The Bitch Is Back.

I returned to law school this January after my year-long hiatus, mainly because I had run out of options and excuses for not being in school. My job search in higher education administration had been fruitless, and I was frankly getting sick of sitting on my couch in my cold, dark apartment on my one or two days off from the café I managed, searching for 'big girl' jobs, sending out resumes, reading rejection letters, crying, reaching out to former colleagues, baking, cleaning, crying, and self-medicating with reruns of Grey’s Anatomy and The Biggest Loser. 

After not having much success with finding an office job and blessed with the encouragement of my girlfriend and a friend in the business, I tried working on more creative endeavors, but I mostly felt drained and sad. Some days I didn’t even have time to turn on my computer, because my job didn't necessitate use of advanced technology and the effort of opening my laptop was too extreme by the time I got home.

My management position at the cafe allowed me to exercise creativity and develop business savvy, test out marketing experiments, and engage in a mentorship with an astute businesswoman. It taught me creative problem-solving, personnel management, and--most importantly--how to develop business infrastructure. My position was engaging, but not what I had planned on doing with my life. Although I consider it a small business, it was still a restaurant. In restaurants, you perform back-breaking labor every day. It doesn’t matter what your job is—you will inevitably be drawn into hauling boxes, unpacking boxes, delivering food, making food; you do whatever necessary to get the job done. Most mornings, my legs didn't work properly until after a hot shower loosened up the muscles in my back.  On top of the physicality, it’s socially and emotionally draining. Most small businesses don’t have a spread of responsibilities across many positions. There are only a couple of people juggling a never-ending task list. Success is tenuous at best: you hope that you hired the right people, that the customers keep coming back, that you ordered enough stock, that the books are balanced and profits are rolling in. There are no specialists or consultants, and every day you keep the doors open is a gamble. 

Every day I walked to work in the California sunshine, grateful to have a job. But, what did I go to college for if not to land a great job? I have a B.A. from a good school. I performed well at that school. I have worked since I was 14 and put myself through college. I have the soft skills that companies supposedly look for. I had a year and a half of law school under my belt. I tailored my resume. I had my resume professionally reviewed. I wrote unique cover letters for every job. I took two-hour long personality tests for companies. If I received a response, it was usually a rejection. For the two interviews I went on, I sent handwritten thank you notes. 

What was I doing wrong?

My friend came to San Francisco for her honeymoon about six months ago. She graduated with her Masters in Library Studies a couple of years ago and quickly found out that there were very few jobs out there. She worked for free for a while, and then got lucky with a consistent part-time job, which eventually turned into a full-time job, at a library about 45 minutes from her home. She works nights and weekends at her library, but is grateful because she has work. In a society where people like us and our friends—highly ranked in undergrad with real-life work experience or post-graduate degrees—keep getting laid off or are chronically underemployed, we feel cheated. That night at a swanky vegan bar we pretended to afford, my friend said the most spot-on analysis of higher education I’ve heard so far: "Those student loans were a promise that we would have a job once we got an education. The government and the schools all told us we would have jobs once we got out, that our education was an investment in ourselves. Now look at us. We can barely get by. They haven’t delivered, because there aren't enough jobs for us to fill. Our education was worthless.”

And with that conversation, along with my mounting debt, growing inability to pay my bills (namely my $118,000 student loan debt), and year without health insurance, I finally felt defeated.  Could I have done more? Probably. Of course. I could have been like the bulldogs I met in law school, the ones who go to every networking event and every mixer and every alumni meet-up. I could grit my teeth and put on my ill-fitting suit and be charming. But I just didn’t want to. (Here, I could go into an in-depth explanation of depression and self-defeating attitudes, but Hyperbole and a Half did such a good job, that I'm going to link it.) 

So I gave up on the life I was creating in California. I went back to New York.

As I passed through the full body scanner at SFO, sobbing uncontrollably after leaving my girlfriend pressed against the glass barricade between ticketing and security, the TSA officer hesitantly pulled me over to search my bags. "Is everything okay today, ma'am?" (They usually stop the emotionally unstable. It's just good policy.) As he picked through my belongings, I contemplated my decision. 

I was going back to New York to figure everything out, spend time with my growing family, and find a job OR go to a tier three law school where I had a standing scholarship. At best, it would be quality time with my family, as well as a lengthy vacation and an opportunity to really grab hold of something real. At worst, it would be a semi-permanent tenure in my mother's country home while working another gig and trying to figure my life out. 

After finding that my offensive cargo included Indian food with some liquid curry, the TSA guard let me go. By the time I turned around to look at my lady one last time, I only saw a glimpse of her bright red sneakers riding up the escalator. That was that. It was go time. I boarded the plane, and touched down in Westchester, where my mother greeted me with a huge smile and my first love Desdemona, my Volkswagen Beetle.

In upstate New York, the only jobs I found were as a server and as a networking writer acquiring clients for a company (stalking people on social media). Food handling and social media are how society defines me as a millenial. ("Would you like a selfie with that latte?") Granted, there are slim pickings in upstate New York, but I thought I could do better. People offered me receptionist jobs, and my aghast reaction bemused them: "Well, at least you'd make a stable salary and there are health benefits." I knew then how bad my situation was. 

There's a moment when you return to your hometown (read: grow up) when you realize that nobody is better or worse than the next person. There are no points of comparison--there are just different opportunities available to different people. 

As I bumped into people I grew up with and saw what paths they had taken, I felt impassioned to change my limp trajectory. Three years or more out of college, many of my friends were still working their high school jobs. Many of them were unemployed or only employed part-time. Some of them switched to trade work because it was more available. And here I was, serving them all beer and pasta because I had squandered a great opportunity. 

Now, I don't mean to imply that serving is not a worthy pursuit. Food and Beverage is a great industry and I highly enjoy working in it. But, when you have the education, the know-how, the passion, and the support to do something extraordinary and you don't, that's a problem. Going back to my hometown, where many of my peers are lucky to have jobs or find any kind of opportunity, was eye-opening. That I was able to grow up in a small rural town in upstate New York, get into a great university, put myself through college, get into a good law school, and move myself to one of the most magnificent cities in the world is evidence enough of the kind of opportunities I have been afforded. At crunch time, I choked. I can hinge that on a number of excuses, or I can just face the fact that I didn't focus my attention on what's important and just move on from there. 

So, I got myself back into my Tier 1 law school, took my hiatus in New York as just that, and flew back to San Francisco to the open arms of my lesbian lover and the prestigious law school that I had run away from. 

That being said, regardless of where I'm coming from or where I'm going to, the bitch is back for now. 

If You Can't See the Crazy Person...

There's this saying in New York:

If you can't see the crazy person on the bus, then it's you.

It's the same for the MUNI buses in San Francisco. I have the distinct pleasure of using the city buses fairly often at this point in my life. I have no choice because I've been run into poverty by the vulturous parking police (Did you know they charge you a fee on top of your parking ticket for processing? A fee on top of a fee. Way to go, San Francisco.) and the absolutely incompetent taxi drivers who roam the streets. (If I have to give you directions or tell you to pay attention because you're ignoring the car headed straight for my door, you need to find a new job.)

You all know how much I love the public transit system. The most disgusting people in the world ride the 19. No, really. Once I sat in between a mouth-to-mouth crack deal and, another time, across from a man picking his silver dollar-sized, bloody, oozing, open cheek sore. My favorite bus ride involved a crazy, homeless prostitute screaming at two women because they told her to stop harassing a girl who had Aspberger's. The pro kept saying she was going to break out her vaseline and the women told her to get off because they had their steel-toed boots on. It was a goldmine of ghetto. (And yes, this occurred in the Tenderloin, which is the ghetto of San Francisco.)

But, I digress.

When I climb the grime-caked steps to the most agonizing twenty minutes of my day, I glance around for an entirely empty seat. No neighbors. No loud music. The radius must be devoid of human life. I'd prefer to see a rodent than another human being. After I secure a deserted location, I sit, smiling to myself about my good fortune and hoping that it will continue through the rest of my ride.

Others board in a similar manner. No one actually wants to see, touch, smell (or taste for that matter) another being on their already dismal bus ride. Inevitably, single seats fill up first and those late to the party must make a conscious decision about which person looks: 1. the least crazy, 2. the least intimidating, 3. the most respectful, 4. the least talkative, 5. the thinnest and therefore most space-conscientious neighbor, and 6. the prettiest. Of course, these are my criteria. But let's be honest: who doesn't include most of these?

Fascinatingly, while no one wants to actually sit next to anyone, the last person to have an adjacent empty seat has effectively lost the working-class adults' dodgeball-team-picking equivalent. The last person sitting by him or herself on the bus is either crazy, demonstrating some sort of anti-social behavior, or is ugly. Like, abnormally ugly.

For a great while, that person was me. I realized something was amiss when I had taken the bus a number of times to and from my doctor and no one wanted to sit next to me. They'd rather stand, than situate themselves next to my warm thigh.

Something had to give. I went through my criteria, hoping to expose the flaw in my person or character:

#6-5
First, I lost twenty pounds. This didn't help much, unfortunately. People still avoided me. Then, I started wearing make up exclusively for my bus rides. Fewer people avoided me. Every so often, a brave soul moseyed over to my area, and timidly sat down. A few men on the 19 asked for my number and sadly trudged off in disappointment after I told them I was with a woman.

#4-3
Second, I stopped being overly friendly. No more talking to strangers about happenings in San Francisco. Don't speak unless spoken to and don't make eye contact. Making eye contact on the bus is the social equivalent of a high-five over a urinal.

#2
Third, people aren't actually intimidated by me. As a defense mechanism, I started to butch it up a little bit more--dark clothing, military backpack, beat up Chucks. I became the person to sit next to if you didn't want to get robbed.

#1
Still, no one sat next to me. Process of elimination: I was the crazy person. So, I withdrew from law school.

Miraculously, my bus luck started changing! After a couple of weeks, my eyes brightened with life. The dark circles under my eyes disappeared. 'Walking on Sunshine' played from my conservatively-volumed iPod. My soul rejoined my body because I wasn't excising it in an attempt to achieve the farce of the American Dream. I started to sit up straighter from not carrying law books anymore. I lost more weight. My hair shined. My teeth stopped yellowing from coffee. My mind stopped shorting from caffeine overload. My wallet grew fuller due to sobriety. I stopped questioning myself, my intelligence, and my future and I stopped letting other people do it on the daily.

All of a sudden, I wasn't the crazy, rocking law student on the bus. People started to sit next to me because I was normal.

This is what normalcy feels like: a stranger's warm thigh on a dirty bus headed to my low-paying, managerial job at a cafe in Russian Hill.

I promise to keep Tales of a Neurotic Law Student going. My next post will outline the reasons why I left.

Type-A Love in the Elevator

As a neurotic law student, I have many quirks and pet peeves. Passive aggressiveness tops my list of pet peeves. Undermining my intelligence is directly below that. Thusly, riding the elevator in the University's apartment building, coincidentally named 'The Tower,' is always an exercise in self-restraint. (For those of you who need to brush up on your British History to get that joke, google Anne Boleyn or any of the other wives of Henry VIII.)

The apartment building happens to be gorgeous. It was built in 1920 and served as a hotel for a couple of decades. It's known for its Art Deco style. High ceilings. A gorgeous stained glass window over the entry doors. Expansive windows. Wood paneling in the common areas. Crown molding. The details are what make the Tower so gorgeous. They also distract from a hundred years' worth of filth.

Many people consider it a shit-hole. I'm from New York though, so this gorgeous building evokes in me the nostalgia of times long past where New York was bustling with the construction of Art Deco buildings.  I always wanted to live in a place like this. But now that I've been here for six months, it's time to leave.

You see, the downside of this building is that it's inhabited with neurotic law students such as myself. We're all Type-A. The people that put on airs of being Type-B, cool, level-headed students are filthy, lying, study ninjas. Those are the ones you have to watch out for...

Hundreds of Type-A twenty-somethings inhabit the Tower. People never leave their doors open because they're always furiously studying. The only sounds of life come from the great outdoors where the homeless scream to the heavens and jacked cars explode with their built-in alarm systems, indicating their almost certain death. The only point at which these Type-A twenty-somethings meet is in the elevators (or at the gym but that's an entirely different rant for an entirely different day).

For the first few months I lived in the tower, one to two of the three elevators worked at a time. Interacting with people was a necessity. Entering a Tower elevator is an experience.

First, no one speaks and no one introduces himself. You'd think that, as Type-A, law students, everyone would want to interact with each other. After all, your peers could be your future meal ticket at a big firm. Networking in the legal profession is key to success. But no, Type-A law students do not talk in the elevator. They are too engrossed in their phones, their thoughts, their musings on life, whatever goes on in their gigantic Type-A brains.

Second, door-holding is a thing of the past. I couldn't understand why no one holds the elevator for each other. I cannot count how many times I've rushed to enter a half-open elevator with one person inside, but it closes in my face. Why did that skinny (expletive) fail to hit the <ll> button indicating 'open?' It's pretty much a social norm. You see the person hustling and you press the button. It's not as if they haven't seen me. Oh no, almost every time I've been shut out, I have stared straight into their evil eyes. They lazily lean against the elevator wall, stare at me, and then pick up their iPhone to start texting. They're probably texting their law school bestie about how they shut out some sweaty, chubby brunette running for the elevator. The one elevator that was working at the time. And they live on the 20th floor. Unfortunately, after about five months of this nonsense, I caved. I stopped trying to change the culture of the Tower by holding the elevator open for people. I stopped asking an aggressive "Really?" when my peers let the elevator close. I stopped hustling. I now saunter. Moreover, when I see some poor law student entering the building, I pick up my pace, enter the elevator, and hope to god that security detains them long enough that the elevator door will close and I won't have to be near them. I have changed my character since being indoctrinated with law school.

Third. My biggest pet peeve. The Lobby Button. Oh, I cannot even begin. I live on the twelfth floor of the building. That's about half way up so I'm usually the first person to get in an empty elevator and we pick up people as it descends. Almost all of the time, I'm headed to the lobby. I push the lobby button as soon as I enter the elevator. Every student that enters observes the elevator panel. They look at it. They pause. And then they press the lobby button.

Are you serious? It's lit up. You looked at it. It's as if they don't trust that somebody else has pressed it until they felt it for themselves. Yes, only your magical touch will make the elevator descend to the lobby. You are the king of all lobby buttons. I feel like this undermines my intelligence. I'm the only one in the elevator and you still need to make sure that I was competent enough to press the button.

Even as I write this, I realize how ridiculous this rant is. But, I have counted the number of times that I have entered an elevator, pressed the button, and somebody else does not feel the need to re-press it. Four. Four times in six months.

As I need to find meaning in everything, I have determined that this is a good indicator of which law students are team players or Alpha fe/males. Team players trust that other people are capable of performing at or above their level. Alphas feel the need to constantly assert themselves. Their pressing of the lobby button says, "Hey guys. I know you think you were right, but I'm going to recheck your work just in case."

tl;dr I need to move.

Me, You, and Outlining

The semester is winding to a close at this point. We have another three weeks of school and then finals start. At this point, everyone should be outlining or else having panic attacks about why their outlines aren't complete.

When my fiance decided to surprise me by coming to San Francisco for a week, I couldn't have been more thrilled. We've been doing the long distance thing for close to a year now and we snatch every opportunity to see each other. Of course, long visits require a certain allocation of free time. This means that sweeping romantic gestures, while highly encouraged, require extensive preparation and time management.

I am absolutely thrilled that I get to see my honey bear for a week. But my neurotic law student sense is tingling. I only had two days to prepare for his arrival and that was only enough to send out summer job applications and complete my initial, cursory readings. When will I get to finish that Property outline? What about the second round of Torts reading? Can I just get by with highlighting instead of briefing? Thank God that Moot Court's over but what about my Education Law class? I'm pretty sure we're going to have, like, six cases to read this week and I can't miss anymore classes.

As such, my fiance and I have found ourselves in the Gold Room this sunny, beautiful Saturday in San Francisco. I'm busy wrapping up Torts and moving onto outlining Property while he bangs out some sort of physics theory proof. It's a good thing that he also has work to do over his spring vacation, because otherwise my working alone in the Gold Room while he ventures into SF sans moi would be super pathetic.

Alas, that's the life of a law student. And grad student apparently. At least we have activities planned post-studying. Yes, I even made an itinerary for his stay. Don't judge.

tl;dr It's easy to make long distance relationships work so long as you both have no social life because you're in grad school.

Resolving Cross-Continental Confusion: A New Yorker's Guide to the SF Subway

It is a well-established fact that I, J-Hizzle, detest San Francisco public transit. Indeed, one of my friend's selling points for my moving to the city was that the transit system was one of the most revolutionary in the country! That I would be impressed by the extent of the network! That I would be able to get anywhere via BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) or Muni (Municipal Transit)! That jerk lives in the suburbs. Of course he thinks it's magnificent in comparison to the absolute deficiency of public transit in California.

On numerous occasions, MUNI or the 'light-rail' (personally, I find it to be a black hole of disappointment) have failed me. So, I feel obligated to dedicate a post (read: rant) to the inadequacies of San Francisco's transit system. Being a New Yorker for my entire life, I now understand how spoiled I was by the labyrinth of accessible transportation both above and below the city streets. Granted, it wasn't always clean or pleasant but it got you where you needed to go. Additionally, let's not forget Metro North and our beloved Long Island Railroad (LIRR)! Despite being in the suburbs, they work like clockwork. Expect the trains there, on time, down to the minute, and in great frequency. The breathing, breeding, violently passionate organism that is New York would crumple without the extraordinary transportation network that spiders out from Manhattan's center up to the pastures of Albany, the vineyards of Long Island, and the trash dumps of New Jersey.

So, on to my--probably incomplete--guide to surviving SF transportation.

A New Yorker's Guide to the SF Subway:

1. Gambling your Commute Away

The first thing you must learn is that, by committing yourself to SF transit, you have just played penny slots at a second-rate casino. The algorithm is off ever so slightly, so you either win big or lose steadily to the point of madness, where you're just pumping money into the machine in hopes it'll fix the damage it's done. When I hit big, the train gets me where I need to go in thirty minutes or less. How delightful!

What you need to keep in mind is that winning big is a rare occurrence, especially at second-rate casinos.  When expecting to commute, always add at least half an hour (preferably forty-five minutes) to your expected commute time because you will likely encounter one of several problems:

a. The driver stops at every street to pick up hordes of morning commuters, effectively packing the train to sausage-like consistency and adding anywhere between ten and twenty minutes to the commute.

b. The driver will stop mid-commute for unscheduled maintenance, 'security' issues, to chat with a train conductor going the opposite direction, take a bathroom break, yield to a broken down train on the one rail line in the city, whatever. What civil engineer decided to make ONE rail line? He should be hung by his thumbs in a prison somewhere moist and tropical.

c. Disgruntled locals have decided to protest some cause or another and half of the stops have been shut down while they vent their agitation.

2. Interacting with the Locals


Expect to be packed like a sausage into a Muni train or bus at one point or another. It will be an experience, for sure. Now, I do not mean to imply that this sort of transit overpopulation does not occur in New York. In fact, it occurs all the time and you can probably expect to be pick-pocketed if you are oblivious to the stranger pressing up against you. But, in San Francisco, you have a few types of people that frequent the overpopulated trains:

a. Really friendly people. They stand out against the general misery permeating the place and everyone hates them.

Advice: Tune them out by turning your iPod up.

b. Really uncomfortable people. They clearly do not want to touch, smell, or feel the aura of anyone for as long as possible. In fact, they hate it so much that they keep everyone else from moving to the back of the bus by standing a ridiculous distance from others in the aisle. Consequently, no one else can get on and a giant plug of bodies develops in the center of the bus.

Advice: Apply mosh strategy and 'accidentally' bump the offending party into correct position. They're too passive aggressive to openly attack you.

c. Really unusual people. These people do things like carry small dogs or cats, smoke marijuana, inject Heroin, rock back and forth, practice Irish step choreography, have interestingly impractical hairstyles, and/or are too involved in their hipsterdom (Note: Have seen all of these).

Advice:
Part A -- Avoid all eye contact. It will distress them immensely because they will not receive the necessary attention their parents never gave them.
Part B -- Stare at them for the entirety of your trip. They will reconsider their behavior on their next public transit adventure.

d. Inappropriately Sexual People. The other day, a well-dressed businessman came on the train somewhere around Forest Hill. While all of the seats were occupied, the standing room was largely vacant. For some reason, he decided to come stand directly in front of me. Interestingly enough, his man parts were roughly eight inches from my face and tightly packed into his trousers. Now, I was not trying to look at his endowments but, once the car started filling up at Church and Castro, I didn't have much choice; anytime I looked up at his face, carefully positioned right on top of the magazine he was so engrossed in, he looked into my eyes with dirty bedroom eyes. I took the lesser of two evils.

Advice: These people are incredibly difficult to avoid. Their tendency is to hover between appropriate and inappropriate physical space. My best suggestion is to give them a little elbow in the back as you exit the subway. Better yet, you could surreptitiously pinch their ass on the way out and let them feel the warm sting of sexual harassment for once.


3. Evacuating Your Personal Hell


Which brings me to the subject of leaving the car/bus whenever you're on it. Now, I'm going to assume that San Franciscans are incredibly polite people. Because the alternative is that they're stupid and/or passive aggressive assholes. Once the car stops, they tend to stand around with large eyes and slumped shoulders, looking out the door as if freedom were just beyond their grasp. There is no movement except by the floundering assholes trying to work their way through the crowd to the exit. I know, because I am often one of those floundering assholes. I've taken to pushing old ladies out of the way to claim the seat directly next to the door just so I have an exit strategy (Hyperbole. The SF subway actually has seats specifically for old ladies). In any case, they just stand there and no amount of 'excuse me' will persuade them to move their asses five inches to the side of the aisle. The other day (the same as inappropriate personal space man), I was stuck directly in the center of a car and resorted to elbowing three people out of the way and jumping over somebody's luggage that they had left directly in the middle of the aisle just so I could narrowly escape the confines of my own personal hell. Little bothers me more than people not being aware of and failing to adjust to their environment.

Advice: Find a good seat early on or stay parked by the door for as long as possible. Always yield to those exiting and others will learn by example. Worst comes to worst, shout something inappropriate and a space will clear.

4. Exploring the Underground

Now, as a New Yorker, I am used to musicians playing in the subway. Usually, they happen to be ex-Orchestra musicians who went crazy and couldn't hold down a job at the Met or the Philharmonic. Or they're students. My point is, they're really fucking good. Parting with a dollar is a privilege because you have just been so thoroughly stimulated by having the honor of watching them play. In San Francisco, there are several good musicians. The other day, I was passing through when some jazz men were grooving. I am extraordinarily partial to the gentleman at Civic Center who plays the accordion while his dog lies at his feet.

There are also several not-so-good musicians. Their cacophony echoes up the steps and throughout the subway in some sort of ear-splitting dissonance as the out of tune notes collide with each other in the worst mating season since horses met donkeys.

There are also several people that wish they could be musicians. They diligently practice every day, some with chalkboards of music notes and others with instruments they may have picked out of a garbage dump somewhere. In any case, I take my hat off to them for having the gall to try and err in front of a live audience and ask payment in return.

Also, there are tons of homeless people that live in the subway. As a bleeding-heart, I would buy coffee and sandwiches for all of them, but my native San Franciscan friends told me that I'm an idiot for attempting that even once. Use your discretion when dealing with the locals.

5. Avoid suspicious puddles.