Narkoleptomania

I know it, but I don't do it.

I just wrote this really cool post [if I say so myself--which I do] so I hit post but of course I didn't copy the post so of course I got an error message and lost my post.

I could curse, really I could but I'm watching cricket [yes, cricket - have you figured out I'm not American yet?] and I think my team's going to lose so I'll save the cursing for then.

Also...cricket rocks, so much more fun than baseball - this is a purely prejudicial statement based on no actual comparison on my part as I've never actually watched a baseball game that wasn't part of a movie.

Well after much sifting through my memory I finally remembered enough HTML to get my Haloscan comment and trackback to work. Poor job on the auto thing for blogger Haloscan, it messed up my code and then forced me to go clean it up. It’s really unkind to have it as an option for dolts such as myself only for us to find that it doesn’t work. Or maybe it’s because I’m a bigger dolt than the rest that it didn’t work for me? No need to comment anyone.

I came across this posting on Yale Law’s website entitled The Truth About the Billable Hour a few months ago but at the time I didn’t have a blog so since everybody seems to have rediscovered it, I’ll jump in on the fray and link it. For some reason it really doesn’t look that scary to me. I’m also thinking of it in terms of the fact that in many cases there’s probably two or three weeks when you’re pulling 16 hour days to meet a deadline and then it slacks off noticeably – assuming of course you work at a firm that doesn’t require face time.

Speaking of rediscovering things, it seems as if all my friends have rediscovered Friendster. A few months ago my email was bursting (these were the days when Yahoo! only offered 6MB and Hotmail only 2MB of space – remember those days?) with these invites. These are people I see fairly often, speak to almost every day on either IM or the phone but suddenly it’s imperative that I join their “online community” and meet their friends (who in many cases I happen to already know and there’s a reason they aren’t my friends. Seriously though, I’m just ragging on Friendster because I’ve never really sat and surfed around trying to meet people. I guess it must work for some people though because I’ve started getting the invites again.

How did I get to start talking about Friendster…?

This weekend hasn’t all been bad or frustrating law school news via email. I received an email from a 1L at William and Mary congratulating me on my acceptance and offering to answer any questions I may have. Fabulous. I wouldn’t even have known that I got in if he hadn’t sent that email because I’ve yet to receive any notification from the school. It’s great anyway. I don’t think I’ll go, if they offer me a ton of money I’ll probably consider it but as it is I’m pretty focused on either Georgetown or Cornell. Considering Penn’s reported 30% increase in applications I’m not really counting on hearing anything positive from them. Oh well, life could be worse so I'm pretty grateful.

Oh yeah, and no I still haven’t been able to access what is more than likely my rejection letter from Northwestern. Bums.

I get this email at around 6:00pm my time:

-------------
Dear Narkoleptik,

The Admissions Committee has completed its review of your application for Admissions. To view your decision, please log-in through our “Check Application Status” webpage (https://www.law.northwestern.edu/form/adm_checkstatus_entry.cfm). To retrieve your decision you will need your Applicant ID Number. For your reference your Applicant ID is *****. Your decision letter will not be mailed.

**Please note: your decision will be available AFTER 6pm CST (01/28/05)**

Regards,
The Admissions Committee
-----------

I could address the fact that I think it's supremely tacky of them not to actually mail the letter but I won't - oh wait, I already did when I made it bold. Anyway here's the kicker, I log onto the site about 9:00pm and they still haven't updated my status.

So basically, Northwestern is too cheap to mail letters notifying applicants of their decision even though their application fee is one of the most expensive and they're apparently too cheap to pay the people who update their site, or just don't care to reconcile the emails they send out with status updates.

OK.

--End Rant--

I'm wading my way throught the maze that is my NeedAccess Application. I'm stuck by three things:

1. damn I'm poor (sad but true)
2. damn these people want a lot of information
3. this is taking me a so little time cause I'm so poor.

Looking back, filling out my college financial aid forms was the easiest; no I don't have a second home, no I don't have mutual funds stashed away, no..., no..., no..., you get my drift.

Yah, it would seem I've found one of the few advantages of being poor. How sad is that.

I got this huge catalogue from Cardozo School of Law yesterday. Up until today I had always had Cardozo in the back of my mind as a school I'd attend. It wasn't at the top of my list but I always figured I could do much worse than ending up there. So the catalogue, it was Cardozo's attempt at capturing the community that exists there and while it did that to some degree it convinced me that I wouldn't feel comfortable there. It struck me as odd since the one commonality in all the catalogues I've seen is that they all do a fairly good job of pulling you in, this one did the total opposite. I can't really place my finger on it but Cardozo's catalogue had a chilly feel to it.

My other main problem with Cardozo was the fact that it's so young (approximately 25 years) and consequently its alumni network would be limited as well. They had this page called ClassAction which was basically the cool things that happened to their Alumni, the whole thing took up maybe 3 pages. On some level I'm comparing it to my UG which is many hundreds of years old but still, it's something to think about. But yeah...my point...the catalogue did more harm than good in my case.

Also...they should put the thing in colour, black and white is just depressing.

As per usual, I came across one of the myriad of posts on the evils of BIGLAW and how associates are dispensable wage slaves and such on xoxohth. I’m sure much of this is true and having worked in BIGLAW it’s really quite amazing how often attorneys leave [Aside: It was always the cool ones who were going. The morons stuck around like superglue]. Anyway, while so many people bitch about the monotony of the work and all that, and how you’re basically a glorified paralegal; consider this: the paralegal you’re working with is more than likely getting half of what you’re getting to do the same work. Sure you may not have all the intellectual challenges you dreamed of as you strode around your ivy covered campuses but really, considering what you know as an associate, do you think you have that much to contribute…other than the cite checking and other grunt work of course. You’re great for the job, you were on law review, that’s what you did. Why not do it for some big bucks now? You know there’s a learning curve, so you’re at the bottom now and getting paid 125K to be, surely you won’t remain there forever – you’ll have more challenging tasks, the paralegal more than likely won’t.

Basically I’m just saying that I think people who expect BIGLAW life to be a bed of roses and start bitching when it isn’t primarily have unrealistic expectations. I don’t expect to be fulfilled my first 3 or 4 years on the job, I expect to be flush. If you hop off to Public Interest Law there’s really no guarantee that you’ll be fulfilled, you’ll still have to start off at the bottom, they’re be a numerous frustrations AND you’ll probably not be able to make your car payments on top of it. There’s no easy way folks, lets face it, we’ll have to pay our dues.

The last thing in my little rant is this; so your 125K a year job sucks, how do you think the custodians or the paralegals, or even the temp attorney’s (they’ve got the loans, the familial obligations and no stead job) feel? All I’m saying is; look for the silver lining…

this + this = crazy. ass. people.

i call them freaks.

As I suffer thorough the endless maze of financial aid forms that broke ass people such as myself have to fill out, I can’t help but wonder; how come I can’t come up with a crazy idea that somebody will want to pay me money for.

1. I’m not surprised this dude lives in Nebraska – stereotype? Yes. Based in part on fact? See link above or here.
2. "People will always comment on something out of the ordinary," Fischer said in his sales pitch. "People like weird." Umm…yah I’d comment on the fact that I think a guy advertising SnoreStop on his forehead is weird, and may end up with bad acne but do I feel inclined to purchase SnoreStop after seeing this guy walking by me with it on his forehead? No not really.
3. "I look forward to an enjoyable association with Andrew — a man who clearly has a head for business in every sense of the word," SnoreStop CEO Christian de Rivel said. Christian…dude…give the 37K to charity.

Seriously, why can’t I come up with the next crazy, yet successful money making scheme…

After reading about the ridiculous inches of snow that fell in the Northeast these past few days I couldn’t help thinking back to my college days spent in COLD-ASS Massachusetts when we’d all sit and wonder why there weren’t more really cool colleges in Florida than there are. I gotta ask…why aren’t there more highly ranked law schools in Florida? Is it to punish us (and by us I mean all of us who hate snow but want a prestigious piece of paper primarily available in the Northeast – New England to be specific)? Yes California has its share of schools but the earthquake thing isn’t cool. I’ll take a hurricane over an earthquake any day cause at least there’s some warning (knocking on virtual wood that I’ll never have to make the choice) but come on Florida, hook us up.

So yesterday I decided I’d post the schools I got into since I’m having some trouble deciding. Oh, it’s also of note that I have no idea what kind of law I want to do (except I don’t want to be poor – I can suffer BIGLAW long enough to make some money) and I have no idea where I want to be. I have no really ties pulling me to any particular location (now that I write it, that’s kinda sad – but that’s clearly content enough for another post) so I pretty much want to go to the best school that’ll give me the best opportunities.
Acceptances are as follows (in alphabetical order):

Case Western
Cardozo (lots of money)
Cornell (probably a little)
Georgetown (none)
Miami U (lots of money)
Temple (probably a little)
Washington and Lee (probably a little)

So I’ve at this point narrowed it down to Georgetown and Cornell which are similarly ranked – 12 and 14 respectively. Every now and then I think to the schools that are giving me lots of money but I’ll ignore those thoughts for now.

I’m probably going to be naïve here and say that I don’t think that those 2 points really make that much of a difference in the long run, so all things being equal which one do I choose? I think I may have to flip a coin…

My problems are thus:

Having embraced my paranoid soul and the advice of all law school sages such as Richard Montauk (How to get into the Top Law Schools) and PrincetonReview.com I applied to the required amount of safeties, of course the safeties were just if I didn’t get into my reaches. Here’s the thing, I got into all of my safeties with a TON of money and a couple of my reaches, both of which I’d go to in a heartbeat but more than likely I’ll get no money from them. Do I take the money and have a debt free graduation with maybe average career opportunities or do I go to my reaches, be indebted for approximately $120 000 and have above average career opportunities – assuming of course I do well among the super competitive really bright folk that are going to be there? Don’t misunderstand; I’m not saying that the people who go to Tier 2 through 4 schools are any less than the Tier 1 folk it’s just that from what I gather, this distinction matters a LOT to prospective employers.

I should mention I am somewhat of an academic snob, but not so much that I can’t change (with a little counseling perhaps) for zero debt and a job in 3 years time? Is that name on that little piece of paper worth it? Right now, I tend to think so, but would an objective financial advisor agree? Pity I’m too poor to afford one.

I'll post the schools I actually got into later...or maybe tomorrow...I'd love some feedback.

I haven’t addressed politics in my blog before and I probably won’t too much. There’s really very little I can say about politics that you won’t find in one way or another on any of the anti-Bush sites out there; also whenever I write about politics (international or domestic) I find my dialogue infused with so many swear words, sarcastic comments, general frustration and well, anger, that it’s just not good for morale and it certainly doesn’t help my attempting to cut down on my swearing (not by a lot, just by one or two words a day – I don’t like cold turkey approaches to anything).

Tony Pierce includes a guest post here that I think articulately comments on (without the swear words) my thoughts on the 43rd President of the USA and his latest lil' party.

America...what were you thinking??

As expected Harvard President Lawrence Summers apologised for his statements - suggesting that women do not have the same innate ability in the sciences and math as men do - today and is by all accounts quite contrite [yeah right]. Is it just me or does it seem as if people can say any crap they want and then attempt to stave off the damage by issuing a prompt apology? How much does the apology mean when there's a 75% chance he doesn't mean it and says it only to diminish public outcry? As tactless as his statements were, I kinda wish he'd have stuck by them and tried to defend them... [you know...have some balls] but politics won out. Clearly he thought they had some merit or he wouldn't have said them in the first place. He made them in a prepared speech not some off the cuff, impromptu statement; surely he read them over at least once before writing them. After all that am I really supposed to believe that he can genuinely retract these statements and see the "error of his ways" in a couple days?

I think that to an extent he's right, numerous psychological tests (which I'm too lazy to look up and link to right now) have proven that males tend to have better spatial abilities than females off the bat. This imbalance can be erased through social conditioning so I would argue that females tend to not rise to the same levels as males in professions such as the sciences because they haven't undergone the necessary conditioning to wipe out the differences in spatial abilities etc. From an early age not as many women tend to take science classes as males - and this isn’t' at an age where ability is really discernible but since the pattern begins from such an early age then clearly more men than women are going to end up being scientists.

Slithery D has some views on this whole issue and he's looking for a fight too :). He agrees with Summers' original thesis. He's pretty disappointed no one’s taken him up on it yet.

It's all a lie, a big fat lie. What you ask? I’ll tell you…this myth about lawyers not having time to scratch their posteriors, too busy to have families, hobbies all that stuff. I’m on vacation til law school so I have all this free time which I use to surf the web, do you have ANY idea how many blogs there are out there by associates who’re grumbling about how their job sucks and how little time they have??? Need I ask the obvious? If you have so little time how come you manage to find the time to write these convoluted dissertations you call a blog? I think it’s all a game, a lie, a big fat lie. You have lives, you have money and your job doesn’t suck that much.

You know it’s true…

Evan Schaeffer tells a far out story about why it's important that lawyers have hobbies. It's something that I've thought about on and off over the past couple of years while working in BIGLAW. It always struck me how one dimensional the lawyers were. Of the ones I got to know pretty well, only one was able to make time to play basketball regularly. Of the others some just seemed really dull and had probably never heard of the word hobby and the rest were only too willing to bemoan the fact that since they left law school they’ve been unable to maintain an interest or active participation in whatever hobby they had had.

This has been the aspect of BIGLAW that’s scared me. The most that the majority of the lawyers seemed able to squeeze into their busy schedule was a weekend golf session with their practice group (which we all know was just another place for them to discuss business. The thing is if you listened to all these people it’s like at the end of law school you make a choice; red pill or blue pill (sorry had to say that, I’m a huge fan) anyway, the choice is between life and your law firm. Once the choice was made it was irreversible and they were doomed to become boring lifeless workaholics. I’m very convinced that without some sort of hobby or regular distraction I’d simply burn out or alternatively, be really boring which I’ve mentioned these people are in large part. I think that although there’s no question that being a lawyer is hard work, these people never really made an effort to take back a small portion of their lives. So basically I absolutely refuse to believe that it’s simply impossible to have a hobby while working in BIGLAW, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it because if it’s really impossible, I’m royally screwed.

I think there’s something wrong with me. Here’s why: I received another acceptance to law school yesterday and I wasn’t overly excited. In fact I’m on more pins and needles waiting for my financial aid letters to come than am I with the acceptances. I hesitate to think that I’ve just reached that level of conceitedness that the acceptances no longer matter cause that’d mean I’m a horrible horrible person. I don’t want to be that arrogant, hmm, could I be aiming to be one of the few humble lawyers in the world? I’ll have to think about that. But yeah, back to my point. I’ve heard positive responses from a bunch of schools and now I just want their money so other acceptances that I know I’ll more than likely not take advantage of are kind of moot. Thing is, I know I’ll be pissed when I get the rejection letters. Does this make any sense at all? Do you now think I’m an ungrateful moron, do you want to smack me? Yes? Well that’s OK, you don’t know who I am :p, but I’m still hurt that you didn’t tap into my inner turmoil.

There are still a couple of schools that I haven’t heard from that are total reaches for me so I know I’d be over the moon if I got in…with some money. I mean this isn’t only me either, every time I tell my Mom I got in another school it’s like…”hmm…OK, congrats (I guess)…so would you go to that school over the others you got in?”

All that being said the one thing that I am aware of constantly is how lucky I am to be in this position. I’m extremely grateful for that. I mean it. Am I redeemed in your eyes? Yes? Ok…I like you too and you’re forgiven for wanting to smack me.

I posted earlier about being a fan of the Anonymous Lawyer blog. I was one of the really late losers who found out ages after everybody else that it was Jeremy Blachman posting it. I have to agree with this posting, it's lost most of the appeal for me. I wish he hadn't outed himself.

Where's the fun?

OK, I don’t know if I’m somehow discriminating against old people…but this…is not cool. I’m all for the gift of birth and stuff but I really think it’s unfair to a child to knowingly go get pregnant at 66 years old. I can’t help thinking that in some ways she wanted to be the world’s oldest woman to give birth more than she wanted to have a kid. An earlier article here mentions that she and her husband wanted a kid for 50 years. Now I’m just saying, over the course of 50 years she could have adopted, had a surrogate mother and right now she could be a great grand mother. If she really wanted to have a child, she could have done it.

Of course it’s her right to have a child but I think when you have a child at 66 years old you deny that child so much. Although I know active 66 year olds, I don’t know that many who want to be chasing a child around, when the kid is 10 she’ll be 76 if she makes it. Is she going to be able to carry that child to football practice and stuff or will the child be stuck feeding her apple sauce as she totters around the house trying to remember where she left her walking stick?

Also as the BBC article mentions she was supposed to have twins and unfortunately one died in the womb…but seriously how would she have handled all that and what effect would it have had on those kids?

Might I just say thanks to the U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services for their absolutely revolutionary weight-loss tip. As one of the billions of people who could stand to lose a few pounds and has been unsuccessful in that pursuit (in my case primarily due to laziness and an aversion to excessive sweat), I’d like to say “Thank You”. This has been the pivotal piece of the puzzle that's been missing for all persons aspiring to lose weight. Now, there’s nothing standing in my way because lets face it, all I have to do is eat less and exercise more.

Any tips from the U.S. government on success in law school? Study hard perhaps? Do all reading? Don’t skip class? Am I even close here? Help me out you guys…please!

Narkoleptik friend suggested to me today that since I’ve been accepted to law school and since I have a blog that supposedly about law school that I should offer my mythical readers some advice. Fortunately as very few people (if any) read this blog there is less pressure to give good advice than you would imagine. The lack of pressure is good because I don’t seem to have a reservoir of law school advice to pull from quite yet…maybe in a month or so.

The one thing I can say that has made a world of difference to me is the fact that I applied early. I had the majority of my apps in by mid-October and I got my first acceptance letter the first week of December. It was fantastic because my holidays were set, regardless of what happened I knew I was going to be at *some* law school. I honestly believe that the admissions folk are a bit more lenient in the beginning. So that’s my scintillating bit of advice: APPLY EARLY. Not very original but Narkoleptik friend can be happy.

In my inaugural (makes it sound important doesn’t it?) post I mentioned something about legal minded folk not being the most original of people. The one link I’ve managed to add to my blog thus far has been one to Anonymous Lawyer which everyone knows about. It’s become quite a phenomenon – and rightly so, it’s really funny and insightful.

Today I came across two other blogs; one called Anonymous Recent College Grad and another Called Anonymous Law Professor and yet another called Anonymous Law Student. See a trend here...?

I'm sure there are more.

Apple:

You Rock!

Unless you’ve been living under a rock…or just don’t give a shit, you must have heard about the Ipod Shuffle. It’s gorgeous and I want one. Of course I already have a 15gb Ipod and since I’m a lazy bum who doesn’t jog, run, walk or do many (read any) of the activities that people will invariably use the Shuffle for so really now that I think about it…there’s very little reason for me to actually get one. There’s also the fact that I’m on my way to racking up 120K worth of debt. Narkoleptik friend mentioned that perhaps it wouldn’t be a good idea to get even more debt, I think…what’s another $150 added to 120K?

And no, I’m not planning to be a tax lawyer.

I should mention that I worked in a law firm for about a year. One of those top law firms in NYC where everybody makes a large sums of money which they never have time to spend. Now, the interesting thing about my experience is that the vast majority of lawyers I spoke to (I got to know a fair number of them pretty well) were all like, “don’t go to law school, you don’t want to be a lawyer, look at me – you don’t want to be like me do you?” Well, yeah I thought I did until you started telling me how much your job sucks. But if it sucks so much, how come you put on your Burberry coat, pick up your Louis Vuitton briefcase and come back at 7:00am every morning?

This is troubling; I know being a lawyer is nothing like TV – very few of the lawyers I met were cute enough to be on TV. Anyway, my point – why do all these people hate their jobs? Will I hate it too and am I just a sucker for still wanting to be a lawyer despite all this talk that being a lawyer sucks? I have visions of being stimulated by my job, you know…actually wanting to do it, not just for the money but because it’s what I want to do and because it…fulfils me.

Is this a pipe dream? Am I about to borrow 100K to pay for an overly expensive boat ride up shit creek? Should I sell all my worldly belongings (very few) and go be a tree hugger?

One of the things I have started to do since I became obsessed with law school is comb the internet for any and all law school related things (thanks Google). One of the sites I came across is LawSchoolNumbers.com which was linked from lawschooldiscussion.org. LawSchoolNumbers is a website that allows anonymous posters to put up their GPA and LSAT score(s) and other extra-curricular info as well as the schools to which they applied and whether they got accepted, rejected, deferred. This is all done, I gather, to help other aspiring law students like myself. The one thing I can’t help thinking is, isn’t it possible that all of this is crap? You know like somebody will put that they have a 2.1 gpa from Green Mountain College (in Vermont) and a 156 LSAT and got into a top 25 law school just to make you scratch your heads?

I ask because I do believe that I’m capable of doing something like that depending on my mood. I’ve never done it mind you, and there’s a 99.99% chance that I never will but there’s that possibility that I could feel just that idle one day or that someone else just might. I know I’m not the only idle one out there. Don’t pretend.

The reason I bring this up is because I happened upon a very passionate (read angry) discussion on LawSchooLdiscussion about the unfair admittance policies of some of the top 25 law schools. The whole thing degenerated into a mud-slinging match centered around affirmative action because as some of our main characters claimed some of the scores of the people on LawSchoolNumbers who got into top schools are only possible because they’re minority (read black…or African American if that’s more politically correct). I won’t touch on the affirmative action issue right now as it is relatively late and I won’t be able to do it justice but I think that it is important that some of these things have to be taken with a grain of salt, I mean here I am writing all this stuff, for all you know I’m Paris Hilton pretending I can make complete sentences. OK, no, that’s too much of a stretch. My point is, however, that even if I say that whatever I’m writing is true doesn’t necessarily mean that it is and it’s certainly not a good idea to use unproven facts as a basis for a serious debate.

Wow! Somebody actually read my blog and...posted a comment! Knot dude...or dudette you made my day!

A little bit about me but hopefully not enough to make any of the currently non-existent people who read this blog figure out who I am.

I’m female, went to one of those top colleges where people always claim that if only we were a little bit older we’d have been ivy. We do have enough ivy on the buildings to comfort some of us.

I did decently in college. Also did decently on the LSAT (sans $1200 prep course). Could I be any more vague? My paranoid soul rests happily. (Don’t worry decently isn’t a euphemism for 2.5/150)

Seriously though, the reason I am so vague is because I have already been admitted to a few schools and my scores aren’t particularly relevant at this point and I may casually encourage friends to stop by this “blog I came across on the web” and I don’t want them to figure me out quite yet. Yes I have to troll for readers I admit it.

I thought it would be best for my chances and my blood pressure to get in my applications as early as possible, and if my acceptances are any indication, earlier is better. As for the actual application process: I did my LSATs in July 2004 and got my recommendations in to the LSAC by late August. The beginning of September I started calling my target schools to find out when they started accepting applications and filled up my little database in Excel. I then proceeded to submit all applications as early as possible. I started getting acceptances in early December so it has been a good end to a really stressful year.

Now of course I have to deal with troubling issues such as financing law school and actually deciding where to go, but I’m infinitely more grateful that these are my troubles as opposed to not having anywhere to go next year.

This is meant to be my life in the months prior to and during law school. Yes, yes, I know it's not the most original idea but have you been on the internet? There's nothing original there and I'm not imaginative enough to think up something original right now. Have you forgotten? I want to be a lawyer! There are no imaginative lawyers out there, and I doubt I'll be the first.

Seriously though, I figured it's time I get with this whole blog thing because...well...everybody else is doing it and because for the past few months I've been eating, breathing and sleeping law school admissions. I'll tell you about a few of my nightmares if I can face them later.

As I was reading a few of the law blogs that I frequent during my law obsessed phase I realized that the vast majority of blogs all link to the same blogs. You know like Brian Leiter, JD2B.com and so on. One more point on the lack of originality that seems to infuse myself and other like-minded wanna-be-lawyer folk. In that vein, as soon as I figure out how this link thing works I'll link to some of the more popular (and interesting) blogs out there.

I'm really quite curious about how this blog is going to turn out because based on my history; this doesn't seem to be a project that I'll keep up for a long time. All attempts to write a diary have all failed miserably after a couple days. Hmm...maybe I'm just not that interesting of a person. Also for some reason every time I consider writing a diary I become infused with paranoia and start thinking about people reading my deepest thoughts and feeling exposed when I very well know that due to said paranoia I'd never write my deepest thoughts in the diary anyway. Did you get that? Was it confusing and essentially pointless? Hey, maybe I am cut out for this lawyer thing.

All that crap about my paranoia of course explains why I’ve decided to spend my free time (I’ve got lots) detailing my law school drama with you all. Is it this mythical anonymity that the internet provides that’s possibly steering me? Well yeah, that plus it’s free. I like free and who wouldn’t love to chronicle every boring moment of their lives for free in a place where people can read it if they’re bored enough?