When I first got to Korea two years ago (and my goodness, I think it was actually two years ago this past Saturday), I wondered why I felt so tired all the time. In retrospect, it was partly because I was doing close to three hours of commuting every day and trying to keep up with class by doing homework on the subways and the like, but it was mainly, I think, the result of adjusting. Adjusting to a new city, new lifestyle, new language, new food, new everything.

Law school is the same. I was wondering: "how can you be so tired when you do nothing but go to classes and read and go to meetings every day?" when I caught myself. Adjusting to a new city, new lifestyle, new language (of law), new/old food. Not everything is new, but even the old things are packaged in a slightly different way -- I've been to this city and school numerous times before, but never as an enrolled student. Things don't look the same way they did when I came here for the big Ivy League football games -- I was a different person then. Or maybe just not quite yet the person I have become.

That's the big trick, I guess, coming back from a life-changing experience. Yeah, things change in your absence, but more than that, you change. Which in turns changes everything.

And in some ways, you never change. For example: today I spoke in my civil procedure class for the first time. My prof was quite nice about it, emailing a warning to the four people who were to speak today. She normally doesn't do that, but since we had to come up in front of the class and present oral arguments for a case we had read, she asked if we'd be willing to do it. I considered saying no, actually, but you can't really say no to something like that. In any case, I figured it was better to accept and be in her good graces than refuse and be called on out of the blue one day. At least this way I'd earn a few days of not living in fear of being called on.

Anyway. The way I haven't changed: I got the prof's email about 2.5 hours before class, stared at it a while, replied affirmatively, and then spent the rest of the time freaking out about it. One of the guys in my hall tried to help me out by reading the case online and talking about it, but since he's not in my section, he couldn't offer much insight into what my professor wanted. So I read the case thoroughly, wrote several pages of notes and drawings, and went upstairs to discuss it with someone in my section who lives on the second floor of my dorm.

(The case, incidentally, was pretty interesting, and very fact-heavy: a 1946 Supreme Court case involving a railroad worker who was killed on the job; his widow filed a suit for negligence. The theory was that, in the course of his duties as a switch operator, he was struck on the back of the head by a hook for mail located on the mail car of a train that was backing into the station. There was all kinds of crazy-ass evidence, including the height and swing-out radius of the hook, the height of the worker, the height and location of dirt mounds near the tracks that elevated the worker to a height where he could have been struck by the hook. The defense, arguing for the railroads, pushed a wacked-out theory of murderous hobos in the area, pointing out that the the worker fell with his head to the south; if he'd been hit by the train, he would have fallen with his head to the north.)

Anyway. Again. I was freaking out the hour before class, and then got up with my co-counsel, along with the two students for the plaintiff, and ... it was fun. Yeah, it was actually kind of fun. Mostly because we stuck to the facts of the case and didn't get asked about any points of civil procedure, which I suck at. It was just like talking with the other three students up there, cracking jokes, and making fun. I was too afraid to take first crack at presenting the case, so my co-counsel did it, and then left the explanation of the murderous hobo theory to me, which I presented to the class with: "The area in question is very dark and frequented by hobos and vagrants, who are, as everyone knows, untrustworthy and suspicious."

So the part about how this shows I'm still the same? Well, I'm still the person who wants to make the class laugh, to make the audience like me, and I am ridiculously susceptible to compliments about performance. A couple people said I did a good job, and one said I was funny in class. Sad to say, this made my day. Possibly my week. Ask me at the end of the semester if it made my year.

I thought afterwards that it was rather clever of my professor (if indeed she was thinking this at all) to call on me to speak on a day when the speaker didn't have to know a shred of civil procedure to do well. (It really was all about facts of the case.) I feel like she knows that I'm completely clueless in that class, mostly because I sent her an email on Monday that was all like, um, I didn't understand the point of class today. Add to that the fact that I have never raised my hand or spoken in that class, and I have to say, if this assignment was on purpose, she couldn't have done better -- I had to fight the urge to raise my hand to answer questions in the latter half of class (when, mind you, I had no idea what was going on -- it was just the urge to speak!). And I feel less like: "dear god, I haven't spoken yet and it's been a month since class started and now I really have to say something brilliant since it's gonna be my first words in class." Pressure's off, I got a couple laughs, and now I just have to stop beating myself about missing a couple opportunities to get more laughs.

I should be a freakin' comedienne, that's what. Not because I'm funny, but because I'm so eager to please and so neurotic about it.

I so need to read now. What the hell am I doing writing this ode to myself here?