I am so beat.

Yesterday and today did mediation training form 9 to 5. Absorbing all that informtation and applying it in role plays where fellow trainees were calling each other names and being obstinant while also dealing with co-mediators who have different styles -- yeah, tired.

I'm really grateful for the free food, though. Good sandwiches.

And I learned a lot. A humbling experience: I thought that since I'm already fairly empathetic and communicative, I'd just naturally be good at mediation, but it's a very fine art, guiding people through the issues and coming out the other side having them understand each other's point of view. I'm less sure of my abilities in this area than I was on Friday, before I started training. I think it'll be good, though.

I have another weekend o' role play two weeks from now, and then I can start going to court and actually dealing with people who have real problems.

I had a conversation this weekend with someone who said I was drawing too strong of a line between myself and people younger than me, and he's probably right. It's not really the age thing anyway -- there's a bunch of factors that play into it. One is if the person's worked a job in the real world. I met my "big sib" this past week, who started law school at age 26, and she said, "There was one class where we were talking about at-will employees, and I was amazed at how many people sat there and raised their hands in favor of at-will employment when they've never even held a real job. They just had no clue whatsoever about the real world effect of what they were saying."

Another thing is marriage. There are at least two Mormon men in my class and both of them have a maturity than I wouldn't expect from people right out of school. Both of them also did missions overseas, and that plays into it too -- living abroad for at least several months seems to have an enormous maturizing (?) effect on people. (Maturizing? Maturing. Whatever. I'm tired. Last night I couldn't figure out how to say "I couldn't lie down in one direction" in the past tense -- tried out "I couldn't have lain down -- no, lied down -- no, lay down?" and finally ended up with "I couldn't have become supine in one direction.")

Anyway. It's 10 on a Sunday night and I haven't done any reading since Friday afternoon. I'm mildly screwed for this week. I'm going to bed.