Al...most...there...

After dithering about my North Korean refugee strategy paper for two mornings in a row (and this after I dithered and whined and wrote for five days earlier this week), I decided to post it to the course website and stop the second-guessing. Yes, it's completely unrealistic and that's exactly what the professor didn't want, and yes, it contains some extremely questionable assumptions, but it's 5,400 words (20 pages) of soothing prose and wacky laughable ideas, and really, all I need to do is pass. Just. Pass.

Which is just what I told Joiner on the phone, since she just experienced the nightmare that we all dread -- finding out that her final is actually tomorrow, not Tuesday. Ack! Panic! Heart! Fluttering! (But thank goodness she checked today and didn't miss taking the exam tomorrow, eh?) Fortunately, professional responsibility (ethics) is not a substantive law class, so it's not like she needs to read and absorb the holdings of 50 cases about, say, admin law (hate) in the next 20 hours. Triage, I told her, triage and strategize about studying for the next 19 hours, and hey, it's all 3Ls anyway, so you can bet that some of them haven't even started studying yet. And remember -- all you have to do is pass. Just. Pass.

Which is good advice for me to take as well, since it's 3 pm and I've still four weeks of class notes to get through for my administrative law class. Strangely, I have not been experiencing much panic about this exam or the paper. It could be the drugs I'm taking for my cold, or perhaps it's impending graduation-induced sang froid. What does it matter, in the end? I just need to pass. The worst thing about it is that I'll have to sit, bored, for 8 hours tomorrow, while I struggle to find pertinent things to say about the constitutionality of the administrative state, whether rulemaking or adjudication is the best way to go about making policy, and what role judicial review plays in shaping how agencies do their business.

Blah. I read a lot of regulations in one of my previous incarnations, and I'd rather read those than grapple with the legal questions that surround them. It's all fine and good to ponder the legal reasoning behind why an agency should be able to decide between rulemaking or adjudication, but in the end, regs are much more immediately about people -- how many and what kind of bathrooms should be available for migrant farmworkers, or what level of dangerous chemical is permissible in a workplace, or whether a bankrupt business owner can own capital in the reorganized company, or what the Department of Transportation has to prove if they're going to approve a highway through your city park -- while the legal reasoning? Just (joyless) mental masturbation. Like all of my law school experience, I find the class devoid of the very things that make law relevant and important to life.

Whatever. Just. Pass.