A Conversation with Elizabeth
2000
Re: New Job

From:          Elizabeth 
To:            LMixson@PEC.com
Sent:          Friday, March 10, 2000 1:37 PM
Subject:       Re: New Job
 
Right, what can you say. Don't they get to where they expect that type of thing in your field? At these yoga retreats, are they with your instructor, or do you get to see her there? I guess you'd say if that were going anywhere. Regarding changes, I sort of felt myself flip flopping about SEEMING to have decided to stay here at least until I finish school. I felt myself teeter tottering once again. I'll just have to ride things out and see how my mind keeps changing, but also await the July notification.  I may have no choice if NOT accepted.  I think I've told you the school here is trying to get the "ABA" accreditation and is making all these changes and upping tuition to go along with this.  Its really all political in a way.  A friend yesterday asked me, Well do you take the same bar exam as he accredited people.  I said, Yes, but...I'd be stuck in Alabama. That doesn't seem fair, if I pass the same exam. The tuition went up AGAIN, a fairly big leap, having just gone up last term as well. We "heard" Wednesday, BUT, the school said there PROBABLY would not be another raise until next summer.  What one person said to me is the school REALLY wants to clear all of us "out"--those of who started BEFORE the changes will be in place, which is this coming FALL. The students in the program now have had a lot of freedom--I've been able to just about take courses when I wanted to and skip around.  All that is changing, but the "in-house" students are at so many different stages of finishing, it is quite a nightmare, I'm sure, wanting to get them OUT, so the curriculum can change and stabilize.  It will be the VERY SAME courses, that won't change.  It will just be more regimented in some senses, but also many formerly required courses will now be electives.
 
Keeping the tuition stable will encourage students to get on out.  (What people will want to do is drag out their school enrollment, hoping the school will get accredited BEFORE they have to graduate.  I've been trying to do a tiny bit of that myself.)  What I HATE the most is if I go ahead and take a sort of normal load here, the way I look at things, the school may get accredited, JUST AFTER I leave, I mean possibly the very next term. 
 
That's like--what can I say--missing a very big boat, because the VALUE of an ABA degree vs. just a state accredited degree is ENORMOUS.  Oh well, enough of that.  The new hike will put me in a pinch.  I no longer can do it out of paychecks and will have to hit savings to make up the deficit.  The Mars Movie:  The paper here said that its not your flashy type of "new" sci fi movie, but "cerebral" more in line with the original 2001.  That the pace was measured and slow, more like older classic sci fi movies, but all in all the review was good.  Brian de Palma is the director.  He is one of my favorite film directors, although a little on the violent side.  I'd love to go soon.  Next week I having to ask for a very chopped up schedule though, so I better not ask for this afternoon off as well. (I have to drive to Tuscaloosa for a dental appointment--I hope it does not involve a root canal, but I'm almost positive it will be a crown, but I will have to take the whole day off.).  Also, I have registration and students are going to LINE UP at 4:00 a.m.--I'm serious, because there is one class in the summer everyone wants.  I'm going to line up as well, but maybe more like 7, although that's probably too late. I do want to get ONE special class, but fortunately its not the one they will be lining up for.  Also next week I'm going to an afternoon session to train on special uses for Lexis-Nexis, the big law database.  I use it all the time, but I under use it, because it can do a lot I never really have tried.
 
Otherwise, nothing much.  Work is boring.  I've been organizing floppy disks, erasing old files, consolidating similar stuff on one disk, etc.  Not exciting, but I don't know what's on half the disks.
Elizabeth

The Mars movie was Mission to Mars in which a team on the first mission to Mars discovers a strange formation which ends up killing everyone on the mission except one man who manages to survive several months until the Mars II mission comes to rescue him. It turns out the formation is an alien artifact which sends one of the team members to the alien’s home world.  The move was based 20 years later, in 2020, which seemed a reasonable time for the mission to Mars but yet here we are in 2024 and not only has there not been a mission to Mars, but not even a return to the moon.  

The mention of a yoga retreat was referring to my upcoming yoga retreat March 17th through the 19th in which I traveled to Gray Bear Lodge in Tennessee for a weekend retreat with Doug Keller. Doug was a fairly well known and respected yoga teacher who also taught classes at the yoga center where I was taking classes. Although I knew of Doug, I had not taken any classes with him at the time so the retreat would be the first time I studied with Doug.  

This would be the last email that I saved between Elizabeth and myself for several years. I believe we continued to exchange some email but since I was using my PEC business email account and was leaving PEC, I didn’t save any of our final exchanges while at PEC.  I started work at AOL on March 27th.

AOL