Jamie Longazel is Assistant Professor of Sociology and Research Fellow at the Human Rights Center at the University of Dayton. 

I teach a unit on legal education in my Law & Society course. Among other lessons, I use it as an opportunity to introduce students to feminist legal theory.

We read a chapter from Becoming Gentlemen by Lani Guinier, Michelle Fine, and Jane Balin, a chapter from What Works for Women at Work by Joan Williams and Rachel Dempsey, and a provocative essay about sexism and public bathrooms.

Students always told me the unit reminds them of the 2001 film Legally Blonde starring Reese Witherspoon, and insisted that I show it in class.

Over and again, I dismissed their pleas, even without having seen the film. How could it not be problematic?
In time, I gave in. I promised I would at least watch the movie. And if it turned out to be appropriate, I would consider showing it the following year.

The first thirty minutes or so confirmed my suspicions: It was pure garbage, nothing but stereotypes.
Just when I was about to give up on it, however, there was a shift. I stood corrected. It may suffer from inaccuracies, but we could definitely use it to start a conversation about feminist legal theory.

To my students’ delight, I have shown the film in class each of the last two years. I use it to set up an in-class debate around the question, “Is Legally Blonde a feminist film?”

I’m not about to launch into a full analysis here; after all, I wouldn’t want my future students to stumble upon this post and use it to give their side an advantage in the debate. Instead, let me simply note a few highlights from this year’s debate.

Those who argued ‘yes, Legally Blonde is a feminist film’ said…

• The film challenges the idea that feminism is ‘anti-feminine.’ All women are included – even Reese Witherspoon’s character, Elle Woods, who studies fashion and wears exuberant amounts of pink. Feminism is about being yourself.
  
• The film depicts women, as our student judge so wonderfully summarized, “unlearning the patriarchy.” For example, while Elle’s ex-boyfriend Warner pitted Elle and his new girlfriend, Vivian, against one another, in time the two became friends after realizing their shared interests as women.   
• Rather than being saved by a man, Elle’s female law professor picks Elle up when she is down after bumping into her at the salon.

Those who argued ‘no, Legally Blonde is not a feminist film’ said…

• This is upper class, white feminism. Women from backgrounds different from Elle’s would not be able to pull off what she did.
  
• The ‘be who you are’ message aside, stereotypes remained rampant – especially, for example, among Elle’s sorority sisters, who received almost no character development. 
• Over and again, the objectification of Elle is what placed her in the prominent positions that led to her success, sending a subtle message that she is not competent otherwise.

As you can see, students on both sides come up with some solid arguments. What I like most about the exercise is that the ambiguity makes for a good debate. I also appreciate how my law school-bound students relish the opportunity to make a case in front of a crowd, particularly the women, who, not surprisingly, tend to be much more engaged in this activity.

This year, the “yes team” won the debate. Although next year, it just may go the other way.  

Jamie Longazel is Assistant Professor of Sociology and Research Fellow at the Human Rights Center at the University of Dayton. 
 
“Sit down and read. Educate yourself for the coming conflicts.” - Mother Jones

After only a week in office, Donald Trump has made it quite clear that we will facing some frightening realities over the next four years. Many of us are scrambling for ways to respond.

I love this Mother Jones quote as a reminder that the lessons can precede the conflict, rather than the other way around.

The particular lesson I always come back to as a scholar-educator-activist is Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed. For Freire, true liberation – for the oppressed and their oppressors – comes when the oppressed “[learn] to perceive social, political, and economic contradictions, and to take action against the oppressive elements of that reality.”

I do not think U.S. academics appreciate Freire as much as we should. Most of us are on board with his
critique of the “banking method” of education, but his core political message about education for liberation remains on the margins of academia.  

It could be that the tendency in the Global North is to see education as apolitical. The conventional wisdom equates “political teaching” with imposing your views upon your students. Surging right-wing populism has stretched this narrative even further, in effect politicizing higher education to suit its own agenda. The “Professor Watchlist,” for instance, aims to expose “professors that advance a radical agenda in lecture halls.”
In the face of these criticisms and the parallel assault on facts that in all likelihood will continue to characterize the Trump Administration, it is going to be important that we make clear what makes teaching political and that we make a strong case for why political teaching is so important.

Teaching is a political act when it encourages students to grapple with realities that others choose to ignore, when it draws attention to oppression and gives voice to those who experience it.  

Political teaching also involves thinking about education beyond the confines of the traditional classroom. Not just in service learning or community engagement projects, but also in studying with members of our communities, particularly those who have been unable to access higher education institutions. We ought to be learning together about the forces that keep so many of us down.

As I write, I am beginning my second semester teaching a course that is part of the Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program. Inside-Out brings “traditional” college students together with people who are incarcerated to learn side-by-side in a prison setting.

Each week I will travel with students from my predominately white, relatively affluent university to a local men’s correctional facility. The course will unfold under the assumption that we are all equally capable and our voices equally valuable. Experiential knowledge and academic knowledge will have equal weight. Everyone will read the same readings, write the same papers, and participate in the same discussions. Although I will distinguish myself to a degree as the facilitator, I will sit in the circle along with the students, listening, learning, and resisting the urge to lecture.

The title of this particular course is Crime & Inequality. The name may imply an endless string of charts and stats about disparities in punishment, offending, and victimization. However, the crux of what I do is use crime as a jumping off point for an in-depth discussion about identity and oppression.
The focus, therefore, is out of step with traditional criminological approaches focusing on “them” as offenders or the subjects of social control. Rather, guided by a combination of critical writings and our cumulative experiences, we will be looking at issues like criminalization across history, the politics of crime, rape culture, and the criminalization of resistance.

What will gradually get unveiled is how complex, interwoven systems of oppression affect each of us differently. We will all struggle through the difficult reality that we, too, are complicit in such systems. Through deep reflection and honest discussion, we will also come to understand better the roots of our own day-to-day hardships.

The process, more so than the result, is what makes Inside-Out worthy of the label, “transformative education.” The program provides participants with a real-life example of what solidarity across difference looks like. Our experiences with oppressive systems mostly differ, yet I approach this course appreciating the possibility of finding unity in the shared experience of struggle.

Engaging with identity therefore gets us to this point, yet transcending identity is the larger goal.
Education, we might say, imitates life in this way.
​
As we enter a moment of profound uncertainty, it is my hope that life might also imitate this style of education. With truth seeking, reflection, and dialogue all under assault, our task will be to get at the root of our struggles, to become empowered enough to push back, and to stand in solidarity with, learn from, and inspire those who are engaged in struggles of their own. Following the advice of Mother Jones, what we need to do as we prepare is sit down and read – or, better yet, learn – together. 

Click here for part 1.

Teaching Law & Society Through a Transnational Lens

In her recent book, Law and Societies in Global Contexts, Eve Darian-Smith (2013) argues that mainstream law and society instruction has too often limited the scope of “society” to that within the domestic nation-state. This has not been because of narrow foresight, however.  Rather, it was because the field of socio-legal studies was largely shaped by a set of political horizons within which the nation-state predominated as the central scale of social justice claims. Socio-legal scholars have therefore often taught their students about the heroic struggles for rights and equality by labor activists, women, people of color, and queers in seeking recognition or redistribution from the nation state. Yet in the face of an administration that has both amassed its power by rebuking these victories and also seems to foreclose future possibilities of protection, how might we use this as an opportunity to reconsider how we teach about law and society?

Teaching Law & Society in a transnational perspective means situating American law within a history of settler colonialism, a legacy that has persisted most visibly in the recent struggle at Standing Rock. Scholars of settler colonialism have revealed the enduring material logics of sovereignty and offer powerful critiques of the symbolic legitimacy of law. The historical continuity of this analytical perspective offers a frame through which to understand the shifting articulations of law, race, control over territory and resources, and larger transnational struggles for political-economic power. 

A transnational perspective also offers our students a new political horizon from which to understand twenty first century challenges of climate change, refugee migration, and global economic inequality. These issues are the result of shifting geographies of power and new technologies of global governance that are not limited to formal legality. Indicators, standards and other forms of “soft law” have all become important sites of contestation.  Hence, a transnational perspective means teaching students about the wide-ranging forms of legality that now exert control.

As we approach the Age of Trump, socio-legal studies is not only poised to help our students better understand the cotemporary political moment, but also equip them for what will surely be a difficult period for people of color, women, queer, and working class people who have long struggled for basic rights and to improve their working conditions. Understanding these struggles through a transnational context will not only reveal the underlying architectures of power through which domination is exercised, but also enlist new allies that will be important in the struggles to come. 

Matthew Canfield is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Anthropology at New York University, writing his dissertation on food sovereignty and global governance.

If mainstream pundits and scholars weren’t already frightened of Donald Trump, that surely changed during the second presidential debate when he threatened to jail Hillary Clinton. Trump’s off-hand threat to Clinton—“because you’d be in jail”—drew criticism from commentators and scholars across the political spectrum for his clear disregard for the principles of rule of law.  
 
Of course, this was neither the first, nor the only time that he revealed his attitude towards legal principles and conventions. From his unconstitutional calls to round up and deport millions of Muslims, to his rejection of the exoneration of the Central Park 5, to his refusal to abide by the rulings of the National Labor Relations Board, Trump has repeatedly demonstrated that he holds the same instrumental view of law that he holds for basic facts.
 
Trump’s legal ideology reflects a worldview that reduces everything down to deal-making. Indeed, with over 3,500 legal actions, Trump is America’s most litigious president. Like a socio-legal scholar, Trump understands that law is an arena where “the haves come out ahead,” using lawsuits to bully his critics and workers. His crude legal ideology could easily be described by the Soviet legal theorist Evgeny Pashukanis’ critique that the Western “concept of justice is drawn from the exchange relationship, and expresses nothing outside of it.”
 
Yet Trump not only exploits law for his own gain, he has also claimed to speak on behalf of it. In his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, Trump howled “I am the law and order candidate!” against a brooding dark backdrop festooned with American flags. By painting an apocalyptic portrait in which, “The attacks on our police, and the terrorism in our cities, threaten our very way of life,” he drew on the specter of violence and racial anxiety to claim his own authority.
 
Trump’s mimicry of Nixon’s law-and-order rhetoric along with his less-than-subtle racism reflects a world in which some populations—people of color, women, and queers—are more subject to punitive legal measures than others.
 
As we confront the looming horizon of his presidency, how must we address this contradiction? What does this election teach us about law? And, how can we prepare ourselves and our students for the Age of Trump?
 
These questions have been at the top of my mind as I have reflected on the way I teach my undergraduate “Law & Society” course. Trump’s victory came amid a module on law and social change, in which we were examining what historian Carol Anderson has recently termed “White Rage” in response to the Brown decision. While this election appeared to be an echo of the past—a re-entrenchment of white heteropatriarchy in the face of popular uprisings by people of color and legal victories by the LGBT movement—the reduction of this counter-mobilization to racial or sexual antipathy fails to account for the larger political shifts that we are not only seeing domestically, but also globally. 

Anxieties of Power and Racial Populism
 
Seen from a global perspective, Donald Trump’s election, like the Brexit referendum, reflects a rising tide of right-wing political movements that are exploiting popular concerns over declining economic power and long-standing racial anxiety to launch their parties to power. The similarities and shared symbols between these two major votes is instructive.
 
In Britain, Nigel Farage, the former head of the UK Independence Party, stoked the fears of distressed working class Brits about immigrants that, he claimed, were taking over their jobs. Like Trump’s election, the Brexit vote was won by a coalition of white working class voters. Moreover, like Trump’s mantra to “Make America Great Again,” Farage called on Brits make Brexit their “Independence Day” and “take back control.” A giddy photo of Farage and Trump set amidst the gleaming gilded elevator of Trump Tower days after the US election, confirmed Trump’s hope that the US election would be “Brexit times 10.”
 
Both Brexit and Trump—as well as the growing political strength of right-wing nationalist parties in France, Germany, the Netherlands, and Brazil—serve as a reminder of the enduring ties between race, national sovereignty, and economic power. Indeed, as post-colonial scholars have demonstrated, sovereignty is often articulated within a grammar of racial difference that serves to secure access to economic resources. In settler colonial states, such as the United States, continued articulations of racial difference are asserted within a global political economic context of declining economic strength.
 
Today, as the economic center of global capitalism pivots away from its former transatlantic axis and domestic economic inequality grows, those workers who once embraced a more egalitarian redistributive economic vision during times of prosperity are now left clinging to the symbolic wages that W.E.B. DuBois referred to as the “psychological wage of whiteness.” (It is no wonder that White Nationalists are now enjoying mainstream popular attention as they celebrate the rise of Trump.) For as economic inequality widens, Trump offered a voice for his white working class supporters’ affective and symbolic sentiments of superiority.
 
As socio-legal scholars, we know that these forms of power—racial, economic, and political—are facilitated by law. Indeed, as critical race theorists such as Ian Lopez have demonstrated, race is a socio-legal construction that has been constituted physically, symbolically, and materially through the violence of law.  Global trade agreements, campaign finance laws, voter suppression, and mass incarceration are critical sites of law that were crucial in constructing neoliberalism. In an Age of Trump, Brexit, and other movements of right-wing populism, these sites will remain essential in constructing new racialized regimes of power.
 
In short, Trump’s election reminds us that we cannot teach Law & Society solely within a domestic context. To do so reproduces a narrative of American exceptionalism that conceals the relationship between race, power, and global political-economic formations. Perhaps more importantly, however, it prevents our students from understanding the global coalitions of solidarity that are increasingly important within a context of global interdependence and governance.

In New Orleans last June, as part of the Law and Society Association's annual meeting, the Consortium sponsored three professional development panels meant to serve people at teaching-centered institutions, within undergraduate studies programs everywhere, and who are graduate students and faculty interested in pedagogy and student research.   As part of the program, we sponsored a Teaching Café, featuring ideas from faculty at a range of institutions who use moot courts, mock trials, legislative lobbying, citizen-police training, and so much more to engage students in an immersive undergraduate legal studies education.
 
A second panel focused on the relationship between legal studies and the law school environment, from the perspective of undergraduate faculty.  In conversation with audience members, the panelists noted the diversity of student expectations for undergraduate legal studies: many want to go to law school, some into the field of criminal justice, and some go directly into the workforce.  Still others hope to pursue doctoral education in a field related to “law and society.”  Given this varied set of expectations from our undergraduates, as well as our institutional relationships (to law schools and offices of admissions, for example), and our own intellectual commitments, how can we best serve our students in learning about the connections between law, society, and culture?
 
CULJP also sponsored a panel on landing a law and society job at a teaching-centered institution.  This panel was exceptionally well-attended, with nearly fifty attendees interested in thinking about the job search process.  Our panelists, from both teaching-centered and research-oriented institutions, represented a range of professional identities – from newly hired faculty to department chairs and deans. Those who attended the panel asked a variety of questions that ranged from how to prepare a teaching statement for a job in an interdisciplinary department, to how to present oneself in a cover letter, to the benefits and drawbacks of applying for jobs not specifically listed as law and society but that have the potential to allow scholars to continue to do law and society work within specific disciplines.
 
Were you an attendee or panelist at one of these professional development events at Law and Society 2016?  If so, what did you find most useful?  What did you learn?  Answer in comments to keep the dialogue alive – and look for more opportunities like this to connect, in Mexico City 2017!

​The Consortium of Undergraduate Law and Justice Programs is very pleased to announce the inaugural winners of the Teaching Innovation Award, Shannon Portillo (University of Kansas) and Danielle Rudes (George Mason University). This award recognizes Professors Portillo and Rudes for their excellence and innovation in interdisciplinary legal studies teaching.
 
The Awards Committee was particularly impressed by their development of the BURST model (Building Undergraduate Research Skills and Techniques), which provides students with the opportunity to consume and produce legal studies scholarship in a capstone course setting. In this model, students conduct original research, with paper writing occurring in an iterative process in which students gather feedback from faculty and peers throughout the semester. This has been an incredible success, as it has increased student learning and resulted in numerous conference paper presentations and publications. Moreover, Professors Portillo and Rudes have been exceptionally generous with regard to sharing their research kit with other legal studies faculty, a model of collegiality to be emulated.

Joanna Grisinger is an Associate Professor of Instruction at the Center for Legal Studies at Northwestern University and a CULJP board member.

I know I’m not the only one thinking about how to use (the now-Tony-award-winning) “Hamilton” in my classroom next year, so I wanted to share some resources I’ve been gathering about the musical. 

First, how to listen? The show is sung-through, so the cast album allows one to listen to (if not see) the complete show. The cast album is streaming on Spotify and Amazon Prime, and is available for purchase on iTunes and Amazon. The 2016 book Hamilton: The Revolution (the “Hamiltome”) contains lyrics and essays about the development of the musical; Lin-Manuel Miranda has provided additional lyrical annotations at genius.com. A lengthy 2015 New Yorker profile of Miranda  provides some background about the creation of the musical, and Miranda’s 2009 performance of the first song at the White House offers a hint of the success to come.  

Source materials for the musical include Joanne Freeman's Affairs of Honor: National Politics in the New Republic (Yale University Press, 2002), Joanne Freeman, ed., Alexander Hamilton: Writings (Library of America, 2001), and Ron Chernow's Alexander Hamilton (Penguin, 2004).

The Gilder Lehrman Institute has put together a wealth of essays, primary sources, and teaching materials on Alexander Hamilton. In addition, a huge number of primary sources on the American Revolution and the Constitution are available through Yale's Project Avalon, including the full text of the Federalist Papers. Another great source is the Founders' Constitution ("the Oxford English Dictionary of American constitutional history"), which is fully available online.

Historian Lyra D. Monteiro (Rutgers-Newark) has a critical essay for The Public Historian on “Race-Conscious Casting and the Erasure of the Black Past in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton" (Feb. 2016). Prof. Monteiro's essay elicited thoughtful responses from Jason Allen (New Jersey Council for the Humanities), David Dean (Carleton University), Ellen Noonan (American Social History Project, CUNY), and 
Annette Gordon-Reed (Harvard Law School). Monteiro's own response is here.

Discussion of the politics and historical accuracy can also be found in the Junto: A Group Blog on Early American History, the New York Times and Slate, while an article in Vox argues that “Hamilton is fanfic, and its historical critics are totally missing the point.”

For coverage in podcast form: Backstory with the American History Guys has posted a podcast entitled "Hamilton: A History." The National Constitution Center has posted a podcast entitled "Hamilton, the Man and the Musical," with guests Annette Gordon-Reed (Harvard Law School) and Michael Klarman (Harvard Law School).  

Finally, Richard Primus (University of Michigan Law School) asks, “Will Lin-Manuel Miranda Transform the Supreme Court?” As he suggests, “Within the foreseeable future, a jurisprudence of original meanings may fuel the most progressive constitutional decision making since the days of Chief Justice Earl Warren. Just you wait.”

Updated: 

• R.E. Fulton at Nursing Clio has written on "Hamilton as a Model for Women’s History."
• The New York Times on "The Many Faces of Alexander Hamilton" at institutions across New York City; the article contains lots of useful links. 

amThe Consortium is hosting three Professional Development Panels, a CULJP Board meeting, and a coffee (half) hour.  Board members who attend will also be happy to meet with individuals representing member programs, or those who want more information about what we are up to, and how you can be involved.

Thursday, June 2nd, 8:15 – 10:00 am “The Relationship Between Undergraduate Legal Studies and Law School Education, a Perspective from Undergrad Professors” --  NOLA Marriott  Salon D (3rd floor) 

• Chair: Renee Cramer, Drake University   
• Participants: 
• Daniel LaChance, Emory University   
• Jinee Lokaneeta, Drew University   
• Aaron Lorenz, Ramapo College   
• Jamie Rowen, University of Massachusetts, Amherst   

Friday, June 3rd, 2:45 – 4:30pm “Landing a Law and Society Job at a Teaching Institution”
NOLA Marriott Salon D (3rd floor) 
The academic job market is a difficult place to be - and candidates need to think through how to present themselves for a wide array of positions. Interdisciplinary legal studies education is a unique and vibrant field - and applying for jobs within it is different than applying for positions within more standard disciplinary homes at research-focused institutions. This roundtable includes faculty from several undergraduate teaching-centered institutions, who hire often in the fields related to law and society. It also includes faculty who mentor graduate students towards these positions. The roundtable will offer our collective reflections on, and advice for, the job market for these types of positions. We will discuss cover letters, teaching portfolios, the 'job talk' and teaching demonstration, and the intangible things we look for, when evaluating candidates to become our colleagues.

• Chair: Renee Cramer, Drake University   
• Participants: 
• Paul Collins, University of Massachusetts, Amherst   
• Renee Cramer, Drake University  
• Sarah Hampson, University of Washington Tacoma   
• Aaron Lorenz, Ramapo College  
• Anna-Maria Marshall, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign   
• Shannon Portillo, University of Kansas   
• Mary Nell Trautner, University at Buffalo, SUNY   
• Monica Williams, Weber State University   

Saturday, June 4th, 8:30 – 9:30 am  CULJP Board Meeting [Location TBA – check onsite message board]

Saturday, June 4th, 9:30 – 10:00 am CULJP Coffee Hour [Location TBA – check onsite message board] 

Saturday, June 4th, 4:45 – 6:30 pm “Teaching Café” -- NOLA Marriott Bissonet (3rd floor) 
At this "cafe" style panel, you can move from table to table, talking about the different approaches to undergraduate teaching brought by each of the several participants. From lobbying state legislators, to ride alongs with city police, faculty in this cafe engage students in a wide range of experiential learning. They use moot courts, mock trials, and a research lab to immerse their students in undergraduate legal education.

• Chair: Renee Cramer, Drake University   
• Participants:
• Jean Carmalt, John Jay College of Criminal Justice   
• William Garriott, Drake University   
• Lauren McCarthy, University of Massachusetts Amherst   
• Danielle Rudes, George Mason University   
• Mihaela Serban, Ramapo College of New Jersey  
• Lori Sexton, University of Missouri, Kansas City  
• Michael Yarbrough, John Jay College (CUNY)   

Jinee Lokaneeta is an Associate Professor of Political Science and International Relations at Drew University and a CULJP board member.

In this blog post, I want to share the introduction of a new minor in Law, Justice, and Society and the discussions and processes that led to the successful passage of the minor at Drew University, a liberal arts college in Madison, NJ. Similar to many other institutions, there was a long history of many law courses being primarily offered in the political science department such as Civil Liberties, Constitutional Law and Civil Rights, International Law and there was a list of recommended courses mostly for pre-law students that also included a few courses from other departments – on ethics, logic and criminology for example. The major criteria for such a list was to cater to students who were interested in getting into law school. Even though we made it clear that there is no recommended major for law school, political science continued/continues to be one of the popular majors that are considered by students interested in law school though it has also changed over time. In such a context, how does one introduce a minor that explicitly asks students to take courses across different disciplines and think of law not just as being for students interested in law school but that linked integrally to questions of justice. As the description of our minor states “Law emerges out of struggles over social, political and cultural values; law affects different communities differently; and law shapes society and is shaped by it.” Further, how does one explain that a more interdisciplinary perspective on law is beneficial for those interested in a legal career as well? 

We had some really wonderful conversations across faculty from different disciplines about the need for such a minor. One major impetus for initiating the conversation on the minor for our college was a chance to hear about the Consortium for Undergraduate Law and Justice Programs and have a chance to present an early version of the proposal at a Consortium meeting a few years ago. The possibility of joining a number of universities that were offering a variety of programs – some majors and others minors and concentrations – allowed one to imagine a space where such an initiative at Drew could be a way to become a part of a shared community. 

Building the Minor  
Over time, a menu of courses that approach law from different perspectives and a more conducive institutional milieu paved the way for the minor. The minor was finally passed in 2016 and currently has courses from 7 different departments in the college of liberal arts and one from the theological school, making it a really exciting initiative. While the majority of the courses still continue to be from the Department of Political Science and International Relations, it also reflected some of the unique features of the department’s offerings – for instance our United Nations semester where students study the UN in close proximity of the space in New York city and also attend some of the events associated with the UN. In addition, courses on International Human Rights; Torture; Gender and Human Rights; on Policing, State and Security also add to the richness of the discussions on law and political science. Occasional courses on Cultural Diversity and the Law also bring together different challenges posed by culture to legal cultures and institutions. But the success of the minor really depends on courses that are emerging from other disciplines and in recent years colleagues have introduced courses on U.S. Legal History; Laws and Trials in Ancient Society; Human Rights in Literature and Film; Law and Literature; Mass Incarceration and Economic Justice; and Censorship and Russian Literature. Currently we just have one course that puts it all together to help students make sense of the minor – Law, Justice and Society – that introduces students to a field of interdisciplinary legal studies. In my next post(s), I want to discuss the structure of the core course, the Minor, and more broadly the vision of interdisciplinary legal studies and the challenges therein. For now, I am just excited that the minor has finally passed. 

Marah Schlingensiepen is a senior in the University of Kansas School of Public Affairs & Administration as well as an Undergraduate Research Assistant on the Sociolegal Justice Project.
 
As we enter into the latter portion of our undergraduate careers, we start to ponder the things that have deeply interested us thus far while simultaneously being encouraged from many different people to start giving thought to what's next. And the thought is exciting. It was thrilling to think about my endless options. Did I want to take time off? Was I prepared and excited to enter the workforce? Or was I interested in pursuing a graduate degree? My plan was to apply to graduate schools. 

After acknowledging that research was the highlight of my undergraduate years, and many conversations with great mentors, I decided to apply for doctoral programs. As I entered the application phase, the excitement wore off just a little bit because it is draining. How am I supposed to adequately present myself to this institution? There is no doubt about it; the application phase is a difficult several months. Between taking the GRE, writing personal statements, continually editing my writing sample, meeting with professors for frequent advice, gathering letters of recommendations and still being enrolled in 19 credit hours and working part-time, my excitement wore off a little bit. But once those applications were all submitted, I felt intense relief and total excitement. I had applied, and I was officially a part of the waiting game. It was a time during which I could simply imagine myself attending these various doctoral programs, and it felt wonderful.
 
For students who are part of the application phase, or who may soon be a part of that phase, ask a lot of questions. Ask your peers who may have just gone through it, and ask your professors. Because, as I was continually reminded, questions are totally normal. I had hundreds of them, and that is okay. Furthermore, make sure you are managing your time well. It is helpful to set time aside each week, dedicated purely to application materials, so that by the time the deadlines are approaching, you are way ahead of the game. And finally, remember that this is only a part of the process. 

And here I am, rejected from two of those programs, accepted by four, and still waiting on two. I am incredibly excited, yet also thoroughly terrified. Where will I be living in a few short months? How do I know whether I am making the right decision? As everyone offers completely different advice, I find it tough to digest it all. And I think that this is probably normal, too. But through this phase, with which I am not yet done, I have learned the importance of talking it through with those who have just been through it. It's tough. What do I decide? There is a lot at stake, and this is a huge decision; it will definitely have an impact on the rest of my life. So I am still learning to continue to ask questions, but it is harder to take in the answers. This is partially due to the wide range of emotions that comes with this time period, but it is also due to the fact that everyone has had different goals for themselves, different experiences, and different outcomes, and I don't know where I quite fit in or with whom I align most. So it is critical to remember that this is my decision, and that my experience is unique. I look forward to the recruitment weekends for each of the programs to which I have been accepted thus far, and I have a huge decision to make in the very near future.

This phase is exhilarating, terrifying, joyous, anxiety-ridden, and still a part of the great unknown. I wish the best of luck to all others who may find themselves in this wonderful situation, and I am so grateful to my exceptional mentors, my incredibly supportive and reliable research colleagues that became close friends, and all of my loved ones who have been intimately involved, by default, in this long process.