Cole’S Law Blog

Upon a circumspect glance at my online transcript, it was bound to end up this way: summer school was inevitable.  Although it was only January at the time, the track marks of first semester lumped me into the rejected bin with all the other discarded resumes and cheesy cover letters; diagnosed with a case of “born slacker.”  When a “B” is the pinnacle of your report card you start wishing for the days when the worst thing on your card would be an “NI.”  With this knowledge and little else it was clear to me that I lacked the appropriate muster to be anywhere near the top 50^th percentile of the class ranks.  This rating system is of imperative concern for the one reason I enrolled in law school: money.

While there are still two blissful years until I complete this scornful task, it is now only 80 days until recruiting for next summer’s internship positions, where top firms interview and offer students anywhere from $10/hour to $4000 a week to intern at their firm.  “Intern” is not really the term as it is more like apprenticing since it is out of this position that one will most likely receive a job offer, and a good one at that.  This all largely depends, rather exclusively, on your class ranking, the primary parameter for measuring success for both law students and the law firms that recruit them.  And although I don’t know the exact numerical value, I have a pretty good approximation that I fall somewhere between the 51^st percentile and absolute dogshit.  Most good firms won’t even look at you if you fall out of the 50^th, and if you’re dog shit…well, maybe it’s time to bag it up and torch the thing.  This reality is what has brought me to the inevitable conclusion and currently places me in a small dorm room in a relatively unquaint suburb of Istanbul.

There are quite a few reasons for choosing such a seemingly arbitrary locale.  First is the climate that could rival San Diego in its renowned perfection.  After four days it hasn’t rained once and they’ve told us it probably won’t rain at all.  It is 80-85 during the day and 65-75 at night.  However, this isn’t the paramount reason for my 5,228 mile sojourn in Chicken Town.  The chiefmost purpose is to take full advantage of the purported ease of the assigned courses.  In Turkey, as it is in most places around the world, law is taught at the undergraduate level.  Surely I can excel when I have to compete with a bunch of freshmen?  For the time being I liken it to a fight between my present self and my incarnation at eighteen.  I could beat up my former self.  Couldn’t I?  Well, maybe not but at this point that doesn’t matter.  All I need to do is outwit the bastard.

Second in my choice was the scant alternatives for remedying my atrocious GPA.  To stay at home and take summer school would have meant three hour classes that would end around 11pm, living at home, and either getting a job or hearing a refraining chorus of “Lovefool” from a parent telling me to go get a job.  At that rate, I’d be taking tax law and crossing my balls for a good grade and an excruciatingly humid Washington summer.  Here, it’s kolay sokak, which my pocket Turkish guide is telling me translates to easy street.  I am plagued with a daunting courseload that includes a.) Civil Rights in the Middle East, and b.) Business in the Middle East.  Sure there were other abroad programs to less estranged countries: there was a month in the Hague, the party city of the Netherlands that hosts the International Court of Justice.

The most maternally endorsed option was the four week program with students culled exclusively from my own law school that encompassed a week each in London, Brussels, Paris, and Geneva.  When it came down to it, I just couldn’t bring myself to travel 4000 miles away from law school and still be making small talk and sharing awkward pauses with the same people I wanted to avoid for the summer.   Finally, there was a program in Santiago, Chile that shared some similarities to this one.  After looking into it further, I quickly realized that it would be winter.  To put the icing on that cake is the notorious stigma Chile has for its incredibly ugly women, title-winner of most heinous in South America for quite some time now.

The situation in Turkey seems to be just the opposite: perfect weather and olive-oil women.  Nonetheless, the female prognosis may be quashed for several reasons.  First, is the language barrier and like any country I’ve invaded, the inherent xenophobia associated with a pale-faced, 6’1’’ blatant American looking for a little Turkish delight.[1] Couple that off with my surname and nationality and getting laid here will be something of an oddity and I’d probably have to bet the odds-against if Vegas was taking wagers on me landing a quality Turkish rug.

I have been here four days now and although my hands are always in my pockets and my eyes wide, I like the place fine.  It seems that half the people are eager to help me and the other half are just trying to con.  A cab driver, who upon entering asked how many days I had been here in Istanbul, attempted to extract $17 for a five minute cab ride.  As he screamed repeatedly “THIS IS TURKEY!  THIS IS TURKEY!” I exited the cab, or should I say my mother and I exited the cab and threw a 5 lira ($3.33) note into his cab.  Asshole.

As for the campus, I’m happy to say that I’ve made the right choice.  Whereas I’d be living out of a suitcase in the four week, four city European expedition, here I have my own bathroom at a university whose campus is hilly and serene, its buildings all having been constructed within the last ten years.  At the student center, there are two swimming pools, one indoor, one outdoor, and several balconies that serve as vistas overlooking Istanbul.  On the mountainside adjacent to the dorm and sandwiched between two massive Turkish flags is a Stalin-esque poster depicting Kemal Ataturk, who the tour guide deemed the George Washington of modern Turkey.  Passing by the likeness the other day, I pointed at Father Turk:

“Whose that chick?” I asked.  It was just loud enough for some students to hear.  Upon their reaction, I’ve concluded that maybe there’s an unwritten law that there’s a hundred-year grace period until you can make a joke about someone’s leader.[2] We’ll call it the Lincoln rule.

Another thing that the tour guide also said is that the city is built on seven hills, like Rome or Cincinnati.  I heard this anecdote several times from two different tour guides and it must be in the manual under Section “lower-cased j” of developing a common bond between you and your rich and stupid American tourists.  Either way, I guess it’s time to check out the real Cin City.

The campus isn’t all rosewater though.  Besides my inability to speak and my not-so-paranoid idea that I am a novelty amongst the students, the only tangible complaint is to whoever the fuck decided to design a dorm room with glass doors.  To this person I say a healthy and hearty “fuck you, you aesthetic fuckwad” for designing a dorm with absolutely no foresight whatsoever.   In addition to glass doors, the school employs energy-saving track lighting that makes walking the halls seem like a bad Japanese horror film.  Each time a young girl decides to skip along the hallway at 3 a.m. you can expect the lights to flicker on and illuminate your once-dark bedroom, with your glass door unwontedly turning itself into a seven-foot flashlight every 32 seconds.  This door also serves as an excellent reverberator of sound, making even the most trivial whisper completely coherent.  So thanks for the dorm room Frank Lloyd Fuck.[3]

There’s also a problem about alcohol on campus.  There isn’t any and it’s strictly prohibited because of Islam and stuff.  Of course, this didn’t stop me from buying a bottle of Johnny Walker Red yesterday and a six-pack of terrible Turkish beer earlier today, ignoring the request of a Turkish security guard for a search of my belongings.

“English?” I asked knowingly.

She said something further.

“I don’t understand,” I said.

Finally she just waived me off and I kept walking, Scotch in the bag.

Scotch or not it’s already occurring to me that this is something I wasn’t ready for.  The other day I was walking down the main drag outside of campus when something made me turn and stop.  What looked to be a normal gas station was not just a gas station.  There was a fucking goat sitting there.  After several double takes I just started laughing.  The goat had been painted bright yellow.  How’s that for a fucking oddity.

We’re not in Wichita anymore and as for what will happen this month I cannot say.  What I do know is what I am capable of, meeting new people, having new awkward pauses and more terrible small talk.  This time I’m up for it.  If I’m feeling particularly sprightly, I may even ask for seconds.  Like on Thanksgiving.

I have a month to study in Turkey and at the rate it’s going there may not be anything left over.  That is unless the vultures get to me first.  Carve me up real nice.  If I do get cooked though let’s I hope I get a chef who knows what he’s doing.  I don’t want people to saying that his grilled American “needs improvement.”

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[1] The average height for a male in Turkey is just under 5’8’’.

[2] Actually, I’ve just learned after-the-fact of course that it is borderline illegal to make a derogatory comment about Ataturk.  In 2005, just a year before winning the Nobel Prize, Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk was charged with a crime for his remarks concerning the Armenian and Kurdish conflicts and Ataturk.  The case was dropped but such remarks are still largely prohibited.

[3] Another fuck you to whoever installed the electrical systems here.  I electrocuted myself this morning while unplugging my laptop.