{"id":218,"date":"2005-08-13T23:34:07","date_gmt":"2005-08-14T07:34:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tgdarkly.com\/blog\/?p=201"},"modified":"2005-08-13T23:34:07","modified_gmt":"2005-08-14T07:34:07","slug":"my-weakness-my-circumstances-my-questions-and-contentment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/2005\/08\/13\/my-weakness-my-circumstances-my-questions-and-contentment\/","title":{"rendered":"My Weakness, My Circumstances, My Questions, and Contentment"},"content":{"rendered":"

This week I attended a conference of intellectual property law scholars. I presented my current paper on peer-to-peer file sharing litigation, and heard presentations of many other interesting papers (see my SSRN<\/a> page if you’re curious about my paper). It was the sort of thing I enjoy about academia. Yet, I was vaguely disturbed during the entire conference, until I had a conversation that brought my discomfort to a boil.
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\nThe problem is that my full-time academic appointment is in an undergraduate institution. Teaching law to undregraduates is seen in legal academia as sort of like being a gym teacher. The real<\/em> scholars teach at law schools. When you mention to colleagues that you teach at an undergraduate institution, you get a sort of “Oh, isn’t that nice” response.<\/p>\n

This shouldn’t bother me. I was offered a very good faculty appointment at a decent law school last year, but chose to say where I am, so that we could remain close to family and not move to a city we thought would be difficult for our children. It was a “bad career move,” one which I second-guess constantly, but which I believe was best for my wife and three young kids. And I enjoy my job; actually it’s a great job, with good colleagues, diverse and interesting students, and a flexible schedule.<\/p>\n

But still, the real action, in terms of intellectual life in the law, is at the law schools. Yet, even the one chance for a law school appointment that I turned down was extraordinary. The market for law faculty jobs is merciless. And this leads to the conversation at the conference that threw me down the dark paths.<\/p>\n

I had intereviewed at several other law schools last year, including one that seemed like a good fit. Everything about my interviews and presentation there went very well, but at the last minute I didn’t get the job. They told me there were some internal political issues about the curriculum, and that as a result they had decided not to hire someone in my field. At the conference last week, however, I ran into one of the people who intereviewed me at this particular school. He told me he liked my scholarship and had supported my candidacy, but others on the faculty were reluctant to hire me because I lack the typical paper credentials. As he put it, “some guy on the faculty says, ‘I went to Harvard Law School; we should be able to find a patent law professor who also went to Harvard Law School.'” And that’s that.<\/p>\n

Most law faculty got their J.D.’s at elite law schools, and many also went to elite colleges. I didn’t. I was a decent student in high school and college, but not exceptional, and I did reasonably well, but again not exceptional, on the various standardized entrance exams. So, rather than Princeton and Harvard, my c.v. mentions Gordon and Seton Hall. Not names that trigger thoughts of scholarly brilliance. Yet, my c.v. does show significant, continuous growth — I graduated 22nd out of 255 students in my law school class; obtained a second law degree (called a “Master of Laws”) from NYU Law School, which is now ranked number 5 in the nation, with high grades; made Partner at a major law firm; and wrote scholarly articles that have been published in journals from schools like Harvard and Vanderbilt. But many folks in the legal academy don’t seem to have any concept of how intellectual maturity often develops over time. They’re mostly concerned about what diplomas you earned fifteen or twenty years ago.<\/p>\n

None of this surprises me. I’ve known it since I left practice for my first temporary teaching job. But still, it’s painful and disconcerting to hear about how it is actually affecting me.<\/p>\n

And all of this, I guess, brings to a point I wanted to make about circumstances. I’m not sure why God has placed me in these circumstances. He’s given me this burning desire to expand and use my intellect, he’s blessed me with some wonderful opportunities (including my current college teaching job), and yet I’m not quite good enough<\/em> to really make a difference. I can see clearly what I want to achieve, the kind of teacher, mentor and scholar I want to be, and I know I’m capable of doing it, yet my background makes it difficult for me to get the best opportunities to do so. Am I, like Moses, chosen for a task for which I’m not fully capable in myself, in order to demonstrate God’s grace and power as He accomplishes it through me? Or am I just deceiving myself, chasing after something that’s beyond me, like a career minor league ballplayer who should know he’ll never make the majors? I don’t see any answers to these questions, which have dogged me for so long.<\/p>\n

I know that, regardless of the answers, I want to be “content in any and every situation,” and to trust that “I can do everything through him who gives me strength.” Phil. 4:10-13<\/a>. We often overlook (I hadn’t noticed it until just now) how Paul ties the famous “I can do everything through him who gives me strength” statement to the idea of contentment in his circumstances. God gives us the grace to do what needs to be done in the circumstances we inhabit. Because of that grace, we can be content — glad for positive circumstances when they come, but not obsessing over the desire for circumstantial change when they don’t. Still — if only, if only, if only…….<\/p>\n

God give me the grace to be content and serve humbly and effectively now and wherever He may call me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This week I attended a conference of intellectual property law scholars. I presented my current paper on peer-to-peer file sharing litigation, and heard presentations of many other interesting papers (see my SSRN page if you’re curious about my paper). It was the sort of thing I enjoy about academia. Yet, I was vaguely disturbed during […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-218","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-spirituality"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p824rZ-3w","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=218"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}