The Great Change: Turning Cathy into a Lawyer

Tonight I went to a Kaplan-BarBri free seminar on the first year law experience. I hate enabling Kaplan and its hard-sell marketing pitches, but it was free so I went. The event itself became sort of a hard-sell for the weeklong BarBri prep course. I'm not impressed by the pitch, but I might do it anyway because it's worth it to me to turn over any stones I can in order to succeed at this.

The guy who led it was interesting; I could see him being a good lecturer because he led a stimulating class session. But his assessment of the law school experience at times seemed a bit off in comparison to what I've gathered from other students. And I tried to ask him a question at the end that he just couldn't seem to understand (although I was tired so I suppose I may be responsible for a lack of coherence in the query).

He had raised the issue that for a lawyer, the goal is to take a fact and somehow make it support the client's position. Each side has the same fact to deal with so clearly the treatment won't be the same in most instances. He sort of suggested that the gist of law school was to learn how to handle facts in that way. But I was wondering if there's a third viewpoint - that of a third-party arbiter of justice. That party wouldn't need to wrap facts in such a way to be a proponent of a position: instead it would be guardian of a principle, to set groundwork so that certain types of fact patterns could fit uniform legal logic and be applied to many different cases. If the fact pattern of a case coincided with that of precedent, the precedent could be applied in the new case. His point seemed to suggest that precedent-applying, or even analysis with the purpose of being able to establish a coherent precedent, was not as important: manipulating facts to support arguments seemed to be. I think that's an important skill to learn in order to learn to be a good advocate, but I'm wondering if he overemphasized it as the crux of the law school experience?

Meanwhile I did finally hear an explanation of what the socratic method is: that the information comes from the student rather than being rotely distributed by the professor. So law professors structure their lectures so that the students are induced to reveal knowledge rather than simply receive what might have otherwise been spoonfed by the teacher.

I was thinking about the SCO-Linux thing again (something new on Slashdot every day, today it was a link to a Robert Cringely article) and my mind wandered to this realization: It used to be that people who wanted property claimed by someone else would send an army and try to take it. Now we just send lawyers.

Today it dawned on me that by my going to law school, I'm becoming a soldier.

I was originally going to write a post entitled, "Moving Sucks," because I've just returned from trip dedicated to apartment searching. When my law school semester begins I'll divulge where I'll be studying, but for now let's just say that it involves moving VERY FAR from where I currently live.

I cashed in some frequent flier miles (thanks, United) and went to this City to be Named Later and ran around in ghastly heat to see a zillion apartments listed on Craigslist by people seeking roommates. I nearly melted down, and it wasn't for the weather. It's depressing and stressful and a huge shock to the system to move. I hate moving; I can handle a lot of travelling but I need stability in my home. And as I'm getting older it's getting more and more important to me that my home be Just So, very comfortable and presentable. And Mine. But I'll be a student on loans so sacrifices will need to be made in this quest to Turn Cathy into a Lawyer. I'll need to have roommates, I'll need to sacrifice on amenities, and I'll need to have this all figured out NOW so that I'll have time to get all settled in properly before school starts.

As of a few days ago I still didn't know what I was going to do, how I was going to find a new home and come to terms with not being able to find something quite as perfect as I might have liked. But this is why I titled this post as I did: because separately, and sometimes together, my mom and dad and sister all held my hand, albeit virtually, and helped me work through this and come to a decision. I did in fact make a decision; I will have a new home to move into and I feel pretty good about it. But this post isn't about the move or the apartment, it's about realizing how lucky I am that I have the family that I do, people ready, willing, and ABLE to support me.

<sarcasm mode> Of course, they've RUINED it for me! I'll never be able to complain again without gobs of guilt! </sarcasm mode>

Nah, I'm being silly. I'm sure I'll still have grounds to complain! That's the thing about family: the closeness is what causes the poignancy. The ups and downs wouldn't wound so deeply if they weren't connected to people so deeply connected to me. But in spite of the built-in aggravations that inherently come from having parents and sisters, I am very glad that I have them and especially that I have these particular ones. There's a certain marvellousness in having people close to you who love you absolutely; who know you well enough that you don't have to explain everything about yourself; and who are so generous with their support when it's needed without even having to be asked. Not everyone has that, so I know how lucky I am.

(Also to be thanked in the non-family category: Robin/Robyne for her hospitality in letting me stay in her home with my stress particularly while she was dealing with hers.)

I'm going to blame my lack of posting the last few days on all the running around I'm having to do to get ready for my move. The good news is it's slowly coming together: I think I actually have a plan for how, where, and (mostly) when I will be moving. Yay.

Yesterday I spent chasing after all sorts of doctors. My school requires that I submit records of all my immunizations. All I can say is that I'm glad my mom is one of the most organized people in the world because a lot of these immunizations took place when I was a baby and I doubt I had the wherewithall to ask the doctor for a copy of my shots so that I could store them in a safe place until someday nearly 29 years later when I was going to need them again. I'd like to think I was a fairly bright little child, but undoubtedly not THAT bright.

The immunization chart from my pediatrician took care of most of the requirements, but another doctor had just done my physical and I needed to get that form filled out as well. And ANOTHER doctor's office had done my last tetanus shot so I had to get in touch with them to find the record (which took several pieces of correspondance and a bunch of follow-up phone calls.) I've lived in relatively few places in the course of my life, but it seems that every doctor from every place I lived held some sort of important piece to my health documentation puzzle.

I don't think I'm the only one who, when at the doctor, is focused only on the issue at hand. The doctor applies treatment and then you go on your merry way. Who knew that you needed to immediately request documentation of what transpired just in case someday some school or institution required you to prove to them you are as healthy as you think you are? And then pity the disorganized person who brings home the paperwork and then files it in such a safe place that it is never seen again...

Of course, if I thought this exercise was annoying and tedious, I can't WAIT until I have to fill out the moral character application for admittance to the Bar. I took a look at it last night to see if I could get a jump on it. You have to account for all the time and every employer since you were 18. Assuming you can remember all of them, you can't just put down where it was that you worked. You have to remember your supervisors' names and then track them down and provide current contact information. (I realized there was no way to get a jump on this because I have no idea where they will all be in 3 years.)

Fortunately, as it turns out, I've always had packrat tendencies and I've saved a lot of stuff with the thought that it *might* turn out to be important. I just wish someone had told me that it was a *certainty* that these things would be important. I would have been more organized about holding on to all this official paperwork and it would have spared me the subsequent scrambling.

It's sort of like being a curator of your own life: imagine if you were someone famous like George Washington, someone that years later people would want to know everything about. Think about what sort of documents historians 200 years from now would like to see. Save them, because chances are they will come in handy sometime prior to your bicentennial celebration.

The blogging software in its default settings encourages a primary category to be set for every post. (There's a way to associate multiple categories but I haven't gotten around to figuring that part out yet.) I'm setting this post's category to "law school*" even though I'll mostly be talking about the Tour de France because yesterday it tied into the process of getting myself to law school.

I've been following the Tour since 1998, the year that Marco Pantani blew away Jan Ullrich in the mountains to take the win in Paris. This was the year before Lance Armstrong came back and took up the task of blowing everyone away, becoming a household name among people who had never followed cycling before. I mention this to establish that while I'm not the hugest cycling fan ever (many are much more into it than I), I'm more familiar with the dynamics of the sport than the many people who think it's just about people like Armstrong simply riding bikes really fast. There's strategy and teamwork and subtlety and drama. And this year's Tour has exemplified all of that in spades.

What people less familiar with professional cycling might not realize is that there are now several Americans racing the Tour, including Tyler Hamilton. By following Armstrong's exploits over the past few years I learned of Hamilton because he used to be Armstrong's teammate. He was Armstrong's domestique, which meant that his presence in the Tour was devoted to getting Armstrong into Paris at the end of the Tour at the top of the General Classification. Still, evidence of his own talent would shine through whenever the occasion allowed. Eventually he left the service of Armstrong to pursue becoming a GC contender in his own right.

As Armstrong's fame has soared, I've found it a bit more enjoyable to root for someone less well-known. Not that I don't want Armstrong to win the Tour, but once everyone knew how talented Armstrong was, I didn't feel that my awareness of it was special anymore. Rooting for Hamilton, being lesser known, was more akin to rooting for the underdog, someone whose accomplishments would take more people by surprise, and therefore it felt more rewarding when he did well.

Last year Hamilton started doing well under some of the most awful condiditions. Early in the Tour of Italy he broke his shoulder. He refused to have it x-rayed though because he thought knowing its condition might keep him from finishing the Tour. He stayed in the race and at its conclusion days later finished with distinction, in 2nd place.

This year Hamilton came to the Tour de France in excellent shape with high hopes of being a tough competitor for the overall General Classification. On paper he looked like he stood a chance: like Armstrong and Ullrich, Hamilton is both an excellent climber in the Alps and Pyrenees and an excellent time trialist (where one races by himself against the clock, with no teammates to protect him from the wind or provide any other support).

But then, at the very beginning of the 3-week marathon of individual stages (each day's race), Hamilton suffered a crash, and in this crash he broke his collarbone. This was devastating: all of his training and preparation for the Tour would be flushed down the drain because how could he continue with a broken collarbone? How indeed. But he did. Taking it "day by day," as he said, he supported his team through a respectable performance in a team time trial, and then lo and behold, managed to hang on in the Alps. By the time the Tour got to the Pyrenees he was in the top 10 (out of 150+ riders, not including the dozens who had already dropped out since the start). But still, as he wrote on his website, he was starting to feel disappointed, plagued by the what-ifs: if he could have this kind of performance injured, imagine what he could have done healthy?

And then yesterday happened. In a weird stage that was deceptively hilly, he started out nearly getting dropped from the peloton (a bad place to be - he would be on his own against the wind and his nearest GC competitors, benefitting from the shared labor and pacing of the peloton, would beat him to the finish line). His team went back and helped him catch up with the peloton. And then he kept going: up past the peloton, and then up past the people who had already gotten ahead of the peloton. He passed them all and then was all alone on the road, with around 100km to still ride in the stage.

When I reluctantly woke up yesterday I had a long, hard day in front of me. Yesterday was Moving Day, at least as far as most of my furniture was concerned. I needed to rent a truck, get most of my things out of my apartment and onto the truck, then take the truck to a semi trailer and load *it* up so that it could drive my things across the country. A stressful and laborious chore.

Since the Tour started earlier this month I've been setting the alarm on my TV turn on with Tour coverage at 6am when that day's stage would be underway and broadcast live. The first thing I heard yesterday morning as I became conscious was, "...Tyler Hamilton is on his own..." up ahead of the peloton. I eagerly finished awakening and hardly tore myself away from the TV for the remainder of the race.

Maybe you have to be familiar with professional cycling, or perhaps you need to have tried it yourself, to understand why NO ONE in the Tour does what Hamilton did: to take the chance to go out on his own with so many miles left to ride solo. The distances are incredible (and in this case there were significant hills) and most riders, even the toughest like Armstrong, want the protection of their teammates and the peloton to save their energy. But the only way to advance in the GC is to "pick up time" on your GC neighbors. [The winner of the Tour de France is the person who has ridden all the stages with the lowest cumulative time. The GC ranks riders according to their cumulative time. So if Hamilton managed to finish the stage in less time than the other riders he stood a chance of moving up the GC by having a relatively lower cumulative time than the other riders who took longer to finish the stage.] So the then 7th place Tyler Hamilton, feeling strong, took the chance to go out and make the Tour more of what he wanted it to be.

The Tour de France offers riders other distinctions in addition to honoring the final GC victor upon arrival in Paris. Each day's stage is a full race unto itself. With 150+ riders competing over 100-200km in any particular stage, winning it is no small feat.

And there was Hamilton, broken collarbone and all, leaving the peloton and his competing GC neighbors in his dust. Remember, the peloton has the speed advantage because the riders can work together to take turns doing the hard work blocking the wind. Usually the peloton can let someone get ahead for a while because its efficiency allows it to catch up when the solo rider inevitably tires. But yesterday the peloton didn't; it couldn't. Hamilton stayed ahead, even though he was doing all the work himself.

As he neared the finish line I was yelling at the TV, "Go Tyler! Go Tyler!" and when he finished, winning the whole stage, I was as happy for a complete stranger as I think I ever could be. I knew what a tremendous feat he had accomplished, and I felt appropriately smug for having known about his potential long before he demonstrated it in this definitive way.

All day as friends and neighbors helped me load my stuff I regaled them with Tyler's feat. When my back and limbs started complaining from the stress and strain I replayed in my mind Hamilton crossing the finish line and in much worse physical condition than I was in! It was hugely motivating and got me through the day shleping my stuff from apartment to truck to semi.

Once on the semi I needed to pack strategically so that I filled a space nine feet high, eight feet wide, and three feet long. Odd dimensions, and it involved being very strategic about how everything was going to be packed in. This prompted the friend helping me to comment that it was like playing Furniture Tetris. Fun with spacial relations.

But that was a big part of my Move to Law School and I'm glad to have it out of the way. Next I need to have a moving sale which is slated for this coming weekend. It's the best time to have it with respect to the overall moving schedule, but I am distressed that it means I will miss the live coverage of those final stages when the Tour de France will be decided and concluded. Have I mentioned it before? Moving sucks.... But I guess when the going gets tough I'll channel Tyler Hamilton and then it might not seem so bad.

* It's now "law school - the process" after some category tweaking. - 11/11/03

My (current) apartment complex has a lot of potential to be a nice place to live, but my apathetic landlords seem to believe that no tenant should ever be too content with their living situation, not when it's possible to keep the them chronically annoyed. Nothing too dramatic, defect-wise; just enough problems to keep the tenants at a low-boiling seethe.

One of the perennial issues has been an oscillating temperature in the shower. It used to be much worse, and after years of complaining various small fixes helped alleviate the situation somewhat. But not completely, because the other day, once again, I nearly got burned when all the cold water dropped out of the shower leaving only what came straight from the boiler. The reason: the automatic sprinklers had gone on.

It's pathetic and nauseatingly wasteful, those sprinklers. The heads are broken so they gush water straight into the air and/or splay it all over the sidewalk. They go on every day, even when it's raining. They go on for quite a while, leaving swampland behind in the gutters and gulleys edging the lawn. And yet some grass never manages to get any water and instead becomes parched and yellow.

In addition to this being a horrible waste of natural resources, it also serves as a reliable torture mechanism for the tenants because, every day, the sprinklers go on in the morning. Right when everyone would be showering and heading off to their day. I've gotten late starts quite often because unless I hit the shower before 7, I couldn't be sure I'd survive unburned unless I waited until nearly 10.

This weekend the sprinklers added a new hardship to my existence: flooding my moving sale. I'd advertised it for 8am but started setting up at 7am to catch the early birds. I knew better than to set up on the grass, but thanks to the incredible inaccuracy of the water dispersion, when the sprinklers came on my stuff still got wet. And not just from the sprinkling but also from the deluge spilling off the oversaturated ground. Just when I'd think everything was safe, a tidal wave would sneak up and soak things from the bottom up. I'd scurry around and move everything, and then a different group of sprinklers would go on and I'd have to move everything again.

I think it's quite healthy, with this upcoming move, to focus on all the defects of my current residence. It will make the transition less traumatic, right? So I celebrate the new infestation of ants because THEY ARE NOT MY ANTS! Tub doesn't drain? NOT MY PROBLEM! It's wonderful, this sense of freedom to not be burdened by these defects any longer.

On the other hand, just when I was whipping up a healthy sense of loathing for this place, I've been suckered into appreciating it in a way I didn't expect: it would seem that my neighbors are nice. I don't have a lot in common with them, but several have been exceptionally helpful supporting me with my move and helping me carry a lot of stuff. My downstairs neighbor, in particular, not only helped me carry my things on several occasions but also let me tell him all about the Tour de France and Tyler Hamilton. (He'd never heard of him before, but now he understands why Tyler was so terrific and will be looking out for him next year.)

With regards to the Tour, I did manage to tape it and watch it after my moving sale. What a terrific year for it. I realized as I watched the closing ceremony one of the reasons why it's a great sport: it has a lot of winners.

Edit (7/28/03): If I'd known it would be this easy to get the sprinkler thing resolved I'd have blogged the problem long ago... When I went downstairs today I found the landscapers with a pile of sprinkler heads, presumably fixing the damn things. Still doesn't quite alleviate the drought-inducing aspect or eliminate the water-torture-by-shower, but it's a start... I think the real lesson here is that next time I have a problem that needs resolving, I should just complain about it here and that will take care of it. (Right?)

The song has a lyric, "You can check in any time you like, but you can never leave."

Today it was time to test that theory, it was time to leave California. I'd been there a long time, 11 years (except for the interlude when I gave living in France a try). It's always been hard to answer when people ask me where I'm from. I'm from NJ, in the sense that I spent my entire childhood there. But I'm from California in the sense that it's where I've spent my entire adulthood. So which place has best defined me?

If I were a car (can you tell I've just spent a lot of time driving?) I'd say I was manufactured in NJ. I got my wheels and learned to walk, got my horn and learned to talk. The engine was built and I learned how to run. But I didn't go places until I was in California.

When I applied to law school I only applied to places where I'd be willing to live. Being from the Northeast I figured I'd be comfortable there. But when the acceptance letters came, and my best option was a school in the Northeast, it was a hard decision to make to leave my home and start over again far away. After weeks of agonizing I reached a conclusion but it was only on Thursday that I put the plan into action.

It seems sort of ironic; most people head west to pursue their dreams. In American culture there's always something romantic and dreamy about the West, about heading off into the sunset. And here I am, going East to follow my dreams.

Night was falling as I drove out of Nevada and descended into the Salt Lake area. Some rainclouds had congregated around the hills, and the waning sunlight provided them with all sorts of pastel tints, turning them orange and illuminating their precipitation so that I passed under an archway of rainbows. And so it seems that just because you are facing East doesn't mean you don't get head off into a gorgeous sunset.

This entry was actually posted on Aug. 4. However, it was mentally composed on 7/31 so I changed the date when I posted today. I like to keep the posts spread out, and while I was travelling across the country there was no time for anything other than driving and sleeping. Blogging had to wait until now (now being 8/4)

My (erstwhile) roommate came home today, noticed my significantly-reduced pile of boxes in the entryway and murmured appreciatively. I'm now almost entirely moved in, and not a moment too soon as the opening volley in the quest to Turn Cathy into a Lawyer happens this week. Social activities kick off tomorrow, orientation begins Thursday, and classes (with homework due!) begin on Monday.

To be honest, I'm feeling like a deer in headlights. Not so much because I'm afraid of law school but because I'm feeling so wiped out from the summer. The moving, the disorientation, the finances, the logistics, everything. I feel like I've been running nonstop all summer, even going back to the beginning of the year, and yet there's still more to do.

I was hoping to have a clean beginning, to have all of the "old" things of my life behind me and be ready to put 100% towards what's ahead. But whom am I kidding? Even if that were possible, stepping 100% into the unknown is damn scary! And probably irresponsible. So I'm straddling the past and present. I still have a foot in California (maybe one of these days I'll blog the recall election, but let me point out here that the last time California elected an actor as governor, he gassed the students...), and one foot is in NJ, and in a feat of octopus-like dexterity I have my remaining limbs mostly all settled in Massachusetts.

But I'm so drained that every little divet seems like an insurmountable hurdle.

[You don't really need to read the following paragraph, I just need to vent]

Last night I unpacked my phone and plugged it into the jack in my room, and found it's on someone else's line! (And I'm not sure whose...) I'm still covered by unemployment until I start classes, and they told me (oh for heaven's sake, WHY???) I needed to call when I got to Massachusetts, but their line is always busy and it's impossible to get through. And with Visa bills with moving expenses starting to arrive, money is now a source of stress as well. And the bike I was going to bring to school for commuting was a piece of crap so I need to find another one. I can't seem to figure out how to get my renter's insurance transferred. I need to get a second hepatitis B vaccination shot for school but I don't know where. And I can't really use the kitchen because there's so much abandoned crap in the refrigerator and on the shelves so I've been having to eat out a lot more than I'd like. And every little hiccup in social relations causes me palpitations, I want to crawl under the covers and go to sleep for a week...

Anyway, this will pass. (It will, right?) And helping it pass might be that I'm probably in better shape than many of my classmates. I'm pretty much moved into my room (yay!), and tonight I'll tackle what I can. I'll save getting excited for tomorrow...

Ever notice how Nike likes to name their sneaker styles Air [Insert Lofty Adjective Here]? It seems that they're either running out of good words to use, or someone didn't bother to consult the dictionary. I was in a shoe store a few years ago and saw signs selling a sneaker called "Air Trepidation." Right. That's a shoe I really want to have. I think. Or maybe not. I'm not really sure, can I get back to you?

The above came to mind because the emotion I've been strongly feeling today on the eve of orientation is one of trepidation, and I was trying to figure out why. As mentioned yesterday, residual stress has taken its toll, but I think there's something else on my mind.

I've been reading a lot more lately about SCO, and the RIAA, and various other high tech civil liberties issues and I think it's triggering a fear I wasn't prepared to deal with, or at least wasn't expecting to deal with right now. Part of the reason I wanted to go to law school was to fix things that are broken in the law. But what if the more I learn, the more I find out that the law isn't necessarily broken; that to fix the things that I think need fixing would undermine things that actually work.

I knew that there might be a conflict between my generic sense of justice and actual legal mechanics but I glibly dismissed it in my initial post. Today I find it giving me pause. As I watch the utter destructive arrogance of groups like SCO and the RIAA I want to start jumping in right now and weigh in in the fight. But I feel hampered. Hampered by the fact that law school itself will suck up most of my bandwidth, and, I fear, hampered by what will inevitably be an ever growing realization of how little I know.

I guess the question boils down to how I can affect positive change without being paralyzed by the daunting task before me. But maybe I'm thinking about this all wrong. It's as if I expect that as I start learning about the law, it will be like digging a well. The further I dig into it, the deeper the pit I'll find myself in. But perhaps there is instead a more constructive analogy - literally - where the more work I put into my studies, the stronger the foundation I will have for my forays into fixing what's wrong in the world.

And there's another reason for optimism which the SCO example illustrates. There's a lot of legal and technological experts who are appalled by their behavior and find it anithetical to various legal tenets. Take, for instance, the GPL, which SCO has unilaterally decided to declare invalid, despite the position of those who created it, complied with it, or enforced their rights under it. It makes me think that perhaps to affect legal change you DON'T necessarily need to know what you are talking about... So imagine what I can accomplish if I do.

I seem to have Harry Potter on the brain. This probably has something to do with having recently read the latest book and caught a bit of the first movie on TV the other day.

Wednesday night I went to a local bar with other incoming law students. (It turned into karaoke night. I regaled my new classmates with my usual rendition of "The Power of Love." The Huey Lewis and the News version, of course. None of this Celine Dion nonsense.) There was a second year law student there as well, freaking out the other students with tales about the bedside manners of the professors. (She was very apologetic, repeatedly saying, "I shouldn't be telling you this," but then telling everyone anyway.) It suddenly struck me that the various law professors mapped to the professors at Hogwarts. One was clearly Snape, one was Dumbledore, etc.

The other similarity I noticed was at Thursday's orientation, when I spent a morning with that dazed sense of disorientation that J.K. Rowling described the new Hogwarts students feeling. It started with getting sorted into our sections (no sorting hat though - it was all determined earlier), filling out forms, getting a student ID, buying books, buying xeroxes, getting my locker, losing my student ID and then finding it again where I bought the books (that part wasn't on the standard orientation schedule), and sitting through lots and lots of orientation meetings. I remember walking around doing all these chores with the bewildered realization, "I CHOSE to do this???" It wasn't like I was fated to be here and am simply living out my destiny. I voluntarily put myself in this position, of paying a gazillion dollars for the privilege of doing incredible amounts of work. Months ago back home in California this all SEEMED like a good idea...

But here I am, for better or worse, not at Hogwarts but at Boston University. Yet another university with an unknown nickname outside its region. I went to the University of California at Berkeley as an undergraduate, but that name is quite a mouthful so we all called it "Cal" for short. At least everyone in California did. No one in New Jersey had a clue what I was talking about. The shortest name I could get away with using back east was "UC Berkeley," because even if I just called it "Berkeley" they all thought I meant the Berklee College of Music in Boston. But it appears that the reverse is true with Boston University, or BU. I was telling someone in California where I was planning to go to law school, and told him I was going to BU. He looked perplexed, "What do you mean, be me?"

All day yesterday people were asking me where I was from, and as you've read here (and here and here and here...), the accurate answer takes a while to explain. But it turns out that the geographical diversity in my biography may serve me well, because I realized I can speak both East Coast and West Coast. And as we've seen in the above example, sometimes that translating ability can come in handy.

Yesterday was my very first day of law school ever. I've always liked the first day of school. Oh sure, it usually has been the harbinger of massive amounts of work to follow (in fact in law school we already had homework assigned before classes began) but there's nothing like the ambient cleanliness of a fresh beginning. Everything's possible, it's full of mystery, and nothing is tainted by the inevitable stress and demoralization that will certainly follow...

Law school is fairly regimented, with certain things happening certain years. First year students ("1L's") are assigned to a section (at BU the first year class is divided into sections of about 90 students) and take their assigned curriculum together. Classes are usually on a selection of subjects that will eventually appear on the Bar. It isn't until the second year that students get more choice in electives and take classes with people from other sections or other years (some law schools actually do seem to allow some choice in the first year, but from what I understand, this general system seems pretty standard across most law schools.)

My schedule this semester includes Criminal Law, Civ(il) Pro(cedure), Contracts, and Torts. Next semester instead of Torts and Criminal Law I will take Property and Con(stitutional) Law.

I also have a writing seminar that will last all year. That should be an interesting class with respect to my blog. Blogging I'm sure will help me in the sense that the more I write, the more confident I am in my general writing ability, gaining that instinctive confidence that the right words will come to me and I will be able to successfully manipulate them into my message. On the other hand, my writing will have different purposes and audiences. Whereas here I strive for artful expositions or narratives, in that class I will write precise explanations or persuasions. Humor will need to give way to clarity (of course, it probably wouldn't hurt if I incorporated some clarity here...) I'm curious how this course will affect the Great Change. Blogging has helped me find my voice and I certainly hope that the legal writing training won't cause me to lose it. I hope it will instead make me multilingual - able to speak in a variety of ways depending on the audience.

Yesterday two of the classes met (Civ Pro and Contracts). I enjoyed them and the subject matter didn't seem too daunting. Today I will have my first Criminal Law class, and tomorrow will be the first on Torts. (Writing starts next week so my blogging should remain unscathed for a little while longer.) So far I like the professors that I've met. Someone in orientation said about the faculty at BU, "The students like the professors, and the professors like the students." At this point that seems to be the case and will surely help the experience immeasurably. It's hard enough already without there being a competitive wariness between students and teachers, and it's comforting to have teachers who understand and care about the Great Changes their students are going through.

This entry has a forged time stamp as well. It was written on the morning of 8/26, around the time the cable internet at home decided to become nonfunctional. So I saved it to a file and I've just gotten myself on the wireless network at school to post it, now being 8/27.

I'm done with the first week of classes, and I seem to have survived them in good shape.

So far I feel pretty good about this law school thing, no significant trepidation remaining although I do have some some concerns. Some of the concerns are on the macro level, having to do with the Great Change and being able to accept the law as it is as I learn about its inner workings, and some of the concerns are about the logistics of law school.

Of the latter category is the fact that it's nearly impossible to remember my schedule. When I was an undergrad classes across the campus tended to keep a uniform schedule (MWF hourly classes, or TTh classes of an hour and a half, usually all starting and stopping at the same time). But here classes are of irregular lengths with varying start times. I think this may mostly be due to the unusual architecture of the law school: it's a tower. While this may make it a fine example of urban planning with its relatively small footprint, it's a school heavily dependent on its elevators and two somewhat skimpy stairwells to connect its 17 stories plus a variety of basement and lobby levels. If everyone got out of class at the same time there would be utter gridlock. So my guess is that classes are staggered in order to free up the hallways.

Of course, that doesn't quite explain why some classes meet Monday, Tuesday, Thursday; and others meet Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and still others Monday, Wedesday, Thursday... And rarely at the same time on each occasion. The one interesting quirk about my schedule is that all my classes are in the same room. So I just need to know what time to get there for my first class of the day and then just wait to see which professor shows up.

My earlier observation about the professors caring about the students seems to hold. Mine seem to be more interested in educating us than torturing us, which I'm sure will make the experience much less excruciating. So far I seem to prefer my classes on Contracts and Civil Procedure. The subjects seem to be very mechanical, and while I suppose some might find them to be dry and boring, the geeky side of my personality tends to find them enthralling for the same reason. Criminal Law and Torts are leaving me feeling a little unsettled though. The lectures seem to be approaching the subjects somewhat circuitously and I find myself halfway through wondering exactly what I'm supposed to walk away knowing.

Torts also bothers me for some of those macro reasons. The sense I've gotten so far is that one should never leave the house. Nearly everything you might do could be a tort and someone could sue you. To a layman I think there's some sense that the tort liability system may be out of control. As part of this Great Change I'm learning that it's not actually out of control - it actually seems fairly normalized and regimented - but it's nonetheless fairly insane and potentially socially destructive. As a society, do we want liabilities to be so easily applied? Yes we don't want people to be able to do bad things, but innocuously bad things seem to generate as great a liability as maliciously bad things*. The effect of this would appear to be that we have a society which has no incentive to forgive culprits for their accidents.

(* Actually, I'm not entirely sure whether the element of malice may not somehow change things in the eyes of the law. But so far it looks like it isn't required in order to generate liability. At least not for assault and battery, which is as far as we've gotten. You'd be amazed at what qualifies for assault and battery. See Vosburg v. Putney [50 N.W. 403 (Wis 1891)] or Garratt v. Dailey [279 P.2d 1091 (Wash. 1955)] if you don't believe me.)

Contracts is similar to torts in the sense that malice doesn't seem to be a big determiner of whether the transgressed party has the right to claim damages, but within contracts this principle doesn't seem to have the same detrimental effect on society. People freely enter into contracts and voluntarily take on their liabilities. Whereas with torts you seem to take on these liabilities just by having been born.

Tomorrow I head into the third week of classes. It will be the first week with a full, regular schedule. I'm hoping that I'll be able to establish more of a routine now that I'm getting used to everything. By "everything" I mean classes, my apartment, and all the other facets to life up here. I also hope that I'll be able to update my blog more regularly. Although it's interesting: it's not for lack of time that I haven't. Rather, it's that the Great Change has apparently already begun and it's happening with a greater intensity than I would have expected. Ideas for entries come to mind, but my thoughts are so busy churning over what I've learned that it's hard to distill the inspirations into coherent and substantive prose. It's more than an "all circuits are busy, please try again" kind of thing; rather it's that I'm not entirely sure what it is that I think about things. Previous perceptions and misconceptions are being challenged by further study, and the jury's still out (so to speak) on how I will eventually come to think about them.

However, while I suppose this could be a disorienting and disconcerting period for me, I'm enjoying it nonetheless. The discovery is invigorating in its own way. Every new insight ends up being it's own reward. So it's fair to say that so far I'm liking my studies, and more than that, I'm also enjoying my life outside of school.

This past weekend, for example, I hung out with classmates playing cards on Friday afternoon, caught a movie and pizza and went to a bar afterwards on another night, and today went to dim sum with still more classmates. I've never been this social, ever, even as an undergrad. I never even go to bars! But it was fun - hanging out with nice people that I have a lot in common with. And it's so easy to do things like that here in Boston. It's very easy to get everywhere, often on foot, and there's tons to do. Of all the places I've lived before it's reminding me most of Paris. In fact, I've been interacting with it much like I did with Paris when I lived there. Exploring it, occupying it, and taking advantage of its many opportunities for getting out and being with people.

At the bar last night there was a moment where I mentally checked out for a bit to take it all in. I had a strange, unfamiliar feeling. And then I realized that what I was feeling was happy. That this is the place for me. What a relief, especially after the months of agonizing. It could so easily have turned out to be a nightmare. But now I feel strongly that I've made the right decision to come here. It won't be without its trials, I'm sure, but they will be easier to face since I don't have the constant desire to run away and be somewhere else.

Some dates quietly blend into the fabric of time, while some pack a poignant punch. For me September 9 is one of the latter as it's the birthday of an ex-boyfriend (sadly, an ex-friend altogether.) Why oh why did he have to have such a numerically memorable (9/9) birthday? Could it have not been something more bland and innocuous, say, December 5 or March 23 or, even better, February 31?

I'm being facetious of course; I'm not really that bitter (really!) and it's silly to get too emotionally worked up over a numeric splotch on the calendar. But I mention it as an overture to describing the iteration of September 9 that I experienced yesterday.

There was a social put on by the law school for the students in my section and the professors teaching and advising us. It provided a nice forum for interacting with the faculty because it was much more relaxed than during office hours or during class. My professors aren't the menacing kind that eat students for lunch, but still... A few professors were there who have interests in IP and I used the opportunity to articulate some of my thoughts about the state of intellectual property laws and what I want to do about them.

It's with almost a desperate sense that I want to convert the law school experience into opportunities to make a difference in this area. To the extent I will be better educated on the underlying issues, to the extent that I'll be able to distinguish myself in the field, to the extent that I will be able to make contacts with other people whose energy can be harnessed to fight the battles that need fighting, and to the extent that within the law school experience I will have an opportunity to start making a difference -- for all these reasons I want to milk the experience for all it's worth. Up until now, when I talked about the (disgraceful) state of IP, I spoke with a certain wistfullness, wishing I could be one of the people who could do something about it. I went to law school though so I COULD do something about it, and yesterday was the first time I finally had the sense that I was on my way.

(As a fringe benefit, I now plan to reclaim all future September 9ths as the anniversary of my new beginning. Numerical splotch or not, I'd rather have the day be about me for a change.)

Edit 9/11: Edited for content by removing several sections that were not well-articulated.

When I moved into my apartment one of my big reservations was the kitchen. It was old and grungy. Even the deepest cleaning would still leave inpenetrable filth. My landlady has been amenable to making improvements, though, so bit by bit the situation has been ameliorated. We have a new refrigerator and a new oven, she has engaged someone to retile the floor, and she's letting us repaint. So today one of my roommates and I made our first pass on changing the aesthetics of the place by painting the walls blue.

On the whole I suppose this is a decent place to live, but I still have a few issues. One is that I live with three other girls, but I only have a decent relationship with one (the one who's painting with me). The others aren't horrible, and now that we all have cable and internet in our own rooms, and completely different schedules, we can go a long time without actually seeing each other... But their standards of cleanliness and mine are not sufficiently equal and this is driving me nuts. Granted it took a LONG time to learn how to keep my living space tidy. I still have more to master, and a lot of laziness to overcome. But really. Globs of toothpaste left in the sink? Did you not NOTICE??? If the garbage can is full, can you not take it out? Crumbs on the table, dishes piled in the sink... do you think your mother lives here? Would it kill you to actually clean once in a while?

And the alarm. Oy, the alarm. One of the roommates has an alarm clock that doesn't beep, it doesn't play music... it crows. And she doesn't always hear it. It just crows and crows and crows... Today (Saturday!) it woke me up at 6am. Other days it goes off when I'm awake but studying. It is very hard to read court cases with a "cock-a-doodle-doo!" grating in the background. Even with the doors closed, it's a sound that can't be shut out. Music could maybe even blend into the background, but a screeching rooster penetrates everything.

I hate my roommate with the white hot passion of a thousand suns.

She is one of the most myopic people I've ever met. Completely unaware (at best) or uncaring (very likely) about the impact she has on other people.

We discussed, all the roommates, that you can't leave food in the sink because there's no garbage disposal and it clogs the drain. Guess who keeps leaving plates with food on them in the sink. I provided for the apartment a pristine, practically new microwave and asked people to clean up their splatters before they caked on. No one did, so a few days ago I cleaned it. Guess whose bacon grease is now all over it again.

She doesn't clean the bathroom, ever, or at least not in a way that doesn't require someone else to come in and finish the job and even PUT THE SPONGE AWAY. Worse, if someone else cleans it, two days later the sink will be covered with dried globs of toothpaste and her hair. We discussed, all the roommates together, just a few days ago how we needed to "all" remember to clean up after ourselves so we wouldn't have to clean so much, and one of them (not her) did a good job deep cleaning. But, like clockwork, the hair and toothpaste came back two days later. So I went in and cleaned again. Guess what's back in the sink...

I have lost count of the number of nights when she has single-handedly destroyed any semblance of restful sleep. She has an alarm clock that crows. At 5 AM. Incessantly. Because she sleeps through it, so then if I want to avoid being driven utterly mad by its high-pitched shrieking, I have to get out of bed, march around the apartment to her door, and yell at her loudly and repeatedly (thereby waking the other roommates who somehow manage not to hear the crowing.) By which point I'm completely awake and unable to go back to sleep.

Of course, then there were the occasions where she decided to start HAMMERING at four o'clock in the morning. And the time that she called at five o'clock because she lost the keys so I had to let her in...

And this isn't even the worst of it, because the worst of it is that she smokes in the apartment. Despite having represented to me and the other roommates before I'd moved in that she doesn't smoke. Her room is pooly ventilated and the stench creeps in to the common areas of the apartment. And then creeps into my room. I can't get away, or at best I have to barricade myself in my room. It's disgusting, and she refuses to stop. She claims to make accomodations to be better ventilated, but the stench last night makes me think she's not even trying. She also says that she only smokes when she's writing papers, but tonight she was watching tv and talking on the phone and yet here I am breathing her second hand smoke in my bedroom. Clearly she lies too.

And so what if when she's stressed writing her papers she needs to smoke. Why should I have to endure it?

Finals are coming up and I have a lot to do. And a lot to deal with since it's time to start thinking about summer jobs and various other things that require attention. I can do it, I can handle the stress, but sometimes I need to be able to go home and relax. And I can't, because MY HOME is the single biggest source of stress for me. I can't count on a restful night's sleep and feeling fresh the next morning. I can't count on being able to even BREATHE in my own home. I go out to school every day and I love being there, but I never, ever get to come home to recharge and I desperately need to. I can feel my batteries running down and I'm plagued with panic because I have no idea if I will ever be able to get any relief. I'm running a marathon without any mileage markers or aid stations. And I'm scared because she may destroy my semester.

A few days ago we "talked" about it. And I tried to be flexible. She agreed to change alarm clocks, so now I get woken up by a different one. She apologized for being such a sound sleeper, but you know, I still have to deal with it. I'm *welcome* to come wake her up, but somehow this has become my job??? And it's my job to let her smoke out all her stress because, hey, she's so over-extended with her schooling and jobs... I mean, it's not like I've got anything important going on in my life.

My other two roommates are fine to deal with on their own but they are completely conflict-averse and refuse to do anything about the insipid roommate even though they are put out by some of her behavior. They tell me I have to deal with her directly. I don't know what to do. Talking doesn't help. None of her alleged "accomodations" help. She pays lip service to caring but her actions say otherwise. Not only do I have to deal with her impositions but the daily slap in the face from the disrespect they entail. I can't live like this, dealing with these things and in the brief moments of bliss when she's not around, walking around on pins and needles waiting for her to destroy the erstwhile calm.

Something has to give before it's my sanity.

Help.

The last post that lingered for a while was a complaint about my roommate. There are some who have told me that it's impolitic to refer to someone in a public forum with the words, "I hate..." and that's true. It's also not a very well-written post, but I'm hesitant to edit it heavily or remove it because I'm trying to document the process of law school and she's become a not-so-negligible part of the experience. If the aforementioned tantrum compromised style, in exchange it may have captured the sense of panic I felt at that moment (and at many, many moments before) from losing my home as a place of refuge, terrified about what the implications of that loss would be on my semester and future legal career.

I'm not sure what to do about the situation. Some of my friends have suggested various modes of revenge. Revenge is not my style though because I hate to descend away from my standards of civilized behavior. Much as I WANTED to throw her alarm clock out the window, I didn't. And I wouldn't. I also wouldn't harm her in any way, which I want to say equally publicly in case she should happen to suffer some horrible accident lest people think I'm somehow responsible. I would prefer to seethe, or find some catharsis in a more verbal way. Say, by posting on my blog or writing a song. If my friends want to contemplate machiavellian counter-attacks, though, that's ok too. One friend of mine consulted her sister, who suggested putting raisinettes in the shower. It's hard to immediately ascertain what they are, and it's very easy to presume they are something extremely disgusting. Unfortunately, Miss Myopia wouldn't notice and it would just antagonize the roommates I like.

One of these roommates actually cleans, and may be responsible for the fact that I'm not completely a melted-down puddle of stressed-out goo over this yet. Apparently she's cleaned up quite a bit of mess in the bathroom that I wasn't even aware of, including sprays of vomit. This, and a few other incidents, has led us to speculate that the problem roommate might be bulimic. She also may be an alcoholic, which we suspect given the large quantities of beer she consumes regularly. These things, if true, are lamentable, not detestable. In a sense, these realizations make me feel worse. I'd rather be able to hate her outright, not feel guilty that I'm taking issues with her vulnerabilities. On the other hand:

a) I'm not her nursemaid. She doesn't pay me to take care of her. I have no problem helping her or my other roommates out from time to time (I've helped her fix her computer and another one with her homework) but being friendly and helpful is not the same as bearing the full-on burden of her illnesses. I'm not qualified skill-wise to take these things on, nor am I compensated for it in any way that could mitigate the imposition it has on my already overstuffed schedule; and

b) Just because she may be at the mercy of these problems does not mean she's not also a jerk. When she says "OK, I won't smoke," and does it anyway, when she refuses to clean up the kitchen/bathroom/microwave after herself... these are aggressively antagonistic actions. They may stem from a troubled psyche, but she's clearly capable of conscious thought and choices and if she refuses to make respecting her roommates one of her choices then I think it's reasonable to resent her. I don't wish her any ill will, I don't want anything bad to happen to her and I'd hope that she get help for whatever may ail her. I just want her to stop messing up my home.

This weekend hasn't been too much of a problem, so far. I came back up from Thanksgiving yesterday and so far no one's home but me. I was also home last Wednesday. I'd had some errands to run in the morning and when I opened the door to go out there was a package in the hall. For me! This was confusing: I never heard it get delivered, and I hadn't ordered anything. It turned out it was a care package from the friend mentioned above. (A care package! Wow! Even my own parents didn't send me care packages during all those summers when I languished at sleepaway camp...) Turns out she sent me a gigantic container of chocolate covered raisins. But these are for dining purposes only � she wanted to make sure I was getting enough vegetables in my diet. �Remember, 5 a day!"

Today began the first significant snowfall of the season. Outside everything is all white and fluffy, and last I checked (it's dark now), clean and serene. It's expected to keep snowing through tomorrow, leaving behind one to two feet when it's all done. I guess if we're going to be inconvenienced by a snowstorm, it might as well be a big one. My car has become an ever-growing metallic marshmallow, but that's ok, I have no where to go. I've declared tonight a study break and will be having people come over to watch Monty Python. We'll probably pick episodes that can tie into our studies, like the lifeboat sketch which harkens back to Regina v. Dudley...

What would a blog about law school be if it didn't talk about final exams...

Yesterday I finished for the week with exams on civil procedure and contracts. Technically these were midterms and not finals because the courses continue into next semester. Heading into them was scary: law school exams are evil creatures of lore that lurk unseen in dark caves. You know they're there, you know they could eat you, yet you don't know where the soft fleshy parts are that you can drill your sword through to defeat them. You just hope you get lucky when you lunge at them in the shadows.

But it turns out that maybe they weren't so bad. For the most part I felt like I knew what was going on. How well I'll do may depend on how well I was able to write clear analyses under the unforgiving ticking of the clock. I've begun to notice that when I write quickly I sort of end up taking a belligerent tone. That might be fine, as long as I'm belligerent accurately.

And then there's the curve, that horrible, apersonal mathematical monster that assigns grades relative to other students. But perhaps it's not an altogether bad thing. It means it's like my friend reminded me: you don't have to outrun the bear - you just have to outrun your friend.

The semester began on January 5. I got off to a horrid start, coming down with food poisoning at the very end of my trip. It kept me out of 2 days of classes, which is not a good way to begin a semester.

I still have my civil procedure class and contracts. No more torts or criminal law, instead we've picked up Constitutional Law and Property. My property teacher is funny. He tells a lot of stories in class to explain concepts, and uses lyrics to rock songs as other examples. My Constitutional Law professor takes on a scary persona in class, using the full-on Socratic method to grill students on the principles learned from our cases. Most of the class is terrified but I kind of like it. The professor isn't really evil, and Constitutional Law really requires a rigorous examination. People generally have assumptions about the powers of the judiciary, separation of powers, when federalism is appropriate... and it's becoming clear that most of these common assumptions are at minimum not understood in context, and frequently entirely wrong. Pretty much any assumption that leads one to believe that any of these issues have been definitely resolved is wrong. Wrong wrong wrong. Constitutional precedent is a mess, with paradoxical rulings between different Supreme Court eras, and even within the sitting Court itself.

I met with my civil procedure professor the other day as we were discussing still more cases, and in frustration I blurted out that I was amazed our country functions at all.

Actually they began yesterday, but more occurred today.

This week was the week that grades finally came out. The final grades I got for two of my courses last semester, the ones that were only a semester long, were not what I'd hope for. I blame extenuating circumstances for the lowest of the two, but I didn't enjoy either class. I suppose I always knew I was doomed to an unspectacular perforance.

After seeing my grades I walked around for several days feeling really stupid. I'd won the opportunity to do something distinctive this semester, to learn something I really wanted to learn, but the opportunity was dependant on the 2 final grades averaging to just a notch above what they turned out to be. The grades, along with being as annoyingly low as they were, also made the opportunity disappear. And instead of being distinctive, I became mediocre in just so many ways.

Somewhat shellshocked and panicked at the turn of the academic tide, I sought advice. All of it was to put aside my silly notions of accelerated learning, to abandon my desires to feed my tremendous curiosities and passions this semester. Just bear down and do absolutely nothing, nothing at all, other than focus on my first year curriculum.

I feel so trapped. I see other people, wits about them, seize the time in law school and make the most of it. Every minute of it. That's what I wanted to do, to squeeze out as much as I could every moment. But the advice is that I'd be the biggest moron to try to do that. Have patience, one of my professors said. There will be plenty of time to exercise my brain in the ways I want next year.

Patience is not one of my strong suits, and I've made that work for me. The upside to impatience is ambition and drive. I can get a lot done when I don't wait and instead go out and get what I want. I work harder when I know I have to work harder. When resigned to blandness, that's what I produce. I fear that's my fate, being trapped in this 1L box. I'm just a plain old law student, an indistinctive plain old law student, and it's miserable. That's not who I want to be. But it doesn't seem to be something I can change; I just have to ride it out. Which stands to be even harder, what with the situation being so de-motivating. And kind of frightening. I'm nearly 30 - isn't it time I started playing grown-up and start getting real things done? Ticking away another semester before I can get started feels like I'm wasting away time I can't afford.

So on top of learning all sorts of law stuff I also have to learn patience. Like that's really gonna happen with every ounce of my being screaming out that this isn't what I'm supposed to be.

This week I've been beaten, beaten down and beaten into this standardized mold. I guess I knew this shoe would drop when I signed up for this law school thing, I knew that the institution craved conformity and would try its hardest to make me comply. I thought I could resist but it turns out it's winning. I can't wait until I finally get to fight back.

(For what it's worth, it turns out that I'm not entirely stupid after all: the two grades for the midterms came out at least a notch ABOVE what I was required to have to preserve my opportunity. But all for naught. Except that I don't have to walk around thinking of myself as a complete nitwit.)

In elementary school we periodically used to be given basic physical coordination tests in gym class. They involved a few essential skills although the only one I remember clearly was throwing and catching. The teacher used to toss yarn balls and we had to catch them without getting imaginary peanut butter on ourselves (meaning we'd have to catch them in our hands and not against our chests, which would naturally cause an imaginary laundry disaster). If we didn't meet a certain standard of competence, we were assigned "extra gym," where a few times a week we would get pulled from our regular class for an extra physical education one. In theory it was a good program especially for kids like me for whom academics came easy but physical coordination required more effort. At least while we were younger and "extra gym," hadn't taken on a pejorative meaning. (For years afterwards in my family, if someone did something clumsy, the other family members might chortle mockingly, "Extra gym!")

I was thinking about the program the other day when I finished the latest assignment for the First Year Research and Writing course. This class, unlike the other major courses in the first year, are designed to give us practical training in the skills we'll need as lawyers. At least in theory. I find we are covering so many topics so briefly that it's questionable whether I'll walk away with any tangible skills I'd be confident in using subsequently. I fear that the best I can hope for is basic familiarity with the tasks in question so that when I'm out in the lawyer world and encounter them again at least my learning curve will be flatter.

The last assignment involved writing a settlement agreement after a negotiation. We were partnered with classmates and given a scenario to negotiate over. Since there is an odd number of students in the class I was partnered against two people. As a result I got smashed.

At first, when I walked away after the negotiations, I felt good about the deal we reached. Based on some of the possibilities that had come up my fictitious client could have done a lot worse. But as I thought about the result afterwards I realized that I didn't actually get him anything. The best I achieved was that he dropped his claim and was financially no worse for wear, except that now he was barred from ever pursuing his claim again. Oops? It was particularly tough being one person going up against two people because as I made progress with one, the other who had been less engaged would then swoop in and refuse to make the same concessions. Eventually I think I got as good a deal as I did because my tenacity lasted longer than theirs did. Tenacity can be handy, but it strikes me that better settlements are negotiated when it's not just a competition over whose advocate is more bull-headed than the other.

There is a professor at school who is a specialist in negotiation whom I'd met briefly last semester in preparation for the negotiating competition, my first formal exercise in the endeavor. That hadn't gone particularly well either, with my partner and I getting knocked out in the first round. So when this last negotiation went the same pathetic way, I emailed the professor in a panic. Surely there was SOMETHING that other negotiators know that apparently I don't. Perhaps he could fill me in?

He was nice enough to meet with me and so I got my law school equivalent of extra gym. Whether my negotiating skill has vastly improved has still yet to be determined, but really it's experience and practice that will ultimately make the difference. Still, the chance to discuss how to approach negotiations and debrief about the previous experiences was helpful. If nothing else my confidence increased since I won't feel it's an entirely new and unknown experience the next time such a situation comes up.

This was really posted on 3/9, but I've got a backlog of ideas so I decided to backdate it to keep the posts spread out. The meeting had actually taken place on 3/5 anyway.

"May it please the Court..."

Today was a historic occasion: First Year Moot Court. Every first year law student everywhere (I think) does it. As soon as you decide you're going to law school you know there's Moot Court in your future. First you write an appellate brief arguing a position, and then eventually you end up in a role-played trial situation arguing before a panel of judges. It can be daunting the first time: it's public speaking compounded by formality, demand for persuasiveness, and a potentially constant battery of questions hurled by the judges.

I did fairly well, so the judges told me afterwards. I did feel like I'd done a reasonable job as well, although not without a few stumbles. Nothing too significant given that it was a first time, but some of my best points backwards out came sometimes. And I didn't have just cotton mouth - sometimes it felt like cotton brain. But I fielded the questions reasonably well without undermining my argument. The hardest part of the whole thing was sitting still for 45 minutes after I'd given my argument while everyone else gave theirs.

Yet it all feels very anticlimactic and I find myself incredibly annoyed at the law school. It may not be constructive to complain here but I'm feeling impetuous so I will anyway.

The judges' panel was to include 3 people: two students and either a law practitioner or professor. But at the time we were to start our professor didn't show up. I hope there wasn't something serious which prevented her from being there, but my personal concern is that the school did not replace her with anyone else. The two students were very good, asking good questions and providing reasonable feedback afterward. But they were second year law students. Hardly the same thing as someone with decades of experience. This is the only moot court I'm required to do while in law school, and though I might do some of the extracurricular ones in later years, I could conceivably graduate without ever having the benefit of professional feedback in this area. Given how expensive law school is, I consider that unacceptable, especially since all my other classmates presumably got that benefit. And given how much work went in to leading up to today, it was also disappointing.

If I seem particularly sour it's also because I nearly got into an argument with the person running the program earlier in the day. We were to receive our opponents' brief a week before the arguments to help us prepare but there was no clear communication on exactly how we were to get our hands on it. I tried tracking it down last week but it was a fruitless effort. I again went today to get it and was nearly completely stymied again, though thankfully not (I won the near-argument). I'm annoyed because this exercise was too important - and too stressful - an experience to have been administered so imperfectly.

It turns out I actually learned something useful in law school. Recently in Property we learned about the difference between subletting and assigning an interest in a tenancy. This turned out to be really handy because I need to give up my apartment this summer and apparently I'd rather assign my interest and not just sublet. I didn't know that was possible to do before. Thanks, law school!

I like law school. I have no regrets about making the decision to change the course of my life and pursue this. I have no regrets about the school I chose. But still.

It's hard, it's stressful, it's challenging in unprecedented ways, it's dysfunctional and frustrating, and it's intense. It swallows up your life and your identity, and just when you think it's sated, it swallows up some more.

So I feel like venting a bit.

I actually like the fact that it consumes my life, though to a point. Unlike a job, which begins and ends and leaves the rest of the day to other activities, law school leaks out all over. Day to day, week to week, my schedule varies completely. Whether it's extracurricular activities or study sessions, mandatory or simply enriching, something is always cropping up. Some days I can get out of school by lunchtime. Others by 7:30pm. That's fine, and I don't mind that who I am and what I do are one and the same because I like what it is and I'm proud of it. Except when there are other demands in life that require attention without there being either enough time or energy to give to them. Family? The quick phone call is fine, but there's no bandwidth to deal with any crises. Friends? I hope you still remember me by the time I graduate... Horrible roommates who still wake you up at 4 in the morning and then yell at you for having too many frozen meals in the freezer because they never clean up after themselves in the kitchen thereby making it too putrid to actually try to cook in? They seem to require attention too.*

And forget about downtime to enjoy yourself. Relax and recharge? Ha.

Scholastically I'm finding that the Great Change I presumed would happen is a reality. The law works in its own idiom and requires thinking about things differently than a lay person would naturally do. I'm enjoying the enlightenment, but sometimes I leave school feeling like I've been hung upside down by the ankles and shaken until all the loose change falls out of my pockets. It's not just adviseable to leave preconceptions at the door, it's demanded. Ultimately my pockets will be restuffed with scholarly knowledge and empowerment (I hope) but for now, even with the best attitude of gratitude for the process, it's still a bit jarring.

The dysfunction is a little harder to abide by. I'm in the thick of looking for a job for the summer and it's incredibly frustrating. Silicon Valley is not without its own dysfunction - hence a lot of the motivation to pursue law - but it functions more like a meritocracy. If you can talk the talk and walk the walk, people will give you things to do. Apparently the law is much less fluid and I find I need to do certain things at certain times, even just to volunteer! The process seems to prevail over the substance. And the fact that I have 7 years of professional experience behind me doesn't seem to amount to much either, not nearly as much as my two grades for last semester. My two piddly little unrepresentative grades that will close more doors to me than anything substantive I have to offer will open.

* In the category of mind-boggling logic, I nominate what she said to me a few weeks ago when I confronted her (again) about her smoking. "I never said I was a non-smoker," she protested. "I said I was a FORMER smoker. Therefore you should have been on guard that I would fall back on my old habits."

The Boston Marathon passed by near where I lived today. My friend and I went to watch it. I liked having it so nearby - it's so nice to live somewhere where important things happen.

Speaking of marathons in a more metaphysical way, it's been a year since I began my blog. In that time I've made almost 123 posts, about one every three days. I'd like to up that rate, but I find it challenging. My time is claimed by the demands of law school constantly, or if not my time then my energy and mental cycles. This means that although I'm usually not want for an idea of something to write about, I often don't have the attention span to do it justice. I find myself torn between wanting to at least get my ideas out there and the concern that if I can't articulate them properly then I will be selling myself short. I seem to have readers, which thrills me to no end, but it certainly ups the stakes to write when you know someone is paying attention to it.

But this will not be the week for increased postings. We're into the reading period now, the "calm" before the storm and all of our exams, which begin next week. This week studying will take place constantly, and the only other thing that I'll allow myself to think about is arranging the final logistics for my summer plans. A post or two might pop up, but I'm going to cut myself some slack until May 6.

This is your brain after a civpro exam...

OK, it's my brain. And the exam got out 37 minutes ago. I might be slightly more coherent now than I was 37 minutes ago but it's questionable.

I'm ignoring my posting moritorium by posting today because I think it's a good breadcrumb to leave about my condition after being flayed by an exam. And because it's not likely I'll be studying contracts with any competancy in this condition. Even stringing together correctly sentences can't do right now.

With any luck I did string some of them together competantly during the exam. It was very intense, though, taking 3 hours of non-stop writing. Sort of like the Constitutional Law one from last Monday which was an 8-hour take-home test. For both, sheer stamina was important. I'm starting to see why the LSAT is regarded as it is: the LSAT is a 5 hour test, and you need to keep your brain going at top speed the entire time. Same thing on a law school final.

There's one more to go, on Thursday. I can't wait for it to be over, but the exhaustion is palpable. It feels like my brain normally is protected by energy stores, but right now those stores have been depleted. All the excess fat has been burned. Hopefully there's enough left to get through the last one.

Today was the LAST final! Yay!

This last round was tough. Very intense, mentally. The Constitutional Law final was an 8-hour take home that used nearly every minute (on my birthday too, no less - what fun.) Property wasn't too bad (although maybe because I didn't realize what I didn't know?) but Civil Procedure on Tuesday required non-stop writing for three hours and the Contracts exam today for 3.5. There were no extra moments for contemplation. Knowledge needed to be queued up for easy dumping into properly analytic sentences, which may or may not have occurred.

Meanwhile my brain has been so seized up with studying and stress that now that it's over it almost doesn't know how to function in this vacuum where cases don't need to be read and notes need not be crammed and legal analysis doesn't need to be generated every second.

After today's test some friends and I went out for lunch and ice cream as an early celebration. Later there might be some celebration via inebriation... Actually, I don't really care to drink (and I have a feeling that after one I might be on the floor, since I feel like I might be on the floor so easily without one as well) but I think I'll go anyway since it's sort of the Last Day of School and I might not see a lot of people again for a long time. I used to like the last day of school when I was younger - it usually involved cupcakes and soda and extra recess. Not mental torture.

And actually I'm not completely done. After the exam we picked up our packets for the writing competition whose outcome will determine for which journal we can work for next year. I have about a week to get that done, and then I get on with my summer.

In the law paternalism describes when courts exert a certain type of judicial influence that tends to look after the little guy. We studied it mostly in contracts. A paternalistic way of adjudicating a contract dispute would be to infer and apply more protective doctrines in defense of the party with unequal bargaining power. In a sense it manhandles the result, picking and choosing doctrines that seem to allow the greatest sense of overall justice even though a more literal application of more entrenched contract doctrines might seem to suggest an alternative result.

My problem is that law school itself is starting to seem extremely paternalistic. I'm developing the distinct sense that my academic career is not what I make it out to be, but rather only what the school permits it to be. In earlier months, and even prior to matriculation, I was introduced to and tantalized by all sorts of interesting educational opportunities I could draw from. With some idea of what I wanted my Great Change to be like, and with an eye on where I want to be when I'm done Changing, I set my sights on the opportunities that would work best with my plans. Opportunities where I could really sink my teeth into interesting material. Opportunities where I could distinguish myself in the particular way I wanted. When I considered what I wanted law school to be for me, these were the things I decided needed to be in it. So I researched and planned meticulously. I was not going to wander aimlessly through law school with no sense of purpose: I knew what I wanted and I was determined to do what it took to get it.

It turns out it doesn't work like that. The opportunities presented to me are not so readily available after all. Their promise in a surprising number of instances remains illusory. There are far more hoops to jump through to get them than I had anticipated, there is more competition to obtain them than was communicated, and the criteria for obtaining them seems to have little to do with the passion the student might express for fully milking their educational value.

I knew that certain things would work like that, like journals. Because there is a prestige factor to writing for a journal, there is a writing competition to get on them (which is what I need to work on this week.) But still, such a process seems pointless. The reason journal positions are so impacted is because there are so many students who seek to do them just because they are afraid of not having them on their resumes. So students (like me, for instance) who would like to do a journal to feed their interest in legal writing and publishing have to compete with those for whom there is no equivalent educational desire.

In other instances the competition arises out of there being scarce resources. While this is not entirely unexpected either, there may be more scarcity than there really need be and also far more than was communicated. After I chose certain opportunities I wanted to pursue I went ahead and planned around them accordingly because no one ever indicated that there would be cutthroat competition to obtain them, nor did anyone ever articulate what the criteria would be in order to be judged worthy of winning them. Had they done so, I would have set my expectations accordingly and not now feel so discouraged and stymied upon learning that I can't have them.

In the last several days I've confronted several situations where I've faced these disappointments (although in the interest of full disclosure, I should say that I got one opportunity that works out according to plan. Of course I have no idea on what basis I got so lucky while others of my peers didn't.) And my frustration has led me to feel that Law School is a very paternalistic place. I knew that it controlled the first year, making students do things the way it prescribed. It was pointless to resist since the school was going to demand what it wanted and if you wanted to succeed in it you had to comply. I think I managed to go along with that, and I thought without completely subjugating myself. A professor had convinced me to appreciate it, that the controlled curriculum of the first year of law school was a luxury that would not be subsequently experienced again. (Personally, I think I will gladly bear the sacrifice of not having to experience it again, but I digress.)

But what about the other years of law school? Most of the friends who had gone through law school before me hated it. Their souls got smashed and broken down but I always thought it was because they weren't committed or directed enough to be able to assert their own sense of self in the face of all the ways Law School commands conformity. I thought with me it would be different. Surely my stronger sense of purpose would inoculate me from those effects and allow me to protect my education. After all, I'm a little older and wiser than some of my peers, some of whom are straight out of college and who just shrugged their shoulders and went to law school because they didn't have a better plan. Surely my more determined sense of direction would serve me well.

My point about paternalism is that I don't feel any of what makes me me matters. I don't feel I can plot my own course, no matter how ambitious or hard-working I make myself to be. My education is not mine to direct, it's subject to the whims of the school. Even in instances without the aspect of competition, like course offerings, I'm finding the best-laid plans are subject to being crushed by the Godzilla-like presence of the Institution as it stomps through my metropolis of personal goals. It will control what I learn and when, and more and more I see that very little is up to me.

This is amazingly frustrating and surprising. I feel so broken down and anonymous, as if nothing I brought to it with me matters. I feel as though I were a child, naked and raw, who needed looking after because she couldn't possibly have any idea of what may be good for her. While I want to respect the wisdom of those who came before me, surely I don't need to be looked after so thoroughly. Surely Cathy Gellis, in all the ways she is who she is and for all the reasons she got to this place, has some sort of legitimate sense of how her education should progress. But I feel increasingly that I'm banging my head against the wall, trying to make the experience what I want it to be because I want it to be that way, and that it will just lead to failure and frustration.

It seems I need to accept my anonymity and go along with the flow. What law school ends up being in my life seems more a chance of fate than any sort of just desserts. Education itself doesn't even seem to be the overarching value. Passion for learning doesn't seem particularly rewarded either. No matter how much you want to learn, or what you want to learn, you will learn only what law school lets you and on the schedule it permits. At this moment I'm not happy to be giving up years of my life and thousands of dollars to play this game. It doesn't seem like one I can win. At the moment it feels like one I've already lost.

No sooner had the semester ended when my summer began. My writing competition got completed Thursday evening and mailed off on Friday morning. Then it was time to pack. The rest of Friday and Saturday morning I packed up and moved out everything from my apartment. It was hot and sweltering and stressful, yet in its own way glorious. By the time I got in the car and drove away on Saturday at least one thing was true: I no longer had to live, ever again, with the horrible rooster-crowing, indoor-smoking, fire-endangering* disaster of a roommate.

(* = I don't think I mentioned the latest issue with her, that she would put something in the oven on 400+ degrees and then go to sleep and forget about it. It was a happy day when our oven broke and she finally couldn't do that anymore.)

It turns out I inadvertently inconvenienced her, and I initially felt bad about that. RCN wouldn't let me easily put the internet/cable/etc. account in the name of the woman who took over my room (or anyone else's, for that matter). So I had to cancel it (I didn't want it in my name for the time I wasn't there, and that way the new people could start their own service). I set it to terminate on May 13, my last full day there, and notified Bad Roommate about it in advance. She got very stressed out because apparently she's looking for a job and didn't think she could go without Internet. I did feel a little guilty, like maybe I could have gone out of my way to leave it on longer and not leave her in the lurch. That feeling passed quickly, though, when she went in to her room and started smoking.

But before I could celebrate my newfound freedom on Saturday, I still had to load up the car so I could move to Washington, DC for the summer. This was a trickier procedure than I would have liked. My friend from school is also spending the summer there so I offered to drive him down with me. That was fine in theory but I realized too late that I had neglected to calculate how much space in my car would be consumed by him sitting in it. Oh, and his stuff too. But on the upside, at least he was manual labor who helped carry all sorts of stuff while I played Sentra Tetris again and wedged in what I could.

Eventually we got in the car and started driving, stopping off that night at my dad's in New Jersey before getting to Washington on Sunday. I found a room in a Bay Area-style group home. My landlord saw one in Oakland once and decided to run his own in DC. There's about nine rooms, with a common TV area, kitchen, and bathrooms. You'd think I'd have learned my lesson about living with lots of roommates but at least here smoking is not permitted indoors and someone comes in to clean twice a month. I've got my own room that locks, and the other people seem nice. A very eclectic, intellectual mix. More often than not I come home to The News Hour or CSPAN on the television in the living room. Lots of students and Washington interns. It will be an interesting place to spend the summer.

I was very busy with the move and unpacking last week, so I didn't get to post until 5/24. It should have been posted when it actually happened, which the adjusted date reflects. Since I moved in another woman moved into the room next to me. She seems nice. She does NOT own a rooster alarm clock. She is amazed that I was able to exercise such restraint over the course of the previous year in not dismembering either the clock... or the previous roommate.

I started my summer job today. This was a bad idea. Not that there's anything wrong with the job but I went straight from exams to the writing competition to packing/moving to the job with absolutely no recovery time in between. My brain is tired, and it shows. I'm tired all over, in fact. I can't remember the last time I got a proper night's sleep.

But the job sounds really great. I'm interning for the Consumer Project on Technology and will get to do all sorts of research regarding intellectual property and international law. The legal geek in me is very excited.

This post made on 5/24 as well. With all the changes and all the tiredness, I got behind. Oh well, I guess that exhaustion was all part of the Great Change too.

I really like living inside the Beltway. Interesting things seem to be happening all over.

My boss sent me to a two day meeting put on by the State Department. It was an informal workgroup meeting where treaty negotiators discussed the status of various international treaties. In attendance were also law professors, ALI drafters, UCC drafters, experts in various legal fields, and other veteran legal practitioners. I was the only law student. I took notes. And wonder of wonders, I UNDERSTOOD WHAT WAS GOING ON!!!! I really should thank my professors. The first year curriculum has an aspect of hazing to it, that you do it because you do it, and I've met lots of people who say that they never use anything they learned. But I found it all useful at this meeting. From civil procedure were discussions on personal jurisdiction, forum, and choice of law. From contracts, particularly with respect to a discussion on ecommerce, the basic fundamentals of contract law (e.g., offer and acceptance). In a segment on family law I remembered a case we read from Constitutional Law (Michael H. v. Gerald D.). Property and torts also came up, as did admiralty law (which I came to know by virtue of the writing competition which covered it).

It was fascinating and an incredibly educational experience just being there. I learned a ton about particular legal areas (like maritime law, family law, space law) and it was a crash course in international treaty process and European Union law. I'll be well-prepared for my classes next year.

I mostly sat there quietly taking notes, but during one of the last segments on an ecommerce treaty I raised my hand to make some comments. I may be new to the law thing, but the Internet I know a lot about.

Date also changed. Was posted 5/24.

Grades are in... yuck.

No failures, not even a C. But an astonishingly high absence of vowels.

What's frustrating is that I threw everything into the finals, and I can't imagine what more I could have done. Clearly something else was required since obviously others included it to get A's. Sort of wish I'd known what that might have been in advance...

At some point I might chase down the finals and figure out where I went wrong. Maybe. I'm mostly tempted to forget about them and just keep moving forward.

I'm inclined to think that what may have hurt me was a certain disorganization to the essays. I felt very rushed and pressured, but not like I didn't know stuff. I'd been advised to spend more time organizing them, but I'm not sure when that time could have been spared from. I did try to make sure, as I was also advised, that each sentence articulated part of the analysis and didn't waste space and time on filler. Or so I thought.

At BU the professors also have discretion to bump up grades for class participation by a notch. Either I didn't get bumped in classes I thought I would, or I did get bumped but apparently had done worse on the finals than I'd thought. Can't figure out which is a more depressing theory.

Of course the stupid thing is that I did learn a lot. Already I've changed, my thinking has changed, and I have insight into legal workings at a depth I didn't have before. Unfortunately there's no way to quickly represent that knowledge to anyone quickly, say, like prospective employers. The grades were supposed to be the proxy, the way this system works.

Something tells me I'm going to have to buck the system, but I was starting to think that already.

I've posted before about the extraordinary amount of time my 1L ConLaw class required. The book exacerbated the condition: it was dense, poorly organized, and abominably edited (if it was really edited at all). Among my more notable complaints: already dense and abstract sentences were made more dense and abstract by misplaced commas. It was hard enough to parse the material without essential keys to decrypting English grammar being strewn about randomly.

I am apparently not the only one with these kinds of complaints...

(I do disagree with him though that the entire casebook series is defective. I liked the (Fisher) Evidence book I used last semester and the Contracts book I used 1L year. This semester my (Chisum) Patent Law and Law and Ethics books are also from the same series, and they seem ok so far.)

Housecleaning note: I'm including this post in the 1L process category because it more directly applies to that time period, even though it was technically written during the period of the 2L process.

Edit 1/26: I just took a look at the aforementioned casebooks. They are all blue-bound Foundation Press books, but only two of them say "University Casebook Series," so I'm not sure what, if anything, distinguishes them. But those two were the ConLaw book (bad) and the Evidence book (good) so draw your own universal conclusions.

I just posted this on Blawg Wisdom:

"I took the LSAT twice. The first time I think I got a 163, just by doing some practice tests. But it was hard to stay focused on regular studying, and I never really found any handy insight on how to work through the logic problems.

So the next year, when I did this all again, I sprang for the review course. This was all new to me � I'd never taken a review course before so I shopped around a bit (good idea). I ended up opting for the Princeton Review. I chose it because after attending the free review classes offered by both them and Kaplan (also a good idea), I was much more impressed with the Princeton Review. Or perhaps I should say I was very turned off by Kaplan. I found them extremely hard-selling, smarmy and slick, like snake-oil salesmen. And in one of those free review sessions I found the instructor pompous and insulting. So I chose Door #2 and went for the Princeton Review, who always struck me as much more straight forward and professional in all the introductory dealings I had with them.

They were also candid up front: normally their students see a 7 point jump in their scores, but because I was nearer the higher end of the scale I was less likely to see that much of an improvement. But I did go up 3 points, which was a greater improvement than what you'd expect just from taking the exam again. It probably was also enough to expand my options as an applicant. I am a little surprised I didn't have a bigger jump, but I chalk it up to test-taking fatigue. That might be the downside to taking a class: you're kind of sick of the LSAT by the time it rolls around. On the other hand, it does help pace the studying.

And I actually enjoyed the class. The instructor, an undergrad at Stanford, knew how to teach the material, and I thought the insight was handy. Particularly for the logic problems, whose solutions are particularly unobvious, but also for the analytical reasoning sections. In fact, I really enjoyed that part as a lesson in logical thinking and in some way probably still draw from the material today. I did tune out the instruction on reading comprehension though because I did just fine on my own and didn't want to accidentally break what was already working.

So my advice probably boils down to the suggestion to take a few pretests on your own to see how they go. Then depending on what needs to be done to improve, decide whether it's something you can do your own with a book and more pretests, or if you'd benefit by more structure and concrete lessons. If you decide the latter, a class can be worth it."

Despite the date I've put this in "Law school - the process (1L), although it probably should be in a '(0L)' category, which I don't really have because I didn't start blogging until I was almost on my way to school."