I. Sociology. Socrates. Teeth.

My major in college was sociology, which is different from, say rocket science, in that it gets no respect. However, it's also similar to rocket science in that most people don't know what the heck it is, including sociology majors. However, sociology prepared me well for law school: law students, likewise get no respect. It has to do with asking questions. The Socratic Method (named after rapper, Method Man) employs the act of questioning as a means of seeking truth, of provoking thought, and of humbling the first year law student. It is standard procedure for lowering cocky first-years down a peg or three. The Socratic method is defined in Black's Law Dictionary as: 1) hanging a law student out to dry because she didn't do her homework; 2) hanging a law student out to dry because he's weak minded; or 3) hanging a law student out to dry because he didn't do his homework and is weak minded. Drilling an ignorant student to glean information that's not there is an interesting sideshow, yet ultimately, it's like a dentist drilling a perfectly healthy tooth. Good for torture, like in that movie Marathon Man, but not good for one's dental health or legal knowledge.

II. More Socrates. The Paper Chase. Student Loans.

A large audience shall attend to observe the Socraticization (no, that's not a "word") of a single student. I say a large audience because law school classes are necessarily inundated: there are 2.6 attorneys per capita in San Diego County, and they all have to come from somewhere. In addition to graduating practicing attorneys, law school educates a fair number not destined for the legal profession. Law school's first-year class must accommodate a bottom 10% to be automatically expelled at year’s end. It also matriculates juris doctorates who will not become lawyers. A non-abundance of legal positions may be a shocker to the new grad. School statisticians lure fresh-faced applicants by boasting enviable rates of employment once school's done. They do not underline that "employment" denotes any type or form of work. A graduate folding Gap-khakis is "employed" with equal statistical weight as a classmate inducted to a Big-Firm in a Tall-Building (that is a practice with fat-pocketed clients). Both types of grads bear the onus of six-figured student-loan debt.

As this is nominally a bankruptcy blog, it merits discussion that student loan debt is a type of debt excepted from bankruptcy discharge. Though, discharge may be permitted for hardship--“hardship,” being defined in 11 USC §523(a)(8) as “just kidding” or: The state of being 1) dead; or 2) disabled to the extent that sometimes you wish you were. The egalitarian lobby-group, the Deceased for the Equal Treatment of Hardship (“DETH”) is currently attempting to expand the hardship exception on behalf of the living.

Now, back to that audience observing a classmate--who might be a mate, or might be a competitor, but most likely a competitor--suffer a barrage of questions for questions' sake. Both professor and student know the latter has no answers.

III. Yet More Socrates. Steel and Glass. Drop Outs.

Most observers of the Method occupy one of three types of emotional response: 1) schadenfreude; 2) gladitsnotmeism (break that one down); or 3) indifference. These types shall successfully become Big-Firm-in-a-Tall-Building automatons; associates hunched in windowless confines within steel and glass--towers that scrape an unseen sky: these are Tall-Building Lawyers in exclusive service to the corporate entity. The exceptions to these observers---students with sympathy--are prone to drop out of law school. Or stay the course, graduate, and represent the community or a consumer clientele.

IV. Canadian. Cashews. Baleful Response to the Exchange of Nuts.

A fourth emotional response to observance of law-school haplessness--besides schadenfreude, gladitsnotmeism (did you break that one down?), and indifference--was eating cashews. I was seated by a Canadian exchange student who would share with me cashews from an uneconomical-single-serving-size bag of cashews. She shared not because she volunteered to, but because I can't turn a good cashew down, even if it's not being offered to me, and I have to ask for it. So, while law professors grilled, I ate nuts. Of note (but not really), the Canadian exchange-student's German-exchange-student boyfriend didn't take kindly to this cashew sharing. I ascertained this from a third-party report that he'd been staring at me across the quad with murder in his eyes. I hadn't noticed, due to indifference.

The point is that law students must learn respect is something they'll have to earn. And there's no better preparation for that than a degree in sociology.

V. Sociology: a Brief History

The day I met my then-future sister-in-law, she prompted me to report my college pedigree. I promptly answered "sociology," and she promptly spat out her beer. I tugged at my collar, except that I didn't have a collar--I wore a tee-shirt-- so I guess I mimed it, muttered something about "no respect," and changed the subject. Fortunately, her sister--my future-wife pretended to be more hospitable.

Selecting this major stemmed from fascination with the writings of Durkheim, Foucault, Comte, and Weber and had nothing to do with the high female-to-male ratio in sociology classes. I did not take interest in any sociologist (or Canadian for that matter--I just wanted her cashews); I was destined to only love and marry a molecular pathologist. My wife, Robin would contend that molecular pathology is at least arguably, slightly more complex than sociology. I differ. She then tends to compare the relative merits of our college writings, to what end I don't know. I had in my salad days composed sociology papers of great depth, which is apparent in such titles as, "The Impact of Leash Laws Upon the Mores of the Modern Canine," (ca. 1995) and "Leaf Blowers: an Empirical Study of the Intersection of Humans and Leaves," also from 1995--it was a prolific year. Contemporaneously, Robin published the study, "Erythropoietin Promotes MCF-7 Breast Cancer Cell Migration by an ERK/Mitogen-activated Protein Kinase-dependent Pathway and Is Primarily Responsible for the Increase in Migration Observed in Hypoxia." Now you tell me, whose writings--mine or Robin's--do you believe further advanced man's pursuit of knowledge? In fact, Robin's breast-cancer research failed to obtain permanent access to the great repository that is Wikipedia; its editors summarily removed her contributions therein, something about urokinase-type plasminogen and epithelial-mesenchymal transition. Robin says the rejection pertains to her suggestion of pernicious side effects in multi-billion-dollar pharmaceutical-treatments. I think they had trouble pronouncing the words.

It is futile within these blogatory* confines to impart upon the reader the integral role of sociology in humanistic study. That is not a cop out**; the discipline is too... big for the space herein. You'll just have to take my word for it: sociology is deep, man. Still, the spitting-out-of-beer-at-its-mention remains a commonplace response to confession of this college major. Yet, the humility that accompanied me as an undergrad made the law-school transition a smooth one.

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*No, that's not a word, but it should be, as in: " blo·ga·tory [blä-gŭ-tō-rē] adj. 1. something of a bloggish nature

**Yes it is. Like I said, most people don't know what the heck sociology is. I am no exception, though from having studied it I may at least posit that, "It's about society and stuff. "