I am not Professor Inspirata

Professor Inspirata is the professor that three of us had drinks with a couple weeks ago and were stunned to find that she behaved and talked like a normal human being; i.e., was socialized to a fairly high degree. (She's also the one who offered me a Tootsie roll on Tuesday after I complained about Crimson for 20 minutes.) I was curious about how Prof. Inspirata (who had OJ cut with sparkling water as her "drink") balanced her family and her many, many duties (teacher, human rights activist, board member of half a dozen organizations, scholar, etc.), and so asked her: "How do you do all the things that you do?"

This caused her to laugh, and thank me for thinking that she did manage to do everything. I pressed her again, though, because I was really curious, and she admitted, "Well, I don't sleep very much." I immediately shot back (because I was just that rude/fearless/tipsy): "How much sleep do you get?"

"Five or six hours a night," she replied. She goes home and dedicates her evenings to her kid and husband, then after the kid goes to bed, gets back to work. Which sounds like the schedule corporate lawyers keep, actually. But you know, you don't get to know the justices of the Supreme Court on a first-name basis by sitting around and watching reruns of Law and Order.

Sort of inadvertently, I put myself on a sleep deprivation schedule this week; in trying to actually read for con law and research my history paper and uh, hanging out and watching Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert (who has really grown on me -- anyone see his skit on the immigration bill last night?) with Joiner, I've been getting to bed quite late this week (about 1:30 am). Determined to also keep my sanity by exercising regularly, I also have been getting up around 8 or so in the morning.

Well friends, I ain't no Prof. Inspirata, because after 4 days of 6.5 hours of sleep a night, I pretty much sleepwalked through today and am ready to crash. I managed to stay someone awake through the hearing I observed this morning, partly because the opposing party, who was serving as his own lawyer, was clearly full of rage. At one point, our client didn't answer the way the guy expected during the guy's cross-examination so what did he say?

"Freakin' liar."

Right in front of the hearing examiner! It was freakin' hilarious, is what it was.

Random thoughts:
- maybe I don't want to run Student Org #2 (mediation). I freakin' hate administrative shit. And policy. And leading people.
- I did a nice thing for someone yesterday morning, and calmed them down about their workload, helped them figure a schedule to keep for their paper, assured them they'd finish and do a good job -- in other words, life-coached 'em. But after I did that, I thought, "Dude! You so do not have a lot of work. I have quite a bit more work than you do. Huh. I need MY life coach."