The fine gloss a year puts on your undergraduate years

There are a ton of things that are miserable about being in college. ( Not that there are a lot of good things.)  One of the worst things is being told how wonderful and easy it is. (On a side note this is not something you ever hear about law school, people who have finished law school tell you one of two things, law practice is so much better and that they know how you are suffering or get out now it is not worth the miserable suffering.) Being told how easy and fun college is compared to the real world doesn't help anything, It doesn't make a paper write itself or the drama of living with 50 women go away. People who are out of school for a long time forget the misery that comes from being under constant scrutiny, of being judged and maligned at every corner. While there is some of this in the working world the biggest difference is in your job you have time to master your skill, to take charge over your domain. In school everything is new all the time. I think part of the reason you don't hear form lawyers how much better law school is, is that unlike undergraduate education where you put the miserable stuff behind you once you enter the real world (only to take on new and different miseries) the skills you take from law school are much more applicable. Lawyers are given a daily reminder of the ways real practice is better.

I was not happy my last semester in college. The sorority drama seemed especially petty, I wanted to start law school (and despite a lifetime of  being told I was exceptional I knew I wasn't going to Yale) my classes seemed especially esoteric and bogged down in the pedagogy of Ivory Tower academia. My degree, in addition to being in political science, is in Rhetoric and the focus of my degree was narrative as public discourse. It couldn't have gotten much more heady or philosophical. There was a time I lived and breathed the words of dead Russians and longer dead Romans and Greeks. But by my last semester I had very little patience for it. The theory that had once excited me felt too far removed from reality. I just started reading the Idiot by Dostoevsky as my commute book, and I am enjoying it so much. I remember now why I once declared my love for depressing Russian literature. It was nice to discover that the frustrations of undergraduate life didn't squeeze the joy of literature from me.
     
It is easy to look back from the vantage point of twenty years and exclaim how easy everything was and how you wished you had appreciated it more, but that comment is made from the sure footed position of the future. Yes knowing that you passed, graduated and  got a job makes it seem easy, but when you're in school none of that is certain. I am sure there are things I will appreciate more about law school from the vantage point of a job that pays me, and hopefully financial security. I try to recognize that it is a shared experience I have with lawyers across the US and that it shapes our profession and will shape me. It is just hard to remember when you are paying someone to break you down and build you back from the broken pieces.

Thunder Snow

Beautiful or a death trap?

It is a real thing, I swear. I didn't know it but you can have a thunder storm with snow. Winter weather this year has not approached the craziness of last year and what people who were in DC call "snowmageddon" but it has been a little stressful for little ole coastal me.
Last Tuesday, the day before our big job fair, we had an ice storm and while taking the garbage out I slipped on our front steps and landed on my right arm. I scared the dog with my scream and spent a few hours wondering if I should go to the hospital. Thankfully I am a south paw, although we lefties use our right hands much more than the average right-y uses their left. (for example because of a lack of left handed scissors at my public elementary school I cut with my right hand, even with knives which is weird.) Also importantly for a job fair, we shake hands with our right. (I nearly cried every time someone shook my hand too tight.) Also my lack of range of motion made it really difficult to dress myself. Something that played out as a bit of a comedy of errors as my roommate and I tried to decided what to wear for the job fair.

Our back yard.

My injuries led a friend from home to observe that I may want to choose where I live based on how likely I am to get hurt, given my general klutziness.   
This weeks weather was less dangerous, but more mystifying. Wednesday brought us the previously mentioned "thunder-snow" a whopping seven and half inches of it, and nearly twenty-four hours without power. The loss of power was difficult to deal with. I could read my books as long as the sun was out but once it got to dark there wasn't much I could do. It is do difficult to balance a twenty-five pound law book and take notes by flash light, plus the reading is just not lively enough to keep me engaged in the dark (well except for criminal law, but no one wants to be reading about rape and murder in a cold house with the lights out.) So I caught up on sleep and read a bit of "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo" which is way too good. Honestly law school is getting in the way of my real reading.
So now I sit trying to focus, you can see how well that is going, knowing that all of the school we missed in the last couple of weeks will have to be made up, and thinking snow days must be a lot more fun when you are a kid, but I wouldn't know because where I grew up it is currently seventy two degrees and sunny as my father likes to remind me... I am not jealous at all.

Grace doing a better job braving the snow than I did

Little Women

It's been a tough week for my mom and with her my whole family. This news has really gotten me thinking about how important our relationship is. The more I think about it the more I realize the legacy of women in my life. My family is full of mythical women, not that they were not real but just that at some point their impact became bigger than themselves. Thinking back on the people and stories that shaped me it was almost always the women in my life. (With the obvious huge exception of my father.) 

One of the common tropes in our culture is how poorly women treat each other. There are more books about mean girls and cruel sorority sisters than anyone could read in a lifetime. Looking at the cultural artifacts of modern times you see instance after instance of women treating each other terribly, really all reality TV is women putting each other down for publicity. It makes me ill to watch for two reasons. The first, if women want to be held on an equal plain as men we need to take cues from them in how they treat one another, and it certainly isn't pulling one another down. I think it is so important for women to be there for each other, especially the young girls who are learning from us. The second, more personal reason, is I would like culture to reflect my experience, I was raised by a tribe of amazing women each of whom have blessed me with amazing gifts. I wish that this was more women's experience, and that it was what was expected of us. Of course if the standard we are held up to is cruel and degrading that will be what young girls learn, and the experience won't change.

There are so many women who have gotten me where I am: 

The grandmother who taught me that it was okay to be smart and that we each have struggles to deal with.

The grandmother who wished positivity for me and pushed me to be happy, who loved life and taught me to make a mean pie and showed me what it meant to love deeply. 

The aunt who nurtured my creative side. 

The aunt who let me know it was okay to want what I want. 

The aunt who is understanding and honest and has more answers about my crazy weird family than I could hope for.    

The nanny who became a sister and friend, a trusted confidant, with true perspective.

The cousin who always made me feel cool.

The cousin who was there as a big sister and fellow chocolate addict. 

The friend who forced me to have some fun in high school.

The friend whose steady friendship is fiercely dependable.

The friend who is much to understanding of how lazy I am, how much I love junk food and my love of inappropriate conversations. 

My sister who reminds me that there is so much light and beauty in the world, who is much too kind and the only other person on the planet who really gets my parents. 

Most importantly my mom, I try to remember how lucky I am to have such a wonderful relationship with my mom. Who lets me know it is okay to cry and that she is always on my side, a dependable safety net to use as I need. I don't know how she is able to keep the crazy mis-formed pieces of our family together, to create order in the chaotic universe of our lives. She is somehow always only a phone call away, and even more astonishing she can reach through the phone and span a continent with her words. I can't believe her kindness and generosity, the way she willingly sacrifices herself for the rest of us. I hope I don't forget how lucky I am and that I never have to try to fill her shoes.    

Love you mom

   

On a side note I did not want to title this post "Little Women," it was the first thing that came to my mind, but I immediately thought, no I can think of something better than that. So I racked my brain and searched online and you know what I discovered, there just aren't many books about women's relationships. I thought about Jane Austen, but really her books are about finding husbands in the company of your sisters. And then I thought of Amy Tan and Toni Morrison but those are as much about poverty and the minority experience, which really wasn't what I was going for either. (Plus neither have written a book that I would read of my own free will, sorry if that is literary blasphemy.)  According to fiction it seems that a measure of success for women (at least white privileged women) is never forming strong enough bonds with other women that you can't leave them behind. In most novels (even good ones) female protagonists are either finding men or hating their mothers (or both). I think that we can blame Disney and Shakespeare for this.   

The version of me born in 1948 is so jealous...

I promise I will get to the rally and Halloween (as soon as I get the photos off my camera), but first . . . Patti Boyd.
One of my friends was looking at my iPod and as a result of my tastes being very hip for someone in the 1970's recommended Patti Boyd's biography to me. I don't know if I am going to be able to finish it. Not that it isn't an amazing story. It is just to frustrating to read, it is making me simultaneously jealous and disheartened.
For anyone who doesn't know Patti Boyd is the ex-wife of George Harrison and Eric Clapton. She is the inspiration for among other songs: Layla, Bell Bottom Blues, Something oh and Wonderful tonight.
Layla- the song I love so much it was my vote for my best friend to name her daughter, and the name she ultimately chose.
Bell Bottom Blues- My favorite modern blues song, my favorite Clapton song.
Something- The song Rolling Stone called it the most romantic song ever written.
And of course Wonderful Tonight- Only one of my top five songs (it is in a separate category from my favorites stratified by artist, because I don't think it exemplifies Clapton's style or playing the way most do.) Also what I would consider to be the most romantic song ever written. It is a song I often use to exemplify what women want, it is to be made to feel like that, to be seen the way she is seen in that song. That the man we are with sees us as more beautiful than we think we are, needs us more than we can see and loves us more than we know. (And by the way it was written as they were getting ready to go to Paul and Linda McCartney's Buddy Holly party.)
I really don't feel like this is fair at all, what I wouldn't give for just one amazing love song to be written about me, and she has at least a half dozen.Then the worst part is as you read you get all the horrible rock and roll wife stories that taint the way I see these songs.
Honestly I am waiting to find out that Beast of Burden (what I consider to be the sexiest song ever written) was inspired by a sub-par one night stand with Keith Richards and I will really throw the book down.

The Jersey Shore

I am spending the long wekend on the Jersey shore. But just so there is no confusion my Jersey shore looks a lot more like this... 

than like this...

It is hard to belive that we are only two weeks in, I am already tired. ( I will blame it in part on school deciding to hold a special Friday session and therefore having an extra day of class this week.) Lame especially considering the fact that I would have been able to get out of town a day earlier and avoided the traffic, except with the hurricane coming I guess the shore is dead. Leave it to me to plan a beach vacation for during a huge storm.
Although it seems that now the storm has passed, missing us pretty much completely and now we have beautiful weather and smaller crowds that your usual labor day. It is sort of perfect for my intentions, relax spend time with my family, soak in the calm. I am even caught up on my reading so I only had to bring my computer. (I was able to read a novel today on the beach!) It is shaping up to be a great weekend!

What to do when the weather gets bad?

Buy books of course!
Today's weather has been insane. Well maybe not if you are from the East Coast, but for me it is always something that is hard to get used to. I woke up to thunder and lightning, which I love. I get gleeful over counting the time and seeing how far away lightning is striking and I love the sound of rain. To me this is where California weather differs the most from other parts of the world. We have a steady climb to warm weather (although I guess where I am from they haven't had many days even reach the Seventies this summer) and then a steady decline into cold weather and then in the middle of winter we have two months of rain. It is never very extreme, but those winter months do get a little gloomy. There is no quick changeability, it is rare that we get any sort of rain in the summer, and really rare that we ever get thunder and lightning. It was great to be able to enjoy the weather from inside and get some things done.

So I have been working on getting some of the free stuff we have acquired to look presentable (more on that when I can actually upload my photos) but more importantly I was able to buy books. Seeing as class starts in just over a week this really needed to happen. So I went scouring looking for good deals and I did have some luck getting better prices then the campus bookstore. Now I love books, all books, I have a really hard time letting them go. I love the way they smell the way they feel in your hand, how you can watch yourself progress through one via the placement of your bookmark (not that it isn't uncommon for me to finish a book in a sitting.) But I love them as evidenced by my parents house where the majority of the books are mine, being that they are able to clear out clutter, and my father is a Kindle person. (I don't understand Kindle people- I see the appeal, but what would reading be without the page? Your answer: Fanfiction.)So anyway after navigating through sights that want me to "rent" books at a lower price (wait I have to give it back? it has a due date? I can't write in it? So you want me to pay to do what my school library allows me to do for free? No thank you) I don't think I sold back more than  a half dozen of my books for all of undergrad, I love them and after I am done with then I feel like I have formed some sort of strange relationship with them, each of us taking something and leaving our mark. (Wow nerd alert.)
So with all of that in mind I go to buy my books and I end up spending almost as much on them as I did on my Ikea furniture. For four books, nearly 500 dollars, now I am willing to pay it and I am sure, as a book user I will probably get my money's worth, but SERIOUSLY, it was a little painful. Now I just get to stress out over them arriving on time.