Academic

Conference on "Bailing Out Failing Institutions"

By Gordon Smith, Christine, Hurt, Vic Fleischer, Fred Tung, Lisa Fairfax, David Zaring

If the list of participants is accurate, I am the only person from the Mountain time zone at Columbia Law School's 6th Deals Roundtable, which has the title Financial Institutions and Private Equity. The website states that the focus of the conference is "Bailing Out Failing Institutions." I am looking forward to seeing many old friends and hearing some folks, like Harvey Miller, who are hard to catch in person in Utah.

By the way, when I arrived at the campus of Columbia University this morning, I was transported back in my memories to 1985, the first time I had visited this place. I had rented a car in Washington, DC, where I was doing an internship in the DC Circuit through BYU's Washington Seminar, and I had driven to NY for the day with my then-fiancee and now wife, Sue. It was my first time in NY, and we were there, among other reasons, to check out law schools. Sue was not interested in living in NY, but she was kind enough to indulge my investigation.

Trying to find Columbia, we got lost in Harlem, then received some bad directions from a guy who looked like a policeman from the back, but he wasn't. By the time we finally found the university, I was a bit scattered. Still, we walked around the campus and through the law building. I remember being shocked by the price of an apartment that was advertised on one of the bulletin boards. We left NY thinking that we might be happier going to law school elsewhere, and I never applied to Columbia.

A few weeks later, we visited Hyde Park, where we ran into a friend from BYU on the Midway. He was at Chicago in the PhD program for English, but as things turned out, he left that program and we became classmates the next fall in the law school. I am not sure that Hyde Park was an upgrade on Morningside Heights, but meeting that friend on the Midway sure made it seem that way.

Full post as published by Conglomerate on November 14, 2008 (boomark / email).