Why I would forego 4goprint.com

So today I got an email, an advertisement. Shocking, right? So I go ahead and open it to be sure I didn’t just mistake it as spam, and I notice something rather annoying… The vast majority of the email was, to paraphrase “no really, this isn’t spam! please, please, please don’t mark it as spam! seriously, its not spam! now buy something please?” It being completely unsolicited and from a company I have no ties with and have never heard of before, it clearly fell within my definition of spam. The message was both annoying and pathetic, and was what pushed me over the line to actually report it as spam instead of just delete it as I normally would. Because it stood out to me so much, I replied to the company (sales@4goprint.com) and told them as much, thinking perhaps they would rethink how they do their marketing (or at least make it less hypocritical / annoying). I quickly received this reply:

“If you where on our list then you where not spam we where simply letting people know on our mailing list that we had to do this because of our email company made us but since you are a jack ass we are glad not to have you I wish I could have been nicer with a reply but your email left me no choice

Sent from my iPhone”

Nice eh? Now that’s customer service!

Who can know Truth?

It is easy to say that man cannot know divine truth, and thus cop out on any responsibility inherent therein, but that is all it is: a cop-out, an avoidance of responsibility to seek the truth and be forced to act thereupon. If the truth exists and is available, then refusal to seek it and apply it is nothing but self-deception, foolishness, and even perhaps an evil. For what alternative do we give ourselves in avoiding the truth, but lies and falsehood? How can we do anything but that which is wrong, if we reject the truth, the right?
If we refuse to seek truth, we give ourselves no choice but to live in the false, in the dark.

Catching Fish

When it comes to sharing Christ with others, I tend to be rather reserved.  I’m hesitant to bring Christ up in conversation, and I can never imagine what I should say.  I don’t feel prepared, I don’t have all the answers, and to be honest I’m not really worthy of the Gospel at all.  I can’t say I had a “And then everything changed” moment, but today at Ecclesia, the passage we covered today did give me a different perspective on things.

We’re going through the book of Luke at Ecclesia, and this week we covered Luke 5:1-11.  Ryan spoke specifically about a miracle performed (the catch of an incredible number of fish, enough to nearly sink 2 boats) and the response of the soon-to-be disciples. I won’t go over much of that at this point – you should be able to listen to the podcast at www.ecclesianewnan.org soon, assuming I didn’t screw up the recording.  What I want to talk about is something that occurred to me as we were reading the passage.  I do need to cover some of the background though.

Beginning Anew

Well, A lot has happened since my last post – which is pretty much what I said then.  In way of a brief update, I say this:  I retook the LSAT, and got accepted at UGA.  None of the other schools I applied to accepted me, though most did offer the dreaded waitlist again.   I passed on that this time   So I’ll be in Athens in the fall – which may well be the best choice, considering that Atlanta is said to be the hub of human trafficking for the United States.  What better place to be when that is your chosen fight than next door?

I’m keeping this update brief, so that I can post my fairly unrelated writing.  I may continue updating this site, but my goal is do have wordpress running on my own site, but its not up yet.  So until then, keep checking up on clayosophy.wordpress.com !

Where Things Stand Today

A lot has happened, and a lot has not happened since my last post.  Neither school used their waiting lists, or so I understood anyway, so I didn’t get in anywhere.  That was a bit of a discouragement, to say the least, but right now I plan to try again for next year. 

Ok… Now What?

Well, I’m still waiting for word from UGA and William and Mary, and I have no idea whether I will hear from them within the next 2 months or not.  I can’t just assume I’ll get in, so I have to make alternate plans, as I stated in an earlier post.  The problem is, it’s easy to say I’ll do something, but difficult to actually find what it is I should do – or anything relevant at all, as my results seem to be thus far.  If law school doesn’t work out this year, I would like to spend some time overseas.  At the least, in a different part of the country.  I guess I’m a restless person, because I feel like I’ve been in this job and everything long enough; it’s time to move on.  And having lived in the town I have for nearly 10 years, I am definitely feeling the urge to move on.  But where?  To what?  The question never leaves my mind, but I have yet to find an answer.

The Indefinite Wait

I apologize for the lack of updates; I really thought I had posted since i got the UGA notice.  So basically, here’s where things stand: I’m on waiting lists for both schools.  What this means is that I could hear as early as next week that I’ve been accepted… or I could hear nothing at all, up to august.  Yes, I could be accepted as late as August.  Neither one will give estimates or chances of acceptance throughout the process.  Personally, I find this to really be the most frustrating response I could have received.  I can’t make plans for school, because it’s far from definite.  I can’t make other definite plans because I have committed myself to this path.  If there’s a way for it to work, I will do it.  The problem is that for now, I’m stuck in Limbo.  I can’t look for other jobs, I have a hard time getting motivated about alternatives like some form of freelancing/self employment.  And since I will need to train my replacement in the case of law school working out (I can’t just tell my employer “I didn’t train my replacement, but I got in after all.  see ya!”), I’m not sure my current job will be available.  I’m honestly not sure I want it anymore.  It’s a great job if this is what you want to do, but its not what I want to do.  Freelancing would be more to allow me to do what I want (travel) than about loving what that job is too, unless I get very lucky.  So that’s where things are with Law schools.  Nowhere.

William & Mary

I applied to two law schools for the upcoming fall term, UGA and William & Mary, and I finally received word from William & Mary.  Actually, I was supposed to hear at the beginning of the month, but apparently my letter got lost, so when I emailed them they were able to email me the letter.  Basically, I was rejected, but I have the option of being on the waiting list, where my application would be reconsidered as slots open up due to accepted applicants having other plans.  I’m waiting for the response from UGA (They’re over a week late for their own estimated response date), and if it’s positive I won’t worry about W&M.

It’s pretty frustrating, waiting on a school that already takes an inordinate amount of time to get responses to applicants.  Their estimated response date was April 15, a full 11.5 weeks after the application was due.  Now we’re at the 12.5 week mark, getting close to 13.   I’m trying to arrange housing and possibly a part time job for school in the fall… but its impossible to make plans when I don’t even know for sure I’ll be accepted.  I’m certainly not putting down a deposit for an apartment or anything.  They’re delay on an already excessively long decision process just makes the whole process that much harder, that much more stressful.  But that’s ok, I’m done complaining.  As I said before, if law school doesn’t work out for this fall, its not the end of the world.  It’s just the stress of not knowing that’s getting to me.

The Greater Good

Over the last couple days, I have been reading Orson Scott Card’s Treason. Setting aside my fandom of nearly all of Card’s work, I ran across a portion of the story which made me wax a bit philosophical. At one point, a character has, without bringing in spoilers, acquired the ability to heal/cure. The only place he uses this ability is when he is living in a small rural community. Actual story aside, this made me think. If I, you, or whoever had such an ability, how should we use it? What responsibilities are inherent in such an ability?

My immediate though was to take the ability where it is needed most, can “do the most good.” As such, I was thinking of a large city, where the need was more… dense I suppose. Efficiency! I don’t know what gives me that attitude. Is it culture? Society? The needs of the greater outweigh the needs of the few. That seems to be the idea ultimately that shaped what was my initial reaction. How true is it though? What makes the needs of the many of more value than the needs of a small community? Do their needs matter less because they have less? I don’t think so. Which is not to say that there are not times to go to the needs of the many. I just don’t think it’s a given, an absolute, as was my initial reaction.

Think about it yourself. Which would you choose? And why? We can learn a lot about ourselves asking questions of ourselves.

The International Justice Mission

The International Justice Mission is an organization that seeks to bring justice to the millions world-wide that are abuse, exploited, and persecuted. All throughout the Bible God’s passion for justice is quite clear, and IJM is dedicated to doing all they can to bring it about. Based in Washington, DC, IJM performs their work with funds provided by grants and donations from governments, organizations, and people like you and me. They do not just seek to, for example, remove a young girl from a brothel, they also seek to change the system that makes the very crime possible, using that countries own laws and legal system to bring about that change. Some casework types that IJM focuses on include: Slavery, Sex Trafficking, Illegal Property Seizure, Illegal Detention, Police Brutality, and Sexual Violence.