I went to Suffolk University on Beacon Hill for four years and lived in an apartment on the Hill for one.  I attended Suffolk University Law School, a short walk across the Common, for another three years.  When people ask, for instance, why the college still cannot guarantee housing for undergraduates, I try to explain the difficulty of engaging in new construction in Beacon Hill.  I think you really have to spend time there to get to understand the neighborhood and the nature of the people who live in it.  No anecdote of mine, however, could explain the general pettiness of the Beacon Hill neighborhood associations as well as this: http://wbztv.com/local/local_story_277214410.html.

Apparently Beacon Hill residents are now complaining that the chirping noises given off by crosswalks, designed to aid the blind in crossing the street, are simply intolerable:

[A]ccording to Steve Young of the Beacon Hill Civic Association, the new chirping sound was so loud people couldn't sleep.

So they complained to the city.

"They made those volume levels on those devices for people without hearing not for the blind because people without sight have enhanced hearing they don't need to have it so loud (that) it is waking up people two blocks away," Young said.

Was that English?  Incomprehensibility aside, I can't even stomach the gall of this man.  I can almost imagine him flouncing out of bed in a huff at 2 a.m., calling the transit police, ready to verbally abuse whichever poor bastard is working the phones on the graveyard shift:

"Transit Police."

"Yes, this is Steve Young."

"How can I help you, sir?"

"Of the Beacon Hill Civic Association."

"Uhuh."

"Do you realize that the crosswalk on Charles Street is emitting some kind of loud chirping noise?"

"It's so blind people can cross the street, sir."

"Well people are trying to sleep here.  They'll just have to wait until morning to cross."

The idea that Brahmin trustfund babies and overpaid social-climbers might not be able to sleep at night because of this aural assault on their sensitive, Anglo-Saxon ears truly fills me with despair.  Blind people should really have more consideration for Charles Street residents.

Ahem. 

Contrary to the beliefs of stuck-up WASPy assholes, Beacon Hill is not a nation unto itself.  You live in the city.  Cities are noisy.  Get used to it, take off your smoking jacket, get back into bed and find something better to do with your time.

From Dandyism.net, a video of Dan Rather before a live news broadcast on a wind-blown February rooftop, where Rather and his people spend a few moments discussing the pros and cons of wearing a trenchcoat on camera.  I believe the final count is 19 minutes, 43 seconds.

Dandyism's response: "If Mr. Rather had brought a cashmere chesterfield instead of a drab trenchcoat, his decision may have been easier."

Hubarts.com comments on Opening Night at Symphony Hall last night, which featured an all-Ravel program.  According to both theirs and the Globe review, the performance was less than transcendant:

The long mid-section of the short evening was not as wonderful. Soloist Susan Graham seemed precise but not exactly on fire with the material in Sheherazade, and the audience, which usually goes gaga when Levine brings in one of his opera stars, seemed to notice. And I can't say I'm especially fond of the Piano Concerto in G, or maybe it's just the soft, flowery style of guest soloist Jean-Yves Thibaudet, who also made the unfortunate decision to try to bring back lapels.

According to the Wall Street Journal, for the vast majority of law school graduates, the job market has hit a wall.  While elite law firms paying more than ever before, those new lawyers not lucky enough to be in the top five percent of their class are finding it difficult to secure any job at all, never mind a high-paying one:

For graduates of elite law schools, prospects have never been better. Big law firms this year boosted their starting salaries to as high as $160,000. But the majority of law-school graduates are suffering from a supply-and-demand imbalance that's suppressing pay and job growth. The result: Graduates who don't score at the top of their class are struggling to find well-paying jobs to make payments on law-school debts that can exceed $100,000. Some are taking temporary contract work, reviewing documents for as little as $20 an hour, without benefits. And many are blaming their law schools for failing to warn them about the dark side of the job market.

I had come to the same conclusion myself, of course: I'm at the point where I'm ecstatic to receive even a negative response from a firm to which I've sent a resume and a cover letter, because at least that means they know I exist.  Most don't reply at all. 

One new lawyer interviewed in the article called going to law school a waste.  I wouldn't go that far, but if I knew when I was applying to law school what I know now, I would have done things differently.  I would have done more research and thought harder about how much effort I was willing to put in.  My first year grades, the most important in law school, suffered because I was unprepared for how important that year was and because I still had something of a college mindset, thinking I could skim the reading and still get an A.  I was wrong.  So I did average, or even a little below.  My second and third year, I did fantastic.  My last semester in law school I got straight As.  But the first year classes are far more credit-heavy than the electives one takes second and third year, so my cumulative GPA and class rank are average.

The irony is that I know I can do real legal work as well as anyone.  I worked for a Juvenile Court judge the summer after 2L and wrote legal memoranda that he used in deciding motions.  During 3L, I argued motions, handled a caseload, and prosecuted cases in District Court for the Middlesex County District Attorney's office.  I wrote a full-length appellate brief for my advanced legal writing class during 3L and received an A, the highest grade in the class.  None of this is relevant to those who do the hiring at private firms, however: all that matters to them is that the number next to your name indicating your class rank is a single digit.  Or that you went to Harvard.

I don't say this out of arrogance, but rather to show that the whole system is something of a farce.  Law schools gleefully collect absurdly large tuition checks from students, neglecting to mention that only the ones on law review will have any real shot at paying back their loans before their hair turns gray.  Things have gotten to the point where many lawyers are questioning whether the kind of advertising law schools do approaches unethical behavior.

Even the students at the top of the class are being swindled: sure, they're getting six figures a year, but at a megafirm that expects them to work 80 hours a week and be grateful for the opportunity.  Most of them spend their days doing document review.  Not to mention that the possibility of making partner is practically non-existent.  Those ambitious enough to even try will be competing against hundreds of their peers for the exact same job.  Most attorneys seem to make partner by a lateral move these days, anyway.  The only people laughing are the partners themselves, who, as a professor of mine would say, are generally more concerned with keeping their aging wrists steady in order to avoid spilling lunchtime martinis on $5,000 suits.

Who wants to work in that environment?  Law students seem to share the unfortunate misconception that upon graduation they have to become a slave for a certain period of time, either chained to a desk at a firm or juggling hundreds of cases in the district attorney's office for $38,000 a year.  And for what?  So that in five years or so they'll cut your hours to 60 a week and give a two percent raise?  So that you'll have the much-vaunted but ever-elusive "experience" that everyone's looking for?  I don't want that.  There are areas of the law I would love to practice, but not enough to spend some of my best years doing something I know I would hate.  I know that I don't want the practice of law to be my entire life.  There are many other things I want to do.  For now I'll await by bar exam results and keep applying to as many jobs as possible.  But eventually, I know I'll have to make a choice: approach my legal career traditionally and compete in a fading market, or use my law degree as a foundation to do things my own way.