The Great Change: Turning Cathy into a Lawyer

Several years ago I had a boyfriend who was a law student. Who started driving me up the wall because he seemed to be too negative about all sorts of things. At the time I chalked it up to a character flaw, but in facing my own recent grumpiness I wonder now if it's instead a typical by-product of the experience.

In some ways, the suspicion towards police stems from this period. He did a lot of work in criminal defense clinics and personally made a big difference on keeping people out of jail. We're not talking hardened criminals - we're talking people a bit on the fringes of society who stood no chance against the zeal of law-and-order cops, whose zeal clearly got in the way of actual justice. I'd always been interested in civil rights, but hearing about these situations made my concern less theoretical and much more immediate. It's not a hypothetical fear that innocent people may be railroaded unjustly: it actually happens all the time, with almost no outcry at all.

With regard to the ambient grumpiness, there's also the general effect on one's mood that the toll of the entire experience takes. It's a very busy time for me, what with my 2L job search and all, so my rope is a little frayed. But it's not really a question of stress as much as the existential doubt and ennui that sprouts from having no idea how your future is going to turn out, and relatively little guidance in trying to navigate it.

I'm not someone who generally needs a lot of handholding. Normally I figure out how a situation works, what the rules and expectations are, and act accordingly. But with law school there is a lot of complexity but not a sufficient amount of guidance. Now, I say this with respect and gratitude for the people at my school who have been helpful. But it's still not really sufficient. The job hunt for instance, is a nuanced process repleat with its own vernacular, timelines, and lack of guarantees. Also there are different types of job searches, which all happen simultaneously: large firms, small firms, non-profit, government... and out of all of those possibilities I have to find someone who wants me and will give me work to do that's fulfilling. I suppose it will all work out, but it's very difficult at this moment to have any idea how, and that's a very emotionally taxing state to be in.

Also on the list of things wearing me down is the process of course selection for next year. I don't even know where to begin in explaining where I am with that. I got into a bunch of courses that are hard to get into, but I'm locked out of courses that I need for prerequisites. My flexibility in dealing with these problems is meanwhile hampered by unit count maximums, scheduling conflicts, and a tremendous amount of unknowns regarding future course offerings and opportunities. I know what I want to do, but I only have a limited time to do it. It's really difficult to figure out how to work it all in even before all the hurdles and obstacles get added.

(I'm sure I'll be kvetching about course selection as the semester gets closer. Hopefully I'll know what I'm actually taking before October...)

Edit: Date changed. Was posted on 7/21.

Some light in the darkness: I got onto the journal I wanted. The writing competition was not all for naught, it seems...

Huge amounts of time last week were swallowed up by the 2L job search. And that's just for one part of one phase of it.

There are many firms that will be at various regional job fairs, and there are many firms that will be interviewing on-campus at various points. So last week I logged onto the website facilitating these programs to see what firms would be at which. Then I went to each firm's website to evaluate whether I'd even want to think about working there.

There were quite a few to check out, even when I only looked at firms that had offices in locations where I'd be willing to work. I'm concentrating my search in New York, San Francisco, and Washington, DC - if you can call that "concentrating." At least I've managed to eliminate a few places, like Boston. Several months ago I decided that although I like living in Boston now (er, well, during the school year) I don't feel inspired to stay. Instead I feel ready to return either to my roots in the New York area, or my later roots in the Bay Area. Washington is a possibility because it's a cosmopolitan environment vaguely in the Northeast where important things get done. I suppose of the three places it is my last choice because it's the place where I have the least attachment, but there are some firms with offices in all the aforementioned places whose DC office looks the most interesting, either given its size or practice areas. I find myself flipflopping on the NY-SF choice though. I'm very comfortable in the Bay Area, and there are certain firms based primarily out there I'd like to explore working for, but given an equivalent office in NY I find myself unexpectedly preferring the idea of staying back east. I'll have to give it some time to see how transient this sentiment may turn out to be. In the meantime I'm looking into jobs in both locales with a certain "que sera sera" attitude. Most important is the right opportunity, so I'll have to see where that turns out to be.

Written on 7/24/04 but posted on 8/03 due to travel.

A continuation of the previous post because I was unable to post it all at once. In the last one I surmised that I'd end up living where the best opportunity ended up being. More on what that right opportunity might be:

Trying to find that right opportunity though is no easy task. First of all, it's extremely time-consuming to figure out who these firms are, what they do, and whether they have practice areas that sound plausibly interesting to me, as if I really have any good way to assess all that at this juncture. What I've been doing as I do my research is ranking each firm on a scale of 1 to 5. A 1 is a firm whose core practice is something I'm not interested in doing. In theory there are lots of firms that are like this, but I only bother to rank the ones that I've actually heard of so that it's easier to keep track. A 5 is a firm that for some reason exudes a certain something that makes me particularly excited about wanting to get an interview. Maybe it's the practice area, or something else about it's attitude towards its practice or the law. On the flipside of that impression, there are the 2's that might at first SEEM to be up my alley but for some reason turn me off to them and negate any incentive to even try. The IP firms that are clearly – some even say this almost exactly – all about maximizing companies' intellectual property assets, these seem like a depressing place to devote my skills. I'm really concerned, actually, that my idealism on the subject may make it very hard to find a position. First of all, I might appear too opinionated. This might particularly be a problem when the firm has litigated for a client on the "wrong" side of an issue. If I've been rabblerousing that the argument or the client was wrong, I don't think I'd be very attractive to the firm. I'm also concerned that, if hired, I might have to advocate on the "wrong" side for a client. I'm not entirely sure how to reconcile this dilemma and still find a good position where I can develop as a litigator and this is what keeps me up at nights.

But I notice that some firms are so large that they end up having multiple practice areas where I might be able to find work I like. This is particularly true if they work with international law. Although transactions aren't so interesting to me, conflict resolutions are. Some firms even have international IP focuses, so those usually end up ranked a "5". Also, some firms seem to clearly understand that there are two sides to IP: suing everybody, and defending against suits. The tighter and tighter IP laws get, the more of the latter is going to occur. This is why I pass over the firms who only get the former but if the firm acknowledges that defense is also part of the equation, they end up on my list as a 4 or 5. Also tending to be ranked at 5 are firms that do a lot of First Amendment law. Free expression is the most important freedom to me, and why I got into IP in the first place, so that's a kind of work where my passion and the client's interests can perfectly converge.

Then there are other annoyances mucking up the process. For some firms my grades are an obstacle. Some will only interview people with a certain GPA or ranking. For some the cutoff is ridiculously high, but I wouldn't want to work in such a snobby environment anyway. For others for whom I appear to be below the cutoff, it's very hard to take, especially if I've otherwise ranked the firm a 5. For the job fairs there seems to no limit to the amount of firms I can try to get an interview with, so if the firm was a 5, or sometimes a 4, I've applied anyway. To the best I can figure out, if they wouldn't interview me anyway because of my grades then I don't think there's a negative consequence to applying anyway, because even if they were to refuse to interview me because I didn't follow instructions, well, I still wouldn't have had the interview. Anyway, lawyers are supposed to be pushy so maybe it will work in my favor... For the on-campus interviews though there is a bid limit, but since there doesn't seem to be more than 5 firms I'd be interested in for each session, and there are only about 8 sessions, with the bid limit is 75, I'm not sure it hurts to apply then either, especially if I otherwise seem like a good match for the firm's work or am in the ballpark of the cutoff. At least I hope not.

Maybe the hardest thing is to figure out a good attitude to have and to be able to maintain it. Some moments it seems like there are no good firms, or at least none who will interview me, so I despair and start casting a wider net. There end up being more 4's when perhaps they should be 3's. Or I feel more compelled to apply to 3's (I don't apply to 2's though). Other moments I think some firms are perfect and I'm a match, but then maybe something causes me to despair, like the GPA cutoff. Meanwhile, I've never worked in a firm before, it's a bit hard to know what I want in terms of size, location, practice... I have to make my best guess and it tends to vary from moment to moment. I'm still figuring this law thing out and I'm still figuring myself out. I guess the right firm for me is the one who thinks that's ok. All it takes is one.

Written 7/24/04, not posted until 8/9/04 due to travel, then dated for 7/25 to keep the entries spread out.

Edit 8/11/04: There was an interesting article in the NY Times today, about ethics in lawyering. It considered the debate, at times taking place within law firms themselves, about the conflict between zealous advocacy of clients and perhaps promoting a greater social good. It's nice to know I'm not the only one facing this problem. Maybe the firm for me is one who has at least recognized it themselves.

Comments turned off on this post since it seems to be a favorite target of comment spammers.

I just got back last night from 2 weeks of international travel, which unfortunately prevented me from posting regularly. I plan on posting a travelogue, so I might not go into many details about the trip here until I have, but I wanted to say something about my absense lest all my "fans" be worried that I'd abandoned my blogging. Nope, no such luck ;-)

This week will be my last in Washington and it will be intense in its own way. Lots of miscellaneous errands to run, school stuff to start coordinating, more job search activities, packing, finishing up some work from my job, and, since, 'tis the season, some Huey Lewis and the News concerts. I thought I was up for it, but jetlag and a nasty cold is not going to make this week very much fun.

The summer is wrapping up, gosh darnit, and I'm running around trying to get ready. Hence the lack of blogging.

This week I left Washington and returned to Boston, moving into my new home for the duration: my mom's.

This is an unexpected twist in certain ways. She used to live in New Jersey, and still did so when I began my first year. But she's always wanted to live in Boston, may have been jealous that I was getting to, and so moved into my neighborhood - two blocks closer to school than I lived.

So I did the only logical thing - I moved in with her. Unlike my last roommate (well, not the DC one), she cleans up after herself... she doesn't smoke in the house... and perhaps most importantly, she does not have a crowing alarm clock that goes off at 5:30 in the morning.

Of course, I'm 30 years old, I'm still in school, and I live with my mother. I was commenting to friends, "Where did I go wrong?!"

But so far so good, we've survived the week. Amazingly my room is all essentially unpacked and organized. I'm astonished, I can't remember having a room that was organized. I think it's been years. This is still a transition though: I'll be up and down the East Coast next week in the waning hours of my summer vacation. September is the beginning of normal life. To the extent that life in law school is ever normal...

Actually posted 8/21.

I spent the day on campus running school errands and attending an orientation for the journal. The new 1Ls were there in force as well, running around looking a combination of proud and bewildered. Sitting in the lobby watching them pass by I could immediately identify them, although granted I was aided by the fact that unlike lots of the 2Ls and 3Ls I'd never seen them before. Their body language was different, more upright in a way. They had not yet become stooped with the burdens of carrying their books or the stress that slowly weighs you down the first year.

More interesting were the 2Ls. We greeted each other and compared our summers and our courseloads. This is where we finally get interesting and differentiate ourselves, where for better or worse we are finally in charge of our own destiny (at least more so than 1Ls with their prescribed regimen). We're a year apart from the incoming 1Ls, but somehow it seems like a lifetime.

Edit 11/26: Per request below (and it's a good idea anyway) I finally syndicated the blog.

I milked it for all it was worth, down to the waning moments. Three and a half months, spent working with international IP in Washington, visiting Cambodia, Israel, and the places formerly known as Yugoslavia, and, for good measure, because I could, indulging in 12 Huey Lewis and the News concerts... I also spent time with friends and family, including some relatives I hadn't met before.

It was probably one of the most interesting summers of my life. People have been asking me how it was and I've been responding, "Thorough." Unusual opportunities were presented to me, and I was lucky enough to be able to seize all of them.

Edit: posted on 8/31.

It was quite exciting, I finally had an on-campus job interview today. There's a system where you can submit a resume to be considered for an open slot in an interviewer's schedule, and I managed to get one of them. It was quite validating to be so blessed, and I thought the interview generally went well.

Of course, I later sent a particularly dorky thank you note to follow-up, so trust me to ruin that moment.

The bigger problem is that my writing lately has gotten cludgy. Thoughts are not flowing well, typos are endemic... I have lots of good ideas, but I'm in a period where articulating them is unusually difficult. This happens from time to time and may be exacerbated by increased stress and the fact that my mental cycles are now being pulled in all sorts of directions. It could also be that my muse is mocking me. Maybe she's annoyed that when I was in her part of the world I didn't stop by to visit.

This is a bad time for my muse to be moody because I'm starting to have an awful lot to write. For one, I'd like to maintain the blog and even be able to write more regularly about many more things than I have been. I'd also like to be able to draft articulate responses to major news events, maybe even of publishable quality. But all that is getting pushed to the side by all the other things with the new semester I suddenly need to write. For the Copyright and Rhetoric class are several writing exercises, some of which I've done a shabby job on so far, and major papers are upcoming. I also need to draft a whole bunch of cover letters and hopefully some (ideally non-asinine) thank you notes, all of which require deft (or at least basically literate) use of vocabulary and grammar.

You'd think with all the blogging the practice would have helped, and maybe it has. But when I look back through the old posts I sometimes cringe, because not all posts have been the fine pieces of writing I'd hope to showcase my skills with. Some are close, but sometimes my zeal and enthusiasm have had a corrosive effect on fluidity or clarity. Sometimes it's a simple mistake that does me in, with an incorrect use of a homonym or some such linguistic blooper. It's not because my control of the English language is so tenuous that I make the mistakes, but just that when you are cruising along at a million miles an hour it's hard to find the time to go back and make sure you got everything right. And sometimes it's because in the excitement, with so much to say, it's easy to get a little lost.

I got some thoughtful comments in my email this morning from a friend who reads my blog, but he too agreed with the counselor about taking the blog off the resume. Especially, he said, because of the content (maybe I'd be better off if it were asinine drivel?). Oh, and he also told me I should rework more parts of my resume but this is getting ridiculous: about a dozen people have reviewed my resume over the last several months and I've gotten heaps of advice, most of which is now contradicting. There is no moment of zen-like perfection to be achieved. The resume will never be perfect because I'll never be perfect. Firms that want cogs will not want me. And vice versa.

However, with the gaping hole in my future job prospects, this realization was extremely depressing. I have this plan to go out to California and attempt to talk to firms, but it might not work out at all. I might not be able to talk to anyone those days, untouchable independent-minded leper that I apparently am...

So with the wind fully taken out of my sails first thing this morning, I went web surfing and headed over to Salon.com, which I read regularly. I checked out the posts of the week from TableTalk, an online board I used to participate in until I decided blogging was a better forum for me.

One of the posts was a tribute to Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, who recently died and whose work "On Death and Dying" radically changed the medical establishment's attitude, approach, and treatment for dying people. Kubler-Ross led a life of distinction in many ways, the poster commented. Hitchhiking to Russia... Being trapped in Poland when WWII broke out and needing to be smuggled out in a coffin... And being a woman in a profession not tolerant to them, and then turning it on its ear.

The poster quoted from her autobiography:

"It is very important that you do only what you love to do. You may be poor, you may go hungry, you may live in a shabby place, but you will totally live. And at the end of your days, you will bless your life because you have done what you came here to do."

The quote bolstered me and reconnected me to the sense of purpose I had in pursuing the law, which is very easy to become detatched from as debt-loads grow and all your classmates are running around school wearing suits getting interviewed... I didn't come to law school to make money. I came to make a difference. The blog is one part of that overall plan, and I feel it would be both dishonest and counter-productive to suppress it. I guess I am slowly reconciling myself to the fact that if it precludes me from being palatable to some firms, so be it. Then that's not the right path for me.

I'm going to break my own convention and post twice in one day. I wanted to write about why a Big Firm might be a good place for me, despite their possible requirement of cog-like performance.

I came to law school because I wanted to do important things. There are firms who also do important things, who are on the vanguard of technology law, for instance. Blog-debate aside, I don't think all big firms are the place for me but some might be great and empowering. I imagine there are big firms who might appreciate a demonstration of intellectual independence, just as there are some who would also appreciate that I've had professional experience prior to school. Not all do, certainly, but I have no reason to believe that the population of Big Firms is so homogenous that there might not be one out there that could be a fit.

In doing my research I've taken a look at some of the cases the firms have taken, or case studies they've written. The firms that brag about having written the DMCA (bad law with bad consequences) I've resisted applying to, but there are some out there who tout how they've defended people under it. It's those kinds of firms that I'd like to pursue.

The blog is a red herring anyway. This is a very strange job application process. In no other circumstance have I essentially needed to tell a potential employer, "I have no idea how to do the job you are hiring me for. Could you hire me anyway and pay me $125,000 while I learn?" I don't want to be just a cog - to continue to overuse an oversimplified shorthand of the stereotypical summer/new associate experience - because I don't want to deprive my employer of the actual value I can deliver. I guess that's partly why I'm finding the blog controvery so surprising. I suppose I thought that the blog would help advertise the fact that I'm willing to be something more, and I thought that someone would see that as desireable.

The other source of my distemper is that if the blog really needed to have been removed, BEFORE I bid for umpteen job interviews might have been a good time to have had this suggested.

But really, attitudes on this don't seem to be unanimous. There is an increasingly loud chorus of removal advocates piping up lately, but there are others, including another counselor, who said that as long as I didn't mind having it read, I could leave it on. That logic resonated with me, so here we are.

By the way, readers are invited to share their thoughts in the comments section if they would like. You don't need to give your true email address or identity if you prefer - the comment spammers I keep having to delete certainly don't - but if you could post in a way that I would know who you are that would be good. Particularly if I DO know who you are, in real life. Otherwise anonymity is fine, no problem...

Edit: I emailed this guy for his opinion. His initial response is on his blog.

When we last left our hero (me) I was still getting my schedule in order. Class-wise, it's settled. Mondays are long days, with Corporations, International Law Process, and Copyright and Rhetoric. I'm in class from 8:30-5, with nary a break (some days I have make-ups of another class so there ends up being no break at all). I also have Evidence and a seminar on Antitrust and IP. I originally thought the last seminar was going to be really interesting, then I thought it would be really boring, but then I changed my mind again and now I'm really excited about it. I'll end up learning a lot more about patents along with antitrust law. Evidence is an interesting class too. My professor is really nice, and I find it very similar, in a way, to a methodology course I took as a sociology undergrad. It's all about critically thinking about information and what it actually indicates, although in Evidence there are some actual legal rules to help shape that analysis.

Corporations is also turning out to be a good class. The casebook is readable, and the professor is extremely understandable. Nothing dry and boring like I feared. International Law Process ... I'll have to get back to you. I haven't really found my rhythm in that class, although I think the fog is slowly lifting. This course is interesting to me because of my work this summer, reading all sorts of international intellectual property treaties. I think I'll end up learning more about the treaty process, which is also relevant after my recent international travels.

Then there's the Copyright and Rhetoric class. Because of Labor Day we've only met twice so far but it's turning out really interesting. We've been drilling on writing, discussing rhetorical structure, and soon we'll get more into copyright policy. We also have a guest-teacher, an actor (and instructor) from Shakespeare and Company, who knows a lot about how to communicate to an audience (as well as classical rhetorical strategies – in other words, he's not just a pretty face...) So I'm taking a lot of courses, but some of them are just fun so I don't even consider them as being "work." Still, they all claim time from my schedule.

In the schedule also are obligations for my journal, including writing a large paper over the course of the year and doing "tech checks." (We haven't started, so I can't describe them too well, but it basically means double-checking the citations of the papers we are about to publish in the journal.) I also just signed up for moot court. And of course I need to make time for the job hunt and a few other obligations.

So I'll be busy this semester, but at least it keeps me off the streets.

There was an article making fun of the law firm hiring process in the recent ABA newsletter, readable here, and its inflexible attention to grades.

Meanwhile I'm getting more and more disheartened by it. It's hard enough to know what the best career path might be without being shut out of entire categories of possibilities. I have a B average. I grant you it's not as stupendous as an A average would be, but it seems to suggest, I would think, that I did the work, went to classes, and essentially learned what I need to know. Apparently, though, failing to attain a better GPA is a serious failing itself, for which there are serious penalties. With a B average it seems the punishment is shunning - I just can't seem to get firms to talk to me. But I shudder to think what a C average might get me. Perhaps a flogging? It makes one wonder what horrors await those with D's and F's...

A friend of mine called me to invite me to an event on Thursday. I had to turn her down because my schedule is incredibly packed, but I felt bad and worried she would feel I was blowing her off. So I tried to explain all the things I had to do instead, but as I was doing it I kept remembering more and more things. Eventually it seemed very reminiscent of Monty Python's Spanish Inquisition sketch:

(warning: the following humor may only be detectable if you know the sketch to which I refer, and even then it still might not be)

"I have an obligation for my journal, writing my note and doing a tech check. I have TWO obligations, writing my note and doing a tech check and writing a moot court brief. I have THREE obligations, writing my note, doing a tech check, writing a moot court brief, and looking for a job. Wait-- AMONGST MY OBLIGATIONS are such diverse elements as writing my note, doing a tech check, writing a moot court brief, looking for a job, and wearing my nice new suit..."

The other connection to the Spanish Inquisition (sketch) is the mention of the rack, the infamous torture device. In the sketch the assisting cardinal incorrectly brings a *dish* rack, which is torturous only to the venomous head cardinal's plans for extracting a confession. The real rack is a device that stretches people to the breaking point. Hmmm, just like this semester...

Date adjusted to when conversation happened. Otherwise posted 9/28.
Edited for EVEN MORE cleverness on 10/3...

She should have died hereafter;
There would have been a time for such a word,
To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more; it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

In the Copyright and Rhetoric class we've entered a unit where we have been using Shakespearean texts to connect to our inner emotions, to find and tap into a truth inside us so that we can learn how to communicate it.

There are several benefits to this exercise vis a vis our legal education. One, that we will be able to argue more effectively when we can hitch our own internal energies to our cause. This can only be done when there is a certain sincerity, a certain truth to our advocacy. It's not about agreeing with the specifics of the argument per se but that there is a belief in the cause. Being able to speak to it from an authentic place not only will help us craft the arguments better, but it will help them be received better. Our audience, the people we need to pursuade, will be most open to our position if we can communicate the depth of our own belief in it.

The other reason my professor wanted to do this is because law school is so much about the opposite process: detatching ourselves from what we are doing, the arguments we try to put forth. Stripping down, she called it. There is a strong impetus to be dry and clinical. It's not that to be lawyers we should be emotionally mushy, demonstrative people, but that the underlying benefit of the efficient professionalism is washed out by the suppression of ourselves. We will be much more effective communicators and advocates when all of ourselves can be in attendance in the practice.

To practice all this we each had to memorize a verse from Shakespeare. We then have been reading it before the rest of the class. An instructor from Shakespeare and company (actually two of them - one who already has helped teach and another who once was his disciple) queries us and prods us to tap into our core, to get in touch with a true emotion and be able to communicate it truthfully through the words of the text.

It ends up being a powerful experience, because it works.

I chose the above text from Macbeth. I chose it partly because in the 6th grade the class performed it, and through all the rehearsals and repetition the rhythm of many of the lines has stuck with me over the years. So I chose it partly because of its familiarity, its resonance. I contemplated using other verses from it but settled on this one because I wanted to explore the futility Macbeth lamented about life and the passage of time.

Before I performed it the instructor asked me all sorts of questions about how I felt about things. It was an open, safe forum, so I talked about all my fears and frustrations with the law school experience. He asked me what was the emotion I felt. I couldn't narrow it down to one single one. Instead I described it as a single thread, made up with two separate pieces intertwined: indignant fury, about the dysfunction of the institution and how pure merit seems to not be sought after or valued, and fear, fear that all the energy I sink into it may be for naught, and all the potential I have may simply end up spent and squandered, without the world becoming any better of a place for it. It would be such a waste, I said. And I hate waste, more than anything. Its tragedy is sometimes too much to bear.

I took some time off from school last weekend, by necessity, for both job searching and mental health purposes...

I headed out to California mostly to do informational interviews, and along the way I went to see the Cal-USC football game and yet another Huey Lewis and the News concert. Great weekend double-header, two of my favorite things...

Job search-wise, it was also really productive. I'd managed to arrange a whole bunch of informational interviews with lots of interesting lawyers who've done cases I've admired. In some instances my resume was passed along to their firm, but even without that it was great to get more information about the legal field, make contacts, and get referrals to other people to talk to.

One of the takeaways of the experience was that if I don't get into a big field next summer, or next year, or ever, that it may all be for the best anyway. That if I want to acquire the skills I think I'll need, and do the work I want to do, or even have time to write on the side, smaller environments will foster that better. Given that the door is closing for the year on large firm opportunities anyway, that was especially good to hear.

Caught up in the 2L work flood, not posted until 10/28 so backdated.

Life as a 2L is ridiculously intense. I feel like I live 6 lives in the span of one day. Things that happened just last week feel like they transpired a year ago.

In some ways the intensity is my own fault. I overloaded my schedule, for one, and I still like to take advantage of other interesting opportunities that pop up. Last Wednesday, for example, I saw a presentation by Judge Posner at our school, and on Monday, in addition from classes from 8:30 to 5:00 almost non-stop, I still went to a brown bag lecture on the human rights violations at Guantanamo Bay. That actually was hard to sit through – it was disturbing material, and I was worn down and had little emotional fortitude to protect myself from being paralyzed with depressing thoughts about the state of our world.

But some of the intensity – and by intensity I don't just mean the hours required and the difficulty of the mental labor involved, but also the variety of subject areas my brain is constantly required to devote attention to – is not my doing. Becoming a lawyer demands paradoxical applications of energy: for instance, I am expected to do well in school, and simultaneously I am also expected to find a job. These ends are mutually exclusive goals given how demanding of time each one of them is. There is only so much of me to go around, energy-wise, and even if I were able to operate at 100% every moment (of course what human is) there are still only so many hours in the day.

It dawns on me though that maybe the law school regimen is purposefully designed to be like this. Maybe as a lawyer I will find myself pulled in so many directions, with so many different things requiring my full intellectual powers and attention. Maybe the purpose of law school is not to learn law so much as to simply train the brain to handle constant full-throttle use, to push it to mental exhaustion and then be able to keep going. Like with weight lifting, when strength is built by working to muscle failure and then doing some more, ultimately increasing stamina.

I'm not particularly complaining about this though. I find the intensity exciting in a way. I like the vibrance to my day. It's just that sometimes it would be nice to be able to press pause.

Due to the aforementioned busy-ness, not posted until 10/28.

To give some more specific examples of intensity, behold my week of October 11 (or at least what I can remember of it that hasn't disappeared into a blur):

Monday was a day off for Columbus Day, and I was still in California doing informational interviews. I spoke to three people that day and had time for little else. That evening I took the red-eye back to California, as it was the only time-efficient way to travel that wouldn't require missing lots of classes for transit.

As it was, I bailed on my first class on Tuesday to attempt to catch up on sleep. I had a meeting with a professor that afternoon to discuss a presentation later in the week, and then a class from 2-5, followed by dinner at a professor's house.

Wednesday was simpler – I merely had a 24 hour take-home exam to do. Thursday was the day of the major presentation in one of my seminars involving running the class for 2 hours. And Friday and Saturday and Sunday was sunk into writing an impossible moot court brief. By the end of it I was wiped out.

This may sound simple and straight-forward. It's not all that many activities. But that's because I made it so. I was robbing Peter to pay Paul, skipping certain classes and ignoring various tasks so I could focus on these major (and many graded) projects that had all converged at once.

Slowly I've been trying to catch up, but in addition to the stress of having a lot to do, it's compounded by the ambient stress of feeling behind. So the catching up itself has been slow.

Posted on 10/28.

These things don't often go together, but they should. It's not just that the human body needs hours to repair itself physically – or at least minimize the amount of conscious hours where it might continue to break itself down – but that the dynamic busy-ness of this life, being pulled in so many directions, each of which requires mental exertion to the point of exhausion, while constantly juggling the existential questions of who am I, what am I doing here, and what will happen to me when it's over... it all requires processing. Sleep is the perfect time to do it, not only because it puts life on pause but because it allows you to dream. The subsconscious finally gets time to untangle your life, to reset you so you're ready to go back out into the fray the next day.

Last night I finally finished moot court. This was the second moot court I'd done, and this time it was optional. By my own choice I had to write a brief and then argue it before a pretend panel of appellate judges. My topic was on antitrust law, a very confusing subject I'm starting to know a lot about, what with this brief and my Antitrust and IP seminar. That said, it was a very difficult legal question I had to write and argue about. It involved tying, which is when a company conditions the purchase of one product on the purchase of another. This kind of arrangement can have anticompetitive effects as the company can use its dominant market power in one area to exert dominance in another. The law generally frowns on anticompetitive behavior, and on tying, but not necessarily. Tying isn't always illegal, and sometimes anticompetitive behavior isn't either. Sometimes it's even encouraged. So it's a far more complicated matter to figure out if a company doing tying would have liability for an antitrust violation. I had to argue in this case that the vendor in question was not.

Originally I felt like I'd done a poor job on the brief, because despite being able to write up to 12 pages, I only wrote 5. But the original question we were supposed to answer was unclear and contained confusing details. As best I was able to understand what was going on, 5 pages may have been perfectly adequate to lay out my argument. And after I handed it in I also discovered many other student with the same argument had only written 5-7 pages themselves, so perhaps I don't pale in contrast. Many other may have dropped out of the competition entirely as well, because that's what this was, a competition, and the best competitors this semester get to do the honors moot court in the spring.

With the briefs turned in last month, last night we finally had the chance to argue the case. I didn't do spectacularly because there wasn't sufficient enough time to do the preparation needed to be spectacular, but I think I did solidly. I'm resigned to not continuing on to the honors moot court next semester, but I hope to do some more moot court competitions in some form. I aim to keep doing it until I get it right.

Backdated to 11/4. Actually posted 11/6. Edited a bit on 11/17.

So this class I'm taking "Copyright and Rhetoric" (actually it may be "Rhetoric and Copyright," but whatever) is a particularly unusual course for law school. It's probably one of the most productive and useful: we're honing our persuasive writing and speaking skills, essential skills as future advocates. But it's a little free-form, more like a workshop than a class, which raises a problem with how to work out grades at the end. My professor invited us to write to her a proposal for how we thought the grades should be calculated, and this is what I sent:

I've long lamented that my education is inconducive to my education. The classes where the educational value is most bountiful are bullied into mute submission by a system that demands to be able to measure and rank its participants. Succeeding grade-wise often seems to require mastery of a different game than mastery of the material itself, which really should be the ultimate goal.

Here we have a class where learning for learning's sake is tantamount, and where that learning is somewhat ephemeral (not easily quantifiable). While you could quiz us on how many cool Greek words we've learned, the larger lessons we are supposed to walk away with probably won't reveal themselves so directly. Our thinking is being shaped, and that's a hard thing to test. Especially because the true impact of these lessons might not reveal itself until years from now when we are all supreme copyright scholars, or politicians, and have had lots of practice behind us.

The other problem with measuring things is that its validity depends on students knowing up front what those things would be. Some people may have exerted themselves in different ways if they'd known that certain aspects of their work would be more highly valued. But we were mostly left to our own devices to figure out how best to apply ourselves to get the most out of our engagement with the class.

The real problem I think you are faced with is that you need to differentiate students who may not really be differentiatable on any sort of productive basis. It's a small class, which self-selected serious, intelligent, hard working-students. If only you had a couple of complete flakes enrolled... but alas, not at this school.

As long as everyone has done what was asked, with reasonable good-faith effort (and I'm inclined to think this is true for everyone), we are all essentially equal. Nitpicking individual assignments may not be constructive because it changes how we should apply ourselves to them. To truly get the most out of this class we should feel able to risk failure. But if doing so jeopardizes the GPA game we are all forced to play as part of our larger progression through school, we will not feel sufficiently free to be able to get as much out of the class as we should.

So this is my proposal, the best I can come up with if giving all A's is not an option...

Step A: We trust you. You are an experienced educator committed to the development of your students. You have the ethos to be able to gauge potential and know when your students live up to it. So for each student, based purely on a subjective sense of how well you think we've been engaged in the class and the material generally, you determine a legitimate high grade and low grade. The test for you to use is whether, after this semester is over and we go out in the world saying, "I got X grade," you would cringe or not. Too high, it might not be deserved. Too low, you would feel it injust.

It may or may not be possible to spread these out over the letter notches (A, A-, B+, etc.) because there may not be enough for a legitimate spread, so perhaps you might temporarily use a more nuanced scale, like from 1-10, where 1 might correlate to a B and 10 an A. This is a step in a process, so that they don't quite match to the potential grades available isn't important right now.

Step B: Draw lots, throw a die. Use some sort of random device. Grades often feel like a crap shoot anyway, with the way they are so often detached from the educational experience. Let's be honest about it for a change. In the end it will be much more fair.

So the idea would be that the random device would allocate a grade distribution. You could even do this without Step A, if you chose. Just draw lots for the A's, A-'s, etc. But if you feel that someone really has a better claim to it than someone else, then use the floor-ceiling pre-qualifier to decide who even gets to be in the A pot, etc.

If you use the 1-10 system, perhaps you would pick a number from a hat for each person. If it were outside the range, you would redraw. When you have the final digit decided, then you can correlate it back to the regular grade scale.

However you would do this process logistically is less critical than that it be done at all. The important ideas to keep sight of are that the grades don't inhibit our learning, and that they don't incorporate unfairness that would result if certain aspects alone suddenly became more greatly prized. Your subjective judgment, applied to the entire course and tempered by randomness, would be far more equitable and constructive.

Interestingly, the skills we've learned this semester showed up in most people's proposals, as we made our suggestions and strongly argued for them. My favorite was the one from a classmate who did a contractual analysis of the syllabus, reaching the seemingly incontrovertable conclusion that it would be unconscionable if we didn't all get A's.

Also interestingly, I didn't make the case for all A's. It's like I feel that A's are so rare and exceptional... someone naturally needs to get the B's. And I guess I feel that, such is my lot, inevitably that someone is going to be me...

Backdated to 11/8, was posted on 11/9.

Today I went to a library I've never been to before, the Science and Engineering library. Despite its best efforts to evade me I eventually tracked it down. I was there to get a book on TCP/IP for research for my note. It was a nostalgic moment, holding a computing book in my hands. What a nice change to carrying law books. I read it right away, and while computer textbooks used to bore me, having been lately so inured to legal texts, reading about TCP/IP now kind of tickled...

Posted 11/25, backdated to when "today" actually occurred.

The calendar on the side of my blog homepage flipped to December today. If I had made a post yesterday I think it would have flipped then. But with no post it was willing to continue to show off my impressive array of November posts. This calendar function is a significant reason behind why I sometimes backdate my posts. I sometimes can only find the time to make several posts all at once. If I can spread them around I will look more prolific than if I post them all under just a few dates. I do frequently begin posts on many days, but it is sometimes only all at once that I am able to finish them properly.

But there was something very striking about seeing a blank calendar for December, having nothing to do with blogging. What a month it's going to be. Classes are wrapping up this week. 3 exams will need to be taken (2 in-class and 1 takehome). Study sessions need to take place. A paper needs to be written. Jobs need to be searched for. Rooms need to be cleaned. A note topic needs to be drafted. Everything previously neglected for the past several months needs to be attended to. Family needs to be visited.

But maybe most striking is that by the time the month is out, nearly everything I've done this semester will be behind me. Come January I'll be off to learn new things. Seems a little weird though – having put so much effort into everything this semester to suddenly have it fade into the background. In just a mere few weeks.

In my meandering through cyberspace to find interesting blogs, I happened across this one where someone pen-named "Publius" has been waxing poetic about deep Constitutional issues.

I am filled with envy that someone could have the time to immerse themselves so thoroughly in Constitutional inquiry, wrestling with policy ideals and practice. Studying, thinking, learning, writing, innovating. How I would love to do that.

In the context of doing it here on my blog I'm limited by the other demands of my life. Finals loom, and I don't have the resources to devote to diving as deeply into some of these incredibly important and fascinating issues as I'd like. I try to as much as I can, but I sense I will have to scale back even what I've managed so far in order to focus on the tasks at hand.

But in the longer view, I would love to be able to do that kind of scholarship for a career, to be able to bathe in the luxurious waters of legal inquiry. But it will be no small task to get that kind of job, and even more difficult thanks to the milquetoast-y performance of last year. And of the choice of school. I love BU, but it's not Harvard, and even though most of my professors came from Harvard and many do extraordinary work well respected by their peers, it still may not be good enough.

It seems that if that's the kind of life I want I may have needed to make different choices far earlier in this process than now, and far earlier than I would have even known to have made them. If there was ANY additional stone I could have turned over to get into Harvard, I should have turned it over. If there was ANY additional thing I could have done my first year to elevate my grades (gotten rid of the roommate?) I should have done it.

The conventional wisdom that had been available to me had recommended getting into the best school I could and doing the best I could gradewise. But the true import of this advice was not obvious before it all may have become too late.

It's not to say that if only I'd known what was at stake I would have worked harder. I worked as hard as I could. But it would have been nice to have had in mind what the ultimate goal was, and then been able to systematically prioritize and achieved the intermediate steps in order to attain it. It is only being in the middle of the process that from the process itself I've begun to figure out what it is I'd like to do.

Therein lies a fundamental problem with the law school process: there are so many aspects to the law one could cloak themselves in, but how is one to know the one most preferred until it has been attempted? I do think you could have some inkling beforehand, but I maintain there is no way to know what studying the law is about until you've actually done it. Until you've read case after case and case-reading becomes as second nature as reading street signs. Until your vocabulary has incorporated the new terms necessary to convey the kind of analysis you've now learned to make. The Great Change needs to take hold before you can even contemplate what you'd want to do with it with any sort of accuracy.

And with trial there often is failure, maybe because something isn't a fit or maybe because it's hard to achieve perfection the first time you've tried it. It seems therefore that the institution of law does itself a disservice by keeping score so early, before the student's worth as a future practitioner can really be measured. And before the student can possibly know to what end they wish to apply their education.

Backdated to 12/4 when this was begun. Actually posted 12/6.

Edit 12/8: Another law student on grading (with links to even more law students on grading).

I am doing much better in my current abode than I did in the one from last year. I am at least much more sane by this point in the semester, even though I'm busier, probably in large part because I'm not being woken up everyday at 5:30AM by a remorseless crowing alarm clock.

I have, however, in recent weeks, begun to be affected by the 8AM Stomping: The upstairs neighbor seems to routinely stomp through his apartment, or more specifically, the room above mine. I do not hear stomping anywhere else in the apartment or at any other time of day, except at 8AM right above my head. It produces an ensemble of percussive thumping and chandelier (well, light fixture) rattling. I could do without either. Now that I'm in study period my schedule is different, and from time to time I might actually like to be sleeping at that time of day. But I do not appear to have that option. It's very annoying. While I am a morning person and I generally like to get up early, I don't want to HAVE to. I have not been able to sleep through it, and even if I'm just lying there contemplating the upcoming day it's still very jarring.

So I guess I'm going to have to leave a note or something, though I'm not quite sure how to phrase it. "In your morning routine, could you please hover? The daily traipsing is very disturbing."

In other apartments where I've lived confronting neighbors has been less risky. If relations turned frosty it wasn't the worst thing in the world because inevitably one of us was going to move. But since my mom lives here, I guess I need to tread more carefully. (Ha! Get it? Tread? Um, yeah....)

Edit 12/11 (Saturday): Apparently the stomping is reserved for weekdays only.

Edit 12/11 (Sunday): Correction - it seems to be a Sunday thorugh Friday thing...

Two exams (in class) are down. Two more major activities to go: today and tomorrow I need to finish my paper for Antitrust and IP, and then on Tuesday I will do a takehome exam for International Law Process. Then I'm sort of done. Over the break I will need to finish up some papers for Copyright and Rhetoric, and I will need to make significant progress on my note (major paper for the journal). And look for a job.

So this is not a good time for my muse to be taking a break. I know she's worked very hard all semester, but I really need her help still. I'm able to get good ideas on my own, but I'm having a harder time than normal conjuring up the correct words to express them when I sit down and try to write. I feel like my brain is very dry, and it needs some sort of lubrication so that I'll be able to properly access my vocabulary.

I have now horribly mixed metaphors, but it goes to my point...

If you help someone study for the bar, is that a bar mitzvah?

Edit 12/22: I want to believe I made this joke up. And I did. It came to me after reading Jeremy's bar song. But I can't help thinking it has a certain obviousness that maybe someone else has stumbled upon before. Great minds and all that...

My paper for Antitrust and IP is now all turned in. There were confusing instructions about what font it should be in, so I printed it out in both Courier 12 and Courier 10. It's either a 20 page paper or a 16 page paper, respectively. I wrote it about whether the RIAA could be subject to antitrust liability for its strategy of mass litigation against filesharers. I argued that it could be. This means I now know everything about Noerr-Pennington petitioning immunity, its sham exception, and the test for the exception espoused by Justice Thomas in Professional Real Estate Investors v. Columbia Pictures, 508 U.S. 49 (1993). (It's not a very good test - the concurrence has a better argument.)

I may post the paper at some point. I'm a little concerned because it's the first academic legal paper I've ever written, and it's not like we're actually taught how to write them. So I can't completely vouch for its quality. It also wasn't an assignment that required significant outside research. There could be some perfect cases and articles on point, but we were only required to use the class materials as the basis of our analysis. On the other hand, they were good materials and may have been sufficiently authoritative on their own. And I did do a bit of extra research, mostly using the Web to find articles on the RIAA's tactics to support my argument.

After I dropped off the paper(s), I picked up my takehome final for International Law process. I now need to scrape myself together to do it. It has to be turned back in tomorrow by 11:30.

Did I mention I'm tired?

The final final exam is done. It was a 24 hour take-home exam for the second half of the International Law Process course. Other bloggers have been debating the relative merits of this kind of exam, at least compared to 3 hour in-class exams, 8 hour take-homes, and term papers. The one 8 hour take-home I've done in law school was hell. It required all 8 hours to do, and rapid sprinting to and from school to pick it up and turn it back in. (It also ruined my birthday, and, subsequently, my GPA...) At least with the 24 hour exam, while it may require 8 hours to complete as well, it also permits enough time to sleep (well, nap) and generally futz around while you get your head together.

But I think the key thing is variety. Too many take-homes would have been taxing and too many in-class ones would have been tedious. I lucked out pretty well this semester with my 5 classes: 2 in-class exams last week, nicely spread out, then plenty of time to do my paper for another class and then devote 24 hours to this last exam. Next semester doesn't look so good though: 4 of the 5 classes have in-class exams, two of them on consecutive days, and two of them on the same day.

My fifth class this semester didn't have an exam, but I need to finish up some other work for it from during the semester. I have until the 5th to do it. While it's nice I didn't have to cram it in while I was working on the finals for all the other classes, it means that today isn't quite the closure to my semester I would have liked it to be.

Nonetheless I met up with some friends and we went to a "celebratory" lunch at Friendly's, as is becoming our inadvertent tradition. I'm a sucker for Friendly's and always wished they had some in California. Good sundaes and decent food, although something went awry with today's salad as it seemed to have been served to me an ingredient at a time...

I am now officially a basket case, but hopefully the condition will be alleviated after a good night's sleep. It's been several days since I last had one. Hopefully the stomping won't be too loud tomorrow... And then I can get busy on everything else I still have to do.

On Wednesday I sent off the last of my work for last semester. This means I am now officially halfway through law school.

I greet this momentous occasion with some mixed emotions. I'm a little concerned, for instance, that I don't know what will be in store for me when I'm done. It makes me a little nervous, blazing along at top speed, when there may very well be a sheer cliff up ahead...

I'm also a little sad. I like law school. I like being a law student. I like studying the law, thinking about the law, writing about the law. I'd miss it if I stopped. So I'll have to figure out a way not to stop, even after I graduate.

On the upside, I am a little excited. Law school is a lot of work, and it's nice to be able to finally see a light at the end of the tunnel. I also eagerly anticipate returning to the work force and being a productive member of society again.

And I'm curious about what I will be like at the end of this process. I clearly have been changing. I think differently than I used to, more mechanically and logically than used to be intuitive. At the same time, I'm not (as my Contracts professor once jokingly phrased it) "ruined." The idealism survives in tact, and I don't think I've devolved ethically as may happen to many law students tempted by the reported riches of the profession.

But stay tuned, there's still another year and a half to go...

I have 3 days of "vacation" left before the semester starts.

I'm not ready. My brain is still all cloudy and encumbered. Last semester plagued me for WAY to long, interfering with all the projects I needed to get on in order to be ready for the next semester. It's been fun travelling and seeing people - that part has actually recharged me - but I've been unable to better capitalize on the downtime to get a jump on the other projects. My brain is just so drained, and it's affecting my writing ability. I have all these lovely ideas and inspirations swirling about my head, but converting them into readable text has been surprisingly laborious, with the results astonishingly inelegant. This is not good, not when projects include sending (nondorky) cover letters and writing my journal note.

But I may have a little time even after the semester starts. I'm in 5 classes, but I get Fridays off. On MW I have Patents and Law and Ethics. On TTh I have Copyright, European Union Law, and Tuesdays also Trial Advocacy in IP. I may also be a research assistant for a professor, and I hope to start swimming. Last semester I was a bump on a log, and all my exercise resulted from walking to and from school. If I think I'd like to do triathlons ever again, I'm going to have to do better. So all that, plus the LSA plus the IP Society plus the job hunt, this will be my life for a while.

But not till Tuesday.

Yesterday was one of those days when I ended it distinctively smarter (or at least better-informed) than when I began it.

It was the first day of classes, and I had Copyright, European Union Law, and Trial Advocacy. In each class I came away with discrete knowledge that I had not had before. I'm very excited about all of them. For copyright, it's a joy to just be able to ponder these issues. I can't wait until I know more about the mechanics of how the law works. Yesterday gave a good sneak peak. For EU law, my wonderful former Contracts professor walked us through the rationale of economic integration - in other words, why independent states like those in Europe would see it advantageous to integrate their economies. (I was also quite the history maven in class, being the sole volunteer to explain the Treaty of Versailles and the Marshall Plan. Which goes to show all you high school students that you should pay attention in history class because you never know if it may come in handy a decade+ later...) Later on in the day in Trial Advocacy we learned about how a trial attorney will set a theme for the case, the foundation of the story that will be told to the jury supporting the facts and the law. We practiced with the infamous case of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. I was on the side defending Goldilocks. My theme was "A child lost and alone sought refuge in a home." You'd vote to acquit, wouldn't you?

Today is Day 2 of classes, with Patent Law and Law and Ethics. I wonder what cool things I'll learn today?

It's the third day of classes now, and I still like them all. I'm really excited about everything I'll get to learn, and the schedule seems manageable. In fact, it's now about 1:45pm on Thursday, and once I finish with a 2pm appointment my weekend essentially begins (not that a lot of lounging around will occur - I still have a lot to do - but nothing too immediate will need to be addressed). The only downside I've noticed so far is that between the end of classes MW at 6pm and the beginning of them on TTh at 9am there's not a lot of time/energy available to do the readings. So I may need to find another time to do my homework.

One of the other odd features of my schedule is that 3 of the 5 classes are being taught by non-BU professors. The Trial Advocacy class is taught by two practicing attorneys. My Copyright class is taught by a professor from Northeastern and the Law and Ethics class professor is from Suffolk. But I like them all, so other than a few additional logistical difficulties in visiting office hours, it's all good.

Meanwhile, thanks to the untimely and tragic but presumably not permanent demise of my laptop, I'm remembering what it was like to take all my notes by hand. At the moment I kind of enjoy it. Dare I say I seem to be paying more attention in class? But I am a little concerned with the situation I'll face at the end of the semester. It may be much more difficult to review everything from the course encapsulated into pages and pages of scribble. (I seem to be taking about three pages of notes per class session.) And it will also be more inconvenient to share my notes with my peers, as I usually do. On the other hand, my typed notes tend to be little more than digital scribble anyway, so maybe nothing really will be lost if I continue this. It might be worth continuing as an experiment, just to see if I can sustain it. Live on the edge, I always say...

My friend came out to visit. Well, actually she didn't really come to visit me - she came to do a puzzle hunt. But she nicely squeezed me into her schedule before heading home. Not that it mattered too much: I just saw her about two weeks ago. We have a remarkably geographically unspecific relationship. We've seen each other in New Jersey, Massachusetts, Illinois, Washington, London, the Bay Area... sometimes all in the same month (well, at least a subset of those places).

So I took her to school with me. I showed her around a bit. I showed her the view from the 12th floor, I showed her the elevators, I showed her my locker... She then showed me that my locker didn't actually lock upon being closed unless the combination was turned. I find myself wishing someone had shown that to me when I'd begun using it a year ago... (How did I never notice this?)

Then I took her to my class on European Union law. She has EU citizenship so she thought it would be interesting. My professor has been going over a lot of introductory material though, making sure that we understand the governmental institutions and the political realities they result from and reciprocally affect. Knowing all that up front gives context to the cases that we will study subsequently. But the consequence of this preparation was that my friend didn't quite get to see a typical law school course. It was more overview lecture than normal, and it wasn't until about 20 minutes left that we started turning to case analysis, which is more emblematic of an American legal education. Of course, American law is more embematic of the typical legal education so there was that difference too.

But I think my friend found it interesting. She's getting a Master's in education, and is apparently studying educational technology right now. She was thus particularly fascinated by my professor's prodigious use of the chalkboard.

Read Part I

I'm friendly with some 1Ls, who so far have not been burdened by grades and the psychological torture they impose, overshadowing the entire educational experience. Anyway, the other day we were shooting the breeze and I was kvetching (as usual) about how much I hate grades. And how mine probably kept me off Law Review.

"I've talked to some people on law review," one of them said, "And I could barely have a conversation with them. YOU I can talk to. You have balance."

I think she meant that I wasn't one dimensional, that I wasn't so consumed with law school that I forgot how to be interesting. Although the truth of the matter is that I am consumed with law school - but ALL of it.