As we noted, Tammy Hsu’s blog is now restricted to invited readers. Some posts are still accessible via Google Cache (and in the comments to our original story, some of you identified favorite posts of yours).
Shortly after we wrote about her, we heard from Tammy C. Hsu. She sent us a defense and explanation of her blog’s origins, which we will now share….
We begin with a message to our readers. Consider yourselves on notice: we regard almost anything you place on the internet, even if just for a brief hot second, to be fair game for coverage. It doesn’t matter to us if you later try to “recall” your mass email or delete your public blog. Once you’ve put something out there, thereby forfeiting any reasonable expectation of privacy, then it’s gone, baby, gone. [FN1]
And honestly, in the internet age, what privacy expectations are reasonable in the first place? Emails can be forwarded; images can be downloaded or photographed themselves, then re-posted. If it’s not already dead, privacy is rapidly dying. You might as well start living in public now, and make life easier for yourself. Just let it all hang out, and then you’ll never be embarrassed about anything getting leaked. (This is my philosophy on Twitter, where my feed is often TMI.)
Living in public: that’s the premise behind a charming new law student blog by a 1L with ambition. Like a fair number of bloggers — Brian Stelter and his Twitter diet come to mind — law student Tammy Hsu seeks to harness public exposure for her own benefit. Hsu, a first-year student at Wake Forest University School of Law, writes a blog built around her goal of transferring into Yale Law School. It’s right there in the title of her site: “Confessions of an (Aspiring) Yalie.”
By putting her ambition out in the open, Hsu is motivating herself to succeed, because failure would be so public. She is lighting the proverbial fire under her own arse, turning her classmates and the internet into one big Tiger Mother. If she’s not at 127 Wall Street this time next year, people will look down upon her — so now she has every incentive to excel in her 1L year at Wake Forest.
You know an email has gone viral when we get unsolicited emails asking us to not post something we just received from a bunch of people all at the same time. Let’s hope Wake Forest School of Law is ready for its closeup.
Someone — claiming to be a Wake Forest law student, and calling himself or herself “Wes Law” — apparently woke up this morning with a bug up the ass. The object of pain was apparently the law librarians at Wake Law. And so the supposed student asked a rhetorical question: “Is there someone who can please explain why do we even have librarians at this law school anymore, and to what purpose they serve?”
What followed was a tirade against the services provided by the librarians, naming names in a flurry of accusations and insults. The entire campus is talking about it, with a few people even trying to answer the question.
I’ve never been to Wake Forest, so I’ll have to answer his question with my own rhetorical question: U mad, bro?
Most weeks nowadays, the New York Times weddings announcements — and our coverage of same — focus quite properly on the newlyweds and their impressive accomplishments. But occasionally, a few announcements hearken back to a simpler day, when nobody cared much about the bride and groom, because the game of social one-upmanship was played on the parental level.
This is one of those weeks. Our featured newlyweds are impressive, but some of their parents are even more so. The finalists:
Around this time last year, we ran a story about a person at Wake Forest going ballistic at the school’s Career Services Office.
There must be something about springtime weather that brings out the crazies at Wake. A tipster reports that this year a student once again has lost his mind because of the challenging job market:
[J]ust wanted to let you guys know that another lame student at Wake Forest Law has had a meltdown because he/she could not find a job. Earlier today, this student sent out a school-wide email that threatens career services and slams the dean, the library, those in charge of LLM program, etc. Unlike last year, this year’s message was sent under an anonymous gmail account instead of an actual student account…
This latest email is both funny and pathetic — the author threatens to release information about career services’ coffee breaks unless the career services department resigns. Apparently these breaks have been observed by a group of secret agent students over the course of the year. Why does this always happen at this school? This kid should seriously concentrate on studying for finals.
Honestly, how many times do we need to tell law students that threatening people will get you nowhere? Every lawyer knows that you can threaten laypeople with impunity. But lawyers and legal professionals don’t take well to bullying because they know the law.
In any event, let’s take a look at the student’s ravings and the fairly measured response from the Wake Forest Dean…
For one glorious moment, prospective law students thinking of going to Wake Forest Law School learned that they had received the Melanie Nutt Scholarship from the school. Then, in an instant, the scholarship was recalled. Apparently the offer of free money was a technical error:
About ten minutes ago I received an e-mail from them telling me I had been offered a $30k/year scholarship. Obviously I was thrilled, as Wake was (keyword: was) at the top of my list. Before I could gloat to my friends, I received a follow-up e-mail …
That follow up email had “ERROR” in the headline, so students knew it couldn’t be good. Apparently there was a technical glitch and a number of students were accidently promised scholarship money.
And the mistake wasn’t limited to just one poor soul.
We’ve done quite a few stories now on law students losing control of their sense of discretion as graduation approaches.
We’ve got another one, this time from Wake Forest School of Law, we think. The student who sent it claims not to have sent it. We’ve spoken to school officials who are looking into this as a possible hacker situation.
But regardless of who sent it, this email does include a tale that many commenters have been worried about. With all the schools trying to help out deferred or unemployed graduates, how will the employment statistics be reported to U.S. News? Somebody (who may or may not be affiliated with Wake Forest) has this hypothesis:
As I was working in the Career Services office last week I heard [Redacted], talking to the others in the office how relieved she was that they were to place several students from last year’s class that had not found a job yet with one at the law school so as to not adversely affect our rankings. It seems as of the total number of unemployed students is so large that if we did the honorable thing and properly and accurately reported our actual data to the ABA and the US News magazine that our ranking would have dropped out of the top 50 law schools. In other words, we would have become a second tier law school. She was happy they could “fix” the problem by hiring former students in some capacity at the law school so our “numbers” looked good. As I sit studying for exam and the more I think of her comments, that madder I get.
“Fix” the problem, bullshit, they just hid the problem. The real problem is the lack of ability in this office. We have discussed this every year with the dean at our “town meeting”, and yet the office remains unchanged and they remain employed despite abysmal results. Well its time for a change in this office. Any bets what the “true” unemployment statistics for our class will be given the economy?
Wake Forest is ranked 40th in the latest U.S. News law school rankings. And while this person is clearly worried about the school’s rankings, the person also wants to hold Wake to a higher ethical standard.
Wake Forest Dean Blake Morant responds after the jump.
A college graduate without student loan debt is akin to reading a kind quote about Kim Kardashian in a tabloid—it’s rare.
In the past eight years, student loan debt has nearly tripled to a whopping $1.1 trillion, and in the past 10 years, the percentage of 25-year-olds with such debt has risen from 25% to 43%
It’s gotten so bad, in fact, that New York Fed economists warned last month that the burden of student debt could stilt consumer spending by twentysomethings, as well as further hamper the recovery of the housing market and economy.
To get a better idea of what massive student loan debt (we’re talking over $100,000 massive) looks like, we talked to an attorney who graduated with a large student loan debt. We also consulted LearnVest Planning Services CFP® Katie Brewer to see just how their repayment plans stack up.
S. Fischer, 36, Attorney Graduated: 2001
How Much I Borrowed: $100,000
What I Still Owe: $45,000
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Ed. note: The Asia Chronicles column is authored by Kinney Recruiting. Kinney has made more placements of U.S. associates, counsels and partners in Asia than any other recruiting firm in each of the past six years. You can reach them by email: asia@kinneyrecruiting.com.
Deal flow has clearly picked recently up for most US associates, counsels and partners in Hong Kong/China and Singapore. We are on the phone with a lot of these folks on a daily basis, many of whom we have known for years. Further, the head of our Asia team, Evan Jowers, and Kinney’s founder and president, Robert Kinney, frequently meet in person with leading US partners in Asia to assess their needs and keep on top of the inside scoop at as many firms as possible. The need for legal recruiting help in Asia from experienced recruiters appears to be live and well. In March, Evan and Robert were in Beijing at such meetings, in April, Evan was in Hong Kong, and for half of June Evan will be in Shanghai and Hong Kong. Thus its pretty easy for us to tell when there has been an across-the-market pick up in capital markets and corporate work.
On an average day in Asia when Evan and Robert visit firms, they typically have 5 to 9 meetings a day, mostly with US partners in the market. The reason they have these meetings is not simply because Kinney makes a lot of US attorney placements in Asia and that a particular firm may have openings; instead these are just visits with friends. After years of working together as business partners, the folks at Kinney are actually these peoples’ friends. The firms Kinney work closely with in Asia (which is just about every law firm – call us if you want to know the one firm in the world we will never place anyone with again, ever, and why) look forward to the visits, or at least act like they do. After seven years in the market, many of the client partners are former associate candidates. Also, these US partners see Kinney as a very good source of market information as well, because they know how deep their contacts are in the market and how frequently they are speaking to counterparts at peer firms.
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