It's been a brutal two days of nonstop classes and reading. Tuesdays and Wednesdays are my crunch days, with four classes each, at an hour and 25 minutes each, and last night, after all my classes, I interviewed for the mediation program, where you are trained to mediate disputes in small claims courts around the Boston area. (That's an option given to people who go into court for claims smaller than $2,000 -- they can sit down with a mediator and try to work out a solution together before going before a judge.)

I was paired up with another applicant and we had to role-play, with us as the mock mediators, and the real mediators playing the role of the squabbling parties. The whole tone of the exercise seemed very therapy-ish to me, which is fine, but not what you'd expect in a legal setting; I was praised for asking one side how he would feel if he were in the opposing party's position. That's the kind of thing I'm kind of good at, though.

I'm a bit worried that if I get in, the time commitment will kill me -- there's 32 hours of training over two weekends, and then about three hours each week (you go to court every other week, but have office duty the week you don't go to court). On the other hand, if I just do reading and sit in these classes discussing cases and hypothetical situations the whole time I'm here, I'm going to go stark raving mad.

It was kind of invigorating, that interview session, but it left me little time to do the reading for today, so this morning I went to Property and Contracts, and then went home and furiously read for two hours for Civil Procedure, and then went to Civ Pro, and then went home and furiously read for my First Year Lawyering workshop.

I was intending to come home and collapse, but a hallmate invited me to a party, and so I went, which was very good because I talked the whole time to a very nice gay boy who, if we become friends, will be my second friend here.

It's raining here now, and I'm sitting here in my ratty bathrobe, thinking about the girl at the party who said she'd turn the eligible age for presidency in an election year, and wondering if she wasn't joking. That's the U.S. presidency, by the way. I've got a slight beer headache and I'm very glad that tomorrow is Rosh Hashanah because our Property class was canceled for the holiday. I wonder if my honorary Jew status is still good. In any case: Shana tovah, everyone.