Preparing for Change

In the following essay, Patricia Larson, a 1970 graduate of UNI and current chair of the College of Natural Sciences Advisory Board, reflects on her journey from high school math teacher to Associate General Counsel for the American Bar Association.

Patricia Larson

I graduated from UNI in 1970 with a degree in mathematics and secondary education. I am now an attorney. Many people think that a transition from high school math teacher to attorney is unusual. Based on the education I received at UNI and the College of Natural Sciences, however, it is perfectly understandable.

When I was attending UNI, I wanted to teach geometry. I also knew that times were changing. Computers were mainframes that used punch cards (remember them?) but we had just walked on the moon and had entered the world of microprocessors. We were in an undeclared and unpopular war in Vietnam that was bringing its own social and technological changes. DDT was killing birds, but the first Earth Day had been declared. Our professors and the press told us that no one could predict what the world--or the job market--would be in twenty years, ten years, or even when we graduated.

Even in education, the teaching market was glutted, school enrollment was declining and school systems were consolidating. We were told that our only choice was to educate ourselves, not for a job, but for a rapidly changing world.

To do this, we were told, we had to be active participants in our education. We had to dig behind the premises and the very structure of any discourse until we were satisfied with the conclusions. We had to learn to think on our feet even as the ground seemed to give way. We had to prepare for change.

When I graduated, I did find a teaching job. Committed to the education I had received, I taught mathematics as a thinking process that requires us to gather facts, sort distinctions and distill analyses until clear communication is produced, with no diversions, no ramblings, no leaps of faith that might distract the reader. A sense of elegance, if you will, so that the reader's response on reaching the conclusion must be, "Of course."

Times changed and I changed. Teaching, in my opinion, is one of the hardest jobs on earth. As I was deciding it was time to do something else, I became friends with a law school professor, sat in on one of her classes and watched her work through the Socratic method with her students. To my surprise, I saw that legal reasoning is mathematic proof in another language. I had the basic skills!

I was a litigator for ten years. I appeared in court, arguing on my feet, using the same mathematical reasoning process that I had been taught and had taught my high school students. I worked to lay out legal arguments as cleanly as proofs, with solid premises, clear language, and no diversions, ramblings or leaps of faith--nothing to distract the judge or jury from concluding that my client should win, "of course."

I am now the Associate General Counsel for the American Bar Association. I still do some litigation but mostly, I prepare contracts for programs that support the work of the ABA, which is aptly summed up in its slogan, "Defending Liberty, Pursuing Justice." One ABA program (on which I did not work but which seems particularly pertinent for this essay and these times) was developed from an idea of Supreme Court Justice Kennedy. It sends ABA members into high schools to facilitate students' analyses of our First Amendment and other rights.

I don't know if I will remain an attorney. After all, I once thought I would always be a teacher and then, that I would always be a litigator. What I do know, however, is that the education I received at UNI and the College of Natural Sciences is as valuable today as it was in the age of the mainframe. I remain prepared for change.

PJL

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Last modified: 12/17/03