Wednesday, January 26, 2005

More snow! Wow, it's coming down again today, gently but steadily.

Second day of classes, and I have to say: BO-RING. I thought (and had heard) that criminal law and torts would be more interesting than contracts (dear lord, please let it be so) or property (which I liked, actually) or civ pro (the less of which is said about, the better), but judging from the first day of class in both of those subjects, I'm afraid they're not going to be. And there ain't no Santa Claus, either, Virginia.

The concepts are more familiar -- fault, negligence, culpability -- and the subjects of some of the cases will be more sexy -- murder, larceny, etc. -- but the teasing out ad infinitem of what exactly "intent" or "malicious" means is still boring. A nice, brisk 10-minute discussion, I could deal with. An hour and 25 minutes of various interpretations of a concept -- no. There's a lot of debate. I get it. Let's move on.

Our crim professor said as much today: we learn common law (the evolving body of law created by judges and modified by cases) in law school, but in practice, the statutes (created by legislatures) are what count. I always thought I liked school, and maybe it's just the subject, but I find myself longingly remembering the days when I applied skills and knowledge to actual tasks, instead of listening to others go on about the minutiae of legal concepts.

Electives don't start til next week, so I have a luxurious five hours between classes today. Just six pages of reading for torts. Last night my hallmate and I laughed ourselves silly over the fact that it was the first day of class and we were already leaving our reading for the day OF class.

Incidentally, to show you how geeky (not necessarily a pejorative term) my class is: yesterday, the crim prof used an example that involved him lifting an axe to chop a tree, when our civil procedure professor (who's up for tenure) leaped from behind him and forced him to swing it toward our dean. (It was a hypothetical about volition and crime.) He said today that he'd gotten an email from the civ pro prof, asking him why he had her striking the dean. Yes, someone in our class emailed our civ pro prof and told her about the hypo. I don't know if that's geeky, brown-nosey, friendly, or funny. I'm gonna go with funny, with a good shake of geek.

Oh, okay, back to torts.

Tuesday, January 25, 2005

I can never get a good night's sleep before the start of anything new, and that includes the start of a new semester. Yesterday being a snow day, today I start the spring term with a full load of classes: criminal law, torts, and legal writing. It's going to be exhausting, even without the dreams of my uncle's wife, with whom our family's relations have always been troubled, wanting the gum I had already tossed into the SUV I was driving with all my stuff across several states, ending up, I believe, in DC. I in fact had a bag of Korean gum in my bag as I talked to my aunt in the dream, and debated giving that to her instead, and ended up not doing so.

Freakin' stupid dreams.

It's blazingly sunny outside, but the wind is kicking up lots of snow. Last night a couple of hallmates went ice skating yet again, and we all learned a couple new things -- I actually learned how to skate backwards. It's astonishing how you pick up things just by being on the ice for a couple hours, things you never learned in all the other times you went skating in your life.

Yes, mom and dad, this is what I have learned at law school.

Off to go return the skates (yes, we have a rink just outside the dorm, and the school rents out -- for free! -- skates. Spoiled with a capital spoiled.).

Monday, January 24, 2005

Hm. Have just been stood up by someone with whom I was supposed to discuss summer job possibilities in SE Asia.

Maybe I should just go ahead and take this job in Hawaii. After all -- Hawaii. Need I say more?

Well, in any case, there might be a glitch with summer funding, so I'll have a reason to put off deciding for a bit. The woman I'd be working for sounds awfully nice, though.

Choices, choices. As bigbro laughingly pointed out, I always do seem to face these dilemmas that are silly for the sheer fact that each option is staggeringly good. Thus, the indecision.

I usually feel great after putting a decision to bed, but I recently made one that I'm second-guessing. There's moot court competition we do here (and have done for 80 years, dahling), for which we work in pairs. Instead of being randomly assigned to a partner, which would be the most efficient and grown-up way to do it, we had to choose partners. Being on of the mid-range floaters in my sub-section (oh, you know who I mean -- the people who aren't remarkable for their brilliance or annoying qualities, and who aren't affiliated with others automatically in the group), I had a difficult choice between possible partners, and ended up partnering with someone with whom I think I can work comfortably with, and get a lot of out of the partnership. This means I missed out on working with others who might have a better shot at winning, or with whom I have a friendship, etc., etc.

The competitive side of me says, "You should have gone with the possible winner, hk, even if it might not have been as comfortable! Damn you and your laziness!"

On the other hand: "Damn YOU and YOUR hyper-competitiveness, hk! This partnership has to produce a 15-page brief, and that means lots of working together. You know you're going to get the most out of working with your partner, and you know it probably wouldn't have been so fruitful with any of the others. Besides, you made a choice and it's too late now. Shut it."

Yeah, yeah. I just hate decisions that involve responsibility. Then again, I second-guessed myself about staying in SF so long to study for finals, and that turned out just fine. So... yeah. Shut it, hk.

This has been a production of Neurotic Productions. Thank you.

Sunday, January 23, 2005

I have never danced with the devil in the light of the moon.

I have never seen caves filled with dazzling jewels that disappear at midnight.

I have never heard the song of the elusive silver loon, said to drive men and dogs wild.

I have never tasted dark chocolate made from the secret pastry recipes of the Templars.

I have never scented the dangerous fragrance of the Chaos Lily, the sole remaining plant of which is now under the care of the highest order of Kohens.

But I have played tackle football with a volleyball in 3-foot high drifts in a grove in front of the largest law library in the world, with male and female youths far younger than I, and under a waning moon. The second night of the 5th biggest blizzard in the Northeast, before a snow day on the first day of the second semester of law school, I have made pity touchdowns when one youth tackled me into a lamp post. And I have been content.

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So the break was good, even though I was kind of down for a while about my last exam. I went to New York and had a great time seeing friends, even though it was freakin' FREEZING the entire time I was down there. I must confess to drinking a very strong martini and half a bottle of wine the night I got to BC's apartment, being really, really happy and making what I thought was scintillating conversation for a couple hours, and then -- yes, you guessed it -- throwing it all up. I don't recall the last time I hurled from drinking, but it's been a really long time, and I'm not very proud about breaking that run.

But the rest of the trip was great: soaking up the rest of the alcohol in my system the next day with five or six pieces of bacon at Def and Stave's apartment, going to the new MOMA courtesy of Miss D's corporate membership, eating the fantastic split pea soup and herb bread that Fearless T made, getting major attitude from a waitress while drinking with Steve-o, getting to see BC in action in the freshman English class she's teaching. I took a day trip up to New Haven, and managed to see all the people I still know at my alma mater, even though it was terribly inconvenient for them. I even saw the little senior I met in Korea in my language school -- on the street, randomly! All in all, a full and pleasant trip.

I was sort of glad, even, to come back here. It was nice to come back to friends in the hall, and even do the work I've been avoiding, like sending out resumes and the like. I was very pleased to get a summer job offer just half an hour after I got back to my prison-like dorm room -- an alternative dispute resolution place in -- ta da! -- Honolulu. Trouble is, there are several other places I'd like to hear from before deciding. But gosh -- Hawaii. Hm. Yeah.

I did fall into a funk yesterday, for some inexplicable reason -- everything and everyone was annoying me, and I went to bed disgruntled and blue. The start of the new semester is certainly a worthy suspect. Being in California and then in New York over the past month reminded me that hey! I used to be a happy person before this ridiculously boring and difficult ride began. Ugh.

But this morning, I woke up to a world gone white. The blizzard has shut down classes for us tomorrow, and provided 3-foot high drifts to play in, and a beautiful sense of stillness the city over. I am sorry for those 4000 people without electricity. But gosh, there's something profound about the times when nature takes over. In a slightly serious but non-life-threatening way, anyway.

There are sacred moments, for lack of better wording, that pop up from time to time. You know, the kind that remind you that most of the time, we live superficially, skimming the surface of life. We have to, in order to get things done. But it's good to let yourself sink in sometimes, and feel how sublime life is, how enormous the wonder, how extraordinary the world can be. The best single moment I can remember of last semester was listening to my hallmate play Chopin on a grand piano in a tiny, dingy practice room underground, with me sitting two feet away. Tonight, playing in the snow under a moon just short of full, might be one of those moments.

Or not. But in any case, it was darntootin' fun.

Thursday, January 13, 2005

This is what it feels like to be done:

- mopey bc the last final was so hard for me

- vaguely disappointed. Why are these things always so anticlimactic?

- pleased to have this stupid semester behind me

- pleased to have 10 days of doing nothing

- tired

- aggrieved that even though it's vacation, I feel like I have a lot of things to do

- a little anxious about finishing them

- grateful, oh so grateful, to everyone who encouraged, advised, cheered, provided, wrote, called, thought of me, and otherwise gave of their time, possessions, energy and wisdom to help me through this. Not just the exams, but the whole term. Thank you.

Tuesday, January 11, 2005

Oh my. Two down, one to go.

Friday's civ pro exam: significantly (and thus scarily) easier than her previous exams, which were killers. If it was easier for me, it was easier for everyone, so with the curve... please let me end up with a B. I'd ask for higher, but I don't believe in miracles.

Yesterday's 8-hour take-home property exam: brain-dead from studying, so I didn't get much productive work done over the weekend for this Monday exam. I got to the room where the senior citizens were handing out the test (and for some reason the procters are all senior citizens, which is nice -- they're sticklers but sweet) around 8:20 am and nearly every seat was filled. I got my test, went to the cafeteria and bought a bagel, then went to the library, where I'd set up my stuff at 8. My stomach was not happy. Roiling, boiling, crashing nausea. Okay, it wasn't that bad. But I could barely eat. Which turned out to be a good thing, because except for two bathroom trips, I didn't leave my seat between 8:45 am and 4:15 pm.

Thanks to One-Armed Maggie, I'd brought an Odwalla bar, four tangerines, two bananas, two snack-size bags of Smartfood popcorn, a cup of coffee, and the bagel to the library with me, and I snarfed them down as I worked through the test. It's astonishing how fast 8 hours go by when you're writing up an exam. I unfortunately got so wrapped up in crafting a pretty response on the first question that I spent 3 and a half hours answering it, which left me two hours each for the remaining two. That's when I thought with gratitude about the advice I'd listened to: "Snacks. Bring lots of snacks." So spaketh One-Armed Maggie, the wise one.

Now, the remaining and least-studied-for final: Contracts. Tomorrow. 10:30 am. At least for the other two I finished reviewing notes and making an outline before I got back to school. I have a chapter and a half left for this one, and I've done no practice exams, nothing. But because it's the last exam, I'm having a hard time caring. Also, because my prof has shown himself to be less than caring about teaching 1Ls (witness: the other two teachers we had scheduled lunches with us, have office hours, etc. -- not so, for Contracts man!), I have discovered I have little motivation to do well. Except for the usual anal-retentiveness and narrow focus on short-term goals, that is.

Even if I liked this class and wanted to do really well on it, I'd have a hard time focusing. My mental faculties are dull, worn down by using them (on mind-numbingly dreary material, I remind you!) over the past three weeks. I started studying on Dec. 21 -- admittedly, in a dilettante-ish fashion at first, but by Dec. 28, I'd ramped up to several hours a day. When I got back here, I started doing 14-hour days in the library. So -- I'm beat. And -- I don't care. And -- I gotta go study now.

I will say, though, that studying and taking exams is far less depressing than reading for and going to class was during the term. Short-term goals, I tell ya. They're so much more fun than life.

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A Postscript

Thanks to Double M, who sent me two US Weeklys in the mail last week (perfect for the mind-weary!), I read up about Brad and Jen's possible split and was not TOO shocked when they announced it. By the way, for any misguided souls who think that law students spend their free time discussing the theories of Oliver Wendell Holmes or how Kant applies to contracts doctrines or the opinions of Learned Hand -- dream ON, my friend! And come back to the real world! Which is one of the many, many TV shows watched by law students here at Crimson College, along with The Bachelorette, Desperate Housewives -- that's just me, and I'm picky -- The O.C., The Nanny, Golden Girls -- yes, there is a woman in my hall who LOVES those shows -- as well as other "respectable shows" like Law and Order, Alias, etc. Intellectuals? I think there might be one or two floating around, but they're an oddity and a rarity, and really, it's all about Brad and Jen. Who, speaking of, are splitting up. Rumors have it that it's because Jen wouldn't pop out a baby.

Now, if the gossip is true, and it's all about the baby issue, please, please, please, media, shut up before I pull a Sydney Bristow and tell you my name is Ima (Gonnakickyourass). Take your judgementalness and shove it up where the sun don't shine, because it's fine when two people agree that their life goals don't match up, and they should split, but it is so, so, SO not fine when a man wants to have a kid, and the woman who's gotta have it wants to do something else first, and is blamed for the breakup. So Jen wants to work on her career. She's 35 years old. She's got about 5 more years where she can play a wide range of characters, and then she'll be shoved into the "40 -- but still sexy!" category. (I don't need to remind you that we don't have such a category for men; if we had one, it'd be "70 -- but still sexy!") We don't blame Brad for wanting kids -- why are we blaming Jen for not wanting kids (right now)? For wanting to put her life and career first (right now)?

It's about not Brad and Jen. I don't know what their deal was or why they're breaking up, and I don't really care. It's about being allowed to define yourself without being judged by a standard that should have gone the way of the 1957 Chrysler Edsel (okay, not the greatest analogy, but you get my drift).

For the rant that got me started, see this editorial.

Tuesday, January 04, 2005

Back in Crimson City. At least the weather is about the same as it was in SF -- soggy and grey -- and even temperature-wise. Warm for January.

Life is just better in California, though. I come back to Crimson City remembering what it's like to be cheerful, to walk around with a smile on my face, to feel optimistic and light-hearted. (Also, I come back addicted to fresh cilantro, but that's neither here nor there, except I will need to have pho soon.)

I'm in the throes of studying for my third final, Contracts, as I have completed first passes for both Civil Procedure and Property . As I read over my notes and the book and my classmate's notes and, word by word, create an outline, I realize that I find it very hard going when it's so boring.

Property is, relatively speaking, interesting -- big Constitutional concepts mixed in with everyday matters like whether you have the right to withhold rent if your landlord has violated 1,500 counts in the housing code. Contracts can be sort of interesting because it's anchored in everyday dealings (like, do you really have to go to arbitration when you find a problem with your Gateway computer if the arbitration clause is only in the agreement you got AFTER receiving the computer?), but discussions quickly get away from the interesting and into dry logic.

Civil Procedure is best not spoken of. It chappeth my hide most profoundly, for it is both deadly dull and dangerously difficult. Dastardly.

And now, my break is over and I return to postponed bargaining and the Uniform Commercial Code.

Saturday, January 01, 2005

Second day of studying property, and this is how much I hate civ pro -- even though I'm coming up on putting in a 12-hour day on this subject, I'm still pushing toward my goal for today and feeling 1000 percent better than I did when I put in a five or six hour day on civil procedure.

Civ pro sucks.

I suck at civ pro.

I don't suck as much on property. But that does not mean that property will not kick my ass. Because these time-pressured tests really don't test what you know as much as how coherently you can pull things out of your ass in a few hours.

I went out briefly this morning to get my glazed donut and cup of coffee at the Royal Donut Shop, bless them, and haven't been out since. Yes, all day I have been doing property and eating and okay, I watched two episodes of Monk on the USA channel. I love Tony Shalhoub.

My body's been going haywire; yesterday I was sneezing my head off all day inside. I suspected an allergy cropping up (maybe mold from all the rain?) but then I went to the House of the Friends O' Bigbro and it was even worse. I left early (through pouring rain and freeways -- now that was an adventure for someone who hasn't driven in three years!) because my eyes were watering, nose itching, throat tender -- um, -izing, I guess. Dosed myself with a Nyquil tablet and went to bed all sneezy. But this morning? Nuthin'. And all day? A couple sneezes.

And I'm back to waking up every three hours. Even through the Nyquil! It's amazing. My stress, she is freakishly strong. At least I can sort of stay half asleep -- trips to the bathroom are not conducted in blazing dorm hall lights.

All right now, back to leaseholds and easements. Three more lectures to go before I sleep tonight.