Law school is ending

As I take a break/procastinate from my final law school exam (it's a take-home), I just wanted to share something that I am going to miss about law school--the crazy people. Don't get me wrong, law school is full of 95% normal people, it's the few odd balls that make it interesting. Here is an email written by someone to his orientation group, a couple of weeks before the start of my first year. The last three years of law school have only solidified the fact that this guy is strange. And if you're thinking to yourself while reading this, "I bet this guy is really into the Renaissance fair," you are correct. Enjoy. PS, names have been changed.

Dear Classmates,

At the risk of sounding corny or 'summer-campy' or too confessional (or just too pedantic/pompous/boring), I would just like to introduce myself. I most likely met some of you at the July social, but I must admit that I do not have a stellar memory for names.

My name is Richard Kimball, and I was born & raised in a small prairie town west of Dallas, TX, frolicking with the chickens, cows, goats, pigs, ponies and my 7 siblings and clambering up tall oak trees on our modest 7 acre homestead. I received my schooling in large part from Cistercian monks, many of whom were Cold War refugees from Communist Hungary; on an interesting legal side-note, the monk's abbot (and my sophomore algebra teacher) enrolled in the Budapest law school as a life-saving cover while he was, illegally, in seminary.

My grammar- and high school English teacher/Drama coach was also an attorney, and he sparked my first interest in the law (my own family being dedicated, for several generations back, to medicine; I am the first in my family to pursue legal studies). One of the fondest memories from my gangly, awkward high school years was the mock jury trial that we staged in Freshman English; juggling the Texas penal code and Bronze Age texts and cultural norms, I prosecuted Homer's Odysseus for murder and conspiracy. Perhaps indicative of my life as a social caterpillar (not butterfly), I was thrilled to interview my local police chief, comb through the criminal code at the Dallas Public Library, build a case, cross-examine the epic 'hero,' and after no small effort, secure a conviction--2 years before I drove a car.

As an undergrad, I double-majored in Classics (Greek & Latin) and Drama at the University of Dallas, a small private Catholic liberal arts college in Irving, TX. I served in student government all 4 years, led various student clubs, was quite argumentative, but never did Moot Court or any pre-law activities (on retrospect, I have no idea why not). After graduation in 2001, I spent a year working for a Benedictine monastery in the mountains of Umbria, Italy. I then returned to the US for work and graduate school; for the former, I taught Latin, English, and Drama at my old prep school, and for the latter, I studied literature and rhetoric at the Univ. of Dallas. One of my favorite graduate classes focused on the life and corpus of St. Thomas More, a personal hero of mine; I am also quite partial to Shakespeare, Dante, Homer, Aristophanes, and Hawthorne. I then also had the opportunity to judge high school/college forensics competitions, sparking a belated interest in debate and moot court. I also learned some tough lessons in realpolitik, picking my way through a legal/political minefield during a grassroots campaign involving campus free-speech issues. Needless to say, reason and compromise prevailed.

After 3 years on both sides of the desk, and most of my life in Texas, I took my master's degree and a new position as an adjunct professor in the University of Wisconsin system. For the past two years now, I have been teaching various levels of college English composition and rhetoric (at UW-Fox Valley in Appleton, at UW-Green Bay, at UW-Manitowoc). For 2 years as well, I also have been teaching an evening class in ethics (geared toward working adults, many of whom were twice my age!) at Lakeland College in Green Bay. Having toiled as a professional educator for over 5 years now, I am now eager to advance my own education and am looking forward, with trepidation but also determination, to law school.

On a personal note, I married my grad school sweetheart Kara in July 2006, and we have a robust and charming son Robert, almost 4 months now (see my Facebook album). We are living in a quiet suburb about 20 min. SW of Milwaukee, so you won't likely find me at the downtown pubs in the wee hours.

In sum, then, I am a bit of a ringer, having been out of undergrad life for 6 years now. I do look forward to meeting and getting to know all of you, as we dive into this trial by fire.

Richard Kimball