Day 227: I’m Not Leaving
Photo by Carol Carpenter on Unsplash
Five of my colleagues in the law school have announced they will leave the faculty at the end of this year. Five, and counting — I know others who are weighing job offers too.
Students are nervously asking us what we’re going to do next year. They worry that the faculty will all abandon them.
Let me say at the outset that I don’t blame anyone who decides to jump ship at this point. When your employer tells you (as ours did last fall) that they will be firing some of you, and very soon, but they won’t say who, or on what criteria — well, who wouldn’t explore their alternatives? And talented people who go knocking on doors will find attractive offers elsewhere. No surprise, and no offense.
But I’m not leaving.
Dream, Disappointment, Discovery
Once I heard a Catholic couple talk about the trajectory of a marriage. They defined it in three stages: Dream, Disappointment, and Discovery. At first everything is wonderful — what could ever go wrong? We invest deeply. Then, one day, a crack breaks open. How could this happen to our love? How could we have been so wrong? The deeper the investment, the deeper the disillusionment.
If you hang on through the disappointment, the couple said, on the other side there’s another phase: Discovery. You learn things you didn’t even know you didn’t know. About your partner. About yourself. About the nature of love itself. And that’s when real love begins.
My Dreams for West Virginia
At the moment in 2008 when I learned that I’d been offered a faculty position at WVU Law, I literally jumped and yelled with joy (in an airport).
I’ve spent the last decade and a half learning how to teach the fundamentals of property law in a state where property equals identity (and a whole lot of legal work). In administrative law, now required for graduation,I get to show law students how to pop open the hood of the Constitution, see how the gears work, and learn a few tricks to make them work (hopefully) better. I get to teach creative-minded students how to think and act entrepreneurially. I live in a historic house built by a property lawyer who walked here a century before me, and I’ve found a calling for bringing him and others like him to life in print. I’ve run every mile of every road and trail in Mon County.
And since the first week I took over the Immigration Law Clinic (to fill a gap in our curriculum), I’ve given all I’ve got to build an immigration clinic that builds an immigration bar in West Virginia. After much trial and error, those efforts are starting to bear fruit. The Immigration Law Clinic survived budget cuts. The clinic students are working effectively and independently, growing toward their roles as licensed attorneys, and making a difference in the lives of the underserved (to put it mildly) noncitizen community. We’ll host the first class of Immigrant Justice Corps Fellows next year to represent unaccompanied child migrants in the state. Law student interest in immigration has never been higher, and just in time, because the need for committed immigration lawyers has never been higher.
Heck no, I’m not leaving. This is just getting good.