MY TWISTED IDEA OF FUN

For a couple of years I had been looking for the right part-time graduate program. I finished my Masters in Political Science at University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1993 and with the exception of taking a CELTA and studying for Japanese, my education for the last fourteen years has been solely based on my reading choices. This is not to be despised or even apologized for because I have always regularly read hard academic books and have continuously developed my intellect. I have spent much of my life living in my head and a certainly large portion of that time is dedicated to thinking about philosophy, political theory, politics, law, religion, history, and literature. Given that list of subjects, it is clear enough that I have had no clear overall focus. For, perhaps, the first ten years after grad school I was simply not even interested in focusing on an academic discipline. Given the fact that I started by Masters at age 23 and finished by age 25 and also graduated from undergrad a year early at age 21, it is no surprise that I was tired with school.

However after a couple of years working as an admissions counselor, I was ready to go back, but not full-time. Frankly, I am committed to my profession as a counselor and was not looking for an academic program that would make that career impossible. I am good at what I do professionally, take great pride in it, and doubt seriously the advantage of leaving that career behind. Hence I started looking for part-time graduate program in my core field of political theory. No such part-time or distance program at what I would consider to be a good school exists. I came close to applying to one part-time PhD program in Japan, but decided that the topic I was planning to focus on was simply not something I could be passionate about. Another year went by and then suddenly I found it.

A disclaimer: I am not lawyer. Given my experience working as a paralegal in both bankruptcy and patent law as well as having a brother and two very close friends (my lifelong best friend and my best friend from my graduate school days) who are lawyers, I know that this is a well informed choice. On the other hand, legal theory and history have interested me since college. This area of scholarship was constantly overlapping with my core interests in the study of politics. Additionally, in the last couple of years, my interest in legal theory and history continued to grow especially when I started to lectures from the University of Chicago faculty and the Federalist Society ( I will write about my favorite podcasts in another post). At the same time I became interested in understanding legal history and theory more systematically.

Earlier this year, I began the latest chapter in my twisted idea of fun.
I started studying part-time for Postgraduate Diploma in Laws and assuming I get through it, I will also take an LLM at the University of London's External Programme. I am not planning to learn anything practical. I am planning on studying the history of law and legal theory. My first course is Western European Legal History. Sometime in 2008, I will move to legal and judicial theory. Assuming I stay on something like a regular study schedule I should be able to get an LLM by 2010.

My fun really began in earnest in May. I am reading mostly about the impact of Roman Law on the West. Based on what I can gather, I may be the only student in the External Programme studying this subject because no one has ever taken an exam in it before (they report the results and give the questions for all past exams) and when I tried to find anyone among the registered students who was taking this course, I could find no one. It is lonely in a way, but to be honest I did not really expect to be part of a learning community. Instead I simply want to obtain mastery of the subject in order to reinvigorate my intellectual foundations. Maybe after I finish the LLM, I will about doing a PhD in intellectual history or political theory, but at the moment, all I want to do is have fun with this.