me would be great.

"ROFL, why would I like Zamyatin, again"

Because way back in our Orwell debate you referenced Zamyatin and "We" positively and called Orwell a pale shadow and plagiarist of him?

My God, Putin, if you can't keep your positions straight...

Well, actually, that'd explain a lot.

@Invictus:

Maritime Law...I'd never have guessed...

Are you a sea/lake/ocean sort of person, or you just find that interesting?

And I'd like to live in SF or NY, too, but they're both ridiculously expensive...was just in SF for a Model UN meet--part of the reason I'm going to double-major in PoliSci, I LOVE international relations and those sorts of debates...plus, it's just too much fun walking down Chinatown in a full-on Kim Jong-Il costume--and it's BEAUTIFUL...so much nicer than Downtown LA...but expensive as hell. :/

I'd like to maybe do immigration law, or gay marriages...

Again, some sort of cause, THAT'S the kind of law work I'd want to do...

Like the legal team that worked to get Prop 8 struck down, THAT'S a job I could go into every day with energy and passion and feeling like I'm doing something worthwhile with my life...

Yeah, if you need to fun and be passionate in your bones about cases then you shouldn't spend the money on law school. The youngest attorney I know just spends her days in the galleys of the Champaign County Courthouse trying to keep the absurd amount of petty crimes cases she has in check. You'll almost certainly be doing YEARS or something like that for higher-ups in the firm you work for or for the city before you get a chance to pull an Erin Brockavic and try to change the world, if ever.

It takes a certain fatalism, is what I'm saying.

As for maritime law, a lot of it comes from an International Law professor I had last year. It seemed like there's plenty to keep you busy and it would be a growth field with globalization and the effects of our new free trade agreements with South Korea and Latin American countries. May be just a pipe dream, though.

Well, I'd want to use a law career as more of a stepping stone into politics...

THAT'S where my real passions lie...

Literature, Philosophy, Politics--they're a sort of three-headed hydra that all share some vast sort of communications, ideals-based body...

I'd like to add to one of those three heads in my lifetime.

Carl Sagan's short clip about the Pale Blue Dot:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMjEVG2rrFQ

THAT puts it all in perspective...

The Earth's already a small, petty enough object in the grand scheme of things as it is, and we already allow time to "creep in this petty pace from day to day" in our lives...

So within that small, petty sphere of time and place...

I don't want to spend my life doing something forgettable on an already-insignificant rock, like my life never mattered, you could just pick it up and drop it out of time and it wouldn't change a thing.

Even if it's just one witty line or saying that lives on, or one phrase or poem...

Or one cause I forward for the rights or freedoms or aid of some group of people...

I want that time to count for SOMETHING.

So I really want to work for a cause, even if it's just at the base assistant level for years...

As long as it's for a cause I believe in--

There's no shame being the smallest protester in 1964 for Civil Rights...just so long as you can say, at some point, you did something, that you TRIED.

Same with literature--

The Eliots and Lawrences and Woolfs all read authors that are famous still, but also authors long-since relegated to obscurity--

But through Eliot and Lawrence and Woolf and all the people they DID inspire to act or to write something greater, they still DID make a difference.

"Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity"

An old quote, but a good one nevertheless. :)

Ugh. What a hateable post.

?

I'm on my cynical swag post-Kony 2012. People thinking they can change the world bugs me a lot at the moment.

What I really want to do is SOMETHING. I want to HELP - you know - help 'people'. Real people. I want to write literature and philosophy and philosophical literature and literature about politics and political literature. THAT would be SOMETHING, wouldn't it? I just want do SOMETHING so much.

That's why I keep writing about it on these forums.

Hey, I'm not saying that I will change it, or that I even can or ever will...

But while we're here, and we only get one shot--

Why not take that shot for what it's worth and do something with it, whatever that might be?

I'm not going all Kony-2012 or "I WILL write the Great American Novel"...

But I'd like to think that by the time I die, gays will be allowed to marry, creationism will be out of schools, and immigration will be fair and open...

So to those causes, and the causes of men like Hitchens and Dawkins and their quest for a more humanistic and less petty and superstitious world--



I probably won't ever play a main part, or even a supporting role, but if all the world's a stage and all the men and women merely players upon it...

Is a brief line, even in a chorus, towards the right cause, too much to hope for?

@Sarg:

Fair enough. (And nice placement of the CAPITALS, by the way, you have that down better than most parodies...) ;)

+1

Thanks. Not being mean, just a cheap laugh. Although I do think it's better to do rather than say what you will do. I'm sure you would do an even better job of fulfilling your ambitions if you didn't spend so much time convincing us all that you were going to do so.

Why not just say you want to live a good life? You obviously don't like Hemingway too much, obiwanobiwan.

You're right, it is better to do than to just talk about it...

Thing is--and this may come as a shock to everyone here, I know--

I'm still young...but old enough to know I don't know everything I THINK I do.

So, unlike some OTHER folks on the site, who seem to have their views locked in and have the answer and get upset if I dare change my mind, what with my being all of 3 years into college...

I don't have the know-how or experience to know exactly WHAT to say yet, in the specifics, or how to DO it...

I just have broad ideas and a big bookshelf of even bigger ideas written by even bigger people is all.

I have to imagine that even those I idolize and mention here so much, though--Shakespeare, Milton, Eliot, Hitchens, Nietzsche--all had that time in their lives...of knowing they really wanted to say SOMETHING about SOMEONE and SOMEWHERE at SOME point in time in SOME fashion...

But didn't have the skills or experience yet--and I know I don't have them yet.

But I'm happy to talk with you guys and gain through discussion.

(Besides, I write a ton even off of the site, so as much as it may seem like it, this isn't like my blog, taking the place of an actual step towards trying my actual goals...my stuff just isn't ready to be dragged out of the drawer and sent to a publisher, is all, and my ideas aren't going to turn any heads at this point, I'm sure...if I can do anything really well, it's public speaking, I do that DAMN well, in MUN and otherwise...but that's just speaking, I need to think carefully of what I really want to SAY, first, so I'm just hashing out all my ideas at this stage of life, hence all my posts and discussions. Plus--they're fun, as are you guys.) :)

@Invictus:

You're right, not the biggest Hemingway fan. ;) (Not a hater, I just think there are far better authors...in fact, I routinely name his peers that I think are better and richer in their writings and ideas--Eliot, Lawrence, Joyce, Woolf, Orwell...)

But a good life is just a fun life if I'm not doing something worthwhile, to me...

Maybe it's just me, but I couldn't stand going on every day if I wasn't trying to fight for this or say that or whatever.

It's why Camus said he thought Sisyphus, in a way, must've been happy to push the boulder up the hill over and over--

He at least could take pleasure in a continued source of struggle towards something, even if it was something in vain.

That's me--I want to feel like I'm really pushing a heavy load, whatever I do, that that load is important and has to be done...

I'm still trying to figure out what all my ideas are and collect them, but if there's one thing in life I HAVE decided on:

It's that a life devoid of some sort of struggle or focus or sense meaning, even manufactured meaning, is an empty life.

Going back to the beginning of this thread with all the degree choices and such, I just have to say the Econ degree I'm going for isn't really all that math intensive. Two semesters of Calc (covered by my AP Calc BC exam), basic stats, and econometrics (which I'm taking now) is all need. But then again, 1) My school isn't a strong Econ school and 2) The econ we do teach is more theoretical than mathematically based. They assume that most of what we'll be doing is applying existing theories and models, not making our own, I suppose. I'm looking forward to a rude awakening next year at LSE.

But I agree with everyone who said to go for an Econ degree. If you are going into public policy, you should have a knowledge of econ at least to the intermediate level, just so you don't make asinine policy suggestions. There are tons of areas relevant to economics. I myself aspire to work for the Federal Reserve, but there have been many Presidents and businessmen who were Econ majors as well. And there are so many branches you can delve into as well! Obi, I think you would find behavioral economics fascinating.

Anyways, I'm starting to rant, so onto the poly-sci major. Do that if you plan on going to law school. Also, realize that just because you get a law degree, doesn't mean you have to be a lawyer. Many Congressional staffers have law degrees, as well as....well, lots of people in business and government. It can be applicable to a wide range of jobs. The degree doesn't determine which job you take. My sister is taking that route. Graduating this year as a poly-sci major, working on Joe Kennedy's campaign in Massachusetts, and is hoping to land a staffer job in November after (if) he wins. She has a backup job with a consulting firm I think, but she wants to wait a decade or so before she farms herself out.

^I probably would find behavior economics interesting...

I think economics in general can be interesting...

There's just the little issue of the mathematics part of it. :)

I am BAD at math...BAD...

As good as I THINK I am with English--I'm that bad at Math (there, an egotistical statement followed by a humbling one.) ;)

"Many Congressional staffers have law degrees, as well as....well, lots of people in business and government."

Yep, that's what I'd be hoping for...

That, and maybe I can kick in my writing skills with a legal background to maybe get into a communications or speech-writing position or so.

"Why is that candidate's speech rambling, incoherent, and all about a teenager from California?"

Actually, it's rambling, incoherent, and all about how awesome Shakespeare is...