Spring Break...so much better than last year!

Spring Break as it should be...mimosas in a mason jar!

At my law school your spring break 1L year is set up to drain the life out of you. Mine did, in part because I was so miserable about the things I would supposed to get done and which made break miserable that I didn't actually get them done. So not only was I stressed out I was unproductive. At very least I got to visit my family which was a bonus.

Central Market- Charelston

This year that was not the case, sure there was work that I would have ideally gotten done, but it didn't need to happen (and therefore did not get done.) I decided to rationalize that spending time relaxing was probably good for my mind. A group of my friends and I rented a beach house in South Carolina. We were a little before college spring break, which made the island we were staying on a bit more laid back than it might be otherwise.

I love getting to spend time near the ocean and I haven't been able to spend as much time in the south I would like, so when one of my girlfriends- who, because of our mutually busy schedules, I never get to spend enough time with- invited me to come along I jumped at the chance, even though it meant missing my dad while he was here for briefly for work. I was really looking forward to a break from school, and DC and the pace of real life. Of course, as is the case with much of life it wasn't as stars and ferries as I had hoped.

First of all, it was early March, so we knew going in that the weather might be iffy, and we didn't get too many great beach days. (You will not the lack of beach photos-I didn't take many.) Also as the population of our vacationers changed and it quickly became evident that I was going on a "boy's trip." Now not entirely boys,  it was two couples three boys and me; but I realized that this was the first time I had been on a "boys boys," (probably because I am not cut out for them.) In college I could always find better modes of transportation to football games than the frat buses, and I have always had more girlfriends than guy friends. So all my trips have been family vacations, trips with my girlfriends and vacations on my own, and I have no problem saying that they are what I prefer. My experiance with this group of fine young gentalmen was that they thought I was their mother, something that I am sure would have displeased their actual mothers.

You notice that I call my travel companions "boys," this is because they behaved as such, not because I think of all males my age as boys, but rather because the behaved as boys. We had an amazing house right on the ocean, I would wake up in the morning to go for a run on the beach and when I got back all the blinds facing the ocean would be closed so that the guys could play video games. Which is fine, it is their vacation my problem is that we were not allowed to open our blinds the whole time we were there, because of the glare. As soon as I would get in the house one of them would ask "hey, when is breakfast going to be ready?" I wanted to answer I don't know asshole maybe when you get off your ass and make it? But I had decided to be "fun" and "kind" which in my twisted brain translated to cooking and cleaning and becoming their mother; which of course then resulted in anger and passive aggression- making me not fun at all. All and all I was left utterly without hope for the men of my generation.

That's not to say the trip didn't have highlights, I read all of the hunger games trilogy in under something like 36 hours. They were addicting, and twisted and while they left much to be desired it was nice to read a heroine that actually stood up for herself. The other highlight was spending the day in Charleston with my friend and her boyfriend. While I did feel like a third wheel the day kept me from killing any of the guys back at the house who were still playing video games. (I get that they relax people but the boys never: went to the beach, to Charleston, to Savannah or really into town- I don't understand why they needed to drive 500 miles and pay to rent a beachfront property if you are only going to do exactly what you do at home.)

 

I really enjoyed Charleston and Folly beach even if it was a week of week of cooking and cleaning for spoiled man children (who couldn't operate a diswaher and spilled beer exrywhere for me to clean up), it was still better than last year. I would love to go back and spend some time there for a bachelorette, or girls vacation; but after this spring break  I think there will need to be a "NO BOYS ALLOWED" sign on the front door.   

When did I become this person?

Confession...

I started this posting some time during the winter exam period last year and it has languished in my draft folder for that time with many paragraphs added and deleted. But it originally started with an exclamation over the fact that I found myself writing sentences like: "Whereby an operation of law you have merged liability..." and how quickly law school shaped my brain and enabled me to "think like a lawyer."

Now it isn't so much about academic changes but a mi a culpa in the form of astonishment that I somehow left behind my posting schedule and haven’t updated in months. This change is not about the way my brain works but instead astonishment at the way this life has swallowed me whole.

It certainly wasn’t a bad semester, being busy allowed me to focus my time better and cut away the things that I don’t get value from, but I never intended to fall of the face of the virtual world. It wasn’t that I didn’t write, there are a number of similarly half-finished postings waiting to be finished.

So here is to 2012, hopefully I will get back on the ball. Big things are coming I will keep you posted.

Presidential Fitness Test

When I was ten or eleven (I know it was spring of fifth grade, I am not sure which side of my birthday it was situated on) my class had to take the "Presidential Fitness Test." While for many kids this is an excuse to get out of the classroom and expend some energy, for my over-tall, gangly, be-speckled self having to not only run but do push up and a bent arm hang was nothing short of torture. Add to that the fact that my fifth grade teacher (a man who exemplified the axiom those who cannot do teach) forgot to tell us when the date of the test. For this reason I was wearing a dress, one of my favorites with polka-dots and a tulle under-skirt. While I may have run faster if I had worn athletic shoes, and I was furious with being made to lay on the ground to do sit ups, it is the memory of struggling to pull my body up over a bar on the playground, my entire body straining to reach above the bar my entire class watching me (I am sure flashing my knickers to all of them) that stuck with me. I cannot think of the "Presidential Fitness Test" without a bolt of fear and shame running through me.
So what does this have to do with anything?
I have decided that we need a new "Presidential Fitness Test," not to test the upper-body  of preteens but instead a measure of fitness of presidential candidates.
Earlier this week Herman Cain said that if elected president he would "sign a constitutional amendment banning abortion." Regardless of your feelings on abortion this statement should raise eyebrows, because under Article 5 of the Constitution the president does not sign constitutional amendments. While there is plenty of room for debate about Roe and its progeny, and questioning their validity shouldn't make a person intelligible to be president not knowing how the foundational law of our republic should, or at very least should open you up to the sort of ridicule and embarrassment that fifth graders face on the school yard when they take the Presidential Fitness Test.     
Discussing this with my roommate we came up with quite a list of questions that should be asked. We agreed that the questions should be simple questions with obvious right and wrong answers, that they shouldn't have room for opinions, or academic analysis and that they should avoid political slant. The list we developed included things like:

• What powers are the president explicitly granted in the constitution?
• How does a bill become a law?
• What rights does the bill of rights grant?
• What are the cabinet level agencies? Or maybe just what is the order of succession to the presidency through some number of cabinet secritaries. 
• What are the branches of the federal government?
• Who are the members of NATO?
• Who are the Members of the G8 and the G20?
• Name the 50 states and territories of the US?
• Who is the leader of Canada? of Mexico?
• What is the price of a gallon of gas? of milk?
• What is the corporate tax  rate?
• What is the salary an individual working full time at federal minimum wage?
• What are legal sources of funds for a corporation?

I am sure that there are others, and that some of these could be removed and, I will admit that I don't know the answers to all of these questions off the top of my head, but shouldn't the president? I don't think that knowledge should be the only factor taken into account, I think President Obama's struggles stem from lack of management experience which can't be codified in a test like this. But why aren't people demanding a basic knowledge, why aren't people embarrassed not to know these things.
In the case of Herman Cain he is running in part on the desire to shrink the federal government, encourage the states to take greater control of areas that the federal government has usurped. It seems to me that running on that platform you should be aware of what a massive undertaking it is to amend the constitution, that this is a legitimate limit on the federal government powers, that amending the constitution was intended to be difficult. If you don't recognize those things then your claim of government overreach is nothing more than political opportunism and that you are willing to overlook it when it suits your agenda. 
The problem is most voters nod and ignore, they refuse to see that ignorance won't serve them well. This is why failing my test wouldn't result in disqualification from office but some sort of visual shame, a funny hat? a miss-tailored suit? Ari Gould style super soaking? Something to get people to understand that this is a problem for efficiency and it is embarrassing.
Basically if children have to risk embarrassment to enter law school there should be a chin-up equivalent for becoming president.

Like running on a treadmill whose speed you can't control.

I realize that I am a bit of a failure at this whole "regular updating" thing. But I do feel like I am jogging at an "eleven."
Life is a little insane this semester (and I understand that there isn't a person on the planet whose life isn't busy, but then I tell people what I have gotten myself into and they are like okay yea, you are busy.) This semester the following activities feel entitled to take up my time:

• Classes: Trademark 3 units, First Amendment 3 Units, Business Associations aka Corporations 4 units, Criminal Procedure 3 Units, Media Law 2 Units, Copyright Clearance 2 units.
• Job: Fifteen hours a week in Virginia. (In order to save time commuting I am totally imposing on my DC family and staying in their guest room one night many weeks.) Note to anyone choosing law schools if you go to school in an area where there are lots of intern opportunities the school year it means you have to be an intern during the school year. 
• Extended research paper of publishable (when did this happen?) quality.
• Intellectual Property Brief: One (short) article a month.
• IP symposium planning committee

And those are just the things that I have some pressure to actually go to. It doesn't include job applications, volunteer work and networking (all of which need to happen if I ever want to find a paying job.) It also doesn't include things like eating, sleeping, getting exercise, keeping the dog happy and cleaning the house.

Now I don't begrudge any of it, while I would like  a little more time to myself wouldn't we all and I signed up for it so I really can't complain. It isn't like I am in this boat alone, this is the life of a 2L, at least those of us who hope to be employable. 

So to answer my mother's questions: No I am not whining or complaining, but I am making excuses.  

On police chases towards mexico, missing daughters, shrunken gloves and pool ladders.

I have gotten a few questions about the Casey Anthony trail in the last week or so, and I have seen even more accounts and opinions on television in the last few days. I know my reaction has been frustrating and generally less than satisfying when people ask. In part because I haven't answered the "do you think she did it?" question, instead I have been answering that I don't feel the prosecution fulfilled their burden of proving the elements of murder in the first degree.
I don't really remember the OJ Simpson trial and, aside from the ubiquitous litigator jokes about it, it doesn't come up as a topic in law school. I will also admit that I didn't watch the Casey Anthony trial with rapt attention, I saw some interviews and have read a bit here and there about it. From everything I saw I think that the jurors did a good job, this is what makes me different from the general public and what makes people furious with lawyers.
Most people look at this through the lens of truth, of what really happened, of tragedy and human drama. Lawyers aren't trained to do any of that because finding the truth is not the role of the justice system. Lawyers are trained not to pass judgement, as an attorney you have the an obligation to represent your client to the best of your ability whether you know they are guilty or positive of their innocence. This is done by trying to frame the law so that it is favorable to out clients.
The best system we have to enable justice is placing the burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt on the People. When someone is convicted, as opposed to being ruled against in civil court, we are placing the stigma of society on them, they become at that moment a criminal someone who is apart from society and therefore not granted the same rights as other citizens. This is a deeply moral judgement, and it caries a heavy burden, in order for it to be satisfied the people must prove each of their burdens beyond a reasonable doubt. Murder in the first degree is hard to prove and it should be, especially when the prosecution is recommending the death penalty.
My feeling on this is that the prosecution wanted a big win and shot itself in the foot for it. If the DA hadn't wanted to see this woman fry they would have been able to get a conviction. People can be convicted without a known cause of death, they can be convicted without a body, but cause of death is what the prosecution focused on and this is was what was easiest for the Defense to blow holes through. They created a situation where they had to prove chloroform and duct tape and they left the jury confused and doubtful. They should have pointed to the holes in the defense's theory, they should have plea bargained down, they should have done any number of things.

Cartoon Copyright the New Yorker 

I am not sure of what happened, although it does look suspicious, what I am sure of is that we live in a country where we would rather a guilty woman go free than an innocent one be incarcerated and because of that system being guilty of something, being shifty or suspicious isn't enough; you must be shown to be guilty of what you were charged with. This doesn't always go down easy but I can't imagine what trade offs would make it better.

Failure is not an option...

When I was about nine or ten my dad brought back a t-shirt from a business trip in Florida. It is a quote from Gene Kranz, the NASA flight director on Apollo 13. While it is exactly what I would want to hear from a flight director if I was an astronaut, I think as a child I would have been better served by the words of Edison "I have not failed. I have just found 10,000 ways that don't work."

While "failure is not an option" works reasonably well as a stance for the parents of a bright (if sometimes lazy) child living in a town where teachers were told not to use red pens, everyone had to be given valentines, birthday party invitations and end of the year trophies, at some point we will all fail. Success isn't about never failing, it is about learning to fail well. This has been the toughest lesson of law school. One of the secrets of the law, which is actually painfully obvious, is that you are going to lose half of the time, and if you define winning as getting exactly what you client wants well then that number is considerably lower. So law school is the excruciating experience of failing a lot, of breaking you down to very small painful parts and building you back up in a way that makes failure less personal so you can learn from losing, so that even the worst sort of day isn't really a failure.

This isn't compatible with "failure is not an option" and it has isolated me. I have created an infallible facade in front of a very human girl. When I am less than perfect there is no one to share that with because it doesn't fit with who I was created to be. There is nothing to success if it wasn't fought for and in exposing our wounds we are allowed to learn from them rather than letting them fester in the dark.

     

An amazon in a hipster bar

A couple weeks ago I went out for one of my friend's birthday. I had a good time, but I was also reminded why I don't go out all that often. My friend picked a great place, with a good DJ and without a cover, although I could tell immediately it wasn't my scene. Maybe it is DC, but I always feel overdressed if I put in the smallest effort into getting ready. The staggering number of people in hoodies and sneakers made me feel ridiculous. More so because I was in heels, I could look over the heads of everyone in the crowd. If that wasn't enough one of the girls who can grate on me begins the evening by saying "oh my god you're huge!"
Yes I am tall, but huge? Way to start a girls night off on the right foot. This girl in particular seems to bring out all my childish insecurities. Whenever I am around her I feel like my twelve-year-old self, and our interactions always seem to turn petty.
I was hoping law school would temper my interactions with superficial girls. That once we began our "professional lives" as they like to tell us, that we would all try to act like grown-ups. Boy was I wrong.
As an undergrad I developed a distaste for the subcategory of these girls who acted dumb to get men. I went to school whith some of the most fiercely intelligent women in my generation. Women who spent their days working on cures for blindness and doing research for Nobel laureates (not an exaggeration) and who would then turn around and act like idiots because when they acted like themselves they were ignored by our male counterparts. They were threatening, and boys don't buy drinks for girls who threaten their masculinity. I can't even begin to count the number of times I was told by smart, amazing women that if I just "acted dumb" that I could have a boyfriend.
And it continues, I don't think it will ever end. As long as men (on the whole)are threatened by women and more attracted to women who seem vulnerable, it won't change and the dating scene will continue to be miserable for everyone. (For women because they are changing themselves to be attractive and for men because they are ending up with girls who are either supercritical or insecure in who they are.)
The party was mostly really fun. I was having a great time aside from the occasional comments about how tall I was for most of the evening. One of my friends, not a superficial girl, was spending some quality time with her crush. The rest of us were giggling like gossipy teenagers. The crush, being either a nice guy or a typical guy who sees an opportunity noticed one of our classmates (definately a silly girl-pretty and more than that, adorable, but also willing to say and do the dumbest stuff for attention.) Like drink in obscene quantities. Anyway, crush goes to help her, gets her water encourages her to stop drinking. The bar closes and we are outside waiting for cabs and superfical girl is puking everywhere. Crush is being kind, holding her hair back. Silly girl finishes the exorcist routine, Crush tries to put her in a cab asks he what her address is to give the driver. She stands up, wipes her mouth, says, "I just want to go back to your place" then caresses his chest and it works. I wanted to throw up. My friend is miserable, I give her a "typical" and an eye roll and we go back to her apartment to watch chick flicks and drink more. And I never want to go to bar again. Which is why this week my roommate and I stayed in watched sitcoms and drank boozy smoothies.

Q: So dumb guys go for dumb girls and smart guys go for dumb girls.

Then what do the smart girls get?

A: Cats mostly

-Modern Family on discovering what it means to be a smart girl

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.

Home

Well I am back in DC, technically Maryland, but well you get the point. I meant to write some during vacation but that, along with a slough of other things, didn't happen. This Christmas will certainly be remembered, but for all the wrong reasons.
Thomas Wofle was right, you can't go home again. The vestiges of your former self, which live in foggy memories and haunt the walls of your childhood home are phantoms, reaching out to you with a hope they cannot fulfill. They leave you lost, lonely, and mean; searching dusty tomes for an artifact to reassure you in your future or stabilize the foundation from which you grew. Ultimately you are left unfulfilled, having unearthed more weaknesses then you care to acknowledge. And still it pulls on you calling for you to stay, to hold onto that fuzzy version of your past self that never really existed.
I thought about running away, frequently, over the break. Getting in a car or on a plane and leaving it behind, the debt, the responsibility. It is a silly dream I know, leaving would make things infinitely more complicated. It is the spirit of American wanderlust in me, I guess, but I know it isn't a viable option. (Just as much as I know the price of the cheapest one way ticket from IAD to De Gaulle on most days.) If I were living in a Russian novel Paris would be my Moscow. I love stories about the post-war expat community in the city about artists and poets and the family they formed there. I have been to modern Paris and I know that Montmartre doesn't look like it did fifty years ago. That the place I imagine doesn't exist and probably never did, it is probably the musings of the romantic in me I have been trying, unsuccessfully, to kill for far to long. I still love the city though, every time I am there I understand why it is the French have such an aversion to work. It would be a lovely life, sitting by the Seine writing, painting, drinking wine and eating cheese. The piece of me that loves Pacific avenue and local bands and feels guilty for not becoming the type of lawyer that defends indigenousness peoples from huge multinational corporations and the ill will of their government wants to run away, to live that life. I am not that person, I don't wander, I plan. I will have my Juris Doctorate mere months after my twenty-fifth birthday.  At least here I know what my role is. Law school is terribly isolating, piercingly difficult and at times painful in the myriad of ways it makes me feel like an idiot but I know who I am and what I am supposed to do. I know I am capable, and that I have the wonderful support I need to do it. Just because you can't go home again doesn't mean it's not there waiting, changed, rough around the edges but there none the less.

Okay so I kinda love exams...

Well only sorta...

First off I know that this puts me at odds with most of the world.

And it doesn't mean that if, given the choice to not have to take them or not have them count for a grade I wouldn't jump at the chance.

What I mean is, accepting the reality that this is something I have to do I will accept it and see the good in them:
I like the idea that I have four hours to sit down and prove myself. It is kind of exciting, like I am in some sort of epic, albeit nerdy, battle with my professors where I have to save my self from a death of drowning in debt or sodium poisoning from over consumption of ramen. Okay, so it isn't really all that epic but the idea of sitting down and proving yourself does have a certain appeal.
The other thing I like is that they bring with them this weird other worldliness where you are both EXTREMELY crazy busy and stressed and at the same time have no plans and quite a bit of freedom. I loved winter exams at Cal especially, because there was a general sense of batting down the hatches and all focusing together; everything would get really quiet. You would walk by a frat house on a Friday night coming back from the library and it would be silent.
Law school it is a little different, in part because I am no longer surrounded by students, and Grace could care less, she just cares that we aren't giving her nearly the level of attention she expects for when we are at home. Honnestly at one point I was sure out lack of attention had "broken the dog," when I was cooking eggs and bacon and she stayed looking sad on the guest bed. (Don't worry she recovered.) Also because my roommate and I are both stress eaters, this time involves a lot of supplemental baking, I am pretty sure the peanut butter cookies are what revived Grace. In all it has been a good thing for our relationship as roommates (which is not always the case with exams.) We both take the same approach to exams: getting through what we can and trying to preserve sanity, trying not to deviate into extreme behavior (of either the distraction or focus type.) We spent the better part of an hour laughing over our favorite blogs.* It is one of my best memories for the semester even if it did give me another thing to waste my time with.

Grace "helping" bake cookies

All and all it is kind of nice. You don't have many times in your life where a period of time is set aside so that you can organize your life and get your head sorted out. Which is really what I try to think of this as. Because the alternative, three weeks where you do everything you can to keep yourself from becoming a smarmy plaintiffs lawyer who gets shot by a deranged client, after alienating everyone in your life close to you, is just too depressing to think about. (True albeit slightly altered story.)

*(The impetus of this being the author of my favorite blog writing to tell me that she liked the title of my blog. Insert obnoxious fan girl squeeing. -If you don't know what this sound is ask a thirteen year old about Justin Beiber or Edward Cullen. If you do not know who these people are you are a better person than me and obviously have a fulfilling life)  

This is what happens when you go into Whole Foods hungry and depressed...

You come out with twenty dollars worth of chocolate and cheese, and you eat half a loaf of bread before you get home...

My roommate and I frequently eat dinner together. Often it is a sort of "graze-y" meal where we are trying to clear out the fridge. One of our favorite things, (and the meal we brought to the rally to Restore Sanity) is simple sandwiches, just sliced tomatoes on good quality bread with fresh mozzarella, melted. They are supper good, because we use really good ingredients. Anyway our bread from the last week hadn't been refrigerated (my bad) so I volunteered to pick up a new loaf from the Whole Foods that is next to metro. Bad idea, not only was I hungry because it had been a long day, but more importantly I was overwhelmed by a slough of bad information and the pressure of impending finals. As anyone who knows me knows, I deal with stress and sadness by eating and shopping (not necessarily at the same time- not that I would say no), preferably for luxury goods and rich foods (not a good thing for someone who is living on government loans.) So Whole Foods for me is like a crack den for a junkie, lets just say the results were tasty but not good for my wallet. I left excited about my meal but wondering how I had managed to do so much damage and only come out with a single bag? So now I have the existing stress and sadness coupled with guilt over my inability to restrain myself.

What do I do?

I eat half the baguette I bought on the way home.
 (Technically an arrest-able offence on DC metro.)

Also, on a somewhat side note, I find it a little depressing that the cookies that are advertised as "chocolate chewies" are actually crunchie cookies. In the box they look deceptively like my grandmother's "chocolate gooey cookies" but no they are actually crunchy. (The law student in me thinks that this is a breach of the contract they formed. Wait you say, they were just poorly advertised, there wasn't any contract- I say oh no. Quick law school 101 moment: there are three elements for a contract to be formed: Offer, Acceptance and Consideration. Whole foods offered to contract for chewy cookies, (this was a unilateral contract which I could only accept through performance) I accepted when I gave consideration for in the form of money. The offer was for chewy cookies and that was not delivered therefore I am entitled to restitution damages, but only if I want to go through the trouble of taking them back, and I am not sure if I am motivated enough to do that.) The rhetor in me says, why not call them that Chocolate Crunchies- It is still an alliteration, and then they wouldn't be lying. Honestly though none of it matters because I left them on the dining room table and Grace jumped up and ate the whole box, mostly I am relived that I didn't kill my roommate's dog.

The Coast Guard is dropping SPAM. (It is not good as my Aunt's turkey)

OR

The time the rest of the country calls the holidays and Law Students call exams.

My trip to my aunt's for Thanksgiving was lovely. I was able to leave a day earlier than planned because my contracts class was canceled and Amtrak is amazing. (Another reason to love train travel, it only cost me $3 to rebook my ticket, it never ceases to amaze me how much more civilized train travel is, even during a delay in Philly everyone was okay, there was so much less stress and upset then when I fly.)
My break was just the respite I needed from the insanity this part of the school year brings with it. I was able to go for a couple of nice walks, eat WAY too much tasty food, catch up on sleep, and generally bum around getting my head ready for the insanity that descended as soon as I got back to school. I even caught up on the last of my readings (for the whole semester)! I didn't think that was going to happen.
Should I have, in all honesty, probably come home early to miss the craziness of traveling the Sunday after Thanksgiving and work more on my outlines, which are woefully unfinished. Well, the insane 1L in me says yes, and I should have been working the whole time. But mostly my philosophy is that the insanity doesn't really help anyone and that calm focus is such a better way to go about things. This is not how most 1L's feel. Most of my classmates seem to be surviving on coffee and anxiety alone. Even at Cal, where there was a fair amount of exam anxiety, I never saw anything like I see from my classmates now.
It is hard to explain exactly what it is like using anything but a long silly over extended metaphor. It feels like we are all on a boat together an I am aware that everything is fine. We are floating along and everyone needs to keep doing their jobs and there won't be a problem. But then about half of my ship[class]mates are running around screaming that we are sinking. They are running around, screaming, jumping into life boats (and leaving the safety of the boat for the dangers of an open ocean in a dingy.)
Mostly I am fine, I can see the insanity of only getting three hours of sleep a night, or committing a case book to memory, or completely cutting myself off from the rest of the world. But there comes a point when everyone around you is screaming and yelling and a little irrational voice in the back of your head starts saying, wait what was that, are we sinking? I know that it is irrational but you can only block out so much of the crazy. And it is nearly impossible to convince people that we are on the Love Boat and not the Titanic. (Okay well maybe not the Love Boat, although with the amount of inter-classmate dating it is getting there. I guess it is more like that Carnival cruise that was adrift for a week. Yes its stressful and the generators and water system have failed, but the Coast Guard is dropping spam and we will get through this.)
The level of stress and crazy running back and fourth wares on you, and you wonder when we are going to push piggy off a cliff. Which, is why I will leave a room when people are spinning themselves into a frenzy, and why I have committed myself to going for a run every day that I don't have class. (Dead week starts tomorrow so it is most days for the next three weeks.) Because when I am working out everything else falls away, I am not a 1L preping for my first exams, my mom isn't sick, I am not going back home to negoitate the tightrope of my childhood-self and friends with the person I am becoming; there is just music and breathing and (probably way too much) burring of muscles. (It is my Coast Guard SPAM- if you will allow me to take it too far.)
Talking to people about this time of year I get so excited for the future, when holiday stress won't have anything to do with outlining or exams,  because December will be just another stressful month at work and it will just be the added stress of parties and presents and decorations. Then I realized that it is sad that I am excited for the stress other people dread. It is hard to believe after a lifetime being in school before the holidays that I only have this one and then two more, then I get to be a grown up. (I guess?)

Anyway that was a rambling post which is probably pretty indicative of where my head is.

 Now onto studying!

Sometimes someone makes you remember...

A pretty good day. Mostly because someone did something for me that really made me feel like everything is going to be okay, an restored my faith in the people around me. Its nice to know that people look out for each other. So thank you.

It's going to be okay...

One of the buildings on Berkeley's campus, in addition to being maze-like was famous for its bathroom graffiti. Most of the year it would vary from funny to dirty, with lots of complaining and many of the jokes that we have all seen. People would post their thoughts and others would respond. But then some time around finals a single message in a distinctive hand writing would go up all over the stalls in the hall:

Its going to be okay...

I remember before my first final at Cal (History 5 with professor Lacquor, I still remember) running to the bathroom, to be sure I wouldn't have to during the exam, and there was this message. And what was most amazing; in a past time that was as much about snarky remarks belittling the author, the responses showed how venerable and overwhelmed we all were. "Thank you" "this means a lot" "that actually really helps" "I hope you are right," were all scrawled next to it. I carried that with me as often as I could and always looked forward to when the graffiti would appear each December and May.   

Fast forward four years and I hear about operation beautiful, a group that places messages on post-it in womens bathrooms that are inspirational, and uplifting. While they are more focused on young women's body image issues, it reminded me of the finals message on Berkeley's stalls and what unexpected positive messages can do. 

So in a tribute to my Berkeley roots and the desire to put some positivity in the world I have Co-opted my own little project. I have taken the free (or as my mother would say included because you know at $46,000 a year I am paying for them) Post-its they leave for us in the library and posting positive messages in the womens bathrooms. Some are taken from operation beautiful, and I use "its going to be okay" frequently but I am sure I will think of new things. This isn't nearly as hip as the Berkeley bathroom graffiti but I am on the East Coast and I doubt school would appreciate its impeccably clean bathrooms being sullied even by positive words. 

Hopefully I will brighten someone's day. 

Hey I got an A on that History final.   

 

Sometimes you're the rocket powered roller skate and sometimes your'e Wile E.

In a lot of ways this is the most important lesson I have learned from law school.

         Some days are rocket days, days when you move fast and understand everything, days when you feel on top of the world. Days when you are cold called in contracts to brief one of the more difficult cases of the semester and do well enough to earn a compliment from your professor. Days when you go faster and further than you ever thought you would. Sure maybe you are a little wobbly but you are going to get there with or without the weight of the coyote on your back.  Some days are Wile E. days, days when no matter what happens your acme shipment is just a little late and a bit defective. Days when you let just a little bit too much of your self slip into your case assessment or confuse a citing rule and mess up a document.    

The worst part is that those days are often the days that the morning dawned bright and the box looked undamaged. You strapped your skates on and felt particularly certain that this was going to be the day you finally caught Roadrunner. But no, the cards are not in your favor, the cartoonist (or law school gods) are not going along with your plan and ultimately you fall, left with the sting of rocket propelled road-burn. The crash all the more painful because of your pride and confidence, and because you so badly want that stupid bird. It has been a Wile E. kind of week. (It is never good when I am so strung up that I leave the house for school at 6:30 because I was unable to sleep, and anyone who knows me know I can sleep in.)  

          All of that hurts, but the important lesson is perspective. Each class, reading, grade, organization, even diploma is not the Roadrunner . Those are merely steps, landscapes, acme products along the way. And it is those things that are important and must be enjoyed, the Roadrunner is about constantly striving for more. And like roadrunner cartoons, when you have been flattened down by one too many anvil, and you're missing your feet because your rocket shoes blew up, its okay because this is the time to make mistakes, there is no client on the line; I don't risk a malpractice suit if I mess up. And hopefully, unlike Wile E., I will learn from my mistakes and not get the rocket powered roller skates again. (There is a whole acme catalog to try!) 

Thththats alll folks...

(Okay I look the Loony Toons analogy bit far didn't I?)

A pretty good Monday...

Which I was owed because last week's (mostly) sucked.
Last Monday I was sleep deprived, which was mostly my fault because I didn't get my memo written before my dad came to visit. My Torts class (which is fun and tends to have cases I understand plus a professor who genuinely enjoys teaching) was replaced by Civil Procedure (which also has a great professor but the subject is terribly dull, and sometimes confusing. it deals with issues like standing and jurisdiction, which are valuable but just not all that interesting.) Which also meant I had extra civil procedure reading to do over the weekend.
Then I had my legal writing class. This tends to be everyone's least favorite class. We all know we need it, and i do think it is helpful, it is just that the format is slow and tedious and then you are thrown out to do something on your own that you don't really know how to do. Then each week after you have toiled with it and gotten very frustrated you are told how you should have done it in the first place. It is really very discouraging, especially when you want to do well.
Last week was especially bad because I wasn't happy with where the draft of my memo was. This admittedly my fault for not working on it sooner than I did. but then we peer reviewed and my reviewer is the biggest jerk in the class, egotistical, talks back in class, thinks he can do no wrong. (He is a good writer, and did a good job editing) but had to humiliate me in the process.
Thankfully was going to happy hour after, nothing helps soothe an ego like burgers and half price drinks.
Today was much better. In part because we didn't have legal rhetoric, we have on on one conferencing with the professor instead. And I had done a good job preparing this draft. Also I was cold called in Contracts today. Something that could have been frightening, especially because it was one of the more dificult cases we have had, and I left my book with many of my notes (stupidly) at home this morning. Thankfully it went as well as it could of. Not amazing but really solid, and that I felt good about.
All and all pretty good. It isn't easy but most of it is a mind game with myself because I have never cared so much about anything before.

Were having a heat wave...

Okay so I guess it isn't a heat wave if it is August into September, but last week it was so pleasant and I thought "Fall, early, yes please." We even had our air conditioning off, (in an attempt to save some money and the planet.) But then Monday the planet said "Just kidding." And we have been having temperatures in the nineties since the start of the week. This isn't a huge deal, I did sign up to live in what was a swamp not even 250 years ago. No it is the collision of the swamp weather with modern life that is frustrating. I seem to always choose the Metro train that has lost its air conditioning and I always seem to end up seated next to the largest smelliest person on the train. Even that I could live with, I am on Metro for less than an hour every day.
No it is the fact that school seems to think that it is appropriate to cool the building to sixty degrees that drives me nuts. I am in three shirts and a sweater with my legs pulled under me and I am still cold. I am excited about the prospect of fall and reasonable temperatures. Honestly I wish that they would cool it with the cooling it!

So why am I dressed like this? 

I SURVIVED!

I made it through my first day (all 11 hours- Mondays are my long day I leave the house at 8:30 and don't get back until 7:30) It was long and tiring. But you know what, I LOVED IT. Honestly it feels like summer camp (only my house is way better than those tents.)
Well more later, now on to bed and Civil Procedure tomorrow.

Orientation week

Well I am now fully oriented, I guess. Honestly I am a little disappointed that I didn't get more information, but I don't feel lost, mostly I feel eager to get started. (Also I feel loaded down with goodies, places love giving you free stuff when you are in law school. I now have two new computer bags, four flash drives and enough , highlighters pens and sticky notes-of course in slightly annoying and hard to use shapes and sizes-to last me a lifetime.
Tuesday was in my backyard, IMBY as we call it because lawyer like everyone else in DC love their acronyms. Which is an event where we are divided into smaller groups to do volunteer work around the city. My group worked along the Anacostia river doing garbage pick up. The group we worked with was really cool. Their mission is to empower the youth that live along the river through taking charge of their neighborhood. (In case you don't know the areas around the Anacostia river are some of the poorest in DC. The river is also one of the most polluted in the country, in part because DC's raw sewage is allowed to run into the river during large storms. Part of what the group does is educate the student on environmental issues but they also teach them "soft employment skills" (what my dad would call essential employability skills) showing up to work on time, working with co-worker, dress, obeying the chain of command. In addition the students also learn teaching skills, they were the ones that lead our group and they teach green collar job skills so that after they leave the program they can get a job. (Here's praying that American does the same for me, although I guess the goal is that in three years I won't have to become a green roofer.)
One of the most moving things was that in the groups headquarters (a converted pump house) they had a wall of all of the students who had been killed. It made me so thankful that I have been give the opportunities I had been given in my life.
Later in the evening all of us met up for what I realize is a law school tradition- drinking. So far I have been pleased with the way people drink, it seems like it is only social lubrication, as apposed to the insanity that is the college drinking scene. Then again maybe everyone was putting their best foot forward and it will all change once we are settled here.
On Wednesday I convinced Dip Girl to play hooky and go to lunch with me. Wee ate at Chef Geof's which was amazing, such good food, another place that had their whole menu offered for restaurant week. I have the lobster roll, which was amazing, but their key lime pie was so good that I had to send off a message to my father and gloat. (He loves key lime pie, we spent our family vacation in th Florida keys going from restaurant to restaurant asking not eating there unless they made their own key lime pie, trying to decide who had the best in the keys. Now Chef Geof's didn't have quite the same aesthetic as the funky side of the highway place we found on maroon key, but the pie was nearly as good.)
After lunch Dip Girl and I went to see Vampires suck. Both of us love true blood, although being that I no longer have a TV (let alone HBO) I won't be watching it; and we have sick fascination with all things twilight (mostly we like to make fun of it.) So we were really excited, not expecting quality but expecting to laugh really hard (there is so much material in the series) we went. And we were really disappointed. There is a ton of material in the books and movies, but mostly it was just awkward. It felt like they were making fun of the actors more than the characters they play, and honestly there is a ton more material from the characters. Dip Girl and I both decided that the originals were a funnier parody of themselves.
Thursday and Friday was orientation. Much of it was information I already knew, and there were more reassurances that we were not going to spontaneously combust from stress than I know what to do with, but maybe some people needed the reassurance. The mock class was great, I made one of those arguments where the pieces all fall together and my professor was really impressed, so that is a good way to start the year. Friday was more of the same, we went to our rhetoric sections, which is a class that I think will be a lot of work but very rewarding.
I met more people after, including a Georgia alumnus who invited me to go to the Lambda (that is our LGBT activist group) barbecue on Saturday. Given my love for gay men, of course I went and had a wonderful time, and was able to meet quite a few more people.
Which leaves toady, my last day of freedom before school starts. I am going to finish cleaning the house, I mopped, swept, swiffer-ed , cleaned the bathroom, dusted and did laundry yesterday. Most of what I have left is cosmetic i.e. windex-ing and daily dishes. Also I need to finish my reading for class. Later the DC parents are coming over to help me finish getting stuff set up, and for dinner. All and all it has been a pretty crazy week, I think it is a sign of things to come.                           

Still nervous, but maybe less so now.

I am so excited to start my contracts class. Let me repeat, I am excited to start my contracts class.
Wait what was that? Did I just talk about excitement and contracts in the same sentence without a hint of irony? Are you reading correctly?
Yes dear reader you are. Now if you are a normal person, or someone who has gone through the first year of law school, you are probably thinking, "what in God's name is she on?"
The first year of law school is notoriously brutal. (In case you don't know 1L- that is the first year of law school- has a pretty standard curriculum across the country based on ABA rules. So most of us will be sitting down to Torts, Contracts and Civil Procedure in a matter of days or week. Most of us will be using the same three books in these classes as well.) And for most people it is contracts that they dread the most.
Now I can't say that I am particularly stoked about the subject matter. (Although who knows I have never taken a contracts class. I have often joked when people ask me what kind of law I am interested in that I may well find that contracts are my passion.) No I am excited about my professor...
In addition to specializing in media and speech issues (areas that I am very interested in) he also serves on the board of trusties for the Campaign for Justice and the Human Rights Campaign, that in addition to helping found the HRC and creating their legal division. If you don't know the CfJ and HRC are two of the biggest organizations looking at the legal issues surrounding gender issues and advocating for the human rights of people in the LGBTQ community. It is an area that has so many hot issues right now, not only is it fascinating but they are issues I feel personally passionate about. (Yea Prop 8 being overturned!) Now who knows if it will ever even come up but maybe it will and hopefully that will be enough to enable me to do really well in contracts this semester.
I also know who my Torts professor is and while I am not nearly as excited, I actually recognized his name because I had read a paper he wrote on environmental law issues. Also he serves on the board for Greenpeace (an organization that while I support their ends I have trouble with their means) and as a group I think they are perceived as being totally outside the law and it would be fascinating to hear from someone who looks at their work from a legal angle.
My Civil Procedure professor is a visiting professor, so the school isn't disposed to give us as much information, but based on his ABA profile, (in case you didn't guess already I have spent the morning crazily stalking these people via my computer) he has done allot of work advocating for law students. (Something that predisposes me to like him.) Although he did assign us reading for the first day (less predisposed) but he is the only professor who has posted his syllabus (more predisposed) and it is clear and far from overwhelming.
All and all I think it is going to be a good semester although, I am a little disappointed by the lack of female faculty teaching 1L classes. Well I will take what I can get. (Or in this case what I am paying through the nose for.)