Bridges

Yesterday, between the end of work and the beginning of a project meeting, I went to a cafe to relax and eat lunch. I brought a textbook, but was more concentrated on keeping soup off of it than reading it. The girl across the table from me asked if the soup was good, and we started talking. She turned out to be a second-year graduate student at BU law school.

We talked about the stresses of finding a job, internships, and the importance of making connections in graduate school for both our majors. She told me that the law students are extremely competitive, which was not a surprise to me. This girl felt no qualms about answering fellow students questions, but it seems that not everyone feels that way. Some students feign ignorance to avoid helping each other. Apparently, at other schools, law students rip pages out of textbooks to try and gain an edge over their classmates.

I can't imagine studying in such a competitive environment. The advertising program involves so many group projects, I feel that being supportive of one another is almost built into the degree. I wonder if extreme competition really makes for better lawyers. Both the law and advertising fields are competitive, but it seems that advertising students work more on forming bridges between one another, while the law students try to cut a bridge's cables once they have crossed it.