Ahhh, the MPRE In the Thrall of Friendster Lost in the Law Weekly

Virginia Law Weekly
In the Thrall of Friendster
I’m the first to admit that, despite my efforts to present myself as a New York sophisticate,
sometimes I’m not the coolest.
Like when I sing in the car to
“Supermodel” from the Clueless
soundtrack. Or when I secretly
think Matt Gould, the guy from
Spike TV’s Joe Schmo, is actually adorable. So when I joined
Friendster, I wondered if my
dorky tendencies were getting the
better of me — or was this really
a way to prove that I was anything but?
Meredith Young,
a third-year law
student, is a Law
Weekly columnist.
Friendster (www.friendster.
com) has not only become the
rage among my friends, but it
seems that ex-boyfriends, high
school rivals, and even celebrities like it, too. I’ve found all of
the aforementioned, and then
some. Described by the site’s cre-
getting married... she said yes.
I’m so happy. Love az.”
Aww. The funniest part of the
story is that I actually was able
to fact-check E! Online News because I’m connected to Ahmet.
Fifteen different ways! (MeAnoosh-Yuengling-KeithAmhet), (Me-Mark-JeannieJames-Ahmet), etc., etc.
While I can’t say that any of
the testimonials I have received
are on the level of Mr. Zappa’s, as
I don’t have anyone who took a
plane ride with me and wrote in
to say something about that
memorable event, they do give
your friends free rein to write
just about anything they want —
as long as it’s 1) nice and 2) something you’d approve their saying, since you can reject or accept
what they’ve written before adding it.
Friends of mine have taken
the liberty to do just that. “What
people don’t know about Merrie
is that she has an uncanny record
of being mistaken for celebrities.
One time I was in the mall with
Friday, November 14, 2003
Columns
5
Ahhh, the MPRE
I think we have a pretty good
law school here. We have some
good students and good teachers,
we are in a pretty good location.
We do pretty well with what we
have. Right? So, why don’t the
MPRE people like us? Huh? Why
did I have to drive 110 miles to
Petersburg, Virginia, to sit in a
classroom of 16 people — nine of
whom came from Charlottesville
— to take the frickin’ MPRE? Why
did I take a law entrance exam at
a junior college? I haven’t sat in a
desk that small since the fifth
grade. I haven’t been in a school
that small since Junior High. What
is wrong with Charlottesville? I
know even the Washington & Lee
students would have appreciated
it. We are after all (a) closer, (b) a
law school, and (c) not in Petersburg, Virginia — apparently the
epicenter of Isabel’s wrath.
Drew Larsen, a
third-year law
student, is Law
Weekly Columns
Editor.
Why were two of my roommates
sent to West Virginia University,
a short 280 miles away in beautiful Morgantown, West Virginia?
Okay, you got me, they applied
late, but does that mean they
should have to take a timed test in
a room with no clocks? No clocks.
Could WVU not spare a classroom
with clocks? Do they have classrooms with clocks in West Virginia?
And does Virginia Commonwealth University read its own
classroom schedule before scheduling MPRE tests in its classrooms? Should law students who
drive 80 miles to take a law entrance test at a business school
have to move rooms three times
before finding an empty classroom popular cultural sentiment might
and start a test 40 minutes late? not take place before the next elecAnd why can’t I eat or drink tion. Let’s cut right to the chase. It
during the MRPE? Are they afraid seems crazy, but it just might work.
that I have written professional Good plan, Sir.
ASIDE of an ASIDE: For future
responsibility doctrine on the inside of my Sun-Maid Raisins box? strategeric purposes, Burma
Why can’t I eat my frickin’ rai- changed its name to Myanmar a
sins? Why can’t I drink my frickin’ few years back. No biggie.
Of course I’m not completely
bottled water? I’m not going to
spill. I promise. You are going to ignorant, I have hope that there
entrust me with arguing the law are some rational processes in the
in your state, but you don’t believe MPRE decision-making hierarchy
that I can successfully manipu- that prevent U.Va. Law from hosting this timelate a bottle of
tested tradition.
water without
And I’m not comspilling it. Are we
pletely selfish, I
serious?
realize that there
Drew, you say,
are worse ways to
you are a self-inspend a Friday.
terested brat.
All I had to do on
Yes, I am. But I
Friday was drive
am also environ100 miles, take a
mentally sound.
test, and drive
Over 200 cars left
back. The good life
Charlottesville
is still good.
for half a dozen
But I’m proud
places in search
illustration by Sam Young of WB 104, damn
of one test last
“Strategery”
it! And I want the
Friday. Wouldn’t
whole world to see
it have been
smarter for one car to bring 200 how great it is, just like George W.
tests to Charlottesville? The sim- Bush wants the whole world to see
plicity and efficiency of my argu- how great democratification is.
ment astound even me. Wow, I Terrible closing. Try again.
But, like most of you, I feel as
must be a genius.
ASIDE: I would like to thank though I could do a better job of
President George W. Bush for in- running, well, just about everyspiring me to create such a simple thing... including the MPRE and
but brilliant plan. Last Thursday the USA! Wow, this is getting re— in a simple but brilliant maneu- ally bad. One more try.
I guess all I am trying to say is
ver during a policy speech before
the National Endowment for De- that I returned from an annoying
mocracy — he asked Middle East- trip to Petersburg on Friday
ern countries to try democratic evening to see that my President
ways. Of course! Why didn’t we makes the New York Times front
think of that before? Simple, but page read like The Onion. (“Bush
brilliant. After all, democratic in- Asks Lands in Mideast to Try
stitutions are usually most suc- Democratic Ways.”) Straw.
cessful when imposed from above. Camel’s Back. Broken. Good night,
Organic, grassroots reflection of and try the Pad Thai.
Lost in the Law Weekly
illustration by Sam Young
Meredith runs with a high profile crowd.
ators as “an online social networking community that connects people through networks
of friends for dating or making
new friends,” Friendster virtually puts members on display for
the rest of their network to see —
profiles, message boards, and
personal messages facilitate a
type of medium that IM has never
before seen. Even if one isn’t enthralled with going online to find
and meet friends or “activity partners” or start an Internet romance, the site has created quite
a stir — even the Village Voice,
Manhattan’s hipster newspaper,
did an article last June titled
“Connecting the Dates with
Friendster: Six Degrees of Sexual
Frustration.”
Having 35 friends — and precisely 276,606 people in my network — can make anyone feel
connected. But then I check the
profiles of friends, and friends of
friends of friends of… (you get
the picture) and see that others
list 87 or even 325 people. I then
wonder if I need to dig deeper
into my past and find more
randoms to add.
But I fear that someone who
has 471 friends has way too much
time on his hands — or else is
dating Selma Blair. Maybe both.
Take Ahmet Zappa. Described
by E! News Daily as “rocker offspring,” Zappa is the son of
Frank, the guitarist and prolific
musician in the 1960s and 1970s.
And, according to the daily entertainment website, Zappa announced his engagement to Blair
— best known as the actress in
Cruel Intentions — on, where
else, Friendster. The Sept. 19
sentence in his profile read: “I’m
her and someone came up to her
and said, ‘Hey, aren’t you that
singer, Jewel?’ She was polite,
but told the mistaken fan that
she was not Jewel. I wouldn’t
have believed it if I didn’t see it
with my own eyes.” Thanks, Matt.
Patently untrue, but I do appreciate your creativity.
Sometimes we get messages
that aren’t quite that welcome.
Take my friend’s thought on unwelcome additions: “Once in a
while I get a request to be
someone’s friend and it’s like,
ugh, I wish YOU hadn’t found
me, but it’s a total smack in the
face not to verify friendship, so I
always do.”
Or take the time that a random
bartender who overheard my conversation with a friend about how
silly but addictive Friendster is
decided to ask me my name, how
long I’ve used it, and so on. Since
I’m not in N.Y., I feel bad giving
fake names — C’ville is too small
to avoid seeing a person only once.
Apparently the first name
“Meredith” and the buzzwords
“law student” were enough for the
guy to send me a personal message to say hello and to invite me
personally (!) to South Street that
Friday. Ironically enough, the guy
was in my personal network
through other friends.
Needless to say, I did not respond to that personal request.
Does any of this really take away
— or add to — my persona? You’ve
got to be kidding. But for some
reason, Friendster is particularly
gratifying and can indeed make
you feel good — especially when
you see how dorky your ex-boyfriend from junior year looks in
his picture.
What do I have to say that you
would want to read? Perhaps there
is a lot that I have to say that you
would find enlightening, but the
more likely scenario is that you
will value pretty close to nothing
of what I have to say.
Oreste McClung,
a third-year law
student, is a Law
Weekly columnist.
Many of my columns don’t really say very much. Some are intended to be funny, but contain
too many inside jokes to
be funny for most of you.
Some are meant to make
you question your beliefs
about the world. But you
probably will not change
your mind much because
of something I say or write.
Portions of my columns are
purely therapeutic in nature. I am working out issues in my own mind and
conveying them to you in
my own code. “Creative”
writers often say that they
write for themselves, not
for their audience, but I
am supposed to be writing
for you, the readers of the
Law Weekly.
You are such a “diverse”
group and I cannot hope
to connect with most of you, but
rather only a few at a time. How
often do you appreciate what you
read when you don’t find it to be
either funny or particularly relevant to your life? You like what
you read because it resonates with
what is going on in your head,
consciously or not. My head is different from yours, so it is far less
than certain that we will connect.
It may be promising for you that
your head and the mind that lives
inside it are not much like mine.
Before composing this thing of
beauty that is my column, I decided to do some research. I read
last week’s edition of the Law
Weekly from start to finish, including my own “existentialist”
column. To my delight I got to see
what I looked like dressed up as
the Cat in the Hat, as if seeing a
picture of me and my first-year
windblown fro is not enough to
deal with. My conclusion after
reading the whole paper was that
I was not dumber after reading it.
There was some poor writing, not
surprisingly a fair amount in my
own column, and there were exhi-
writers along with the advent of
DICTA.
Well, whether it is improving
or not, I would like to credit the
Law Weekly for persisting as a
medium of communication for a
wide range of viewpoints. To be
sure many of us as in the Law
School community have different expectations and standards
for what will and does make a
“good” Law Weekly. For the faculty, the Law Weekly may remain as only good for lining the
litter box after they have read
the faculty quotes and also noticed in ANG which person among
them is incapable of
stopping the “instruction” at our agreed-upon
time.
On
second
thought, that is unfair.
Often the faculty do get
more out of the paper
than that, but not much.
I agree with some faculty sentiments — i.e.,
this paper can often resemble a big pile of sh*t
with lots of flies buzzing on and around it. At
times, I help to give that
pile of sh*t its shape. If
only we could all be
Horsty McLiver all of
the time.
This is my last colphoto by Sam Young
umn of the semester,
Man... what a rag!
but should I write anbitions of diarrhea of the mouth other column in the future, I shall
here and there. But there were strive to be less random, less adalso some laughs, wows, and a herent to the inside joke, and
modest amount of interesting more relevant, but hopefully I
thoughts and observations. It has will not sacrifice the ability to
been said by more than a few that share with you any remnants
the Law Weekly has improved in there are of the unique insight
quality since last year. Some and humor that may have once
wisely credit the new manage- emanated from this confused
ment, and others cite the absence brain.
of the true VANGUARD and its disHere is one last message for
tracting summary of the week’s you. I hope you enjoy it. Ernest
debauchery. Some may credit the Hemingway pointed out that the
addition of a few promising new sun also rises. Well, beautiful
women also sh*t. So there it is.