🎶 Reason - Yaori​
HUGE update on my book: I'm going to be an author!!!!! I can't say much more at the moment, but stay tuned for future news and my "road to book deal" vlog on YouTube. I've learned so much about the publishing industry in the past few months, and I'm still in shock about everything, really. I was running back and forth between conference rooms at NAPABA and the hallways to take calls from my lit agent, and it was honestly the most surreal experience. It still feels surreal. Eight months ago, when I first left the comfortable confines of W-2 life, I could not have imagined being able to reach this point... and now, here I am. (I know, I know--I still have to write the book, but it's good to enjoy the wins when you can! Plenty of time later on for my anxiety to take hold, as it usually does.)
Onto this week! In honor of elections yesterday, I come clean about my past as a Republican and member of the Federalist Society, touching upon my former stance on affirmative action. (My stance since then has clearly changed.)
the sticker price of power.
I used to be a Republican. I wasn't like the other Republicans, though--I was a cool Republican (or so I thought), one that registered as an Independent and would say things like, "I'm socially liberal but fiscally conservative." I read a lot of Ayn Rand and F. Scott Fitzgerald because it made me feel smart, a sort of high school intellectual masturbation. My high school boyfriend, whom I thought was extremely cool and intelligent at the time, didn't believe in climate change and voted for third-party candidates. We talked sometimes about politics, feeling superior about how evidence-based and rational our beliefs were in comparison to others'.
When college admissions results came out and my application was unceremoniously rejected by all of the Ivy League schools I had applied to except for Yale, my ego was, predictably, majorly bruised. Wasn't I smart, after all? Didn't I get the best grades? Hadn't I done everything "right," like others had told me to?
If you had asked me back then whether I supported affirmative action, I probably would have said no. I didn't understand why affirmative action was necessary, why people didn't just study harder. But the bigger thing, in retrospect, was that I just didn't care about other people. I cared about myself and wanting to amass power for myself. It wasn't that I purposely didn't care about others--rather, I passively didn't care about others, because caring about others required mental energy, which I preferred to reserve for thinking about my own advancement in society. With a chip on my shoulder from college admissions results (many other students I met at Admitted Students Days were choosing between multiple Ivy League schools, to my flaming chagrin and deadening shame), I entered college wanting one thing and one thing only: power.
My parents were also anti-affirmative action and saw it as a method for schools to discriminate against Asian Americans, in direct contravention of the admissions system they had grown up with in China--heavily reliant on tests, single exams essentially determining the rest of your life. They had been fostered in that system and, moreover, thrived in that system. It was the only system they knew, and it was a system that they were well-prepared to guide me through, as well. They had already researched and signed me up for SAT prep classes by sophomore year of high school, and my mom sat me down, insisting that I create an SAT study schedule for her review and approval. They, too, wanted power for me (although they may not have called it that), and they saw every instance of affirmative action as one less spot for me, for the children of family friends, for other Asian Americans.
The Republican party, in my opinion, are excellent at two things: first, aligning themselves with the aesthetic of "old money," and second, convincing individuals that the party will foster those individuals' ascent into power and old money if they join--and show them a good time all along the way. And when I was 18, the "Grand Old Party" sounded pretty damn fun. I wanted grandeur; I wanted to be old money; and I wanted to party. What was not to love?
During 1L, it looked like staying conservative and joining the conservative legal student organization, the Federalist Society (or "Fed Soc," for short), was the right move. Before classes even started, my assigned Women's Law Association mentor turned out to be an earnest Fed Soc member and immediately began plying me with tactical information about how to get good grades (study using past exams and outlines of students who had gotten the best grades in the professor's class) and how to position myself for a prestigious clerkship with a federal appellate judge, which tacitly opens up the possibility of the ultimate law student brass ring--a Supreme Court clerkship. I felt a little overwhelmed by how fast she was throwing things at me, but I also wanted to be able to keep up and strategize along with the best of them. If this was the price of power, then it was surely a price that I would pay.
The price seemed small at first. Come to meetings, eat the catered lunches (frequently Chick-fil-a), socialize a bit, contribute your own outlines and exams after grades came out each semester. It was easy enough, and in return, someone made efforts on your behalf to track down outlines and exams for visiting professors from their former schools and a Convention fund sent you and other members to DC each year, where you got to brush shoulders with federal judges, including the prestigious "feeder" judges, whose former clerks often ascended to the ranks of Supreme Court clerks. It was the closest that I had ever gotten to that level of power, and it felt intoxicating. It wasn't until later that I realized what the true price for that level of power was.
🔖 open tabs
I'm monitoring the midterm election results page, although it's looking like it's too close to call which party will have majority in Congress. I'm really proud of the growing diversity in the legislative branch, including the first member of Gen Z!
I randomly started watching the K-drama The Veil on my flight back from NAPABA, and I. Am. Obsessed. It's Taken meets The Departed meets Memento meets James Bond. When my flight landed, I immediately started my 7-day free trial for Viki and am in the middle of trying to watch the entire series in a week. I haven't felt this frenzied about binging a show since I needed to watch six seasons of Game of Thrones in the three-week timespan in between my birthday and reading period for finals. Wish me luck.
I've been reading Maybe You Should Talk to Someone by Lori Gottlieb, a psychotherapist who interweaves her patients' experiences in therapy with her own, following a devastating breakup. I find it entertaining so far! I'm hoping that it gives me some sense of techniques to use in my own writing, as I go about trying to write about others' experiences in biglaw along with my own.
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