Not-Gay Boyfriend Resurfaces

While innocently checking my email Saturday morning, I was frozen for a moment by seeing a familiar name on the "From" column: Treaclehopper.

No, you di'int! It's been more than five weeks since we last met, with no communication in the interim. And now, a light-hearted, playful email, written at midnight on Friday night, with a suggestion for lunch in the near future? Nuh uh!

But hk is weak, ladies and germs, weak and under the thrall of big, pretty blue eyes, and so after a quick succession of emails, we are fixed for dinner next Tuesday, at 6 pm. Next Tuesday.

Now admittedly, I'm only free for early dinner on Monday and Wednesday of this coming week (and we know how Not-Gay Boyfriend likes those early dinners!), but dude, ever heard of Saturday and Sunday? Lemme 'splain: there's this thing called a weekend? Like, when you don't have to go to school or work and stuff? And because they're, like, non-working days, you can have, like, breakfast, lunch, or dinner on those days? And even this crazy meal called brunch?

There is only one explanation: the man is incapable of interacting on a weekend. Perhaps he turns into a werewolf at the stroke of midnight on Friday nights (though the email came a few seconds after midnight -- can werewolves type? perhaps he has a special werewolf-friendly, non-opposable-thumb requiring keyboard?). Perhaps he goes away every weekend to a secret camp in the hills to meet with other social justice types who plot to take over the world. Perhaps he changes into his alter ego, the saucy Baroness Trixie von Schindleheimer, on the weekends and is too busy alternately saving the world and turning tricks to have proper meals. Who knows?

Yes, I am delighted. And yes, I agree with Mr. Stave, who stated with conviction last month: "I think you deserve to know his intentions."
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Depressed? More like uninspired and lazy

I've been a little concerned about myself lately. (No jokes about how surprising that is -- even if they are true.) I just cannot seem to make myself do the reading for class. Really -- I'm behind three full classes for con law, and I've only managed to read two full assignments for my capital punishment class (though oddly, I have been very good and thorough about keeping up with my history class). I skipped class entirely last Monday. I went to my clinical this week dutifully, only to surf the web for half of Friday. I feel sort of listless and uninterested in anything but TV shows. I've been feeling under the weather for a couple weeks now. I just want to withdraw from the world, in other words, and not deal with anything -- class, activities, social life, family. I'm wondering if I'm not experiencing a little SAD (seasonal affective disorder) or low-grade depression. Or it could be just damn plain laziness. Or perhaps chronic fatigue syndrome. Or second year slump.

Eh. I probably just need to get to the gym more often.
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Grades

I'm pleased (? whatever) to report that my grades thus far this year are a lovely striped pattern of Bs and A-minuses. The grade for my winter term class, Pyschiatry & the Law, came down on Friday, and I was shocked to find an A- on my transcript. I had turned in the final about 30 minutes before I had to go to the airport to fly to New Orleans, and I was convinced it was crap.

When I got the grade, I pulled up my final from my files and read it over again, to see if I had -- secretly and unbeknownst even to me -- turned in some brilliant piece of academic writing. It was quite pedantic and uninspired, actually, especially so upon re-reading it.

This confirms my suspicions that grading in this place, this Crimson Law School, this mighty institution, this brilliantly crimson isle among law schools -- is total bullshit.
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And finally...

...let's talk about clerkships. Why? Because everyone else in the second year class is. The office of career services (a.k.a. the place where no one has to do any work, because all bow down and make obeisance to the mighty Crimson Law) and office of public interest jobs (a.k.a. the office that is amusingly differentiated from "career services" because such a miniscule portion of Crimson Law grads go into public service) has been putting on a series of informational sessions about why you should consider doing a clerkship.

Clerkships are one-year internships with judges. The positions can be extremely prestigious, are absolutely mandatory for those who want to be academics, and often involve enormous power behind the scenes. (For anyone who wants to know how much power clerks wield at the Supreme Court, check out The Brethren. I had to read an excerpt of it for my winter class, and it was deliciously gossipy.)

So here's the thing -- I like the idea of a clerkship, because you get to go live somewhere for a year and ... yeah, that's about it. I hate the idea of a clerkship because legal research gives me hives and I don't fancy being anyone's bitch for a year (perhaps not a fair description, I confess, but all internships are kind of like being someone's bitch). So, chances are, I won't be applying.

Even if I did consider a clerkship the nearest seat to g-d, though, it would be quite difficult to get. You need good grades, good legal research skills, and two faculty recommendations. And Crimson recommendations are reputedly of weak caliber, compared to other schools. This is in part, as a few of us were discussing yesterday, because there are a TON of students here (550 per year, yo), and so it is very tough to distinguish yourself from everyone else. But, as we agreed, there is also a stiff, formal atmosphere to this place, where interactions between faculty members, between faculty and students, and between tenured faculty and non-tenured staff, are distant. I heard a clinical instructor (not considered teaching staff and certainly not eligible for tenure) say the other day, "When I came here a couple years ago, I thought I'd be having conversations with faculty members who were on the academic side of [the area he teaches]. But here I am, four years later, and it never happened. After a couple emails proposing lunch or coffee, I just stopped trying."