The Decaying Evolution of Education...

[ChiTownScion]

Res ipsa loquitur.

The gals who married the old Civil War geezers got a pension, and Douglas' "child bride" got her way paid through G-town Law and a jumpstart to her legal career. Considering inflation, it's almost a balance.

 

[Harp]

--- and Douglas' "child bride" got her way paid through G-town Law and a jumpstart to her legal career...

I took a stab at Georgetown Law and was rejected, though Harvard wait listed me until I ran out of patience---years later I met Scott Turow, whose One L I had read in college
and got the Harvard Law bug bite, told him it was all his fault but he just laughed. I guess he inked a contract to write One L before he went to HL, sharp guy.

 

[EngProf]

I took a stab at Georgetown Law and was rejected, though Harvard wait listed me until I ran out of patience---years later I met Scott Turow, whose One L I had read in college
and got the Harvard Law bug bite, told him it was all his fault but he just laughed. I guess he inked a contract to write One L before he went to HL, sharp guy.

I could (and probably should) look this up myself, but is the "One L" book the ancestor of the movie "The Paper Chase"?
Watching that movie cured me of any inclinations I had toward law school. (Not that I had many...)
Engineering grad school is/was so much more pleasant. No back-stabbing and far less ego...

 

[HudsonHawk]

In my genealogical research, I found my great, great grandmother's Confederate Widow pension application from around 1915. It was interesting on several levels, from what she listed as "assets" (things like "1 mule worth $25, 1 wagon worth $100...I think she totaled around $600 in assets) to how she had to verify her eligibility (basically having qualified "witnesses" that she was actually married to a veteran). If I remember correctly, the pension benefit wasn't much, something like $18/month, but then that was when it was being funded by the individual states.

 

[Stearmen]

As of this week, there's still one active Civil War pension account on the books.

Interesting chart attached to the linked article --- the number of surviving US veterans of WWII is now below 150,000, which has to rank as a suitable addition to the Disturbing Realizations thread. It Is Later Than We Think.

Even more astonishing, WWII pension benefits are being paid to 10 surviving *parents* of WWII veterans.

Actually, there are 855,070 WWII Veterans still alive. There may be less as of today, since they are dying at a rate of 492 a day. When my Father died in 2002, the rate was well over 1,000 a day.

 

[Stearmen]

Indeed. And a lot of these 20th Century "Civil War Brides" were young teenagers, which would make it seem even more salacious and creepy by modern-day standards -- imagine a 14-year-old girl marrying a World War II vet today, and the internet would explode. But at the time, especially in rural areas, where most of these marriages seem to have happened, it doesn't seem to have raised all that many eyebrows.

Alberta Martin married Jasper Martin in 1927. Upon his death, she married the Grandson, from Jasper's first marriage! Maudie Celia Hopkins was the last known Civil War Bride, dying 2008. She married William M. Cantrell, February 2, 1934, she was 19. I wonder when the last marriage was and how old was the youngest bride? Peyton Place is blushing!

 

[Harp]

I could (and probably should) look this up myself, but is the "One L" book the ancestor of the movie "The Paper Chase"?
Watching that movie cured me of any inclinations I had toward law school. (Not that I had many...)
Engineering grad school is/was so much more pleasant. No back-stabbing and far less ego...

The Paper Chase birthed a subsequent film by the same handle. Turow's book, One L caught my attention and my law school experience more or less followed predictable suit.

 

[1961MJS]

As of this week, there's still one active Civil War pension account on the books.

Interesting chart attached to the linked article --- the number of surviving US veterans of WWII is now below 150,000, which has to rank as a suitable addition to the Disturbing Realizations thread. It Is Later Than We Think.

Even more astonishing, WWII pension benefits are being paid to 10 surviving *parents* of WWII veterans.

Hi, it would be more interesting if the chart also showed 144,000 WW2 veterans out of how many originally?

Later

 

[ChiTownScion]

I could (and probably should) look this up myself, but is the "One L" book the ancestor of the movie "The Paper Chase"?
Watching that movie cured me of any inclinations I had toward law school. (Not that I had many...)
Engineering grad school is/was so much more pleasant. No back-stabbing and far less ego...

Wouldn't treat the film it as a documentary of the law school experience. I certainly never had a professor whose daughter looked like a young Lindsey Wagner, and
even more certainly I never ended up sleeping with her. Not has any other male lawyer that I have encountered in over three decades of experience.... well, at least not that they've admitted to me.

The subsequent television series of the same name toned it down quite a bit and did an Iago the Parrot Job on John Houseman's Professor Kingsfield character: turned him from antagonist to loveable good guy- curmudgeon.

 

[ChrisB]

As of this week, there's still one active Civil War pension account on the books.

President John Tyler, born 1790, has two grandsons living today: http://mentalfloss.com/article/29842/president-john-tylers-grandsons-are-still-alive

 

[sheeplady]

Alberta Martin married Jasper Martin in 1927. Upon his death, she married the Grandson, from Jasper's first marriage! Maudie Celia Hopkins was the last known Civil War Bride, dying 2008. She married William M. Cantrell, February 2, 1934, she was 19. I wonder when the last marriage was and how old was the youngest bride? Peyton Place is blushing!

Unrelated story, but about child brides. For the couple who built our house, the wife predeceased the husband by over ten years, close to 20. Her husband, sometime in the last two years before his death (he was close to 90) married a woman who was 18 years old.

We only found this out because we looked up his will in the county courthouse and it mentioned that the property be split between Nancy, Edna, and Oscar; with the house going directly to the wife, Edna.

We have to think that this was some sort of arranged marriage or something. Ransom was single for almost 2 decades and was quite wealthy. He obviously could have remarried if he wanted companionship. There is no newspaper recording of their wedding (unlike other family weddings) and the property was split evenly between the 3 heirs to the penny, almost as if she was a daughter and not a wife.

Either two things happened: they were actually married in the sense of husband and wife romantically OR it was done for financial reasons of some sort. The family did have staff, but there's no way to tell if Edna was a servant before her marriage- at the previous census in 1880 she would have only been 9. I have never been able to find Edna's maiden name. She appears in the will, I found her having a child 2 years after her first husband dies (remarried) and completely disappears just as she appeared.

 

[Harp]

Wouldn't treat the film it as a documentary of the law school experience. I certainly never had a professor whose daughter looked like a young Lindsey Wagner, and even more certainly I never ended up sleeping with her. .

I had a gorgeous Torts prof at Oklahoma City University School of Law, all remained platonic.
I was hauled in to her office for ditching class and had the riot act read to me.
A thoroughly enjoyable interrogation.

 

[ChiTownScion]

I had a gorgeous Torts prof at Oklahoma City University School of Law, all remained platonic.
I was hauled in to her office for ditching class and had the riot act read to me.
A thoroughly enjoyable interrogation.

Had an adjunct faculty research & writing instructor who had worked her way through school as a Playboy bunny. WAY above my pay grade, so the Hart- Susan scenario would have never happened. The closest thing we had to the Paper Chase crowd was one egomaniac who could have been Bell: made a big deal out of the fact that he was "transferring up" to Wash U. Last I checked, he was a sole practitioner, essentially chasing ambulances. Sic gloria transit mundi.

 

[Harp]

The closest thing we had to the Paper Chase crowd was one egomaniac who could have been Bell: made a big deal out of the fact that he was "transferring up" to Wash U. Last I checked, he was a sole practitioner, essentially chasing ambulances. Sic gloria transit mundi.

A guy in my 1L study group was a Notre Dame alum and a grad of Cambridge University in England where he had taken a MA in Economics.
Notre Dame Law turned him down, and he was one p....d Domer. Notre Dame had also declined me, but I had received the nicest rejection
letter, wishing me success in the law etc., very sweet. I told him about this, and he was even more p....d-his rejection letter was brief and blunt.
A great guy-all the group were tops, but with his academic credentials plus six years at the Treasury Department in Washington he failed entrance at ND Law.
oh well, magnum in legs vivat homo, sed est fides.
...and I always wanted to date a Playboy bunny.

 

[ChiTownScion]

A guy in my 1L study group was a Notre Dame alum and a grad of Cambridge University in England where he had taken a MA in Economics.
Notre Dame Law turned him down, and he was one p....d Domer. Notre Dame had also declined me, but I had received the nicest rejection
letter, wishing me success in the law etc., very sweet. I told him about this, and he was even more p....d-his rejection letter was brief and blunt.
A great guy-all the group were tops, but with his academic credentials plus six years at the Treasury Department in Washington he failed entrance at ND Law.
oh well, magnum in legs vivat homo, sed est fides.
...and I always wanted to date a Playboy bunny.

Domers. Some of them are pretty decent types. The subway alum wannabes, on the other hand.... don't get me started.

 

[Harp]

Domers. Some of them are pretty decent types. The subway alum wannabes, on the other hand.... don't get me started.

All the alums, Domers and subway alike share a passion for football, but I wonder if the university's past laxness with regard to team discipline and off field behavior
has come full circle. Perhaps the school needs to reexamine priorities; render unto Caesar and focus less on football, and more on clearing out all the heathens in the Theology Department.
I hate to say it but there are more important things in life than football.
...Not much though.
Vae victus veritas.

 

[sheeplady]

Today I had 3 (count 'em, 3) students email me about missing the first weeks of class. Not one week, but one student "informed" me he'd be missing classes for the first THREE WEEKS. Apparently there is nothing I can do. I can't drop him from the class and the waiting list is 10 people long.

 

[tonyb]

Today I had 3 (count 'em, 3) students email me about missing the first weeks of class. Not one week, but one student "informed" me he'd be missing classes for the first THREE WEEKS. Apparently there is nothing I can do. I can't drop him from the class and the waiting list is 10 people long.

Outrageous. I'd flunk him, unless his attendance for the remaining class sessions was perfect and his academic performance was nothing short of stellar, in which case he might get a C. Maybe.

 

[Bushman]

At the college I attend, students are given the a few days where they are allowed to miss class without reason (usually in the ball part of 3 or 4 days), a standard usually set by the department board. After the student misses the allowed number of days, their grade decreases by one letter grade each day they miss. Kind of an incentive not to miss class unless they truly need to. Perhaps you could implement a similar system?

 

[Harp]

After the student misses the allowed number of days, their grade decreases by one letter grade each day they miss. Kind of an incentive not to miss class unless they truly need to. Perhaps you could implement a similar system?

I ditched all the time; usually Aced everything, but a favorite philosophy prof nailed me with the proverbial Gentleman's C, and threw in a castigation for good measure.
But I was his best student and we both knew this, and I kept signing up for his courses because he was simply the best, a real treasure.
Another prof, a Russian instructor was not amused by my cutting manner. Can't win 'em all.