The Nursing CLE Event, an Interview & More Random People From the Past Bugging Me

As mentioned before, I went to a nursing conference recently on endometriosis. This actually took place at Lenox Hill hospital in their auditorium. Despite not being a nurse myself, I had a few reasons for going:

1. Networking (but to be fair, that's a reason for me to most things in life)
2. Comparing a medical CLE event to the numerous legal CLE events I've gone to, that thankfully I don't have to attend live if I don't want to at this point
3. Helping out a friend via accomplishing #1

After doing this, I had an interview for a story on my whole childfree experience. That publicity from Slate.com just keeps paying off in various ways. I wonder if that's also how random people from the past are coming out of the woodwork to contact me.

So, I went to this event & have some impressions:

A) These doctors & speakers were much better than many lawyers I've seen speak. First off, none of you are going to compare to Dr. Seckin's presentation where he had illustrations of his topic. People marveled at the production values he had. Very few attorneys could pull that off.

I also noticed more eye contact & sincere attempts to engage the audience. Another thing I've not seen often enough in presenters at legal CLEs.

B) I ordered the right food. Yes, you got a choice of lunch & I picked well since I liked my main course. The spread was nice & they posted signs telling you what items were. I thank that catering company for that. It's the first time I've seen that; some of us didn't live in households with very cosmopolitan menus so unless it's familiar to those folk, we won't tend to eat or try new things. Ironic that I'm not a foodie but I'm a Yelp Elite, isn't it? I know some of those folks are.

C) I didn't see younger nurses & I don't know what the custom is for them and business cards. No one gave me theirs so I didn't give mine. In some cases, I just didn't get the vibe to do it or feel that I was dealing with the right population. I'm trying to find the non-traditional, disaffected types.

For those who aren't aware, I do get vibes from people sometimes. I'm not great at it but I have gotten them before. When I don't get a good vibe or an open vibe, I'm not going to bother. That's just how I operate. I got that vibe big time from their celebrity spokesperson (not a big time person in case you were wondering).

As I've said before most people I've met in entertainment, even higher profile people, tend to be very nice if they hear you're a lawyer. This person didn't so believe me, that's going to be duly noted.

My sister wants to do nursing and all I can say after this is she'd better be darn good at science if she wants to be a success at it. I'm not sure if she is or what her feelings are on it.

After that, I had my interview & that went better save for this old lady in the restaurant who was remarking on my speaking. I hear her keep saying "She talks a lot!" (well, duh I was being interviewed so of course I was) & making other cracks as I'm doing the interview. When I came in, there was a lot of people but when we got to later in the interview, there were very few people.

I get asked one question after hearing this woman carrying on & in answering (and hearing her mutter again loudly) I mutter "Bitch" under my breath. My interviewer asked about it but figuring she may not have heard this bitchy woman, I didn't bring it up & just kept going in the interview.

After that, I didn't notice the bitch making more comments about me. She moved on to some gentlemen sitting to our left. I'm not sure if she was insane, if the restaurant knew about her or what the deal was.

I don't think going to the conference was a total waste (though I hate getting up early if I'm not getting paid for it) but I didn't really get to network & just didn't have much of a vibe. I figure if I do that sort of networking, I'd have to do just do it online through LinkedIn or something. However, I did observe that the way endometriosis is treated by many doctors & society is one example of the total disregard women are given in society. I also feel like at least the medical community is more concerned about people's day to day experiences & offering programs with information people can use when they walk out the door. I wish more CLEs had that; it feels like many of them don't have things I can use in my day to day life since I don't work in some mega-law firm or have a traditional job (note I didn't say "all"; I found training for Monday Night Law to be useful in day to day life).

I'd also like to see more programs talking about larger societal issues and perhaps teaming up with professionals in other communities & discussing the links between different areas. With many CLE courses you see in my field, you'd think lawyers exist in a vacuum or on an island someplace.

A few days ago, I get a LinkedIn connection request from someone I know. I approve it and then get another connection request from someone I know (or at least, know of). It's the director of alumni relations at my undergrad.

That came as a shock to me for a number of reasons:

1. I've told that office more than once that I would never give a general contribution to the school & spelled out exactly why. Part of it is that if I wanted to fund racism, I'd just give my money to the KKK instead of a pack of hypocrites who claim to be tolerant and accepting of all but kept protecting a racist frat that got them into the press with their antics & was reviled by a great many students there.

2. I told people who I did speak to from those days not to give out my contact information to the alumni office since I had no interest in giving them money. Everyone I talked to agreed to this condition, which got even more important after working with my film company.

Now I don't think anyone violated my trust but if they did, they'd regret it (as anyone who knows me would agree).

3. My name is different & I don't post personal pics of myself on social media. Nor do I use that old name in searches since it's not part of my identity and hasn't been in quite some time. That name has no connection to my legal identity; I've even referred to it as my slave name & won't answer to it.

Had I not gotten married, I would have paid money to change it once I had a good alternative.

After getting this random LinkedIn connection request and hearing about an upcoming alumni event in NYC, I decided I'd just be honest about my feelings toward my undergrad. To hell with anyone found what I had to say offensive or insulting or if it hurt their precious little feelings! My thought was (and has been) that if you're going to contact me after years & years, you're getting the same treatment you'd get if you were some random stranger who'd sent me a Facebook friend request. You're getting the real me, not some sanitized or artificial or PC version. Real me isn't going to censor herself or worry about offending you; real me is going to tell the truth & get her feelings off her chest.

That long lost relative who contacted me ages ago didn't get that my business requires me to watch my back & not be fully trusting of virtual strangers. If you don't get that, I can't explain it to you so I left that situation as is.

I got a response after writing this director, who informed me that the racist frat was no longer on their campus & that everyone has some bad experience at their undergrad (sorry, you won't be swaying me to give that school money after I managed to win in spite of what a rational person would see as the attempt to sabotage me & ruin my shot to live up to my potential).

She's the one who told me about the black sorority coming to campus; thank God they aren't having to deal with that. I would feel horrible for them having to try to get members while a totally racist frat is running around & probably subjecting them to total crap treatment. I may not agree with the concept of a racially separated sorority but from what I recall of the environment at the time for black folks, being a student there was no picnic & I think it would be wrong for some stranger to have to go through that.

After verifying that information on the frat's official website (since I vet everyone & everything as a matter of course), I decided I'd attend that alumni event on Monday. A former professor of mine (who is a LinkedIn connections) is supposed to be there.

In my message to this director, I also said I have no issue with talking to individuals or offering advice to alumni or new grads. You have to judge individuals on their own merits. I never mind requests for advice or informational interviews & have certainly done this for attorneys who wanted to work in the entertainment field. If you don't mind the unvarnished truth, I'll certainly give it to you if asked.

We'll see if those career advice articles that say try networking with your undergrad alumni network is valid for me or not. I hadn't really used that network since I don't live anywhere near my undergrad campus and only have a handful of people I deal with from that time; most of them are sorority sisters. Boy, if I meet that bitchy lawyer who told me I'd never make it, she'll be in for a shock. I'm not so sure she's around since I've never encountered her in nearly 5 years in the legal field & being at bar associations in Manhattan. Maybe I should try looking her up on LinkedIn since different name, different life.

That experience made me vow never to treat someone else that way. In short, she was a dream killing jerkwad who made assumptions about me & my life not to mention severely underestimating my hatred, disconnect & total square peg status with the South. I still remember her name & I mentioned this to the alumni director as well (yep, I discussed EVERYTHING I encountered that was bad though acknowledged that there were some good people around as well). I also wonder when this racist frat was booted off and what happened; as of 2009, I know they were still there so my moral outrage has been quite appropriate for years.

I'm also shocked that they finally let people film at the school; I remember it being a huge thing to deny folks that opportunity. Maybe some higher ups got a clue? Guess I'll see. The jury's still out on my feelings about that place or where it's going. Again, no general contributions but individual groups that helped me could get things from me when I had the means to do it.

If you spit on my giving advice or information, then I'm not into handing you money. Just a fact. To me, advice & information are free but useful if you haven't got the knowledge & savvy. Ask anyone who doesn't have a mentor & had to make a lot of mistakes on their own. Had they had someone to consult, they might have been able to save themselves from heartache & hassle.

Any smart person who hopes to get anywhere knows they aren't the foremost expert on everything & that they'd better keep learning if they want to get anywhere, especially from those who come around later on. They also know they won't live forever & aren't the start or end of a profession. I've felt this way forever, especially when I started out & was looking for guidance on things.

You know, there is one very good thing about those unresolved issues coming up from your past: you get the opportunity to get closure, speak out & put things to rest. Regardless of how things happen if someone reaches out to you, you've been given the power to embrace today & free yourself from some past, sanitized version of yourself. You get to say things you might have been afraid to say or felt you couldn't say in the past. If you're an adult, you get to stand on your own two feet & handle things your way.

Since I dealt with all this, it does feel like catharsis & weight off my shoulders. Time & distance can resolve conflicts you couldn't deal with or were too young for at the time. Plus, if I'm going to have to be in the public sphere I might as well confront things head on & not be a chicken.

Doing an extra gig on Tuesday where someone I know is the casting director (so it's more of an undercover boss kind of thing) & dealing with Comic Con on Thursday & Friday so my week's going to be eventful. Posts will be dealing with those individual experiences & believe me, you'll hear about any pricks I encounter at Comic Con (especially any big name types since I won't want to deal with them in my business or expose their shit to my colleagues).

General Musings, Part 29

Wow, haven't done this in a while. Some links I have for mini-rants are super old so I guess that means it's time to do another general musings post.

Got FiOS put in earlier this week for my phone & Internet after we'd been promised access to the service around 5 years ago. On Monday, I was having an antisocial mood & feeling depressed but managed to go to my first Monday Night Law session regardless. I think it went okay.

This past weekend, I went to a nurses conference on endometriosis. That's one aliment that's totally misunderstood & if you knew how it's treated by doctors/society in general, it's just yet another symptom in the utter disrespect and disregard for women that goes on daily in this country. Now I don't say this as some super man hater (anyone who knows me knows I'm certainly not one) but as fact of life. That experience will be mentioned in a different post.

I should also mention that I did an interview on Saturday after that on my experiences as a childfree woman. To support the contention that not every woman dreams of being a Mommy, read this. It should only be a shocker if you've been hardcore brainwashed by your religious upbringing or you're a total sexist moron (and you can indeed be a sexist without ever having a penis). Surprise, some of us have other ambitions in life! Sorry to those who now have to go without parents because their caregivers' heads have exploded from that revelation. I won't be taking care of you.

Also read this Dear Prudence letter about a family member trying to insert herself into her sister's reproductive choices. I'm glad most of the commenters told this woman to butt out. More people should be telling others to butt out.

Reading about this months back also disturbed me. Are there ANY standards for pharmacists to keep their licenses? Or have these states just not bothered to enforce them & just let these God bothering assholes impose their religious mores on the citizens of their communities?

It disturbs me to hear about any pharmacist playing God when it comes to contraceptive matters since if I did that, you can bet I'd have my law licensed swiped in about 3 seconds. You try not giving effective assistance of counsel to some client & claiming a divine right to do so because of your religious beliefs, even if that client was assigned to you by the court. Guess what? It wouldn't fly in the legal profession. They don't give a damn what you think or what you believe; as a lawyer, you're duty bound to HELP clients you choose to represent or that are assigned to you regardless. If you don't get out of that representation, you don't get to put your little pinhead beliefs ahead of some client's legal matter.

So if I'm held to those standards as a lawyer, does anyone care to explain why doctors & pharmacists get to play God with MY body? Why they get to outright lie to people & impose their will onto grown people like they will suffer ANY personal impact if some woman does or does not breed or get pregnant?

No, I absolutely do not think any of these pharmacists are truly ignorant on that law. It's been the law of the land for years that 17 year olds in the US can get Plan B; this is not new information. As for "oh, it was a lower level worker who didn't know?" Well, attorneys are liable for the conduct of their staff and paralegals; that means WE'D be in trouble for them violating ethics rules in our names & at our offices.

Don't pharmacists have the same liability for things their staffers do? If not, I think that ought to change.

I also wonder how this has been going. Again bothers me on many levels & more dealing with God botherers trying to impose their will onto adults.

I like that term: God botherer. My husband read it in a comic. It's apparently the British version of fundie. We decided to incorporate it into our vernacular when he first mentioned it to me a while back.

I also read this story & did not get why in the Hell you'd keep your seat if you had to sit next to some little kid that wasn't yours. How do you know that kid isn't going to be a total whiny brat? And why in God's name would you want to break up some married couple? They'd just talk or text to each other the whole flight anyway. I'd end up yelling to my husband so you'd never get any peace. Since you apparently now have to pay for this bullshit, I've just been given even more incentive to never fly unless it's on a private plane driven by a competent pilot.

Now for some more bravos to people with some sense:

* Now I'm not a fan of Clarence Thomas by any means (and I'm sure not a fan of his wife) but I do appreciate the fact that A) he's not some ostentatious jerkwad if you meet him on a plane if the young man who was sitting next to him on a flight can be believed & B) he made this statement about people who aren't from Ivy League Law schools. I wish more employers felt that way & actually DID something about it. Talk is cheap; action speaks volumes. I'm just glad someone else said it.

* Savannah Dietrich, who outed her rapists on social media. That just rocks & had to take courage. As a lawyer (though I don't handle criminal law), it doesn't sound to me like the judge was offering her any justice here. If it's a lie, they could sue for defamation of character. If that wouldn't be something worthy of a defamation suit, I can't imagine what would be. I've seen people get threatened with one for accusing people of far less than rape. As I recall, the judge didn't punish her for doing this since victims of all people should have the right to tell their own stories & keep the scumbags from doing it to others. I do not have sympathy for guilty people, which you can learn about if you read the link.

* Whitney Kropp. You may have heard of this story recently but if you haven't, she got elected to her school's Homecoming court as a prank (think Carrie White being on the ballot for Prom Queen in Carrie).

Little did her tormentors know that the entire community would rally behind her with retailers offering free services going toward this event & strangers on Facebook sending their well wishes. Her ultimate triumph was going out & getting applause from members of the opposing team and even pricks at this school.

Speaking from a position of former ugly girl, I believe the pricks at this school only applauded b/c of the egg on their faces. You have to wonder how many people there were her real friends vs. fame whores just trying to get attention. For a good reference, look at what happened to Muriel in Muriel's Wedding when she was getting married to a famous aspiring Olympic athlete from rich parents who was being covered in the press. At that time, she goes by Mariel. Her former friends who'd tormented her for years & are really shitty to her through the whole movie (there's a whole scene where they break up the friendship & proceed to assassinate her entire being) suddenly buddy up to her & serve as her bridesmaids. If you see this film, you'll know they're only in for the glory & because they are fame whores. They never give a damn about Muriel, to say the least.

By the time I was doing Homecoming, I was actually at a point where I was being treated with respect and getting cheers when I went out on stage. A true point of triumph at my school was if people started screaming out your name when you were on stage or being announced for something vs. just politely clapping. I got name screaming when I went out for Homecoming & let me tell you, that felt good to someone who'd been treated like shit by most of her classmates for years.

Lastly, a little lesson to those bullying shits (wherever you are): the kid you bully today will eventually school your sorry ass. You'll be stuck in some menial, common, boring existence where you're unhappy while the people you tormented will be doing far greater & awesome things. The people who grow out of this get it & later atone for their bullshit; the ones who don't continue to be sad & pathetic. In short, don't be a bullying asshole unless you want to grow up to be Al Bundy.

I was going to write more on this but I think I'll just finish up with some discussion on race (yes, again). I came across this story recently & apparently it's a huge uproar whenever any white person wants something separate yet it's okay in 2012 for minority groups to go have something separate.

Now, I'm not going back over what I've mentioned about my high school & experiences with racially segregated student union groups. I never asked about or attempted to join any that weren't of my particular classification so I have no idea whether the particular groups I dealt with were racist (mostly b/c I'm not much of a joiner, contrary to what one might think). I'd place bets that the Black Student Union at my undergrad probably would have been racist to me had I asked, though (especially with that whole leaving a gift for my new roommate & my getting nothing from nobody, setting the tone for my freshman year & leaving a horrid first impression). I mean, we had a group trying to get a black sorority onto campus called "Women Visualizing Unity" and I'll guarantee none of those leaders could have named even 3 members of my chapter! That pissed me off since I felt they were judging me, my sisters & my chapter without bothering to get to know us as people. I also felt my chapter was being neglected & it would get worse if that black sorority got onto our campus.

I hear they apparently have one there now & since my chapter's established now (and has a house), I feel a little better about that. If they are being racist (as my chapter never was when I was around & had better not be now), then I'd take issue but if they're not, cool.

Personally, if the minority groups are going to be racist to people who might actually care about or be sympathetic to their cause (regardless of if they are of that race or not) there probably should be a white group. Racism isn't just a white thing, folks! Anyone can be a racist. If you oppose it, you can't say it's okay to do it to white people or use that tired "white privilege" argument. You're either racist or you aren't & you have to apply the same standards to everyone. Oh, and I don't think "white privilege" exists if you're too low on the income scale.

Plus, I'm a natural redhead so I'm more of a minority than anyone. Don't lump me in with the "white people" because they don't like me either. A student union for natural redheads would be interesting but probably wouldn't work on most US college campuses. You'd have maybe 5 people if you were lucky. I think that one (at least any I started) would have to start welcoming other minorities as well since traditionally, we redheads have never had issues with other minorities. They actually understand us better than the "white people." Most of my friends weren't big on segregating themselves into groups like that anyway.

I think my mother would have been proud of my law school roommate for having that attitude about the Asian student groups we had there. She believes (and I do agree) that you should not cloister yourself off into groups of people like yourself since the world isn't just composed of those people. You have to deal with people who are different from you sooner or later. She also opposes all girls schools for the same reason.

Oh, and it seems the Supreme Court will soon be dealing with a case on affirmative action. I shared my various stories on the subject but if you want to, feel free. I never directly experienced it; it was just more of saying "Hey, poor white people exist & since you don't recognized me as a redhead and lump me in with them you need to be dealing with MY situation instead of assuming that b/c Ted Turner's daughter can afford to go here, I can as well!"

I'm not going into details on affirmative action here since I've discussed it enough (I'm the one who'd rather just kill the racists or at least get them out of positions of authority instead of punishing members of other groups for things they had nothing to do with to raise some members of another group up). I also believe people should consider class background instead of race; even friends of mine who came from more & were minorities themselves thought I made a good point on this. You'd definitely see different mindsets in institutes of higher learning if you get more poor kids, trust me. They'll make that place have diversity of thought & actually bring so-called different life experiences to the table.

Tending to a sick husband now & had a crazy couple days. Not fun. Now he needs to get on the computer.