Bold Renewal

Today Tulane announced a "bold renewal plan" that basically amounts to getting rid of the engineering school, downsizing the medical school, and adjusting to a smaller student body rather than lower admission standards. I can't blame them for any of it, though I hate the cheesy rhetoric and I feel for the people who are losing their jobs.

I don't have it in me to regret quitting my job, though the future seems hazy and I wonder how I'll pay my rent next summer. I'm still scared of turning into yet another unhappy lawyer, but this internship has given me confidence that I can do the work well.

I finally read John McPhee's "Atchafalaya" essay, about the Corps of Engineers' doomed battle with the river in Louisiana, from The Control of Nature. Oliver Houck, big honcho in Tulane's environmental law program and my criminal law professor, turns out to be a major figure in the essay. It was heartening to find him there--I do see him as a kind of role model. But I'm not really that much of a fan of McPhee's style, though it may be heresy to say so. He's obviously smart and thughtful and he chooses interesting subjects, but he leaves me cold.

I also find myself relieved to be out of the literary game, though I can possibly seem myself as a legal journalist a la Nina Totenberg or Dahlia Lithwick, and also as a sporadic essayist, and as a compulsive but unread blogger.