Diversity

Went to a CLE today, "Why Diversity Matters", largely to pick up that bloody civility credit for my CLE requirements.  On the panel was Cecelia Romero, who is now a U.S. Magistrate but who 14 years ago was an associate at Holland & Hart when I was a contract attorney there.  The firm was doing a lot of hand-wringing about why they weren't retaining minority and women associates, but it really wasn't doing anything about it.  There were four of us contracted on this project, and at the end of the contract, they ostensibly interviewed us for permanent positions.  I say "ostensibly" because we all knew they were only hiring one of us and we all knew which one she was (The woman they hired is long gone out of there, BTW.).

I interviewed with the HR manager (who is also long gone out of there) and decided that, rather than wholly wasting my interview time, I would tell her why I thought they had a problem with associate retention.  First, if you are from a disadvantaged background, you have a real shortage of contacts who will allow you to build the book of business a firm requires you to have (voice of experience here).  Second, if you're LDS, which the overwhelming majority of people in Utah are, and you are a young associate at a firm, you are in a singles ward or a young marrieds ward, socializing almost exclusively with people of your own age and social status, not executive types who make attorney hiring decisions for the kind of corporations firms want as clients.  So your success as an associate boils down to this: Without some exceptional input (a genius-level mind or an extraordinary mentor who will help you get that book of business), you had better have been born to the right parents, ones who socialize with the kinds of people who will channel meaningful work your way.  Without that, all the voyage of your career is bound in shallows and miseries.

I got into the University of Michigan Law School on affirmative action.  Now you may ask, "How did you, Whitey McMalerson, get in on affirmative action," but Michigan's system was based on general diversity and not exclusively on race or gender.  They decided they needed a token hick to provide a diverse experience for all those suburban preppies, and I was it.  They didn't bother to tell me that, though.  No, I had to figure out for myself that I wasn't supposed to go anywhere important after I graduated; I was just supposed to go back to Turdville and practice Turdville law for the rest of my life.  I had trouble figuring this out for two reasons.  First, it made no sense, at least not to anyone in any way familiar with Turdville.  You could make a far better living in Turdville doing plumbing and electric than law, and you wouldn't have to worry about student loans.  Second, a significant disadvantage to being a white male is an underdeveloped ability to recognize when you're being patronized.  You think that, at least relative to other white males, you're competing and winning on merit.  Which is bullshit.  But it was my third year before I even got an inkling of what was going on and years before I got it figured out.  I can be slow.

So.  If you're going to bring people from atypical backgrounds on board, you should do one of two things: 1) Be honest with them up front that you're just going to use them for a few years and then boot them, or 2) help them overcome the systemic barriers they have to satisfying your expectations.  Because if all you're going to do is throw a kid from Turdville or the inner city in to sink or swim against a bunch of "peers" who grew up in Grosse Pointe Shores and went to Choate and then Princeton and then Yale and whose parents are feeding them a steady stream of corporate business courtesy their country club circle, you are a cruel, ignorant shit.

Continuing with the Screw-Ups

We all receive lots of lousy advice.  It's part of life on Earth.  What makes the difference is whether you follow it, either because you see it's crap but you're stupid, or you just don't see it's crap.  I like to believe that, in this instance at least, it was the latter.

Doug Alder was a History professor and the head of the Honors Program when I was at Utah State.  He later became President of Dixie and has since retired.  His son, Nate, whom I have known since he was a little fritter and actually shorter than me, is a past Bar President (Fat lot of good that connection has ever done me, although Nate is far from unique in this, and that's a load of bile for another day.).  Doug was really grooming me for grad school, and along the way gave me the bar none worst advice I have ever followed: He told me not to get a teaching certificate.  He said it would look bad to graduate programs I applied to.

I ate that up with a big spoon.  My parents were teachers, so naturally I wanted to advance beyond that, so why waste time doing otherwise?  Dad was the generation past blue collar (in this case farming) and Mom was the generation past decayed, Southern aristocracy, so it was time to advance the family to white collar, upper-middle class status.  With hindsight, I can see the fallacies were as thick as fleas on a hillbilly hound.

First, Doug had no idea what he was talking about.  Although he tries to deny it or at least hide it, he is a silver spooner with precious little knowledge of anything outside academe.  He pokes fun at his bourgeois father, but that's where the money cushion came from that allowed Doug to become The Great Scholar with minimal pain to him and his.  And that's the thing about academe: If you're going to be in it in a non-tech field, it really helps to have a trust fund.  I most assuredly didn't, and I could see that five years of grad school followed by a questionable quest for an assistant professorship was unlikely to be a good idea without such a supplemental income.  After deciding not to pursue grad school, though, and not having a teaching certificate, my choices ran the gamut from law school to law school.  Hobson's Choice is not a good strategy.

Second, my assessment of my situation was, shall we say, overly optimistic.  Some might say delusional.  Contrary to my frankly uninformed read, the family had not really had that middle class generation that is necessary to launch into a contact-based profession, of which law is the ultimate example (Finance, accounting, architecture, and business are others.).  My folks had only managed to grub out an unstable, lower-middle class existence that gave me no connections nor any of the skills needed to acquire some.  STEM professions (engineering, health sciences, etc.) would have been tough, but at least they would have been in the realm of the possible.

Let's do a compare and contrast.  My best friend, Dave Weeks, was a year ahead of me in high school and was likewise the eldest son of two teachers.  His parents too were the generation that moved from blue collar (his mom off the farm, his dad out of the stone quarries).  He bummed around through college and finally got a Life Sciences degree.  Then he became a pharmacist, and now he's a successful MD.  He went STEM, and even with a slow start he took off.  I went humanities without connections, and I've spent three decades slowly spinning in the doldrums.

And so I have hammered on my kids to avoid my egregious mistake: Get the teaching certificate!  In my in no way humble opinion, if you get a non-STEM degree and no certificate, you just pissed away college.  Even if you get a STEM degree, the certificate doesn't hurt.  Have they listened?  Hmm.  Well, Daughter One really isn't the school type and is now married, but at least she found a Navy nuclear tech, so they have a STEM hook.  Daughter Two is in biology, so she's in STEM, moving slowly, but at least she's moving.  Daughter Three, the jury's still out, she has decided that she isn't doing STEM if she's in school, and we'll see where her probable husband is able to take her.  As for Boy, his interests are artistic, but he knows he'll need a day job, and he thinks EMT could do it for him.  Works for me.  In this economy, why bother with college?  Get technical training, preferably something with STEM.  EMT would be portable, flexible, and provide a paycheck, benefits, and a pension.  Good luck finding all that with a liberal arts degree.