.

Fwiw OP - I think you are an excellent writer. I liked the spider metaphor. I hope things work out for you, you do sound like a very bright guy.

Without getting into the merits of UMN and students trashing their own schools on the internet, I am going to note that we do not allow outing on TLS (even attempted outing).

Thanks! Don't get caught in spiderwebs, and good luck on your applications.



You "legitimately" did not know there were two people named Daniel at the school? There must be dozens. It's a pretty common name.

And now you're claiming that after you learned that there was more than one "Daniel" at the school, even though you'd never heard of me before, now you know all about my "reputation"? I mean, you just said you didn't know I even existed, and in the very next sentence, you're saying you know all about my reputation?

Here's what you did: You couldn't come up with anything good to say about the school. There's no way to spin all the facts that have come out in the course of this thread. Therefore, in a misguided attempt to exhibit school pride, you foolishly launched into an ad hominem fallacy, claiming that I wore a white suit on the first day of school. I still have no idea what you think that signifies. I mean, are you suggesting that if a guy wears a white suit, then he shouldn't be believed? People wearing white suits never tell the truth about the quality of their law schools? What exactly is the mysterious inference you're making? Who cares what someone wears on the first day of school -- or any day of school? If some guy wants to wear a white suit, what business is it of yours? Seriously, what are you even saying? The guy who started this thread wore a white suit, and therefore UMN is a great law school? Is that what you're claiming? What?!

At any rate, your attack fails doubly because you got the wrong guy. I don't even own a white suit. In fact, I have never owned nor worn a white suit. And now you're saying I have a bad reputation, even though you say you've never heard of me in the sentence immediately preceding the one where you announce what a bad reputation I've built for myself.

Wow. Just... wow. I pity your future clients. Keep being crazy, I guess...?

Quoted for pricelessness.

UMN 3L here.

I was told about this thread by another UMN student. While there are certainly some valid complaints about the physical facilities at UMN, I think anyone would be unwise to base their entire assessment of the school on the rantings of one clearly embittered 2L who, according to his own GPA report, isn't very good at law school in the first place. For example, I would also not recommend assessing the Minnesota Vikings by asking Dante Culpepper's opinion.

Anyway, if anyone has actual questions about UMN law that they would like answered from a balanced perspective, let me know.

P.S. Anyone who posts "I pity your future clients. Keep being crazy, I guess...?" has forfeited any right to complain about incoming personal attacks. Just sayin'.

(1) Has anybody ever cut through the chains keeping the furniture in the classrooms, and (2) how much did they get away with?

I don't get the obsession with the chains on the classroom accessories. I mean, I have been at UC-Berkeley a couple of times and seen their physical facilities that make UMN look like a palace, with more peeling paint, bare concrete, stains, and chains. According to the OP logic (and that of his fans), that means UC-Berkeley must absolutely suck as a school, right? And all those Boalt Hall students must be hopeless rejects with no job prospects?

There is certainly a lot at UMN to complain about, and I do so with energy and vigor. But I think Daniel appears to have no one but himself to blame for his difficulties. There are a lot of people at UMN who seem able to adapt and overcome and even (gasp!) have fun from time to time. He's miserable because he likes being miserable.

I am currently in the south side of Chicago and we have a pieces of furniture worth thousands of dollars (see, for example, http://www.allmodern.com/Knoll-%AE-Womb ... L1241.html ) that we don't bother to chain down. I think it's just the act of chaining down a piece of furniture to keep people from stealing it that's pretty weird.

Congratulations that your school has pricey furniture. I am sure that does wonders for the quality of legal education that occurs in those rooms. And I am sure that anyone who attends a school that puts chains on the furniture accessories must be "weird." That is certainly a valid presumption. I see your point.

Oh. Wait.

wat

Actually, now I do think you're weird, but that had nothing to do with your school's furniture being chained down.

And I think you are weird for being obsessed with whether furniture has a chain on it (and having a link to the furniture that is installed in your school -- seriously, is that a fetish?) instead of the content of what is actually taught in a classroom.

There. We're tied.

I don't get the obsession with white suits.



Truth.

Actually, I wasn't the one that posted the rumor about Daniel wearing a white suit and I don't care what he wears, just as long as he doesn't wear any Bears gear on Vikings game day. I actually don't even know who he is, and that particular piece of ignorance makes me happy.

Not obsessed with it, bro. Just thought it was a weird thing for a school to do. Yeah, my fetish lasted me the fifteen seconds it took me to search on this forum when it was discussed by a few people before.

You sound real mad. Not sure what your problem is.

1 article to edit, 2 papers to write, and lots of grading to do. I'm not mad though. Just procrastinating by punking haters.

But I have not been grievously offended by the installation of chains on furniture accessories in classrooms. Apparently, the more emotionally delicate out there have big problems with it. Perhaps it would make a good fact pattern for a torts exam -- use of furniture chains to inflict emotional distress on a tender 1L. Daniel will need to get his ExamSoft working first, though.

Boy, you UMN apologists need to come up with some new material. First of all, I think it's a pretty cheap shot to attempt to impugn me for my honesty about what happened to me during my 1L Fall semester exams. Second of all, I think that your statement, that I'm not "very good at law school in the first place," is an extremely stupid mischaracterization of what actually happened.

I was forced to write my exams by hand, while the majority of my colleagues were allowed to use their computers to type, due to the bizarre and idiosyncratic exam policies of the school (policies which no other law school has). I think it's clear that I was at a pretty enormous disadvantage -- particular for the issue spammy exams, where word count mattered as much (if not more) than content. Furthermore, the fact that I got an A- in the one exam that was word-limited further speaks to the fact that it was the mode of test-taking rather than my knowledge/ability-as-a-test-taker, which was at issue.

Of course, if there were still room for doubt, I did have another semester, during which I got a Legal Writing award, a "Book" award, and a 3.8 GPA. And of course, this is a part of the narrative, and it gives context and meaning to the 2.7 I received Fall semester. This is the whole reason why I gave that information in the first place. I could just as easily have kept mum about it, but I thought it would be helpful information, and so I shared it. However, the whole picture, which I honestly proffered in the interest of helping 0Ls get a better picture of the school, is here distorted and used as "ammunition" to attack my character. Classy.

If you want to talk about what happened to me, then let's talk. Just be sure you include all the info:
Fall: 2.7 (exams hand written)
Spring: 3.8 (exams taken normally)

This, of course, begs the question: how many other 3.8 law students are "not very good at law school"? Or do you think that that was the fluke?



She is crazy. She thinks that wearing a white suit (which I didn't do!) entails untrustworthiness. Or... I don't know what. And I'm not complaining about the personal attacks, per se. I could care less about the personal attacks qua personal attacks. I'm merely pointing out that the small handful of people who have elected to speak in UMN's favor have chosen to do so by attacking me rather than actually offering positive information about UMN. My objection here is not that they're being "mean." I couldn't care less about what they think of me. My objection is that this is a deliberate attempt to distract from the point by attacking the messenger rather than the message -- which, I point out, you are doing as well, with your selectively edited information about my grades.

Of course, you're not entirely sane yourself, with your unhealthy fixation on the chains. There are a million criticisms of the school in this thread -- many of them about the actual curriculum and substance of the education. You choose to ignore those, and pretend as though the only criticism that I've leveled, and to which people here have been been receptive is the chains. That's a particularly nice visual, and it's a very concrete example of the environment that UMN's idiot administrators have created, but it's hardly the only criticism that's been leveled at the school here. Indeed, nor the main reason -- nor is it even a significant reason not to go there. Just an emblematic one. The main reason not to go there is because they treat students like an inconvenience rather than their raison d'etre. And that is the seed from which a crappy educational institution blossoms.

Finally, I think that you people are doing a very serious disservice to 0Ls who are looking at UMN. If you enjoyed your experience at UMN, then that's great. Truly. So much the better for you. Write about that. But trying to "silence" anyone who has a different perspective -- how does that help anyone? You know what pisses me off most of all about my situation? If someone had told me what I'm writing here, way back when I was a 0L, I wouldn't have come here. And now that I'm providing information that might prove useful to some -- maybe not all, but some -- 0Ls who are seriously considering wasting their time and money coming to this joke-of-a-school, you dozen-or-so die-hard UMN fanatics come crawling out from under your rocks in a bizarre attempt to "silence" me.

I think the weirdest thing about these criticisms of my criticism has been the apparent obliviousness to the fact that I've actually been pretty honest about the few areas where I think UMN is actually good. I've agreed that the students are generally friendly and reasonable (present company notwithstanding), and that the faculty is generally excellent. I find it bizarre, given those two positions I've taken, that you and your buddies have tried to cast me as "ranting" when I've actually presented a pretty balanced view, which leads to the conclusion that UMN is overall pretty damn crappy. And I don't see why it's so hard for you to accept that this is the honest and fair assessment of many reasonable people. Do you consider it metaphysically impossible that UMN is anything less glorious than Plato's Academy? Psychopath.

Dude, dvd, how did you get biglaw out of state (I mean not Minnesota or Wisconsin). I'm basically a top student in the class and I couldn't get biglaw out of state. Honestly, I can only think of 2 or 3 people with biglaw on the coasts, and I don't think a single person got NYC. Which market if you don't mind me asking (you can PM me also, because I am legitimately curious about how people did out-of-state).

Are people really trying to defend putting chains on school furniture? I have no strong feelings on UMN one way or the other, but dude, that's pretty bad.

Wow. I'm insane and a "psychopath" because I disagree with your infantile whining about your self-created disasters.

Ok. I'll let you have the field. You win. Congratulations, winner!

No. You are "insane" because of your myopic and freaky chain fetish, and you are a "psycho" because you're so frighteningly detached from reality. These are, however, mere trifles. Far more saliently, you are an intellectually dishonest cheerleader for the school, who lacks the introspection to recognize that UMN has some pretty serious flaws, which some people aren't willing to dismiss as easily as you seem to be able to do (but then again, most people don't have the benefit of being psychos).

And "self-created disaster"? Really? Pick an angle, however ridiculous it might be, and stick to it. You are all over the map. Are you now suggesting that UMN's exam policies are reasonable? If so, then how do you explain the fact that no other law school has anything remotely similar to UMN's exam policy? I mean, taking a step back, aren't exams supposed to test how well you learned the material? Isn't that the whole point of having them at all? So how is an exam policy that is contingent on the sensitivity of your spam filter and the quirkiness of the buggy "Examsoft" software a reasonable policy? How is a rigid adherence to that policy good administration? At the end of the day, it bears reminding that the purpose of exams is to gauge how well a particular student learned the material. When a school's policies don't just fail to yield that result, but affirmatively hinder it, then that's pretty bad, wouldn't you say? When you impose bizarre externalities like they do, it's simply bad policy making and bad administration.

But of course, this is really a pretty small piece of the puzzle. You are (deliberately, I suspect) focusing on minor reasons for avoiding UMN. In no particular order: the P&P fiasco; UMN's unwillingness to pay adjuncts more than part-time McDonald's employees (and the consequences of offering such poor incentives); the insultingly shoddy, poorly planned 1L lectures; the non-upgradable, mandatory-purchase, overpriced Lenovo laptops with their patented plastic-hook ornaments and 5-minute boot-up times; the nonfunctional infrastructure of the school, including decades-old technology and frequently malfunctioning Wifi; the abysmal employment prospects, artfully hidden by dishonest tricks designed to create the illusion of a non-existent market for UMN grads; severe regional limitation; deceptive advertising; and general contempt for students by school administrators -- all add up to pretty abundant justification for not applying to this dump!

You want to make it seem like the chains, stains, and my personal exam kerfuffle are the main criticisms of the school -- but they're not. And I never said they were -- nor did anyone else. You're just willfully ignoring all this other substantial and serious criticism, in a demented attempt to bamboozle people into thinking that the couple details you picked out were the meat of my criticism, claiming that it's just "infantile whining."

And by the way, kudos on making just about the snarkiest, most passive-aggressive exit possible. If it's too much to ask that you man-up and admit that your earlier posts were nothing more than a concatenation of cheap shots and fallacious ramblings, then at least have the good sense to retreat quietly.

OP, your poasts (screeds?) are a joy to read.

I aim to please.

I'm in love.

OP is so the future areyouinsane. I look forward to the doc review hell stories out of St. Paul in a couple years.
The screeds are definition win. Please link when you start the scamblog .