Phases and Changes

Caveat: While I enjoy the company of many Boomers individually, I'm an Xer and, accordingly, have very little tolerance for them as a group. You're welcome to send me comments pointing out how little tolerance I have for Boomers, but I'm already aware and okay with it.

I was born right in the middle of Generation X (1968), so I turned 40 last year, right on time. Overall, it was a positive experience. With Boomers as our role models on aging, and their refusal to age, 40 is pretty much everything it's cracked up to be and more.

But things aren't all roses on the other side of 40. Oh no. See, Xers should be moving into the leadership phase of adulthood, having completed the activity phase. We've married (some of us have had the time and energy to do it more than once already), had children, established careers, and we're now ready to steer the ship.

And we should be steering the ship. Because we're done loading the ship. The Millennials are now the "It" generation (in a good "it girl" kind of way; we used to be the "It" generation but in more of a "gotcha, you're it" kind of way). They've splashed on the scene, made a big impact what with the electing of the President and all. Public service is cool again, thanks to them. In my opinion as Someone Who Pays Attention to These Things, the Millennial generation is everything we were promised and more (which chaps the hide of Boomers no end, for some reason; obviously this just makes me love the Millennials even more). So even if we weren't ready to steer the ship, there's no more room on the loading team, so we might as well steer. Right?

No. About that, you would be dead wrong. We *can't* steer the way the previous three generations were allowed to steer. Why? Because the frickin' Boomers aren't done leading. My entire life has been filled with doomsday messages about the fact that Boomers are not going die out in quite the way they would need to not to bankrupt Social Security. Okay, fine. I'm not just dying for them to . . . well, die. But I would like them to *retire*. Otherwise, what are Xers to do? We can't be the leaders because the leaders won't move on to stewardship. We can't be the young whippersnappers anymore because someone else has taken that job. So once again we're just in limbo. Once latch-key kids, we're now latch-key adults. We're authorized to make ourself a sandwich and do our homework, but we're not allowed to use the phone or answer the door. I'm not saying we would steer the ship to greatness. Hell, we may just run the damn thing into the ground. But it's our turn to run it into the ground.

This is all exacerbated when you're an Xer in legal education. Already, people don't retire from legal education until it's 15 years past reasonable. And why would you? As my friend Christine Hurt has said, retirement is about setting your own hours, reading and writing about the things that interest you, and sharing your knowledge with the young people. That's our job description. So I understand that Boomers may not want to retire. But most law professors do at least have the decency to quit wanting to be all involved in things when they hit . . . I don't know . . . 65? And it grates all the more to know that many Boomers can't retire because their cohorts just ran the global economy into the ground right as they were on the verge of bankrupting Social Security.

Perhaps it's all for the best, though. Everyone's been afraid of what a world run by Xers would look like (myself included). It's starting to look like things will pass straight from the Boomers to the Millennials, so everyone may be spared that particular future shock.

My Twitter Empire

So on March 7, I said that I would try a 30-day Twitter experiment. I don't think I've posted anything on the blog since. I think most of the stuff I posted was drafted before March 7 and just scheduled to post (except for the April Fool's post -- that was sheer genius inspired by the moment). So what have I been doing with the time I might have otherwise spent blogging?

Well, first of all, you can't just have the one Twitter account, in my opinion. Although I live life pretty openly on the web (as my Facebook peeps can attest since my Tuesday weight-loss saga started six weeks ago), I'm still persnickety about who knows what aspects of my "bidness." So I started with a personal account (tmcgaugh) and a professional/blogger account (millennialprof). After all, people who might be interested in what's going on personally may have no interest whatsoever in my various thoughts about generational/education stuff -- and vice versa, most likely. But I've also been doing a stint in the Dean of Students office and thought it would be cool to offer a Twitter feed of useful Office of Student Services info (registration updates, upcoming programs, the latest in the perpetual smackdown with CSO, etc.). Obviously, some of the generational stuff can be a little caustic for an official Student Services feed, and obviously my personal Twitter feed is no place for registration updates. So I created one for Student Services (TouroLaw_OSS). I linked that one to the Student Services blog so it was pretty self updating.

So then I clearly needed something to help me manage these three Twitter feeds and to help me learn who else was tweeting about things that pertained to these three different areas of my life (my tweeple -- or tweeps, for short). So first I tried twhirl. I liked twhirl for a variety of reasons: the swirly logo, the fact that it could handle multiple accounts, and the fact that it was something new to divert me from doing work that made any kind of contribution to the world. But twhirl was just a little too high maintenance for three Twitter accounts. So then I added Tweetdeck. Mostly because everyone else's Tweets seemed to come from Tweetdeck.

I LOVED TWEETDECK. It was a deck. For tweets. And all that that implies. I had one column for what I was tweeting, one column for direct messages (DM's) to me, one column for public replies (@) to me, and four different standing columns representing searches that were important ("important" being a relative term when we're talking about Twitter) to me. But Tweetdeck didn't quite fill my every need. It was more cohesive than twhirl, but it still wouldn't handle multiple accounts. So alas, my wondering heart set out to find another to love.

NOW I LOVE SEESMIC. Seesmic is a deck. For tweets. And multiple accounts. But it's not my first love, so I have a more practical relationship with Seesmic. I no longer believe in true love. I no longer believe in love at first sight. I know now that all relationships are a compromise, that you give to get. So while Seesmic handles my multiple Twitter accounts (and my Facebook friend feed, THANK HEAVENS), it doesn't show me those nice rows of search terms. Maybe it *can*, but I haven't even asked, so sure am I that no Twitter app can satisfy me completely. But it handles those multiple accounts so beautifully that I set about making sure that I was only following law schools with my millennialprof and TouroLaw_OSS accounts and that I was only following friends with my personal account. That took a little bit of doing, and the wrinkles aren't completely out. I'm following a couple of Tweeple with one account even though I don't want to be, and even though I've tried to un-follow them (because on the Internet, all you have to do to make the opposite of a word is add "un" to it!) and block them and whatever else I can do, I'm still seeing their feeds. Whatever. Into every life a little rain must fall.

And since Seesmic is so great with those multiple accounts, I decided to do something with that "legalwriting" account I signed up for AGES ago. Why? Well, Twitter is kind of like the Internet in the early days when every domain name was still available and all you had to do was snap it up. I couldn't stand the thought of a charlatan snapping up "legalwriting" and using it for (gasp) commercial purposes. So I snapped it up, and now I post oh-so-infrequent tidbits about legal writing. At some point, I guess I give it to someone who wants to use it for the Legal Writing Institute? I don't know.

And then I started another personal account for an even more specific slice of my life. That one I'm not revealing because even I am entitled to some privacy. On the Internet. Where the whole world is watching. I don't know.

The real problem is the need to have a different e-mail address for each Twitter username. The first three weren't that hard; I actually had three different e-mail addresses I could use. But then I had to come up with two new e-mail addresses. So I got those on Gmail. So now my main Gmail account pulls in e-mail from five different e-mail addresses.

I know this sounds like sheer insanity. And I *am* appropriately embarrassed about the amount of time and effort that's gone into my Twitter Empire (I even spent half a day shooting video and sending it to Ashton Kutcher for some project he's working on . . . I know, I know . . .). Needless to say that the frenzy has died down somewhat and I'm finding some equilibrium. Sort of. I'm going to turn the TouroLaw_OSS name over officially to the Office of Student Services so I can free up my school e-mail address for . . . you guessed it, yet another Twitter username to use with my students this coming fall. Hey, I'm just riding the wave. I'm letting this thing take me where it wants to go. As a writer and a teacher of writing, I am transfixed by anything that requires all users to concisely state their case.

So what's next on the 30-day experiment deck? 30 days without television. I'm not kidding. Some of my friends are appalled that I have cable, let my children watch it, and even feel the need to cut television out (since it clearly shouldn't be an intruder in my life at all). Others are appalled that I'm cutting it out, so unnecessary a sacrifice is this. But I saw a bunch of people do it on Oprah. So off I go.

Cell Phones in the Classroom and Other Observations

I took a class this past spring semester. The class was fascinating purely for the subject matter. The professor was engaging, insightful, and challenging. And the students certainly seemed, for the most part, engaged, enlightened, and challenged. Except when I sat in the back. Then I could see the whole of the seedy electronic underworld.

The New York Times recently asked whether there was a place for smartphones in the classroom. That's sort of like asking if there's a place for the 500-pound gorilla in the living room. Like it or not, it's there.

Here, in brief, are my top 5 observations from my semester of being educated with (by?) Millennials:

1. Men seemed to use their laptops more for things unrelated to class. Women seemed to favor using their cell phones discretely tucked underneath the table. The laptop abuse on the back row was so distracting that I sometimes sat on the front row where I could concentrate better.

2. I've heard for a couple of years now that students seem to buy a lot of shoes during class. I have to admit that my internalized misogynist assumption was that this referred to women. However, I didn't observe a single shoe transaction by a woman this semester. I did, however, see a couple of men buying shoes. Where does this discretionary income come from? I think I had two -- maybe three -- pair of shoes in law school.

3. The laptop abuse was not nearly as rampant as I assumed it would be. The use of laptops increased directly as you got closer to the back row. On the very back row, about 75-80% of the laptops were being used for non-class purposes. This did not, however, stop the guys (sorry, it was all guys) from commenting frequently in class. As you got closer to the front of the room, the maximum abuse was 30-50%. At the front of the room, 0%.

4. I watched others in front of me as they took notes. Most of them were taking verbatim notes that I couldn't imagine were going to be that helpful when it was time to study. This professor slowly moved you toward "aha" moments. It was engaging in the process, not transcribing it, that allowed you the moment. That being said, knowing that all those people in the class had transcripts of what was going on was enough to make anyone lose their mind and think that having your own transcript was the only way to effectively compete.

5. I haven't taken a class -- unless you count CLE's and conferences -- for about 15 years. I don't usually take my laptop with me to sessions at conferences, and my cell phone is generally buried so far down in my purse that it's not worth the effort to do anything more than turn it off and send it back down to the bottom. However, if I'd used my laptop in this class, the temptation to check e-mail, Facebook, etc., would have been virtually irresistible. Classes are different than CLE's and conferences, where a ton of information is packed into 45-minute or hour-long sessions. Regular class, though, are a journey. I'd forgotten what it was like to have a sense of where things were going but have to wait for others in the class to catch up before we could move on. I also forgot what it was like to have difficulty keeping up. I had both of those experiences again in this class. Both the boredom and the panic leave you wanting an escape.

I probably won't wait another 15 years before taking another class. Watching an excellent professor teach over a period of months was a great learning experience, and watching my students learn over a period of months was equally compelling.

Are Law Professors Obsolete?

In an article that sounds more like it came from a science fiction novel than the Journal of the American Medical Association, researchers report on a new technology that could actually make education unnecessary. Scientists have had early success with implanting a retinal chip that projects information to the front of a user's visual field. Originally, the chip would only display information sent remotely from a related device. The idea was for the chip to act sort of like a tele-prompter, projecting information out in front of someone for them to read or respond to. It could be used for GPS information or even by speech-makers. That part of the technology is several years old, though. The new breakthrough is that researchers have now discovered a way to link the chip remotely to an Internet feed which will respond to requests in the user's brain.

Again, this sounds like science fiction, but it's not as fantastic as it sounds. The "commands" it receives from the brain are actually in the form of electrical impulse patterns. The chip has to be "trained" just like voice recognition software. So the chip learns over time how to determine what the user is requesting based on the pattern of impulses sent from the brain. Right now, in the early stages, it only works with (are you ready for this?) Wikipedia. Obviously, however, the hope is that users will eventually have access to the entire body of information on the Internet.

So that raises the question: Are our days as professors numbered? What's the point of a legal education if anyone can immediately call up the answer to a legal question and rattle it off in court? Will lawyers eventually just be actors? Will law professors just be acting coaches?

It sounds like knowledge is actually on its way to becoming obsolete.

Law School Dress Codes?

Eric Chafee, guest blogging at The Faculty Lounge, talk about dress codes in law firms and wonders whether the economic forces that are moving attire in law firms away from business casual might impact law school faculty as well. Prof. Chafee says he hopes so.

And I'm just as surprised as anyone else to find that I hope so, too. Look, I'm an Xer. I'll get away with what I can get away with. I only need to see one Boomer colleague head off to class without a jacket on, and I'm in. That's all the permission I need for "business casual." But it is a professional school, for heaven's sake. Law professors talk a lot about how students don't behave like professionals, but I wonder whether we adequately set the tone. If our students had a firm sense of what was and was not professional, then I think we could exercise a little more latitude in some of the superficial parts of being a professional, like whether we wear a jacket to class or not. But failing that, I do think that maybe we ought to be presenting the whole package.

On the other hand, I do notice that it's a guy who is issuing the call for traditionally professional attire. And he cites his friend, another guy. I have a friend who has written about dress code, too. Prof. Kathleen Bergin, permablogger over at Faculty Lounge, wrote a piece for the Yale Journal of Law & Feminism: Sexualized Advocacy: The Ascendant Backlash Against Female Lawyers, or as I like to call it, "Just Wear the Damn Pants." Anytime conversation turns to what is and is not professional, I can't help but notice that the standard seems to be very white and very male.

For me, for the foreseeable future, my clothing choices are ultimately not driven by my sense of professionalism or my politics. They're driven by the fact that I'm in a two-profession family with two small daughters and no family in a 2500-mile radius. I wear what's clean.

Well, what's mostly clean.

Why Law Profs & Students Should Care About Twitter

So I've now been using Twitter in earnest for about 5 days now. I'm obsessed. I knew it would be hard to investigate the phenomenon that is Twitter, learn enough about it to understand what it can be used for, and stop the investigation before I got sucked in. And I was right. I overshot "discovery" and sailed straight into "obsession" within about 24 hours.

So I just saw that avid Twitterer Jim Milles has "re-tweeted" a link to a piece about Twitter in Court.

Here's what Jim's tweet (a message on Twitter) looks like: jmilles RT @mrebmann: Twittering and Transparency in the Courtroom http://tinyurl.com/bgewho via @ShareThis

And here's what it means. Jim Milles found information of interest that was in a tweet by Twitter user mrebmann. Jim forwarded this information in his own tweet. The information is on a web site with a predictably-long URL, so it's been shortened using a service called Tiny URL. That short URL (or "tiny URL") goes to the same place as the predictably long URL. And then at the end, it says "via @ShareThis." I have no idea what that means yet. Cut me a little slack. I'm just five days on this new planet.

Why should you care? Why should your students care?

Because the information Jim's tweet refers to is a piece about judges allowing reporters to report on cases from inside the courtroom using Twitter. Twitter, of course, only allows messages of 140 words or less, which is why all of this shorthand has been created. If allowing reports via Twitter becomes routine, look for Twitter shorthand that is law-specific to develop soon. And if you don't know how Twitter works or what those abbreviations mean, you won't be able to keep up with it in real time and decipher whether it's accurate or whether it complies with limit of the court's permission to report via Twitter.

Of course, you could just ignore the whole thing and just hire a 12-year-old to go with you to work every day.

The Twitter Experiment

Millennial Law Prof can be followed on Twitter for the next 30 days as millennialprof. I'll send out quick tips and info for teaching Millennial students. Let's see how this goes!