Because some obligations from this semester will carry over until next semester, I've had occasion to think about my schedule for the spring again.
I'm still planning to take the three courses I was already sure about: Tax, Trademark, and Telcom Law. But I'm waffling between two choices for the remaining one: Trial Advocacy (Advanced) and Criminal Procedure. I'm currently registered for Trial Advocacy, which would lend a lovely alliterative quality to my curriculum. However I'm not sure that's one of my main academic priorities...
More substantively, it would allow me to further develop trial advocacy skills, which I'd begun to work on earlier. But that's just it: by its very nature, it would be an enhancement of skills that for the most part I've already been taught. Whereas Crim Pro would cover an area of law I've had very little formal education in, and feel I really should know something of by the time I graduate.
Another consideration is that, as a practical matter, the years of heavy workloads are starting to take a toll. Meaning that the demands of the courses themselves is an operative concern. The Crim Pro class is 4 units, meeting both Tuesday and Thursday late afternoons from 4:20 to 6:20, while the Trial Advocacy class meets from 4:30 to 7:30 only on Tuesdays. Plus it doesn't have a final exam. PLUS it will probably be more fun than sitting through Crim Pro lectures. But part of me feels guilty about choosing it for those reasons. In my mind it seems that as long as I'm in law school, I should choose to take the most substantive things. Or maybe just this substantive thing. There are other substantive classes I don't feel nearly so compelled to do. This one, Crim Pro, despite its notorious rigor, feels like it deserves my attentions more particularly.
I don't have to decide this right away. In fact, I think I can try out both classes for the first two weeks before making a decision (although with some difficulty since they both meet at the same time on Tuesdays).
But either way, it still might be my easiest semester ever, if I just do the four classes. I don't think I've done just four classes in any of my semesters. Even the ones where I only got 15 units they still all involved 5 classes. And that's really the biggest hit in terms of workload - regardless of whether a class is 3 or 4 units, if you have to THINK about the class at all, that's the essense of its burden. (For instance, my semester of 5 classes of 18 units was not that much more difficult than the one of 5 classes for 15.) So there's something luxurious about contemplating a semester with ONLY four classes, but then again, knowing me, I'll probably figure out a way to pile on the work somehow...