Greetings, my fellow port swillers!
Regular friends of the decanter will recall that ol’ Robbo received his legal edumacation back in the day at dear old Dubyanell. Good times. Good times.
In the past year or two, ol’ Robbo’s alma mater has instituted an innovative (indeed, I believe the first in the country) program, in the form of a third year practicum, by which it hopes to prepare its students not so much for the theoretical practice of law, as for the actual practice.
Personally, I think this is a very worthy idea. I came out of school relatively well-trained in knowing how to think like a lawyer and schooled in some basic substantive precedent in various topics, but knowing damn-all about the business of lawyering. Buh-lieve me, friends, there’s a world of difference, no matter where you go with your JD. The goal of the practicum, so far as I understand it, is to at least expose the third years to the chasm between the theoretical and the practical, and brace them for what they may expect once they leave the sheltered, ivy-covered walls of Academe.
Anyhoo, I bring all this up because tomorrow, through a singular combination of circumstances and my own desire to see this program succeed, I will be addressing a class of this year’s current crop of 3L’s on What I Do For A Living.
And I bring it up even more particularly because, as I was mulling over what I would say to these puppies, I realized that there is a 23 year gap between where they are now and where I was in my own third year of law school.
Great God Almighty, how did that happen?
The Port Stands At Your Elbow 
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November 14, 2013 at 4:12 pm
Diane Werle (@quiltbabe)
There is always that gap between education and the real world. Our university offers a number of excellent internship opportunities, from summer programs to the work a semester/school a semester type programs.
Had these been more widely available when I was an undergrad, I may not have become a c.p.a.; silly me, I thought accounting was pretty much black and white. There’s so much grey it’s like a fog bank has permanent residence over the office.
November 14, 2013 at 6:31 pm
captainned
The high & mighty that ran Colgate back in Reagan’s first term had no truck with teaching students the day-to-day operational issues of whatever pseudo-major you’d chosen but could orate until dawn and beyond on how their theory of how Gainsborough’s “blue period” was a clearly a wealth-driven misogynist attack on the healthy and life-affirming redness of liberated ladies lady-parts.
There’s a reason I told them 15 /20 years ago to never send me another piece of mail. Amazingly they’ve honored that request.
@ Diane:
Day job (financial regulator) means I’m always talking to the accountants. Grey is the best you can expect for the near/mid future.