More reasons to be glum, at 12:16 am on a Tuesday night:

- The list of people who DID make it onto law review went up, and I'm glad for the nice, smart, into-law people I know who got on. I'm baffled by one person from my section -- I didn't think she was a particularly sharp needle in the haystack, and the fact that she got onto law review doesn't make me think otherwise. Now I just think that the review process is just as arbitrary and dumbass as the rest of it all. Of the people who stayed late in my hall to do it, one girl got on, and I'm glad for her -- she's a loud, blonde, brownie-making southern girl who also happens to be a law geek. She was printing out her stuff when most of us were just gearing up to really start writing.

It's depressing to think that at this age I still judge myself by external standards. When am I going to stop jumping hurdles for the saking of jumping hurdles? I'm not even that interested in law -- why should not getting onto law review make me feel down?

- I got an email from Supervisor saying that I'd missed some cases in my memo, and that we should talk when I get back into the office (tomorrow). Crap, crap, crap. This is exactly what I fear about legal research. You miss some cases and totally screw yourself over. I'm in for a depressing talk tomorrow. Re-confirmation that I do indeed suck at legal research. If only I could take up Big G's offer and just do legal writing and editing.

The problem is, legal research is really important for lawyering. The fact that I hate it doesn't bode well for my future as a lawyer. I just don't like the type of information synthesizing you do with cases -- I seem to lack the discriminating mechanisms that good researchers use to sift out the useless stuff. Giving me a case to distinguish is fine. Getting down and dirty with a statute and discerning what it means -- a-okay. Finding out information from a client -- I'm on it, chief. Asking me what the courts think about a certain issue -- dear lord, please no.

I know I'll survive this talk tomorrow, but it'll be depressing. I've never -- no, that's not true, actually. I was going to say that I've never been in a position where I kept failing to please repeatedly on a task I was trying to do, but that's actually wrong. When I worked at the exhibit design firm in DC, I was tasked with finding an explorer's map of Africa. The architects had something in mind, but couldn't really articulate it, so I went around to the libraries and research centers around town to find anything that might approximate what they wanted. Nothing sufficed, nothing matched what they had in mind, and they finally said I could stop, and that they would just draw the friggin map themselves.

The same kind of frustrated unease, the same kind of resigned hostility, the same kind of "why can't I do this right?" feeling haunts me in this job.

- Finally, I heard from The Destroyer via email. Remember The Destroyer? He was dating another Destroyer in my section, and I was curious about the effects of two Destroyers meeting. When two people, blessed with an abundance of charm and attractiveness but cursed with an inability to really relate, who leave swathes of broken hearts and injured feelings, who have a curious lack of real friends -- when two of this type meet, what happens? Well, the stronger Destroyer destroys the other, apparently, and in this case, it was the male Destroyer who left. And as he left, he told me all about it. I knew then that I would have to be careful. Destroyers have this way of getting to you, of finding a way in. And getting this email -- short, charming, offhandedly clever -- shows that even though I was careful, he did get in, a little. I should not be so pleased to hear from, nor eager to reply to, someone who is merely a friend.