The Great Change: Turning Cathy into a Lawyer

I finally got a look at the course offerings for next year. Now I have a dilemma: what classes to take?

In the spring, I'm planning on taking Trademark, Telecom Law, and Tax.

Tax??? Is there anything more boring? Perhaps not, but the professor is really good and kept corporations from reaching the vast levels of boringness I'm sure it was otherwise capable of attaining on its own. And lots of people recommend taking tax, so I will. Even though it pollutes my schedule with Friday morning classes. I used to think I didn't mind them, but now that I've had Fridays off, it's hard to go back.

The question is what else to take. My choices:

Negotiation.
Trial advocacy (advanced).
Wills and Trusts.
Indian Law. Edit: interesting, but not a high priority.
Consumer law. (So I'd really be able to complain about Verizon.)
Administrative law. Edit: can't take, schedule conflict.
Secured transactions.
Criminal procedure.

I'm also looking into an independent study, either along with one of the above, although potentially instead of. Thoughts? Things I'll need to consider are unit count (I can do a 4 unit class - but will I want to?), whether it's a bar course (and if that's a good or bad thing since I'll do a bar review course), or whether it's something I should know anyway.

By the way, I've gone ahead and made a "Law school - the process (3L)" category to accomodate this post. I won't start using it until the summer though. I am not done with the 2L thing yet...

Mark your calendars accordingly: a year from today I will have my JD.

Last week I wired off the deposit on the apartment I'll live in this fall in Germany. It's a huge relief to have that detail taken care of. Trying to find an affordable home in a city I'm unfamiliar with in a language I don't speak was not an enjoyable prospect. Fortunately there are some students at the school doing their semesters abroad who wanted to sublet their apartments to the exchange students coming in. There aren't quite as many rooms like that as incoming students though, and I'd procrastinated so long that there was only one left by the time I got my act together. In fact, it wasn't really me who got my act together but another exchange student who'd found the place and needed to find a roommate in order to take it. In the rush to secure the place before someone else did we quickly conversed, deemed each other roommate-worthy – at least sufficiently for four months (she doesn't smoke and *assures* me she doesn't have an alarm clock that crows) – and then sewed up the deal. At least we hope. We wired over the money, but we haven't actually signed a lease yet. Which I fear will end up being in German...

But it should all be set now, and so I've bought my plane ticket for the trip over at the end of August. Also today I got in touch with my "buddy," the student who will help me acclimate to the school and life over there. Over email we discussed the prospect of him meeting me in the airport.

Him:

"If you tell me exactly when you arrive, I might come to the airport. I won't have a huge welcome poster with your name on it, though. I suck at arts and crafts."

Me:

"No, no. Nothing so conspicuous is required. But SOME way for me to identify who you are would be helpful. I can't tell you how many times I've been at airports, not knowing what the guy meeting me looked like. I had to go up to every man there, 'Are you looking for me?'

(I'm serious - this has happened to me twice!)"

Sadly, this is no exaggeration. It has happened to me twice, although I realized after I sent this that one of the occasions was in a train station, not an airport, like the second one was.

Unfortunately, this prospect intrigued him:

"Concerning our rendez-vous at the airport, I will just look out for a girl asking guy after guy whether he wants to take her home, that should make some noise!"

I wrote back that on second thought, he'd better make a sign. A really BIG sign...

I talked to some housing attorneys at work today about the North Carolina case of the woman being evicted because of her abusive ex-boyfriend. One of them confirmed my suspicion that women who are victims of domestic violence tend to count as a protected class under the housing discrimination laws. Beyond that, the other attorneys nodded affirmatively at some of my other theories about possible defenses she could raise.

From a policy standpoint, because I think evicting the woman on this basis is the wrong thing to do, the fact that there was no clear answer of "this is absolutely, positively wrong" is distressing. But personally, I found it a little validating.

I was concerned, as I explained to one of the attorneys, that even though I'd been working with housing law for a few weeks now I didn't feel I could quite resolve the question. It seemed like there must have been a specific answer out there, and I was distressed that I didn't know it.

But it's a myth that there's but one answer. "The law is not black and white," I was reminded by my boss. Everything is subject to argument, and it seems my instincts on how to do it were just as sound as anyone else's might have been.

To a certain extent, the impetus to do a judicial clerkship is driven a lot by inertia. This is what graduating law students do, and since I don't have a good reason not to clerk, I think I'll clerk.

Of course, I'll never get a clerkship if that's all I can say for it. Plus I take some pride in my ability to buck standardization trends in law school. You say 2Ls normally take only 12 units in the fall? I'm sorry, but there are too many things I want to learn while here... So I'll take 18. Stress out about grades? I think not. I'll take my exams seriously, but I refuse to look at the results. Do moot court? Do a journal? Of course! But not because it's what "everyone" does but because it's what I want to do.

So certainly I'd never want to do a clerkship just because it was the next step on the assembly line. I want to do it because it's a unique opportunity to be part of as essential part of our legal system. That said, having never been a clerk, I have to surmise what kind of experience would be. But the educated guesses I can come up with definitely appeal to me.

I've lamented in various posts how people often abdicate their role in their own governance to the legal institutions that wield so much power over their lives. I think that's a shame: the law belongs to everyone, and everyone needs to be able to control it – not be victimized by its awesome power.

In the long run I would like to help make those institutions be more accessible to everyone. In the short run I would like to make them more accessible to *me*. After law school I would like to be a litigator as a means of affecting positive chance. But for me to succeed at that, I will need to know more about how the judicial system actually functions. Towards that end I think the clerkship experience would provide an invaluable education.

But more than that, I think the clerkship itself can be an avenue for doing good. While lawyers may be zealous advocates, important pieces of the adversarial system, the whole point of that system is to yield a just result at the end. Such a result depends entirely on the fair process and resolution of a dispute – which is very much the responsibility of the judge. To be a clerk and support that noble end would be fulfilling on its own, and it's one I relish taking on.

One of my clerkship recommendation letter writers asked me to explain for her why I want to clerk. But I couldn't write something on such an important topic for just one person - I had to share it with everyone! I think it belongs here anyway, as an important part of the law student process. And so accustomed am I to exploring these types of things here that, when intended for the wider audience, it ended up much easier to write.

I spent the last few days trying to get together a list of judges to apply for clerkships with.

For a short time my list included various judges on the DC Circuit. Including John Roberts.

I can't tell you how special it makes me feel that I knew who he was before the rest of the world did...

I know it was the right decision, but it was still really hard to make. I decided to give up my teaching job.

It breaks my heart: those two hours I spent at the pool four days a week were some of the happiest of my summer. But it was getting to be a big burden to have that all time earmarked for that one activity. It didn't leave a lot of time or energy left over to take care of all the other things I need to do this summer, and it required me to have the time management skills of an automaton – being out the door every day precisely on time to get to work at my clerkship so that I could leave on time to get to the pool. I kept it up pretty well for about four weeks, but it was becoming pretty clear that I needed more of my time back. Or at least more flexibility in my schedule.

But I did go out swinging: Monday and Tuesday were my last lessons, the first days of a new class session, and every day of my 14 years of experience was brought to bear. The first days of a new session tend to be a little chaotic, as we test all the kids to figure out what classes they should be in. The first class was pretty straight forward – just a few 3-5 year olds – but the second class, due to an ill teacher, had nine uber-kinetic kids. Somehow I had to get them tested, divided, and then engaged in a learning activity. So I did. Then for the next class there also ended up being seven kids. I tested and divided them as well. One of the fathers noted that I looked really confident despite the chaos. "You didn't have that look of panic I might have expected," he said. And it's true: I didn't. There was nothing about the last couple of days that I haven't dealt with at some point in previous years.

It's a funny thing, teaching swimming lessons. When I'm not doing it, it seems very abstract. It's hard for me to describe how to do it, or even recognize that I can do it, as I'm not usually in contact with that talent. But put me in the pool and I know exactly what to do. There's a piece of my personality, energetic and effervescent, that's never present in any other situation, yet automatically comes out when I'm in the water with the kids. I love tapping into it. I love being in touch with that part, and being reminded that it's part of me too. And I love that feeling of complete confidence I get when I'm doing something that I've done for nearly half my life. That confidence is the complete absence of fear that the situation will overwhelm me, since I have no doubt that I can overcome whatever's thrown at me. It's a wonderful feeling, and one I want to come to have with me in all the other things I go do.

I had an interesting evening. A Big Law Firm hosted a reception for law students. I went, which was a nice way to ease back into the job hunt, which I'm going to need to get more into from here on out.

It was interesting - I think I was the only 3L. In some ways the job hunt will be harder this time around: there are fewer 3L than 2L positions out there, particularly at big firms, and the stakes are higher this time around (this time I really need a job!). But I already can tell that, to the extent it's possible, I will enjoy this year's search much better than last year's. As a 3L I am a real person looking for a real job. For the 2L summer, there's something very artificial about the whole process. Firms and students preen and posture for each other. There's something un-honest about the whole process, it seems. I don't mean that there's dishonesty, but it sometimes seems like the whole firm-2L wooing process is so skewed towards the wooing, and so disconnected from any substantive law practice, that it's hard to really see it as a job application process. Whereas now, for me, even with the same firms it will come down to whether the firm has an opening in a practice area I would like to do. It also seems like the substance of what I can bring will matter more - particularly since now there's more to bring - and I find that less discouraging and dysfunctional than the 2L job search process had been.

The really interesting thing about the evening though was that I bumped into my LSAT teacher at the reception. I'd really liked my LSAT class - somewhat in spite of myself because as someone who typically tests well on these standardized things, I tended to be of the mind that prep courses were a load of crap. But I actually liked my class and I liked the teacher, and I was telling him tonight how I thought that some of the lessons - particularly those for the analytical reasoning sections - have remained with me and even been useful in law school.

Anyway, at the time I took the class I don't think he'd expressed any interest in going to law school himself. I think he may have mentioned thinking about taking the LSAT as a lark, but it seemed to not be part of the path he was on. But obviously since then he's switched gears, and now he's a rising 2L. Cool guy, and a good teacher - he should do well.

The problem with my evening, however, and the origin of this post's title, was that as I got on the BART to go home I discovered, to my disgust, that a bird had defecated on me. It ended up all over my backpack, my fingers, and my suit. It was a very unpleasant commute, waiting to wash my now-filthy hands. And it's very annoying that now I'm going to have to get my suit drycleaned. But what REALLY concerns me is that I'm not sure when this happened. I didn't notice until after I'd left the reception, but I'm not entirely sure it hadn't happened before. I therefore find myself really really hoping that it didn't happen until then, and that I was not walking around the Big Law Firm Reception all night with bird crap on my back.

I met with a lawyer friend today to talk about my note. (Remember that?) The thing is languishing in academic limbo. It's supposed to satisfy my upper division writing requirement, but I haven't heard a peep from the evaluating faculty on whether it does in its current form.

Meanwhile, I'm interested in making any improvements necessary in anticipation of getting it published somewhere, so it was worthwhile to hear my friend's thoughts.

He gave me lots of feedback on the legal issues that I need to incorporate. And he also gave me some structural feedback:

Pretend you're representing one side in a suit, he said. What arguments would you press, and what ones would you expect you'd need to deflect?

Sounds obvious, right? Well, NOW it does. But it's the first time anyone ever described note writing in those terms to me. It would have been really helpful had someone said the same thing to me a year ago. Some guidance, you know - so I wasn't left to my own devices to flounder around until I happened to figure out note-writing on my own. (A hardly likely event - a thousand monkeys on a thousand typewriters in a thousand years would not manage to write a good note, and neither would I without some instruction.)

I don't really want to lambaste peer-edited writing projects altogether: I imagine they can be very positive experiences. But they are entirely contingent on the efforts put in by the upperclassmen giving the advice. I didn't get much of that. To some extent it wasn't their fault - there was a period when I got behind, and I let my note editor off the hook until I got caught up. But even when I did, ultimately I never heard from him. And the one set of comments I got from the editor in charge of the process had one helpful bit, but then was otherwise preoccupied by how often I split my infinitives. If I don't cert (get academic credit for the paper) because I split infinitives I'm going to raise hell. It's not even a rule anymore that you can't!

Anyway, I'm grateful for the great help I've gotten from my friends but very frustrated by the process. As well as stressed about how much work will still be required to make this thing what I really want it to be.

It's 7:11 in the morning, and I've already been up an hour. Today is the day I need to finish packing up my car, finish up at work (to the greatest extent possible - there's a bit of a Sisyphusian quality to my clerkship, with an infinite amount of work I could be doing but, unlike Sisyphus, fortunately, not an eternity of damnation to spend doing it), get my haircut (which unfortunately requires an hour commute each way), meeting a friend for lunch, and then driving to the middle of Nevada.

But it's practically a day off compared to tomorrow, when I have to drive 1010 miles, and learn to speak fluent German.

I certed!

This means that my note passed the upper division writing requirement, and I don't have to do a thing more to it in order to graduate. I may anyway, because I'd like to publish it, BUT I DON'T HAVE TO!

Not only that, but the evaluating professor said I wrote it really well, "like a law professor." What a lovely compliment!

Anyway, I'm absolutely thrilled to have that pressure removed, and positively ecstatic that I won't need to slave away at it either before, during, or after my move to Germany - unless I want to.

One step closer to graduation...

On Wednesday I came up to Boston for a few days to take care of everything I couldn't do from California this summer or wouldn't be able to do from Germany this fall. A lot is getting packed into these few days, and not all of it is very much fun.

Thursday I went to school to deal with lots of administrative issues. Most were tedious, but one is particularly concerning in that I don't think it will be satisfactorily resolved: (Edit 3/8/06: Actually, it was.)

I leave Boston on Tuesday. I leave the country entirely on the 29th. However, my financial aid loan disbursement - the money I really, really need to live on - won't be available until the first day of classes, or September 6. Normally what I've done in the past is, on the first day of classes, written a check for the outstanding balance owed to the school, and then they've handed over the loan check to me in its entirety so I have that money that day. But I won't be able to do that on September 6, because I will be several thousand miles away. So the financial aid office said the university can cash my loan check and then cut me one to refund the difference and then mail it to my mom, who will then be able to deposit into my account for me. That would be fine, except on Thursday I was informed that the school would probably take a week before writing it the new check, and then it would be several more days before it arrived in the mail. Meaning that I wouldn't see the money until mid- to late September.

This isn't going to work! I've been in school for two years, and any financial cushion I might have had to compensate for bad cash flow is pretty much gone. Already I've been begging and pleading with the dentists and doctors I saw this summer not to bill me until the fall, and trying to time charges to my credit card to hit the future billing cycles, but there's limits to how much I can rob Peter of to then stiff Paul on. And I think I'm going to be pushing those limits because of this delay.

What really infuriates me, however, is the complete lack of responsiveness from the school. Now, I should say that in theory BU could still come through for me. And I've talked to some helpful people in the law school (none of whom can control the situation, however). But I seem to be trapped in this nightmarish bureaucracy, where only because I'm doing this touted school program, I risk financial hardship because the university can't see clear to make whatever exceptions to its policies it needs to make in order to make sure I have the funds necessary to complete my studies in a timely way. For this I pay tens of thousands of dollars a year? Support me in doing this, dammit! Don't just throw up your institutional hands and say there's nothing you can do to make sure I can focus on my studies and not worry about bouncing checks and late fees. You can fix this, and I expect you to do so.

Anyway, with this and other stressful matters confronted on Thursday I felt like I spent the whole morning being shrill and whiny. Which may be an accurate assessment of my comportment -- not that it was unwarranted, however. It seems like ever since I decided to do this law school thing life has been non-stop nits. There's always new things to worry about, new things to do, new deadlines to meet. It's very wearing, and Thursday was a very wearing day.

Until the very end, when I went to a Huey Lewis and the News concert that night in the city, and got to watch it from the side of the stage. From a sound, and even visual, perspective it wasn't the best place to be, but it was so extraordinarily cool to be there and watch this fabulous performance be created from the inside out it hardly mattered. Plus I was so worn already it was easy to just get sucked into the moment. I was sort of at the right level of tiredness: subdued enough to not need to be scraped off the ceiling from excitement, but not so tired to be an imbecile... I stood there, in awed transfixion, loving every moment of the concert as it unfolded before by eyes.

And as the specialness of the situation dragged me away from my world of stresses and cleared my mind of all distractions a weird feeling came over me. And I recognized it as a foreign one I'd almost completely forgotten over recent years: contentedness. I was as plainly, uniformly, and undilutedly happy, just standing there, as I've ever felt in years.

My mom spent all yesterday evening and most of today helping me get my wad of clerkship applications out. What an ordeal. (And I'm not even done; there are still some other courts I'd like to apply to, although this was the bulk of them.) Mail merging, printing things out, affixing postage and labels... I wouldn't have been able to get it all done without her help, at least not in the available time.

Unpleasant though the task was, it did conjure up some nostalgia for things like fourth grade school projects, like the one where we stayed up making a model of Tenochtitlan out of construction paper and legos. Turns out those finely honed cutting and pasting skills came in handy...

(There really has to be a better way to do this. And there very well may be: OSCAR, an online system for applying for clerkships. However, not all judges use it. So instead I need to do TWO separate sets of application processes, a mail-based one like the one prepared yesterday and today, and the online one that I haven't had a chance to figure out yet. And these are just federal courts; state courts have their own processes.)

I woke up at 2:45am to leave the house by 3:15 and drive down to New Jersey. That's always a fun way to start the day... I was supposed to leave the night before, but the clerkship applications took most of the day, which left barely enough time for packing. Once I finished that I was pretty much toast, so I decided to take a 4 hour nap before making the drive.

(On the upside, the traffic is great at these odd hours, except for this SUV that followed me from the Mass Pike to the I-91 split in Hartford and insisted on driving 1.5 car lengths behind me, despite there being no one else in any of the other lanes. This car REALLY liked driving right behind me. In fact, when we got to the toll booth, it got behind me in my lane, as opposed to the perfectly good toll lane next to me WITH NO WAIT. Very weird, but unfortunately "weird" is not really want you want to encounter when driving my yourself in the middle of the night...)

Arriving at my dad's in one piece, I parked the car and then walked to the train station, where I caught a train into the city (Manhattan). There I met a friend from middle school (herself a lawyer) for breakfast.

After that I went to Brooklyn to meet blogger Jeremy Blachman for coffee iced tea. It was nice to meet him in person, although I commented how with blogs you sometimes can feel like you "know" a person even before you've met. That's probably a bad thing, because no matter how prolific the blog author, it still won't paint a picture of a person as completely as an immediate acquaintance would. The mistake is to accidentally believe that it has.

But for an otherwise almost complete stranger... we had a lot in common and a good rapport. We talked a lot about blogging, law school, and blogging about law school – and it was nice to talk to someone who understood these things like I do. Normally I'm in "explain" mode, where I'm always telling people what law school's like, why I blog, etc. With him, he already knows, so instead we could compare notes from our experiences. Even though we had very different experiences in law school, and will continue to have very different experiences thereafter, our perspectives on it were, I think, remarkably similar. We both had a similar take on the institution and our participation in it. We participated in different ways, but that we also participated in different ways than many of our peers actually made us have more in common with each other.

Of course, we did have something specific in common from our law school experiences that most of our classmates do not also share: we both had photo shoots! Jeremy had a few, including one for the New York Times, and I had mine for the Corporate Board Member magazine. If you were listening in to our conversation you might think that EVERY law student had a hours-long photo shoot at some point during their law school career, but I think in actuality it's just us...

After meeting Jeremy I then continued deeper into Brooklyn to visit my grandma. After a two-hour nap I had lunch and then was put to work on the latest jigsaw puzzle. I like working on her jigsaw puzzles (although I wasn't crazy about the picture on this one) because I like the way it engages my brain. It gets to rev up in a way that sort of tickles my head, but without stress. I don't even have to finish the puzzle (despite the admonitions of my aunt...) and it's rare that I can use my brain in such an inconsequential way.

In the evening I left and went to Cardozo law school for a reception for my German program. I met a few people I will see again once I'm there. I had to leave before it was over, though, to catch a bus back to New Jersey. And that was pretty much the end of my day. Thank goodness...

I wish I had the money to stop needing to stay in cheap motels. I'm currently staying in another "cheap" motel in Atlantic City, trying to have a relaxing weekend on the beach but failing. My room is overpriced under the best of circumstances, but with a shower that alternates between ice cold and scalding, it most certainly is way more expensive than it should be. (What is with it with me and showers?)

Learning my lesson from the Super8, I did talk to the front desk. They've adjusted my rate slightly, but not nearly as much as circumstances and fairness would call for.

I've thought a lot about my Super8 post since I wrote it, and in some ways self-critically. It is a bit whiny. Of course, lately *I've* been a bit whiny. I've been stretched thin for a long time, and I'm beginning to show signs of fraying. And it isn't quite fair to hold it against these businesses for my condition. On the other hand, given that this is the hospitality business, it's not unreasonable to expect to come away from the relationship feeling good. In a sense that's what you're paying for. But in any case I shouldn't be coming away feeling WORSE than when I started. Yet that's what's been happening a lot lately, when I've been coming away more tired, more stressed, and poorer. I don't think it's because I've got unachievably high standards, however; I think by any objective measure these defects are worthy of concern.

I also wish to restate something I wrote in the Super 8 post. I said that "no great injustice" resulted from my dealings with the motel. But that's not completely true. Yes, it is true that neither life, limb, or significant amount of property was at stake. But like many customer-business relationships, there is an unequal bargaining power manifest in the relationship. The consumer can try to find a good price beforehand, but once he shows up at the establishment to enjoy what he has bargained for, his options immediately become limited. For instance, this weekend's motel told me that if I hadn't liked my room when I checked in I could have refused it. Oh really? And then done what? Been in a far off city with no housing? Been forced to pay even more to get a room somewhere else? It doesn't seem unreasonable to expect that, when agreeing to pay these prices, you can trust the establishment to deliver a room that fulfills even the barest minimum of hospitality standards.

And what do you do when you don't discover the defects until after you've already spent some time there? If it wasn't already too late to leave before I settled in, it certainly was by then. At which point I was over a barrel, because lacking an interest in good customer service as an investment in future business, there's nothing a customer can really do to enforce the implied agreement of value for money. Any leverage the customer might have had in the market has been lost, now that the establishment has won the business. It's therefore only the threat of losing future business that the customer still has to compel performance. But when confronted with recalcitrant or irrational business managers, sometimes that threat carries much less weight then it should.

Backdated due to lack of Internet access. Actually posted 9/2/05.

I landed in Germany yesterday. It was a good trip, apart from the scalding. (Lufthansa in Frankfurt offered complimentary coffee and tea dispensed from some very poorly designed machines. As I was filling my cup the hot water splashed up on me, causing me to drop the cup, and as a result dump a cupful of scalding water all over my hand. That was fun, and gives relevance to the Comparative Tort Law course I will be taking this semester...)

I was met then in Hamburg by my buddy, who didn't bring a sign but was easy to find anyway. He was very helpful, carrying my monstrous bags on a bus and subway and then down the street to my apartment.

The apartment is very nice. It's in an old building that appears to predate WWII. Which is somewhat surprising because Hamburg was so heavily destroyed during the war. It has hardwood floors and raised detail on the ceilings, but it also looks like it was recently redone with a modern kitchen and (very tiny) bathroom (which does have a nice shower!). It's well located and has everything we need except a microwave, which we will buy on Friday, and Internet. The Internet is a problem and we're not sure what to do about it. Purportedly there's wireless at school, but I hate having to go out to use it. I really like having Internet at home and am not sure how I will get by without it. Meanwhile, there's been no Internet at school either (it's currently down) so I've been cut off for quite a few days. I think I'm going through withdrawal...

Due to the aforementioned lack of Internet, this was not posted until 9/2/05.

I haven't gotten to unpack yet because the summer sublettor is still in the room. That's ok though, because she's very nice and was helpful in telling us all about the apartment (how to turn on the heat, how to take out the garbage, etc.) And anyway, she's leaving tomorrow.

My roommate and I get along great. Which surprises both of us, since we're both decidedly independent people. But because we're going through the same program, and also have the same personality wiring, we find each other fairly compatible.

Yesterday we wandered around the city a bit going microwave shopping. We found one to buy and will go back to get it in the next day or so. But what was fun is that it didn't take long to get the hang of the subway (U-Bahn) and begin to feel like we lived here. To the many people who ask why I'm doing this study abroad program, a partial answer is that there is no substitute for living in a foreign country. All the travel in the world won't give you that intimate connection with another people and place that living there full-time provides.

My roommate is of Indian descent, which made our Hamburg adventures more interesting than they would have been otherwise. Near our apartment is a small produce store, and in the morning on the way to orientation we passed by some yummy-looking fresh peas on display outside. We stopped in to buy a 1/4 kilo for breakfast. The man there spoke enough English for us to communicate, but he seemed particularly fascinated with my roommate. "What land are you from?" he asked her. When she told him India, he said "Me too!" And then he proceeded to speak Hindi to her. He seemed so happy to have made a connection with someone else of his ancestry. In fact, today when we went back for more peas and I was struggling to find a 50 cent coin to pay for them, he waved it off, pointing proudly at my roommate and smiling, "My land!"

At school we've gone through two days of orientation, taking care of lots of paperwork, meeting the other foreign students, and some of the German ones. Last night there was a barbecue where we could mix and mingle and drink beer... My buddy and his friend showed me the foosball table in the basement. I'm embarrassingly rusty, but it seems like I may not have been too far afield when I contemplated adding my foosball skills to my legal resume...

Posted 9/2/05

The law school where I am doing my semester is Bucerius Law School, the first private law school in Germany. From what I understand it's a big deal to have a private law school, and I believe it's attempting to wrest some control of the legal field from the exclusive domain of the State. Which compares interestingly to the United States, where the tension between public and private interests manifests in different places.

But one thing this law school emphasizes particularly is training a cosmopolitan, internationally-aware lawyer. Towards that end all their pupils go away one semester to some other country for their studies, and in return law schools around the world (like mine) send their students to Germany for a semester. The school then runs a special program for us. We could, if we wanted to and spoke enough German, take classes with the German students. And I think they can, if they want, take classes with us, with our special catalog of English-speaking classes to choose from.

The school itself is in an old building – a former botanical institute, I think – settled in a park area with a large, quiet lawn and a fully modern interior. It is also within easy walking distance from downtown and its shops, restaurants, and train stations. And it's an easy subway ride from our apartment.

I'm sure I'll have more to add about the school and the experience, but I will save it for other posts.

Posted 9/2/05.

One of the "get-to-know-each-other" group activities the school planned was a running dinner. I had never heard of one before, although I guess it's a bit like a progressive dinner. Except in this case it took place all over Hamburg, which resulted in as much running as it did dinner...

My buddy and I met at 4pm to go shopping for the course we were to prepare. At my suggestion we made chili, with my mom's recipe, doubled, and then converted to metric approximated. Amazingly, it came out pretty good given all that, the fact that German ingredients are not quite the same as the American ones I'm used to, and the miniscule amount of time we actually had to cook it. (And the fact that the part of my brain that does math seems to have withered. I was heard saying to my buddy, "3/4 of a pound of chopped meat, doubled, is, what? 3 kilos?") I'm also amazed I didn't slice off a finger with all the chopping I did, especially because when I did the onions and couldn't see through all my tears. But we got everything together and thrown into a pot, which we then let simmer while we raced out of the house and to another part of Hamburg (via foot and subway) for the appetizer course. Another foreign student and his German buddy had prepared a finely-made bruchetta, so we joined them and another pair for that.

Since we got there late, we pretty much ate and ran (literally and figuratively) back to my buddy's place to get ready for the two other pairs who were coming to our dinner course. The chili by then had nicely simmered and, with a 1.39 euro wine from Chile we'd picked out, we served the 5 guests who turned up eventually. It all seemed to go over well.

Then we headed over to another apartment for dessert, which seems to have been some sort of pudding and milkshakes spiked with Bailey's Irish Cream, and met still more foreign students and their German buddies.

Wrapping up around 11, the Hamburg night was still young and everyone headed over to a bar off the Reeperbahn. The Reeperbahn is Hamburg's red light district – it's full of adult establishments – but it's also a place with a lot of more mainstream nightlife. On Friday night it was still buzzing at 4am. Even *I* was still buzzing at 4am, although I kind of wondered what I was thinking – this is not my thing, staying out late drinking and partying. But the summer's almost over (classes start Monday!) and I'm in this new place, so what the hell...

(However, it should be noted that beer seems to be the cure for the common cold. Upon landing in Germany I became plagued by my usual sinus catastrophe, but three beers (and one glass of wine, and a spiked milkshake) later it seems to be gone.)

Posted 9/4/05.

Three of my four law classes have met twice this week – the last, a German law survey course, will start next week. That one and one of the other ones will run the whole semester; the other two will be replaced by two new courses in November.

The one that runs the whole time is International Conflict of Laws. (Not "ConflictS of Laws," which my professor insisted was something else.) The course is, at least so far, a civil procedure course. We're going over a lot of what I learned as a 1L involving jurisdiction, venue, choice of law, etc. In the United States if you want to sue someone you can't just sue them anywhere and in any court. There's rules about where people can be sued having to do with place (for instance, it may not be fair to a defendant to sue them in a place that's far from where they live, especially if they have no significant connection to that place) and subject matter (not all courts can hear cases on any subject) and choice of law (the court that hears the case may need to use the local law of another place in making its ruling). Complicated? Well, that's just in the US! All these issues are magnified when you put them on the global stage. Then we are no longer talking about whether a plaintiff in California can sue a defendant from New Jersey in a California court – we're talking about whether a plaintiff in Germany can sue a defendant from New Jersey in a German court. And when we start asking these questions, we run into a difference of philosophy (for instance, the US tends to be more concerned about fairness to the defendant, and Europe more about fairness to the plaintiff) plus differences in the rules about whether and where people can be sued. Also, it's not like the systems in any of these places have been worked out to precision: many legal disputes in the US still take place over these issues, as do they in Europe, where there is another level of complication because in Europe there are both national rules on the subject and EU rules, and then there are more rules about when one or the other applies.

I find this kind of thing really interesting though because I really like contemplating process and thinking about the structural issues of fairness and balance. I also think, particularly if I do have an international career, it would be useful to understand more about the practicalities of how international litigation would unfold.

One of my other classes is Comparative Tort Law. In a way I sort of enjoy these flashbacks to 1L year because the first time all these things came at me, they came a bit too fast and without any real context (it was only the first time I'd considered them, after all). Now that I have my legal faculties about me, I'm enjoying contemplating them much more. And I like the course because it addresses where we got some of these notions of tort law from (Rome!) and will (I think) compare US notions with those around the world. The Roman law itself is really interesting, and in the last few classes we've been reviewing the Lex Aquilia - comments by Roman legal thinkers explaining how Roman law applied to various tortuous injuries.

The other class is Comparative IP. In one sense this class is disappointing – I think if I took it in the US, it would have presupposed that the students had a background in IP law already, so that we could build on that background entirely. Unfortunately, there was no prerequisite for the course here and some students are taking it as their first taste in IP law, so the professor needs to make sure more of the basics are covered. She told me she wouldn't be offended if I dropped it, but I've decided to keep it. For one, it won't hurt me to brush up on some of my basics. For another, as I told her, I eat sleep and breathe this stuff... If there is anything to be gleaned from her course – and I think there will be, as there will be more focus on comparison of international IP paradigms than there were in my US classes where they were mentioned more in passing – I'll glean it and add it to my arsenal of policy arguments.

It's also interesting, because in the US law school is hard. At least BU is hard. And I think I do ok – I'm not a legal dullard – but there's so much, so new that it always feels like I'm always running in place, trying to keep up. It does feel different now to actually know what's going on and to have MY notes be the ones being shared. I have offered, and it's come up, to do review sessions for my friends in the class who have not had this background, and that itself is good practice for me because I will need to know how to explain these things well if I push for policy changes.

It is possible that this semester won't be as academically challenging as the ones I've had in BU. In a way that's frustrating, because I'm used to that kind of academic demand and have come to appreciate it in its own, annoying way... But in a way it's also a nice change, and I don't think it will cause me to learn any less. In fact it may help me learn more. In the US I'm always under such pressure to do readings and prepare, that there's no time left to think about what I'm learning. Here there's more time (and an absence of so much thought-squelching pressure) to think about it, to let all these things stew in my head so that I can come away with grander realizations about how things work together than I necessarily have the luxury of doing at BU.

I am very frustrated with my complete lack of German skills. Even when I first moved to France I had the basics to work with. But here, almost nothing.

That said, I'm learning it as fast as I can. I take 3 hours of German at the law school a week; next week I'll take (I think) another 3 hours at the Colon Institute; I read a chapter of my textbook every night (actually I read it two times: the first to see what it's talking about and the second, the next day, to review and learn what I didn't catch the first time); and my friend sends me how-to-speak-German tidbits every so often in emails.

What I'm not really doing is having conversations with people, though. Even the most simple questions – if I can manage them – get answered in English. And the complicated ones I can't even attempt. All the German students in the law school are happy to speak English; my German friends are happy to speak English; my other friends are happy to speak English; and my classes are all in English. (My blog is all in English!) So my English is great! But my German suffers. It's just so hard, though, to try to speak with what I do have, because I have so little.

On the other hand, I've come to the realization that my French is also terrific! Most conversations I attempt (and fail) in German could be done in French. Now, my French may not be perfect – I don't know if I say things the right way – but I can be understood in most instances. Plus I have the vocabulary to at least get started in most instances, and the ability to learn the rest of what the circumstance calls for at the time. I also – and this is what I think is amazing – have the ability to start speaking French instinctively. Being in Germany has really reminded me of that, because during the times when I'm determined not to speak English, I succeed – because I speak French instead. Fluidly, automatically, contextually.

In a way, I feel good about that. I really like being able to speak another language. It gives me this magical feeling of empowerment like nothing else. I do, actually, want to practice the French here. There may be a conversation group I can join, and there are some Quebecoises students who are very happy to speak French with me. (In fact, one said that my French was better than her English.) I don't want to lose this hard-won skill.

But this isn't a French-speaking country, and my lack of German is tremendously disempowering. I shouldn't have needed my friend to fix my cell phone for me. I shouldn't have to walk around being essentially a deaf mute, unable to participate in the world around me unless it's on my terms. I want to participate on their terms! That's what I'm here for! I want to BE here, not observing Germany from the sidelines, but really BEING here as much as I can be, to live the local life as much as possible in four months.

I just bought a dictionary, which I'm very tempted to read cover to cover. I need to start participating in the world around me – so it's time to start collecting the tools.

Not only am I deaf and dumb, here in Germany, but I'm also functionally illiterate.

That's truly an eye-opening experience, and relates a lot to the work I did this summer.

In one sense, a native English speaker in America is a little better off than I am – he can at least ask questions if he can't otherwise glean the information he needs. That's difficult for me.

(However, the other day I did manage to ask someone in the grocery store the other day which of the butters contained salt. German uses so many compound words that even though I might have recognized "saltz" in the word, for all I would know it could be in a word saying "no salt." But then today I tried, and failed, to buy facial soap since I couldn't be sure what it was what the clerk suggested I buy really belonged on my face... Sometimes I get lucky and the packaging includes alternative versions in French – and I tend to reward those products with my purchase – but it's fairly rare and only slightly more common than packaging in English.)

But it's still very debilitating, being locked out of visual language. I think literate people may not even realize how hard it is, since normally we interact with writing so seamlessly, so automatically. Consequently it can be hard for literate people to realize just how writing-dependant modern life is. For those who can't though, their faces are pressed up against the glass of a world they can see but not enter.

This summer when I wrote my housing self-help documentation I did it with the intention that it be understandable to people with low literacy levels. It was hard to write that way, though, since the law that I was explaining was very precise and required precise language to explain. Such language is hard to make understandable to someone whose reading skills are at an elementary school level.

Had I had this experience first, though, I wonder if I would have done it differently, or at least done so with less hypothetical empathy and more actual empathy. In that I've now been there too, being locked out of the words I need to know, and know first hand it's not an easy place to be.

My buddy has been very helpful getting me set up in Hamburg, so I thought I'd return the favor last week by getting his bike flat fixed. "I can fix a flat!" I declared. Which was technically true. I have done it before. But a long time ago, and not often. And not on a 3-speed non-roadbike. And never in Germany...

There is this bike shop on the campus of the University of Hamburg though that provides a workshop for fixing your own bikes, cheap spare parts, and a staff of helpers who can lend a hand if you're stuck. Another German student had shown me where it was, so when my buddy left me his bike, I figured I was set and ready to impress him with my fine bike repair skills.

Unfortunately, I couldn't remember where the bike shop was. And I lacked the German vocabulary to ask anyone. Plus those whom I could ask in English didn't know. After a long while I did eventually find it, and, already flustered, I got to work.

And immediately stopped because I couldn't figure out how to get the wheel off. I was looking for a brake release, but these bikes don't have them. Neither a little lever or a bolt that the cable loops over. Apparently, though, you don't need to release them. As long as you empty the air out of the tire it should slip right off.

Only it didn't. And even the bike repair helpers there (all decked out in their bright red overalls) were stymied. Unfortunately it was really crowded and while I was waiting, these "helpful" girls insisted on taking the bolts all the way off. Which meant I couldn't keep track of all the parts that were now falling off the wheel everywhere. Um, this isn't my bike you're screwing up, ok...?

Eventually, wheel off, I found the leak and applied the patch. Only I didn't wait quite long enough for the glue to dry, so it didn't hold. One of the helpers made the next attempt for me, and then, patch all perfect, I remounted the tire and the wheel, pumped it up, and was on my way. I stopped for lunch and an errand, and then came back to discover that the wheel was flat again. How could that be? We did everything right with that patch! We sanded the tube, we applied enough glue, we waited enough time to apply the patch, we waited enough time to inflate the tire... Unfortunately we neglected to place this wonderful patch OVER the hole, and instead made attached it beautifully beside it.

At this point the level of ambient exasperation was palpable. The helpers towards me for my extreme incompetance and complete inability to communicate effectively, and me towards the helpers for not really helping and to the bike for still needing more fixing, even after the expenditure of all that energy already. But now suddenly confident as inspired by my frustration, I quickly took off the wheel, peeled off the tire, did the patch all by myself (managing to put it OVER the hole...) and then remounted the wheel. Sadly, the step I forgot in my annoyed haste was the one where you are supposed to tighten the wheel bolts to keep it from coming off... I think this pretty much constitutes bike repair malpractice (and here I was, trying to be so helpful and impress my buddy on my fine bike repair skills - apparently I'm a fraud...) However, as far as I know my patch is still holding, and I did at least disclose the bolt problem to my buddy...

Anyway, that was Bike Adventure A. Today was Bike Adventure B, when I took MY bike back there to get a generator for the lamp. The visit then, however, turned into a complete tune-up, replete with a new chain guard (the old one was cracked and rubbed the chain), a new gear shifter (it had three gears but no cable - I was perennially in the highest gear, which explained why I always nearly fell on my face when starting up at intersections, trying to peddle a lump of steel that would barely roll), the dynamo, and a cleaning/greasing of the entire rear gear mechanism, a tweaking of the front wheel (and bolting it securely onto the rest of the bike...), and an adjustment of the front brakes.

It took 2-3 hours and 30 euros to complete but then I was set. The bike was at last roadworthy and I was ready to roll. Just as it started raining...

Edited.

Don't put off going shopping (particularly for things like umbrellas) in a place where it rains. Often.

(In Hambug's defense - and I suppose my own - the first two weeks I was here the weather was fabulous. All to lull me into a false sense of weather-security, I suppose. This is where my Californization was my undoing, because in California, if it's sunny one day, it will likely be sunny for the next 159...)

(Every day I learn more.)

I'm still plugging away at my German. It remains frustrating to communicate, at least as fully as I'd like to, but I think I am ever so slowly beginning to turn a corner in terms of not being so completely locked out of this world. In fact, in the past few days I've had a couple of mini-conversations entirely in German. In one, I went to a store to buy a tool for my bike. There were two tools for the same price, but one came with two other tools in the package and the other didn't. I asked, in German, why they were the same price and the clerk explained to me, in German, that one without the other pieces was made with better materials. Then I asked him (not leaving well enough alone) whether it would really matter for my needs. He seemed to really want to sell me the better one, and explained why, but I couldn't really understand what he was saying. But then, INSTEAD OF SWITCHING TO ENGLISH, like nearly everyone else does when I inevitably struggle, he kept speaking German and rephrased his answer. This time I heard him say that the lesser tool would become "schnell kaput" and immediately understood that he meant it would break more quickly. I still bought it anyway, but at least I knew what I was getting...

Also, people - German people - are beginning to randomly stop me on the street to ask me things. This used to happen to me a lot in France; I guess I look like someone who knows stuff... However, it may all be a facade. Last night, for instance, some men asked me, in German, where the train station was. I answered them, also in German, and gave them directions that they understood, without anyone having to resort to English.

I felt quite proud of myself until this morning, when I realized the directions I gave them were wrong...

9/26: Subject line edited. My teacher swears that the time expression "jeden Tag" requires the accusative case. It doesn't make sense to me, but I guess she would know....

Because some obligations from this semester will carry over until next semester, I've had occasion to think about my schedule for the spring again.

I'm still planning to take the three courses I was already sure about: Tax, Trademark, and Telcom Law. But I'm waffling between two choices for the remaining one: Trial Advocacy (Advanced) and Criminal Procedure. I'm currently registered for Trial Advocacy, which would lend a lovely alliterative quality to my curriculum. However I'm not sure that's one of my main academic priorities...

More substantively, it would allow me to further develop trial advocacy skills, which I'd begun to work on earlier. But that's just it: by its very nature, it would be an enhancement of skills that for the most part I've already been taught. Whereas Crim Pro would cover an area of law I've had very little formal education in, and feel I really should know something of by the time I graduate.

Another consideration is that, as a practical matter, the years of heavy workloads are starting to take a toll. Meaning that the demands of the courses themselves is an operative concern. The Crim Pro class is 4 units, meeting both Tuesday and Thursday late afternoons from 4:20 to 6:20, while the Trial Advocacy class meets from 4:30 to 7:30 only on Tuesdays. Plus it doesn't have a final exam. PLUS it will probably be more fun than sitting through Crim Pro lectures. But part of me feels guilty about choosing it for those reasons. In my mind it seems that as long as I'm in law school, I should choose to take the most substantive things. Or maybe just this substantive thing. There are other substantive classes I don't feel nearly so compelled to do. This one, Crim Pro, despite its notorious rigor, feels like it deserves my attentions more particularly.

I don't have to decide this right away. In fact, I think I can try out both classes for the first two weeks before making a decision (although with some difficulty since they both meet at the same time on Tuesdays).

But either way, it still might be my easiest semester ever, if I just do the four classes. I don't think I've done just four classes in any of my semesters. Even the ones where I only got 15 units they still all involved 5 classes. And that's really the biggest hit in terms of workload - regardless of whether a class is 3 or 4 units, if you have to THINK about the class at all, that's the essense of its burden. (For instance, my semester of 5 classes of 18 units was not that much more difficult than the one of 5 classes for 15.) So there's something luxurious about contemplating a semester with ONLY four classes, but then again, knowing me, I'll probably figure out a way to pile on the work somehow...

I just dropped a course! I don't remember when I last dropped a course. Have I ever dropped a course?

I dropped Law of the WTO. I really wanted to take it because of its implications on international intellectual property law through WIPO and TRIPS, etc. But it isn't clear that what I'd learn would directly bear on those issues, and the scheduling of that particular class precludes a whole bunch of things I might like to do later this term. So I dropped it.

I may still attend, when possible, to glean whatever I can. But it's sort of a relief to not have to stress about showing up all the time.

However, lest you think I've gone all soft, I did add a class today: I got into an alternative dispute resolution course. (It was impacted, and a space only just opened up.) It will be half foreign students and half Germans, and I've never taken an ADR course before. But that won't start until late November, so there's nothing to say about it now.

I also signed up for an arbitration-advocacy moot court class, and later on I'll be taking a comparative constitutional law class. So I don't anticipate being bored any time soon...

Edit: Well, that didn't take long. I suddenly find myself in an Internation Commercial Transaction course. A course I am taking for the Stupidest Reason Ever. Not that I will say what that reason is, but you can pretty much imagine a stupid reason and it may very well be the one. I'm not currently obligated to take it, so I could still change my mind, but so far I find it vastly more interesting than I thought it would be. It's also interesting because it's in English, but half the class is German students. It really is an international International Commercial Transaction course, which I think may alone make it worth taking.

Last night the Bucerius students threw their first school party. After much cajoling I decided to go. I guess it's good to go to these things from time to time, to come out from under my rock and get face time with the people who attend things like these more regularly.

I had a nice enough time, but parties like this are really not my thing. Crowded, loud... there were lots of people there I liked and wanted to talk to, but it wasn't really possible. After a couple of hours I got a little claustrophobic, and my voice was starting to hurt from all the shouting, so I went home. Besides, I had a 9am class the next morning that I wanted to be slightly conscious for.

And I was. Slightly conscious. That one beer I had (I didn't have more for fear of falling off my bike when I went home afterwards) apparently did me in, and this morning my brain felt three feet thick.

The most interesting part of the evening though involved getting there. I rode over on my bike with one of the German students so I could figure out where it was. It was at the St. Pauli Football clubhouse (or something like that), and getting there involved off-roading over this large, rain-soaked dirt field in the still, thinly-lit Autumn darkness. For some reason the ambience made me feel like I was in the movie E.T....

Then I left, to go home to change and then come back. It was a good thing I did, since I got very lost. Hamburg is not a particularly linear city, and roads swoop around and change names constantly. Plus the intersections have their own names too. Even during the day it's hard to figure out, but by now it was dark. And I'd managed to lose my map. So a 10 minute trip instead took about 40 confused minutes of wandering aimlessly through the St. Pauli neighborhood. Which, while not unsafe per se, is not a neighborhood I really wanted to be wandering around lost in at 1 o'clock in the morning, so I'm glad I worked this all out earlier.

Although what baffles me is that despite my complete confusion, people STILL came up to me and asked for directions. I really don't understand how I manage to exude an appearance of language and directional competence when I'm so clearly lacking both, but perhaps this is a talent I can one day exploit?

If you've ever wondered, how wet could one really get in a 20 minute bike ride in the rain, you might be surprised...

On Saturday I packed up my things and headed down to the school (in the rain) to board the busses for the annual student trip to Malente. The second year students every year organize a retreat to a hostel in the countryside. They rent out the whole hostel complex and most first years and some second years go up to meet, mingle, introduce the new students to the extracurricular activities, and then have a really big party. Everything's taken care of (food, transport, etc.) and it was really impressive how well-run the whole operation was. We left Hamburg around 10:30 and arrived at the hostel around lunchtime, where the hostel staff had prepared a meal of standard German fare. We sat at long tables in a large room while dishes filled with cabbage, beef stew, potato dumplings, and noodles were passed around. (It felt a little like summer camp, except the people were less obnoxious...) Shortly after lunch student group and activity leaders set up stations in various rooms around the hostel, and over the next few hours new students walked around to find out more about them. Dinner then was a barbeque – German style, of course. No hotdogs and burgers, but rather little steaks and sausages. The meat was then accompanied by tub-fulls of macaroni salad, potato salad, cucumber salad, and sauerkraut. Also, by then the beer had been broken out -- amazingly vast quantities of beer that they sold for 1 euro each (with a 1 euro bottle deposit) throughout the rest of the day and night. And not the crappy little Astra beers we usually drink but whole bottles of Beck's. Then when dinner was done they cleared out the room and turned it into a dance floor, complete with strobe lights. The party ran until almost dawn, and then at 7 or 8 on Sunday morning those who had been sleeping got up and swarms of students cleaned up the place before eating a really big breakfast (with coldcuts, waffles, bread and jam, cereal, etc.) and heading back to Hamburg.

The international students were completely welcome to come too, and except for our beers it didn't cost us anything. However, because it came during a string of 5 days off from classes, many students instead opted to travel to farther-flung places. Despite Americans being about 2/3 of the international program, there were relatively few at Malente. In fact, I think I was the only American woman who went. But not only were we welcome to come, but we were also invited to find out more about the student groups and partake in them during our remaining months here. I mostly found out about the sports teams, some of whom I'd already played with in the past weeks.

In fact, that's how I knew there was going to be a soccer game up at Malente, from having played last week in an outdoor scrimmage on Friday and an indoor game last Sunday. So I planned ahead and packed my shorts, socks, shin guards and cleats. And it was a good thing I did – especially the cleats. Because remember the rain? The field we played on was essentially just a giant mud puddle fringed by slick grass. There was a definite advantage held by the players who were wearing cleats and had some measure of traction. It was a fairly unstructured game, but a lot of fun, sloshing through the mud and puddles. (A definite advantage was also held by the people not afraid to play through the deep ones. Like me!)

Overall, especially Saturday, I had a great time. Even at the party. I don't think I'd ever done a retreat like this ever before, and I also don't think I'd ever been inclined to. A weekend of drinking? I don't think so... But I enjoyed it in spite of myself, at least well until the night. Even in the waning hours people were drunk, but not disgustingly drunk. And people were nice. I was wearing a ThinkGeek t-shirt, the one that says, "There's only 10 kinds of people in the world: those who understand binary, and those who don't," and nearly everyone stopped by to admire my shirt... (And most of them got the joke! Do all German kids learn binary in school?) I was also paid some lovely compliments about my soccer playing, which really made my day.

Still, there were some poignancies. The generation gap amazingly does not matter in many, many instances. We are all law students – smart people, with a common esoteric interest that we can talk about among ourselves, even transnationally – but rarely to the other people that we know. But I'm 31. And the German law students are for the most part a good 10 years younger than that. Even the second year students, several of whom I'm friends with. Which sometimes doesn't matter, and sometimes sort of does. Never mind my own existential doubts about what I think I'm supposed to be doing with my life right now – that part's not the problem. And in a sense it's kind of cool that I get to do the "kid" things again – or in my case, perhaps for the first time. (It took a lot of maturing before I could lighten up to the point where I could learn to let go in situations like these and even begin to enjoy myself.) But it does seem to be a barrier to making certain substantive social connections with my German peers. (And to some extent the other foreign students, who are also generally younger. However, the Americans, because they've already completed their undergraduate education, are usually at least a few years other. And there are several who are 29, and a few who run 26-28, and I think technically there may be at least one student on the program who's older than me.)

But I don't think it's age that's behind my aches and pains. I think I'm actually in pretty good shape for my age. Or at least I was, before this weekend. The soccer game aggravated some horrible blisters that I picked up from the indoor soccer game that have yet to heal. (And when I say "blisters," I really mean the complete absence of the exterior layer of skin on the backs of my ankles, which has not been able to heal properly, what with needing to walk around every day while wearing shoes. And playing more soccer...) I also got some sort of itchy hives and/or rash on my knees from running into the brush to get the ball when it went out of bounds. And then there's the dislocated jaw... Well, not completely, but I did get nailed in the jaw by an elbow early in the game. It was good to know that I do not have a "glass jaw," however, and not only didn't I get knocked out (or cry), but I stayed in the game and kept playing for another hour. Unfortunately it was a solid shot that made my jaw move sideways suddenly, and it hasn't quite gotten over that trauma yet.

And then on top of all that, there's the foosball injury I somehow sustained on my finger. It's the first time I've ever had to stop playing out of concern for bleeding on the handles, but I guess there's a first time for everything. But all that's ok, and despite drinking vastly more alcohol than I have in ages, or perhaps ever, I'm not really any worse the wear for it. Although the lack of sleep did make me cranky, and I fear I was a little pissy with some friends when we got back to school. I've been wrestling with some pedestrian issues in the back of my mind that the trip brought to the fore, and I was in no condition to deal with them. I guess that's what makes the age gap so pointless to worry about, because even 31 year olds can act 13 from time to time...

Backdated to when it was written. Posted on 10/3.

I've sent off my note to be considered for publication. However, perhaps I should rethink this - it seems apparently they can come back to haunt you later on...

On the other hand, speaking of judicial opportunities, despite massive efforts of cutting, pasting, and collating, nothing seems to have come from my federal clerkship applications. Which is as frustrating as disappointing. The whole effort seemed to be very imprecise, overly demanding, and not an efficient use of energies. I had indeed contemplated postponing the whole thing, but couldn't bring myself to resist the 3L application tide. Part of me wishes that I had, since I sensed I didn't have the right resources to throw at it right now. But part of me was afraid if I don't get on the clerkship horse right after I graduate, I might never get on it. And it is something I would like to do.

So I may see about state opportunities, and apply if it's feasable to do from over here. Otherwise, though it's something I really would like to have done, I will need to recognize the limitations I faced and stop kicking myself for whatever imagined inadequacies might have affected my candidacy. I can only be who I am, and I can only do what I have the time and energy resources to do. Beating myself up won't change that reality, and even if I want to chastize myself for not making it a higher priority, the fact of the matter is that even if I had, something else important would have been dropped and I'd instead now be punishing myself for that.

There are two things that should perhaps be noted: one, though I applied to clerkships in three distinctive metropolitan areas, I only applied to those metropolitan areas. And they are popular metropolitan areas. However, they are areas that I am connected to and would be willing to live in again. At this stage of my life I am not willing to go see what living in another city would be like. I'm already doing that now, but my patience for packing up my life AGAIN and figure out yet another community is waning precipitously. Perhaps that self-imposed restriction reduced my opportunities too much, but that's how it is.

Also, apparently (though I haven't seen this in person to judge whether it wasn't really a mass-mailed letter) one of my rejection letters was a very complimentary missive from a judge who only hires career clerks, but said that I have a very impressive resume that she would keep on file.

See? I don't completely suck after all...

Edited 10/4.

One of the reasons my party ended up the quiet affair it did was that some of the invitees were unable to attend. I don't just mean that they had other obligations. I mean they couldn't attend because they couldn't find the place.

I had emailed everyone with the directions, but they were walking directions from the U-Bahn. Two of my friends have cars, and they were not car-centered directions. In fact, I would have no idea how to give driving directions because I have no idea what the streets are called. At least if you are walking you can use landmarks, but the drivers seemed to need to know where to turn off to find the building to park with a bit more precision (particularly when consulting their maps).

It also didn't help that my building is behind a small frontage road that is obscured from the main street by piles of construction equipment, or that the little side street next to it is an unmarked left turn completely invisible at night.

I do find, however some vindication in that even native Hamburgers, as my car-endowed friends both are, got lost (too). It says quite a bit about this city, and also why so many people seem to always need to ask me for directions. Or at least if it doesn't say anything about my directional expertise it does say something about their desperation...

(For those of you keeping score at home, it should be noted that it happened again. Last week, even though I was dazed and confused myself - my rear bike lamp suddenly broke off, and I was still reeling from the annoyed trauma - yet more people approached me to get directions to a place I couldn't find. I'm sure they regretted asking me once I started babbling ineffectually, but since they hadn't been deterred by my general aura of cluelessness, I guess it served them right.)

I really hate exams. Not just taking them, but having my friends take them. And most of my German friends here are in the thick of studying for the exams they need to retake in the next week or two, which makes them no fun at all... (OK, they are still fun to hang out with, but they are much less available to do so, at least without us all feeling very guilty about it.)

Tonight I did get to help one of them study though. He's really well-versed in the subject matter, but he's been having issues figuring out how to write a good exam. Welcome to my world... Intellectually I know how to do it, but in practice I think I may come up short sometimes.

But my friend was really spending a lot of time trying to get his head around this IRAC structure. Not so much what it was – that part's pretty clear – but how to actually employ it effectively in an exam. So we took a problem from a Torts review book and worked through it. Actually, it wasn't really "torts," because in Germany there's no such discrete subject. Tort liabilities exist, but they are scattered throughout the general civil code. I'm not sure that his test is really on "tort law" any more than it's a test on criminal law as well, and in fact the problem we worked on had to do with whether the subject of the fact pattern would be guilty of theft, which in the US would not be a tort per se.

In one sense it was really interesting for me, because my friend could articulate some of the legal nuances about how theft was codified in the law. Whether something is a crime in Germany depends on both objective and subjective elements. In our practice problem we only got as far as the objective elements, but, then again, if you don't satisfy those the subjective ones won't matter. In this case we were considering whether the object of the potential theft was a "foreign moveable object" and whether it had been "taken away" from its previous owner. Of course, these are rough translations of the actual German terms, which themselves have their own legal definitions. There is law explaining what "foreign" means in this sense, and whether something has been "taken away" requires a multi-layered analysis of its own.

(In this hypo a person had gone to a store wanting to buy two bottles of alcohol. He discovers that he doesn't have enough money for both, so he only puts one in his cart. However, he puts another inside his jacket, an act which was observed by a store detective. But before he gets to the cash register, he had a change of heart and puts the one in his jacket back on the shelf. The question: is he guilty of anything? Interestingly, in Germany the act may very well have met the definition of theft, or at least its objective elements, due to the way Germany considers possession and property, which seems to be different than it is in the US.)

I obviously couldn't critique my friend's understanding of the law in this area, but he seemed to be on top of its particularities. We spent some time instead working out how best to express it in an exam essay. Though German law is different than US law in terms of its doctrinal technicalities and lack of import judicial decisions have on shaping the law, German law students still write their exams much like American students do, laying out the issue (I) in contention, the rule (R) that would determine the issue's resolution, the analysis (A) tying the facts to the rule, and then a conclusion (C). So the exercise was helpful for both of us – him particularly immediately, and me for any future law school exams I may take.

I sort of wish I'd had this discussion two years ago...

Written 10/9, posted 10/10.

I'm taking a "juridique" course, and just had the first session today. Actually, the course began last week but I was slow on the uptake and didn't decide I wanted to do it until after it began. C'est un dommage, mais ce n'est pas grave...

It's a mind-expanding endeavor on two levels: one, it's French practice, and two, it's an explanation of French legal structure. It is kind of interesting to take it with German students. In a sense, we're all equal because we're all fumbling around in a second language for a change. On the other hand, they still have some advantages: the class is all in French, but the provided vocabulary lists give German translations. Also, when we consider hypos, they all share the same Germanic sense of jurisprudence, whereas I'm the only weirdo who thinks about American.

Today, for instance, when we were discussing the types of errors that could result in a contract being void, I was the only one who started talking about cows. Why cows? Because in the back of my mind I remembered a case we studied in 1L contracts on mistake involving people buying the wrong cow.

Of course, now all the Germans probably think all of American jurisprudence has to do with cows. Which obviously isn't the case - for instance, there have been some very important cases involving chickens.

Because of the way the term works at Bucerius, this week most of the international students had final exams. I had one for intellectual property on Wednesday and one on torts today.

They were not quite what I expected. Potentially easier, vastly easier, which in their own way made them harder. I mean, on a hard test I should have been able to have kicked ass on intellectual property. With the exception of trademarks, which is new for me, I knew all the patent and copyright stuff - including actual statutes, policy goals, and normative arguments pros and cons. I was even holding review sessions before the exam, and there wasn't a single question I couldn't give a good answer to. And yet I still might get a B on the damn thing, just because one of the few bits of information the test asked for wasn't in my notes (I seem to have been missing a trademark slide, which I gather contained the specific answer to the question), and perhaps also because I knew too much. It was hard to parse through all the law in my head and only write down the bits that had been gone over in this class. I kept bringing in more knowledge, and it left me confused because it didn't play so well with the superficiality of the new stuff.

I'm less worried about today's tort exam, but that's because I feel very satisfied with my essays. I don't know if the professor's gonna like them, but he should... In fact, I think they would have made suitable blog posts (and if I ever get them back I may very well post them). It was funny, even, because when I was studying for the test I had been thinking about writing a blog essay on the very subject I got asked. So that was convenient... But the whole thing was still weird: both essays I wrote were normative, and none of the questions (even the ones I didn't need to answer) actually asked about the nuance of the various tort systems we learned about. Perhaps at some point I'll blog about them, just so that knowledge doesn't go to waste...

Anyway, it's stupid things like this that remind me that law school grades are the stupidest basis to judge a person. How can people keep believing that they are in any way precise measures of anything about a person worth measuring?

This coming week most of the international students will be gone. Many are going on the school-arranged trip to Berlin. Others have gone to other places. I'm staying here, somewhat purposefully and somewhat because I failed to plan any excursions in advance. Part of me is pleased with this turn of events because with any luck I'll be able to get a leg up on all sorts of neglected projects. And part of me is feeling left out because, well, I left myself out. So it's pretty much a grass-is-greener kind of thing, that no matter what I do this week, I'll want to be doing something else.

And I am feeling pretty blah already. I'm in the kind of mood where all I want to do is take a bubble bath and watch TV. (Unfortunately, I have neither a bathtub nor a TV, which pretty much ruins that plan.) Yesterday there was a Halloween party, but despite my best efforts, my incredibly clever costume idea went highly unappreciated. (It's so clever that I'm not going to blog about it, just in case I ever get the occasion to try it again.) Also, against my best intentions and/or better judgment, I've been sucked into the high school aspect of law school social life and that's going to make the near future annoying and unpleasant. And then on top of all that, I was supposed to play soccer today but the league I was to play in (with the school's men's soccer team) won't let women play. So the week off's begun with an auspicious start.

Things can only get better from here, right?

Written at home on Saturday, posted at school on Sunday.

I almost titled my "Crummy Week(end)" post as "Crappiness begets crappiness?" fearing a "when it rains it pours" future in store for me.

Alas, my instincts may have been correct, as this is turning out to be the type of week where I'm wondering if I've been teleported to another planet, one that looks exactly like Earth except that the local beings are all really weird. And by weird I mean "judgmental," "hostile," and "inclined to hold me to unrealistic expectations of perfection." Because I've already had several strange encounters that have left me agog, and I fear I'm not yet out of the woods...

On the other hand, it's been more of a polarized week so far than a uniformly bad week. In addition to the unpleasant strangeness, there's also been a few particularly good things. For instance, I had a nice time last night with a friend of mine watching Huey Lewis and the News videos for 5 hours. Never underestimate the therapeutic value of HLN music... Plus it was nice to spend time with a friend who is old enough to actually remember the 1980s - and all of them... My friends at school here are very nice, and mature in their own way, but with most of them being 21-22, hanging out with them I'm constantly having flashbacks to the inherent adolescence of my undergraduate years. Much as I loved my school and overall had a good education and nice four years, it's not a period that I particularly care to relive. And yet here I am...

Edit: And could people PLEASE stop hitting me in the head!!! I know I'm a foot shorter than everyone else, but that's no excuse to wave your elbows around wildly. I only finally just got my jaw realigned from the last time I got whacked...

Perhaps part of my distemper resulted from my not having ridden my bike in a while. It, being the piece of crap that it is, was broken yet again.

One of its larger problems is that it lacks a kickstand, and as a result it tips over a lot. And every time it does, something breaks. This last time it was the rear lamp. But the other problem, the more serious one as far as I was concerned, is that the little pulley that put tension in the cable running from the gear shifter to the derailleur had popped off, and consequently the bike was now stuck in the hardest gear. Having now experienced the joys of riding a bike in something other than the hardest gear, I found this change most unwelcome and thus avoided riding the bike.

Finally, though, I got around to fixing it today. I went back to the university bike shop, now with enough German to be able to ask my questions with some competence, and got a new pulley. Someone helped me put it on and made it so the gears all now work. Or so it would seem so far... The bike is currently in second gear, which is generally usable around the fairly flat city, but in any case I'm planning to make do with it. It was the last time, when I greedily tried to ride in first gear up the hill to my apartment, that my troubles began and the pulley popped off. So rather than tempt fate, I think I'll content myself with second gear for the duration.

I also got a new rear lamp, although I decided against getting a kickstand. I had seriously considered getting a kickstand: normally it's not worth the extra weight (the bike already weighs 1.8 tons) but it might keep things from breaking further if it could keep the bike from falling over. On the other hand, I'm tired of putting money into a bike that I'll only use for another month and a half. I could put a lot of money in and it would not cease to be a piece of crap, so I think I'll save myself the grief.

But on the upside, today is a gorgeous day and it was nice to get to ride around for a change. Back at school I am now sitting outside in the fresh air as I write this, which is very nice except that lots of bugs for some reason seem to be inclined to land on my computer. And the last thing I want at this point is a buggy computer...

I'm working on three major projects for my journal, and I've gotten myself involved with the Bucerius Vis Moot Court team. Free cycles? Not in the forseeable future...

Which of course means that I'll be blogging incessantly...

(Actually, it does help keep the wheels lubricated. Particularly when I need to write a lot it helps me get warmed up. Less clear is if it also helps when I just have a lot of reading to do, but I certainly can pretend it does...)

But despite the intellectual onslaught, it's all good. The moot court thing is interesting, in particular because it epitomizes a true international law student exchange as I bring my American sense of jurisprudence to my teammates and their German/Continental one. It will make our joint efforts particularly enlightening for all involved. It also means I'll end up knowing a lot more about the Vienna Convention for the International Sale of Goods and conflict of laws doctrine than I ever have before...

The journal projects will also keep me hopping as well. Among them I'm still working on pulling together the colloquium, and I'm an article editor now with an actual article to edit.

So the next few(?) weeks will be really intense. (New classes start next week too.) But that's ok - all of this is what I came to law school for.

I stayed late in the law school library last night. It's unusual for me, since I'm not really a study-at-the-library person. But with the aforementioned truckloads of work to do, and no Internet connectivity at home, it seemed like a good plan.

Although it was really weird, because people kept strolling through the library all evening. Like at 10:50pm, there would be these grown-ups with small children just meandering on through. I suppose there was a reason for that, but I wasn't informed... Although interesting how in Hamburg, the Bucerius library is apparently THE place to be on a Saturday night.

Then last night I finally got my wish, to live on a planet with more hours in its day. Because with the clocks getting pushed back last night, that's what happened. I didn't even need to move to Mars to do it, although with it's particular proximity last night it would have been easier to do than normal. I walked out of school just a bit past 11 and was immediately struck by the large, red spot in the sky. I waved to the Martians (I'm sure they could see me...)

But sadly, my extra hour seems to have gone to waste. Here I am in the library, yet Lexis Nexis, which I really need RIGHT NOW for BOTH things I need to do today, is down. Um, people? Your timing is NOT convenient... Westlaw is alive, apparently, but I stopped using it last year when I kept getting kicked off of it, and now they've changed their interface and I can't find what I need. Argh...

Edit: Lexis lives. Perhaps they thought the wee-hours of Sunday morning would be a good time for system maintenance? Bastards. Did they not think about all those law students in Europe who would be up at that hour, desperate to do some legal research???

Also on edit: This entire post may be a complete waste of... um... paper? Bits? Electrons? I think I just wrote it because I really wanted to use the phrase "blinded by Mars." You must understand, my life these days is currently one of such distinction where being able to allude to celestial incapacitation is quite the high point.

In the moot court class yesterday I gave a practice oral argument.

My argument bore several deficiencies, mostly having to do with preparation (I'd been so busy trying to sort out the memo that I'd accidentally neglected to focus on a few basic preparatory steps, like actually printing out my argument...) But otherwise I think my argument went well – PARTICULARLY well given these problems. I was cool, calm, collected (or at least much more so than I ever remember being before), and able to clearly and persuasively articulate my position. I also fielded questions from the judges pretty well too. (And given that my argument is not yet fully-fleshed out and complete, it was no small task to be able to gloss over the glaring holes I knew fully well were there.)

I still have things to work on, of course. More eye contact, and I need to punctuate my points better. (Read: answer, then shut up. I seem to fear the silences...) But my greatest triumph is that none of the feedback involved asking me to speak more slowly. Given that EVERY SINGLE* oral presentation in my Copyright and Rhetoric class last year received the feedback that I talked too fast, and given that I know perfectly well that I talk fast and that I LIKE to talk fast, it was quite an accomplishment to not get such feedback this time.

It's not like they weren't paying attention to that facet; my co-counsel was told he talked too fast. But I asked them specifically afterwards, "You didn't think that I talked too fast?"

They said no, and with an expression that queried, "And why ever would you ask?"

I consider it a victory.

* = Actually, in the final presentation my classmates commended me for my vastly slower (and apparently thus improved) diction. So this speed adjustment isn't entirely unprecedented. But if I'd only managed it once it might have seemed an aberration. Twice, it perhaps denotes a trend...

After playing soccer in Malente, I was approached by the captain of the Bucerius women's soccer team. They wanted to send a team to this year's WHU Eurosport competition, and they asked me to be on it since I was a woman who could play.

The WHU is a business school in Vallendar (on the Rhine, near Koblenz) that annually puts on a weekend-long sports competition. Other business schools from around Europe send teams to participate in soccer (men's and women's), basketball, volleyball, rowing, running relay, and cheerleading compeitions. Bucerius goes even though it's a law school (and it's the only law school that does go) because it's a law school with an emphasis on business. And besides, all the business people are gonna need lawyers to get their business done anyway... Ultimately I think there were teams from seven countries represented (including Germany, Sweden, Netherlands, France, Spain, England) and even more countries if you consider the origins of all the students. For instance, I was not the only international student there: Bucerius itself sent four from two countries, and most other schools seemed to have brought their exchange students as well. Thus everything that weekend was organized in English, as it was the common language that everyone could handle.

At the time I was asked to do this it seemed like a great idea. I've been trying to play as much soccer as possible, and the idea that it could be the basis for travel seemed exciting. Plus this didn't seem like your normal backpacker-sightseeing weekend: what better way to get to know Germany than by doing things that Germans do? If I was lucky enough not to have to experience the country just through museums or tourists traps, it seemed I should jump at the chance. So I did.

However, then I got busy. And grumpy. And a part of me started dreading the weekend. It was going to suck up hours and hours that I couldn't do anything else with, and potentially screw up my sleep schedule for days and days afterwards, thereby compromising any future productivity I really needed to have. Plus everyone was raving about the all-night parties that were going to ensue between days of competition, and I just couldn't see the appeal. Even in my youngest and "wildest" days I wasn't keen on that kind of party. And I think whatever enthusiasm I could muster for it was used up in Malente. True, I did have a nice time there in spite of my hesitations. But it also struck me that perhaps I should quit while I was ahead, since these things have never really been my cup of tea. Crowded, loud, dark, smoky rooms, where you have to shout at the top of your lungs to communicate with increasingly inebriated people? It's not exactly my definition of fun. And the drinking? Unlimited beer and 1 euro cocktails may seem to be quite the bargain, but I can't imagine how much I could possibly enjoy it to make up for how lousy I'd feel the next day, exhausted and hungover.

Still, despite my second thoughts, I couldn't back out of the weekend. I'd already paid, and it wouldn't be fair to my team. So I packed what I could to make the weekend as tolerable as possible (lots of schoolwork and snacks in one bag, and a pillow and blanket in another), and on I went, hoping for the best.

After a long day in school on Thursday, we finally all boarded the bus at 11pm and drove all night to the sports hall in Koblenz. There we got out and staked out an area in the stands to wait for the games to begin. At around 9am they did. And they continued until the evening. Our team wasn't scheduled to play until 6, so we mostly watched the other teams throughout the afternoon and did some passing and shooting drills in the hallways.

The complex was vast. Its playing floor was bigger than a full-court basketball arena, and it was divided by large, heavy curtains into thirds. Soccer took place in one third, basketball in another (played width-wise), and two courts of volleyball were in the third. One side and the ends also had bleachers for the people waiting to play to hang out and watch. Then throughout the day on the mezzanine they offered free food and water. Lunch was a wurst of some kind in a roll with ketchup or mustard, plus there were boxes of chocolate milk, mineral water, smoothies (more or less), fruit, and lots free bags of cookies, crackers, and potato chips. (There were also gift bags filled with things provided by sponsors. Mostly the usual free shampoo samples and such, although there also was a condom...)

All in all it was an incredibly well-run event. Especially when you consider that it was entirely put on by 320 college students. (Fewer, even, because the WHU, like Bucerius, also sends a class of students abroad every fall and the incoming international students weren't expected to be so heavily involved.) Logistics involved registering several hundred participants, overseeing about 5 different locations, scheduling and officiating well over a hundred individual matches a day, feeding all these people, arranging and providing accommodations for them, and then putting on massive parties both evenings. Certainly some things could have gone smoother (e.g., dinner on Friday night was a little underwhelming, and the music they played in the sports hall was a little repetitive (a ClearChannel top-40 station has more variety... if I never hear certain songs ever again it won't be too soon...)) but like the Malente weekend – and even more so here – it was a tremendous example of student-led organizational efficiency.

One of the other distinctive features about the weekend is that for their housing, all the visiting students stayed with WHU students. And this is where I lucked out. Because the guy I was assigned to (some random guy I'd never met before...) turned out to be really nice. He lived in a really nice apartment overlooking the Rhine with two other roommates, and all together they had about 11 people (Germans, Spaniards, Frenchmen, and me...) over to crash on their floors. And all three of the roommates were extremely flexible and hospitable. They left a key under the mat, so anyone who wanted to come back from the parties to sleep could at any time. Which was absolutely fantastic for me, given my aversion to parties, since it provided me with an alternative. Even just knowing that I had a back-up plan - some alternative to having to being awake and uncomfortable late into the night - made me immediately feel much more at ease with the weekend entirely.

But I still had some reservations, and even on Saturday I was still entertaining the possibility of leaving early by train as soon as my team finished with its games. (In the morning my host kindly took me to the Koblenz train station on the way to the sports hall so I could drop off my luggage and get a train schedule in preparation for this escape.) The problem was, even though the housing situation was fine, I really wasn't having any fun. I did go to the party Friday night for a little bit and wasn't completely miserable, but I'd really come to WHU for the sports and so far I'd found them disappointing. For one thing, games were really, really short. Two five-minute halves of all-out sprinting. And we had three substitutes, so I couldn't play the whole 10 minutes anyway (although with the all-out sprinting, that was ok). But additionally, and the bigger problem in my estimation, was that the games were surprisingly dirty.

To some extent, I think many of the girls on the other teams lacked the experience at the game to really understand that obstruction is illegal and be able to avoid doing it. In soccer you are allowed to "play the ball," and there are ways to do so where the opposing player is "inadvertently" blocked from being able to get to it. But you can't just maneuver yourself there on the field, making no play for the ball yourself and just being an obstruction to keep others from getting to it.

But the obstruction was just the tip of the iceberg. The really egregious thing was all the charging in from behind. This is much more forbidden, by both FIFA rules and WHU's own rules, and it's dangerous. Particularly in indoor soccer, when there are walls to contend with. A lot of action occurs along the sides when the ball gets caught between scrambling players and the wall. Elbows shouldn't be flying during this, yet sometimes they do. But what really shouldn't happen is people charging in, body-checking the person with the ball into the wall, and before they can recover THEN making the play for the ball. Such action is illegal, dangerous, and incredibly poor sportsmanship, especially when done purposefully to take advantage of lax referees. And that's exactly what happened with one team in particular. I've never had less fun playing soccer than during that game. Maybe that team would have beaten us anyway, but we were deprived of any satisfaction of getting to play the best we could because we were constantly having to contend with their cheating. It was miserable, and had we not had two more games scheduled for the next day, I might have left then and there.

The next day did go better, even though we lost the first game and found ourselves with a 0-2-1 record. It looked like we might be done for, so the captain gave us a peptalk, telling us that in this last game we should just worry about having fun. And we did. And so we won. And thus we limped into the playoffs to play for third place. And we won that game too. So we, along with the rowing team, both got trophies for Bucerius. Sadly those were all the trophies Bucerius came away with from the weekend, but it was nice to be involved with one of those efforts. I didn't cause us to win it, per se (I didn't score any goals), but I played well enough that I wasn't a liability that caused us to lose either. In the end we played well – perhaps better than even the first and second place teams – because we could play as a team. All the passing drills that we spent hours and hours on really seemed to have paid off.

Once we won our final game, my mood vastly improved. But I still thought I might like to leave early so I could get more work done. To that end, I left the sports hall and caught a bus to the train station. I was lucky, actually: the bus only ran once an hour, and it happened to show up just as I was ready to leave. Otherwise I would not have been able to get to the train station in time for the 5:12 train I really wanted to take.

But then, once at the Hauptbahnhof, I discovered that it would cost me 57 euros to leave. And it just didn't seem worth it. No, I was going to need to stick it out until the very end. But now I was a little stuck: me at my luggage were now at the Koblenz train station, too far from either the sports hall in one direction or the university in the other to walk back to. Fortunately, the nice guy letting me stay in his apartment was willing to come get me and take me back to the sports hall for the final contest and awards. And then while I was waiting I got a chance to walk around the town a bit and be an actual tourist for an hour or so.

Meanwhile, back at the gym, the final contest was the cheerleading. The cheerleading was an interesting event. Our school sent a squad of seven people, who seemed more interested in the dance component than the cheerleading component. But I don't know... they were decent dancers, but their choice of songs and choreography might even make Michael Jackson blush. It just seemed a little... much. But seven people managed to conjure up the energy of squads many times their size. Other schools sent enormous contingents, some with dozens of cheerleaders. ESB definitely had the most spirited group, I think, with everyone showing up to the gym the first day with face paint, balloons, and blasting air horns... And I liked the French cheerleaders who walked in with their chant, "ED! HEC! Tous ensembles! Tous ensembles!" ("ED! HEC! All together! All together!") For their dance numbers they started with a French song, and then went to some song that sounded like a hip-hop version of a square dance song. Which, naturally, they square danced to, more or less...

It should also be mentioned here that their school was, in fact, called EDHEC. Most schools seemed to go by acronyms instead of their actual long-winded multi-word and/or multi-syllabic names. Bucerius stood out as an exception, actually, having been named for an actual person. The French school was really called some lengthy French name that was shortened to EDHEC, the ESB was the European School of Business, and the WHU was short for "Wissenschaftliche Hochschule fuer Unternehmensfuehrung..." As I said, Bucerius stood out...

With the cheerleading concluded they gave out the trophies, and I got to go up with my team to collect ours. Then we all dispersed. I went back with my host to his apartment and spent some time talking to his roommate and the other people who wandered in. Then my host and the roommate left to go to the party, and I went to sleep for several hours. At 3am a taxi came for me, where I paid the exorbitant price of 10 euros for a ride up the hill to the party location. But it's one of those things that, though expensive, was worth every penny, as it would not have been particularly pleasant to walk my tired self and my suitcases up the Rhine valley hills to the party, especially not in the middle of the night when I didn't know where I was going.

The party, as it was the night before, was held in an unused factory. It looked like a factory, with large concrete rooms, trailer offices, and a smokestack. Both nights they bathed it in tinted light and thumping music reverberated from its walls. I went up at 3 because the bus was supposed to board at 3:30. Unfortunately, it was delayed until 4:45, so I pretty much stood around in a parking lot of an hour and a half as inebriated people milled around me. At one point I was hit on by someone so drenched in rum he smelled like a dentist's office. Fortunately, drunk people have really short attention spans so I was able to walk away from him when his attention got diverted, and then he either forgot how madly in love with me he was, or couldn't figure out that I'd moved a few feet away...

Eventually I was joined in my wait for the bus with the other Bucerius students, who were in various stages of intoxication. It was fun to mess with their minds too... At one point a group was standing around with one guy with a bushy hairdo and beard. They called me over and asked me, "Don't you think he looks like Jesus?"

"I don't know. I've never seen Jesus."

"Oh come on. Use your imagination."

"But I don't aspire to see Jesus."

"Is that all you can say?"

"OK, I tell you what. The answer is that he doesn't. I've heard that Jesus was seen in a grilled cheese sandwich, and he doesn't look anything like a grilled cheese sandwich."

This answer seemed to satisfy them, and I can now say I've finally sated my long-standing wish to talk about Jesus in a dark parking lot somewhere in Germany in the middle of the night... Meanwhile, some other students started singing about our long wait for the bus. As we eagerly anticipated our bus to pull in, other normal-sized vehicles came in instead. Every time one did, one of my classmates sang out, "Der bus ist klein. Der bus ist klein. Der bus ist klein, ist viel zu klein." (The bus is small. The bus is small. The bus is small, it's much too small.) Sadly I cannot type out the pleasant sing-song melody he put these lyrics too...

But eventually it came, we boarded, and mostly slept through the night until we at last arrived in Hamburg around 11am. I had somehow managed to survive the weekend and am reasonably well-rested, all things considered.

But I did realize, as we rolled off the freeway and into the city, driving past the glistening Alter lake, that Hamburg was no longer just a strange dot on the map to me; Hamburg was home.

My dad always thought I'd make a good judge. I'm not sure I want to be a judge, but today I became intrigued about being a mediator. To the extent that my dad is correct in thinking I'd be good at the former I think I'd also be good at the latter, but I think I would prefer the latter because then I wouldn't have to be permanently attached to one specific jurisdiction. In fact, I think that's my biggest objection to being a judge: the idea of waking up and going to work in the same exact place for years and years... It frightens me. I think I need to feel able to work in different places. Which is not to say that I want to be as much of a nomad as I've been these past few years for the rest of my life; I would like to settle down (and sometime soon). But I would like to settle into a situation where every so often I would get to go to other places.

But as for the mediation aspect, it does appeal to me. I like the problem solving aspect involved with alternative dispute resolution. I think I'm good at that, and I think I also can view a conflict with the appropriate impartiality the situation requires.

Anyway, this is a nascent thought. Prior to today, I never really thought about pursuing it. But maybe now I will.

I got the grades for my first round of exams back and I was right: I got a %$&^ing B+ on my IP exam.

I guess I should have spent more time copying the damn slides for my notes. But, you know, I was too busy understanding ALL the material and thoroughly explaining it to my classmates. Stupid me...

(For the record, I defied my usual rule about not looking at exam grades because of the allowance here to dispute grades. So it seemed particularly prudent to at least make sure that some gross grading error hadn't occurred. But I reiterate my point that grades are really stupid. And I say that even though I got an A- on my torts exam.)

Edit: I don't mean to sound so critical of the professor. I think she wanted the class to do well and tried to make a test that people could easily do well at. Unfortunately, I think it would have been easier for me if it had been harder. Edit 11/17: And by "harder," I mean in part "covering more substantive areas."

And in any case, my point about the futility of grades still stands. I mean, consider: for my torts A-, it doesn't tell you how hard THAT test was. So how proud of it should I be?

German language class today got disrupted when the first* fluffy white flakes of snow of the season fell on Hamburg. The girls from Hong Kong and Singapore had never seen snow before and kept running to the window to marvel at it.

But it was ok, and provided the occasion for me to learn how to explain to them such things as, "The ground is too warm for it to stick."

* Apparently it already snowed in Boston a month ago. So it seems I got the better deal, escaping the clutches of New England and running off to Hamburg, where they say it's been one of the most pleasant autumns in recent memory.

I just found out when I'll have my exams for spring semester. I have two consecutively right at the very beginning of the exam period, followed by another one day afterward.

As it turns out, the one day off is my birthday. It will probably be more fun than my 30th birthday was, when the day got consumed by an 8-hour Con Law final, but only barely...

Granted, this schedule presumes that I take Crim Pro and not Trial Advocacy, but the only real difference if I took the latter instead would be that I could afford to have more fun on my birthday, what with not having another test until the next week.

On the upside, this schedule would suggest that I could be DONE WITH LAW SCHOOL on May 2, 2006.

Interesting thought to conteplate, although I probably shouldn't be doing this now...

In Germany (as in much of the world that is not the United States) people often use their cellphones to send text (SMS) messages to others' because they're frequently more cost effective (as well as easier and less disruptive to receive) than phone calls.

Anyway, the other day I sent an SMS to a law student friend asking if he wanted to come to the movies with me. He wrote back, "Thanks, but I cannot go with you for the following two reasons..."

I teased him as being the only person I know who sends SMS messages in IRAC format...

* At Bucerius, unlike at BU and many other American law schools, we cannot take our exams on our laptops. Instead we must write them out in bluebooks, although they're actually not the American-style blue bluebooks but rather custom Bucerius "bluebooks" with nice white, ruled pages and the Bucerius logo on them.

The T9 reference is to the input system that most cellphones have. Because each phone key matches up with several letters, it can take quite a bit of button-pressing to scroll through each choice before you get to the letter you desire to make your word. So the T9 system is a way for you to simply press the number that has your desired letter once (without needing to scroll through the choices), and then the system guesses, based on the sequence of numbers you've pressed, what word you were trying to make. It can make typing into a cellphone much more efficient, once you get used to it.

Years ago, when I worked in France, by coincidence a good friend of mine from middle school was there at the same time doing a semester of law school abroad. I always thought that would be a nice thing to do if I ever went to law school, and indeed, when it came time to choose which school to go to I chose the one with a French program.

And then I wimped out and didn't even apply to it. I got really skittish about my French skills and decided learning the law was hard enough – having to do it in another language would probably not be all that much fun. And so I picked an English-language program instead, and one thing leading to another, here I am in Germany. NOT France.

But glutton for punishment that I am, I decided to take Cour Jouridique – a course on French law taught all in French. It was sort of a bonus course – outside my main focus – but it was kind of nice to get a taste of what I passed up by not doing the French program as originally planned.

As the course neared the end, though, I once again got skittish about my French skills. I kind of knew what was going on in class. But did I really? Unfortunately, to get credit for the class it turned out that I had to sit for the exam (apparently auditing wasn't an option, which I didn't realize until quite recently). So I did, yesterday. And I THINK I passed. Perhaps not with flying colors, but perhaps just enough. (Fortunately I think I'm able to take it P/NP, which poses much less danger to my transcript, I think.)

It was the first – and only – course I've ever taken in a language other than English (not counting language immersion courses). That in and of itself was good to experience. Of course, in some ways it was particularly difficult for me: legal vocabulary lists, for instance, were translated into German... And it did tax my skills a bit. I kept feeling like everyone else spoke better. And maybe that's so. But you know, I need to cut myself some slack. All my classmates, 19-22 years old, started learning it years ago when they were children – as one is supposed to do with learning a language. Whereas I didn't even START to learn French until I already was their age (21). So maybe, all things considered, I'm really not so bad at it after all.

Today was a good day at the cafeteria. Well, except that I ended up eating fried potatoes twice (should've gone for cucumbers at dinner instead...). But there was a decent pork roast for lunch, and a nice schnizel for dinner.

And the cafeteria ladies were really nice. And I talked to them! Entirely in German! At lunch we discussed whether there would be schnizel for dinner, and when I would be returning home to the US, and at dinner I showed one of them how to use chopsticks.

(Apparently it's Chinese Food Week, so they had chopsticks, but since they also had schnizel and large slabs of non-chopstick-eatable pork, I'm not entirely sure I understand the connection. But I didn't discuss this part.)

In any case, the takeaways from this blog post was that (a) I was well-fed today (er, except for the vegetables), and that (b) I can speak German!

Today was the exam for the International Commercial Transactions exam. OK, so I may have gone to the first class for the silliest of all reasons, but I stayed in it because I was curious. And even though I'm still of the view that commercial transactions are inherently boring (there's nothing about either of those two words, either separately or combined, that gets my blood pumping), I still got a lot out of the class and was glad for the taste of ICT that I was able to fairly painlessly get. I never would have given over the units of my American law school schedule for something I was so dispassionate about, but here it didn't involve much of a trade-off to be able to try it out. And I did find the material interesting, if not for its real-world applicability, but because process always interests me and that's what this course, like my conflict of laws one, was really about (the process of how to unwind these international contractual disputes).

So lord knows how this exam will be graded... but I left feeling pretty good about it. We had to apply the Vienna Convention for the International Sale of Goods to a fact pattern, and I think I did a pretty good job walking through the issue. Much better than I usually write my exams, in fact. More systematically than the usual mental muddle I'm able to produce. I think I may have been onto something when I suggested that the conversation with my friend on IRAC structure might have helped me... Hearing him articulate how he walked through his exams gave me a tangible model to follow.

But that was today. Last week had its own end-of-semester crush. I had to do my final oral argument for my moot court class, I had to do my final for Cour Jouridique, and I had my final exam (along with all the other international students) for German Law. That one was tough, but not in a way an American exam would be tough. It was hard because it covered a lot of different topics, taught by different professors, and to different degrees of depth. We learned eight subjects (general administration of German law, Tort Law, Criminal Law, Constitutional Law, Company Law, Competition Law, Administrative Law, and Contract Law) and had to answer questions on 6 of them. I ended up skipping Criminal Law and Administrative Law, I think, because when I looked at them I blanked out. What's odd is that I guess I answered Company Law, Competition Law, and Contract Law, and I'd missed classes those days... But because classes here are lecture-style – or at least that's the style of the German profs, since these were all Bucerius professors – many of them often have scripts of their lectures that you can read. So I took notes from the scripts a few days before the exam and therefore had something to say. Still, I don't know how well I did: I didn't feel as good leaving that test as I did today, and I'm sure my performance varied from subject to subject (I obviously knew more about some than others). It was hard to study for, because unlike an even longer American law class, the material from one day didn't really relate to that of another. There weren't really any efficiencies we could harness in studying, and instead had to try to know ALL of it and hope for the best on the test.

But it's done, and now it's just one more class meeting of Constitutional Law tomorrow, then two exams next week and an essay for ADR, then the semester is over. Kind of sad, actually... I'd just gotten the hang of it...

Law school doesn't just occasion flashbacks to high school; sometimes it bears the hallmarks of elementary school - like bullying.

Though nearly everyone I've met at Bucerius has been really, really nice - Germans and international students - there has been at least one glaring exception:

Several weeks ago, a Bucerius student - one of the 69 internationals - made it perfectly clear that my blogging - indeed, my very existence - was personally offensive to them. Anonymously, of course. For apparently I am to know what a lousy person I am, but not who is making this charge.

Subsequently there have been several other comments that have also taken issue with other Bucerius-related things I've said. Except that, for the most part, they aren't really criticisms of my assertions as much as they are criticisms of me. But they, too, were made under pseudonym, to make sure that I think it's simply from a random person with some genuine concern. Of course, the ruse is for naught - it's apparent that the commenter knows me from Bucerius - but again, I'm not to know who they are.

Then Saturday, attached to the post containing my ADR essay, came another comment masquerading as one from the class's professor:

"Wunderbar Cathy!

You seem to have an excellent understanding of the topic and it's underlying issues. I hope you teach some of your classmates who might not grasp the subject as well as yourself.

You are definatley a strong canditate for a B+ grade.

Yours sincerley,
[professor's name]"

(Note: apart from redacting the professor's name and adding quotes around the whole post, I copied and pasted it here exactly as it was submitted. So please infer a "[sic]" where necessary.)

Pretty clever, huh? Notice the allusion to the B+ grade, a reference to the comments made in an earlier exam post about my exams. Notice - well, you can't notice, because I deleted it - that this person used the full name of the course instructor as the source of the commenter. Which, of course, was a lie, and I deleted it so this very nice person would not have to have his name widely and permanently associated on the Internet with comments that reflected so poorly on him.

So what to do about my bully... Is it necessary to do anything? I sit here more in bemusement than hurt. Perhaps in fourth grade - the last time when I was bullied - it stung a lot more. But I've certainly grown up since then, even if my bully hasn't.

But I am inclined to blog it. Part of the purpose of my blog is to chronicle my story of what it's like to be in law school, and a truth of that experience is that someone has chosen to do this. Voluntarily and publicly. I have no desire to cover it up, to somehow exonerate it through my silence. My bully has made themselves part of my story, and so I will tell it.

Also, let's not minimize what's actually going on. This kind of commenting, from a fellow student, is the cyber equivalent of putting anonymous, harassing notes on my locker. Though it's happening in another forum, it's no less antagonistic. And just because the desired effect of reducing me to tears and self-doubt hasn't occurred, it's still quite annoying. I have enough to do to keep the spam crap off my site; having to parse through the forged aliases isn't really what I'd like to be doing with my time.

But beyond that, I'm just flabbergasted that someone just mere months away from being a fully-licensed lawyer - an officer of the court - would feel that this kind of behavior is appropriate. Note, we're not talking about some anonymous nutcase on the Internet, nor are we talking about someone with a legitimate and fair criticism of a specific contention I've made. We're talking about someone in my fairly small community, who knows me and sees me every day, yet who doesn't have the guts to look me in the eye and tell me that they have a problem with *me*.

Instead this person hides behind a patchwork of pseudonyms, cloaking their cowardice as they lob gratuitous attacks at me, seemingly with impunity. Clearly they think there is no way I could never know who was behind it.

But perhaps this confidence is misplaced.

With the semester wrapping up, so is my German language education. Tonight we had the last meeting, and I'm quite sad. And distressed - I only have two more weeks to become fluent!

But I really liked the class. My teacher was great: very flexible, creative, fun... She had lots of interesting games and learning tools for us to use, taught us lots of grammar, and was really responsive to our learning needs and desires.

She tried to keep up speaking all in German, but lots of times that didn't quite hold up so she chose her "battles" and didn't necessarily insist. Still, she was still able to teach us a lot of grammar and vocabulary in a relatively short period. She always had lesson plans, but at the same time she was really flexible and willing to indulge our linguistic curiosities as they came up. It was all part of the learning process, and it made it fun.

Personally I was also helped by my self-paced curriculum. Over the first couple of months here I'd managed to work my way through most of the chapters of my old German textbook. Which really helped me in class, so that when she actually taught these concepts, for me it was more like review and so it was much easier to finally grasp them. It's always easier the second time around.

As part of my continuing mission to rave about Huey Lewis's performance on Broadway, I bring you the link to the "Ask a Star" page from Broadway.com.

I like how relaxed and off the cuff he is with his responses (see, e.g., Gerald's question), although perhaps his proofreading skills need some work... (see, e.g., Thea's question.)

I think I actually know (see, e.g., John's question), or at least know of, (see, e.g., Greg's question) some of the people who submitted questions, which is kinda interesting, I guess. And I guess, fan that I am, I probably knew much of what he would say to most of these questions, although some of it was new to me (see, e.g., Nanci's question). For instance, I had previously thought they wouldn't be touring this year, but perhaps the band will see me through law school yet?

And in that law school-vein I feel compelled to confess that I can't remember whether or not to italicize the punctuation appearing in the "see, e.g.," citation form. However, it makes me wonder if the Chicago production includes a scene where the Billy Flynn character bluebooks. If not, I think the omission seriously undermines the authenticity of Huey's performance as a lawyer...

Last night I threw a necessarily small potluck party. It couldn't be too big, because all the people had to be containable within the bounds of my small room. So I invited a few classmates, German and international, whom I talk to reasonably regularly outside of class, plus my two other non-Bucerius friends in Hamburg. It was an interesting combination of law students and Huey Lewis and the News fans (although oddly enough I was the only one who was both...), and on balance a fairly international gathering. As a result we had a variety of tastes at this potluck: Thai curry chicken, macaroni and cheese (from a box, bought in the American section of the Wal-Mart...), German pancakes with Vermont maple spread I brought from the US, carrots and peanut butter, Pringles (expensive but seemingly popular in Germany), Grisini breadsticks, halavah (a Turkish brand that I brought back from Poland), wine, beer, soda, gluehwein, cheese, Hershey's chocolate, and some other snacks.

Unfortunately, I seem to live in a black hole, and once again someone failed to attend my party because she couldn't find it. (Not the same person as last time, though.) In fact, she spent two hours wandering around fruitlessly looking for it – even going so far as to ask the police how to get here! And yet she was unsuccessful... (I take it as a good sign, however, that the police didn't know where I live...)

But the party seemed to go well (for those who managed to attend), and when it was over I got my room straightened up and then this morning did the enormous pile of dishes left over. However, it's kind of nice to do parties because it always inspires me and my roommate to actually clean the apartment... It needs vacuuming right now, but otherwise it's as clean as it's been since the last party...

Written 12/9, posted 12/10. Title refers to this post.

Yesterday I had lunch for the first time at the cafeteria on the University of Hamburg campus. It was very good, much better than at Bucerius, although it's a little far and I have no relationship with the cafeteria ladies there... It's walkable, but not quite close enough to be an expedient solution for most of my lunchtime dining needs. However, it is cheap: I had a large goose drumstick, potato dumplings, pickled red cabbage, chocolate mousse, and hot chocolate for 3.80 euros. A nice, filling, very German meal.

Then in the evening the school had a closing ceremony for the international students. The heads of the school and the international program made nice speeches and we got certificates for our participation and a few other souvenir gifts. We're not quite done yet – there's more exams next week – but things are winding down and we're all rushing around making plans for the last time we will get to see each other.

People keep asking me if I'm getting excited about going home, and I always seem so taken aback by the question. Because the answer is no. If I'm home, I can't be here. And I really like it here. Plus I'm starting to become aware of just what I will miss when I'm not here anymore, and how much.

It figures that as I finally head into the homestretch I suffer yet another sinus catastrophe. As if I'm not under enough pressure to take care of everything I need in the next weeks, I'm now getting sandwiched between it and the pressure exuded from inside my head. Plus I'm all achy and dragging, which doesn't help the effort to get things done.

So today I'm staying home all day, studying for my exams, while mainlining fruit and fluid. And trying to get lots of sleep. Which sort of worked last night, except for the really vivid dreams I kept having. I remember one in particular was about my blog, where I realized that I'd accidentally had a category for "pop culture" and another one for "entertainment," and I was of course going to have to wake up and fix this and leave the necessary explanatory note.

It's a terrible sickness, I tell you. This cold, I mean...

Posted 12/12, backdated to when written.

Well, one ass-kicking final down the tubes...

It was Conflict of Laws, which can basically be described as Civil Procedure on Steroids, since you not only get to contend with American jurisprudence - opaque and inconsistent as it is - on jurisdiction and choice of law, but also European jurisprudence, which is opaque and inconsistent in its own quaintly European way.

I actually thought, by the end of the semester, that I was starting to get some insight into how this all worked. And perhaps I was. But unfortunately those insights I may have gleaned were not necessarily the ones tested on... Well, sort of. I was able to issue-spot pretty well on this test, but I kept feeling like I needed to know more about the technical operation of the issues and exceptions in order to answer the question, and I didn't. It doesn't seem like those things made it either into my notes (the test was open-book) or my brain. Oh well. I'm still glad I took the course - it's tricky stuff, and at least I have a leg up on people who have never tried to learn it. I'm sure it will be much easier to grasp the second time it comes around.

The other annoyance from today's test (other than the test itself...) was that the achy-ness from my cold has manifested to a sharp pain in my back. Just sitting for the test was torture. If someone had offered to remove my skeleton and just prop up my skin with sticks, I might have taken them up on it. I suppose that would have caused discomfort in other ways, but it's telling that it would have seemed at all tempting...

My Comparative Constitutional Law final is now history. It actually didn't go too badly, all things considered. (And among the things that should be considered is that the course didn't even start until November burn-out had already set in and continued full-throttle while there were other exams and things to beat us up with.)

It was three fairly normative questions, which was perfectly reasonable for this kind of subject matter, and I think I had enough constructive things to say for all of them. I had been really worried about the test going into it because I really only had yesterday afternoon to study, and with my head three-feet thick from my cold it was really hard to concentrate.

But now it's over, and despite the cold (and stabbing pain in my back) I feel surprisingly good. I think it has something to do with the fact that, with dozens and dozens of final exams from middle school, high school, college, and law school behind me, I now have only FOUR MORE FINAL EXAMS TO TAKE EVER!!! I can count them on one hand! It's very exciting. And yeah, I know there's the little thing called the "bar exam" coming up, but stop raining on my parade, ok?

So one little ADR essay to do, and then I'm officially done with my semester. Yay!

Edit: It's actually a shame that I didn't talk more about the con law class. It was a really interesting look at the functions and mechanics of Constitutions, and although I can't right now distill what I've learned into a nice pithy blog post, I'm sure the exercise will inform how I view law and politics, international and domestic, from here on out. But to give you some ideas of what we contemplated in the class, here's a blog posting by someone else that bears some striking similarities to the kind of inquiry we were asked to make.

- Huey Lewis, on Hard at Play, Chrysalis Records 1991.

My second ADR essay has been sent off - which means I'M DONE!!! Yay! The academic semester is completely behind me!

I have a week left in Germany, so it will be a week of visiting people, travelling, and winding down. I'll probably take care of some BU school stuff early next week, but nothing productive will even be possible for the next several days. It looks like I'm actually getting a vacation! A real, proper vacation! I hardly know what to do with myself...

(So FYI - expect blogging to be light and retroactive for the immediate future.)

After four months in a foreign country, you're bound to pick up a few things to remember the experience by. Such as:

Law books. Well, not books, per se, but readers of xeroxed materials. It made my books for the semester cost about 1/4 of what I would have paid in Boston. However, I think they may be almost as heavy, to say nothing for creatively collated: some are missing pages, and others are paginated backwards...

German dictionary. For future reference, buy the foreign language dictionary in the US. Not that it is hard to find a German-English dictionary in Hamburg, but they are all written for Germans learning English. Meaning that all the verb tables in the appendix have all the strange English ones. Which I already know; It's the German ones I really needed... Fortunately I was able to find one at a language school bookstore, but I think I would have found a better selection had I shopped for it in the US.

Huey Lewis and the News stuff. But of course. I got a new version of the extended CD version of Sports to replace the one I'd lost. (In addition to the regular album it also has a bunch of extra tracks: live songs, and two session outtakes.) I also got a couple of 45s: a German one from 1984 with a nice picture sleeve I'd never seen before, and one from a pre-HLN band some of the Newsmen were in (although technically I picked this up in California). There was also a promotional poster I've been looking for for 15 years that my friend gave me his extra of. Definitely worth the trip to Germany for that!!!

Indoor soccer sneakers. I ended up playing indoor soccer more than outdoor, but I'd only had cleats and my other sneakers had marking soles. Fortunately I was able to pick up a pair of Adidas ones for only about 25 euros. Wearing kids' sizes in shoes can be pretty handy.

Shirts. Both from WHU: one was a t-shirt from the event (although the cryptic slogan on the back gives me some concern about wearing it), and the team uniform. A teammate had bought some pink(!) striped(!) polyester(!) collared(!) shirts from H&M(!), and then ironed on our names, a number, and the word "Pehrle" on the back. What they didn't tell me until after I'd been wearing it for several hours was that "pehrle" was a condescending term used to address women... But the reason they used it was because there's a famous pop song about Hamburg, which calls the city, "Hamburg, meine Pehrle." (Hamburg, my pearl.)

(I also have a few other souvenirs from WHU, including the little backpack that all the shwag came in and the condom therein...)

Bucerius stuff. A sweatshirt to show off school colors (which unfortunately are red... though the sweatshirt is grey), a mug that they gave all the international students, and a key cord. In Germany lots of people seem to like to attach their keys to the end of these ribbon lanyards, and then carry them around in their pockets with the ribbons hanging out. I think this is a dumb idea, but when in Rome... (I also got another one from WHU.)

Books. Various people gave me some really cool ones: a big one on the history of Jews in Germany, a biography about Gerd Bucerius (who began the ZEIT-Stiftung foundation that later endowed the school), and a book about Chinese papercraft. I really appreciate how thoughtful these gifts were.

Mortar and Pestle. Because I've always wanted one. In fact, when I lived in Provence I was sorely tempted to pick up one at one of the many farmers' markets. Yet I never did. Finally, at one of the Hamburg Christmas markets I saw a nice handmade one and finally decided to get it. Yet I found it amusingly ironic, after the clerk handed me my purchase, when I asked where in Germany it had been made, and she answered, "France."

Stuff from Budni and Rossman . This includes about a dozen extra tissue packs bought to treat my cold (I hadn't meant to buy that many, but that's how many were included in the cheapest package of pocket packs, and it seemed like too many to waste), bandaids from the Period of the Great Blister (I ran out of the really neat gel ones, though, that hung on for days - even when wet - and simultaneously protected and healed the blister), nail polish and a roll of bandages from the Halloween costume (and not an attempt to go "fem," or heal some larger injury...), a four euro umbrella I brought back to New Jersey only because I thought I might need a four euro umbrella before I can get up to Boston and find my better one, and some toothbrushes (really cool ones with plastic spikes).

Stuff from Wal-Mart. Mostly stationery stuff that I'd already used, since I could return what I hadn't. Like mechanical pencils (Wal-Mart was the only place in Germany where I could find disposable ones) and sticky pads (3M knockoffs that aren't as good, but did come in apple and smiley face designs). I also brought home some really horrible German pens, but only because I forgot to throw them out. I did, however, bring home the nice pen I got from the Warsaw hotel and used to write all my exams.

Postcards. From Poland and Ireland.

Gloves. I had neglected to pack some, so I bought some that would be good for biking. Waterproof and windproof, they claimed. Liars.

Bike stuff. A patch kit, tire irons, and a wrench kit. Bought in preparation for long-range bike trips that never happened.

Skat cards. This was a mistake. I meant to buy regular cards and apparently failed (stupid German language...). I did not realize I'd failed, however, until I was trying to teach my friends how to play poker. I may not be a great card counter, but even I began to notice a lack of 2's, 3's, 4's, 5's, and 6's... (An absence which drastically changed the contours of the game of blackjack we also tried...)

November 2005 Games Magazine World of Puzzles. Not only is it fun to do, but a friend of mine had a puzzle of hers published in it!

Cell phone. Since it was such an ordeal to get I decided to keep it. Unfortunately it's sim-locked, which means I can never get it to work on another network. Also unfortunately, the alarm goes off even if the phone is not on, which is something I discovered at a most inconvenient time...

Pictures. I got a lot of them developed and the photo shop also burned them onto a CD for me. Unfortunately, they burned them all upside down...

Anyway, it didn't seem like all that much, but somehow it resulted in an extra suitcase-full of stuff...

Written 12/21, posted 12/22.

Edit 12/22: Oh I forgot. I also got a really nice wallet. Or at least one that was very suitable for my needs, and more so than any I'd seen anywhere in the US.

Edit: 12/31: And a bottle of honey wine, but I couldn't mention this earlier since I brought back another as a present.

Also edited 1/1.

The phone rang in the other room. I wasn't going to answer it – anyone calling for me would have used my cell phone or the phone in my room – but then I thought it perhaps might have been the girl whose apartment we were subletting it from calling to discuss move-out details.

"Hello?"

"Hello, my name is [something German] and I'm calling from [somewhere German]. May I please speak with Mark [also something German]?" the man said, entirely in German.

It should be noted that at this point a touch of panic came over me. Part of it is due to not wanting to accidentally screw up someone's life by accidentally incorrectly giving wrong information. And part of it is due to a long-held sense of paranoia, that if I accidentally said too much on the phone to strangers I might somehow be letting some ax-murdering psychopath know that I was a woman home alone, and by the way the doors were unlocked. So needless to say I was a little nervous, and this nervousness negatively affected my German skills.

However, it had immediately struck me that this was likely a wrong number, since I didn't at all recognize the name. I fumbled around for a way to express this. "He is not here." I managed to get out, in German.

"When will he be there?" the man annoyingly persisted, since he obviously failed to divine from my imprecise utterance and exuded psychic energy what I was trying to tell him.

I tried to make the point plainer. "No, he's NEVER here," I inarticulately but insistently blurted out, also in perfect German.

Now this guy must have really wanted to talk to this Mark fellow to still be putting up with this conversation. He rephrased his question.

"Bitte?" I hadn't understood it.

"Why is he never there?"

At this fortuitous moment the verb "wohnen," meaning "reside," suddenly emerged from the fog in my head. "He do not live here," I explained, conjugating incorrectly.

"Mark [lastname] doesn't live there?"

"The name again?" Perhaps it was a little late in the conversation to be checking that I'd gotten the name correctly, but I did want to be sure I really didn't recognize it from anything.

"Mark [lastname]."

"No, he do not live here," I affirmed, still not conjugating correctly.

"I must have the wrong number."

"Ya think?" I answered, although in German it came out as an unsarcastic "ja."

Mercifully for everyone the call ended shortly thereafter.

My dad, tongue-in-cheek: "I put you through law school."

Me, thinking about my student loans: "Er, I don't think that's a particularly accurate statement."

My dad: "Well, I gave you permission to go to law school."

Me: "I didn't need your permission to go to law school."

My dad, trying one more time: "At least I didn't picket your law school demanding that they throw you out."

Me: "This is true. Thanks."

If you haven't already inferred it, I'm back in the US. I got back last Wednesday and camped out at my dad's in New Jersey, making also several forays into New York. It was a little weird hanging out in New York after being in Hamburg. Hamburg is a significant city - perhaps the second most populous in Germany? - but it's a sleepy cow-town compared to Manhattan.

Chrismahanukwanzakah was spent in several places, seeing lots of friends and family. What's cool is that a friend of my sister's with an apartment in mid-town left it for her to use, so we were able to use it as a base camp for visiting the New York relatives. It now makes about four nights, in my entire life, that I've slept over in Manhattan. There was so rarely any need to, since we could always just go home to New Jersey. But it was pretty convenient not to have to worry about the commute.

I think, though, that this is the longest period I've spent in the area in years. Maybe even since high school! Normally I just pop in for a few days at a time, in a whirlwind of trying to cram in as many visits with local people that I can. This time I've already been here for over a week. I could stay longer; I was contemplating spending the New Year down here. But I'm starting to get antsy about getting back to Boston. Not because I miss Boston - I'm sort of dismayed by how little I do, especially given that I need to live there for a while longer - but because I haven't really been there since May, and I now have two trips to unpack from (California and Germany.) My room is a disaster, and I'd like for it not to be when I head into classes January 9.

Yesterday while still in New Jersey I got my teeth cleaned. I went to the same dentist I've been seeing since I was four, although he's recently expanded his practice and added another dentist, and it was the new dentist who saw me.

In between scrapings and rinsings I explained my situation to the new dentist. "I lived in California a while, so sometimes I see a dentist I have there. It depends where I am when I need a cleaning." It's true; there's a dentist out there I've been seeing off and on since 1997 or so. I just saw him this summer in fact.

But it is nice to be able to still go back to a practice where I've been a patient for so long - since 1978! I mentioned this to the new guy. "And so you reward him by cheating on him with another dentist?" he joked, referring to the California one.

It was very silly, but there's a more serious issue underlying the dental-care one. Wherever you live you root yourself into that community. You learn the lay of the land, where things are. You learn the neighborhood, the transport system. You build a network of friends and a network of the other people you need to support your life: mechanics. Doctors. And, of course, dentists.

The problem is, if you try to be connected to more than one place, in some ways you end up not connected to anywhere. And more and more I feel ready to become connected and rooted to SOMEwhere. My nomadic impulses seem to be quieting. So now it's just a question of deciding where that place will be.

It's a tough decision, and one I'll have to face in a matter of mere weeks: do I want to go back to California, or do I want to stay here (in New Jersey)?

With the exception of law school, I've spent almost my entire adult life in California. I know the area, I have friends, I have doctors and dentists, and probably more professional contacts there than anywhere else.

Only I'm not sure I want to stay there. I like it there, but I'm not sure I want to spend forever there. I've never wanted to spend forever there. As an undergrad in Berkeley people always used to ask me if I would return to NJ after graduation or stay there, and there was never any question in my mind that I would stay there. I'd moved to California and was serious about starting a life there. But at the same time, in the back of my mind, I never thought that I'd settle down there forever, with a house and kids and all... I think I always subconsciously felt I'd go back to New Jersey for that.

That was fine, though - I was young and with plenty of time to enjoy life in California before having to make any big decisions about those kinds of things.

Unfortunately, time appears to be running out. I'm ten years older now, and will be 32 years old when I graduate and begin my new career. I don't have a lot of time anymore to futz around, trying out living in places where I'm not necessarily serious about staying.

The question is, am I really serious about not staying in California? And if so, just where am I serious about staying?

It's a question that keeps me up nights, largely because I'm being forced to make a decision I'm not quite ready to make. The reason: I have to sign up to take the bar. And soon. But which one?

California's, where I have lots of contacts? Or New Jersey's, where every time I'm here I more and more feel like I'm home? (If it seems that I might give away the answer through the way I ask the questions, bear in mind that the aforementioned questions are but just two considerations. It takes a lot more questions and answers in order to come up with a decision I can be confident with.)

If I already had a job lined up, my decision would be made for me. I'd just take the bar where the job was. Since I don't, I have to commit NOW to where it is that I will look for the job. Sign up for the California bar and commit to getting a job there, or take the New York/New Jersey bars and commit to getting a job here.

At this point, practical considerations seem to be directing the decision more than any existential soul searching is. If I sit for the California bar, I can ONLY sit for the California bar. Whereas if I sit for New York, I can also sit for New Jersey at the same time. Two states for one, thus upping the odds that I'll likely be able to practice SOMEWHERE by the time the results come out.

So at the moment that's what I'm thinking about doing. I think it makes sense. But I resent being forced into making a decision with tremendous long term implications before I'm ready, just because of this issue. Consequently, I'm also thinking about taking the California bar in February no matter what happens. I want my cake and eat it too, or at least I want to keep my options open. Even if I do end up staying in New Jersey, I'm still deeply and permanently connected to California. I wouldn't want there to be a barrier to my being able to work there someday if I felt the desire, whether that desire occurred next year or thirty years from now.

In the meantime, with my teeth all clean I'm planning to head soon back up to Boston, where I'm sure I DON'T want to stay. Nice place to have spent some time and get an education, but it's clearly not the place for me to settle down. Why I don't even have a dentist there...

I think my winter vacation is over... Today my friend and I got together to make progress on our moot court brief. This pain was entirely self-inflicted since it's an extracurricular activity we volunteered for. True, it's interesting and even potentially "fun" in a geeky, law-student kind of way. But it's not quite as much fun as doing nothing but watch tv all day. Unfortunately, those idle tv-watching days seem numbered. And they seem to be numbered "0." Over the next few days I need to finish organizing my room (the good news is that I can at last find the floor) and work on several projects for my journal (again with the self-inflicted "fun"). At this point I blow things off at my peril.

On the upside, however, I discovered about an hour ago that classes start on Tuesday and not Monday as I'd originally thought. And posted on my blog. My apologies therefore to anyone who wrote down the wrong information as a result... (but at least the mistake wasn't the other way around).

When I saw Huey Lewis last week after his Chicago performance in the role of lawyer Billy Flynn, I gave him a copy of the "Federal Rules of Evidence."

"If you're gonna be a lawyer," I joked, "You're going to need to know this stuff."

Somewhat parallel to this, I introduced him to the friend with me. Of all the ways I could have introduced my friend, I introduced him as a lawyer. Now, this made some sense: Huey knows I'm a law student, he was playing a lawyer, and I'd just teased him about "being" a lawyer. Introducing my friend in the legal context therefore seemed quite reasonable.

Even so, I could have introduced my friend as a recent law student. After all, that's kind of how I met him, as a fellow student. But because he'd just passed the bar, in my mind I gave him the promotion to "lawyer." Anyone can be a law student, but only people who pass the bar can be lawyers. Still, the label didn't quite make sense because my friend isn't practicing as a lawyer, nor does he seem to have any plans to ever be one. Does that matter? Do you only get to be called a lawyer if you work as a lawyer? Or is being a lawyer a somehow unavoidable state of being?

Contrast "lawyer" to "law student." I have been a law student for two and a half years. It doesn't just define what I do all day – it defines me. Some of this is because being a law student is not a 9-5 activity. Rather it tends to drip into all sorts of areas in my life. There are few, in fact, that aren't affected by my current law student state. But I like that about law school. I like that my entire existence is being put towards this incredible project of learning as much as I can, of thinking about the big issues, of improving myself to become the best and most potent person I can be. And I like how people respond to it when I tell them I'm a law student. The reaction is almost universally positive. I'm a student, first of all, and being a student conjures up all sorts of positive visions of learning and discovery and potential that people like to get behind and support. Plus as a law student people tend to also think that I'm smart, and that's always a good thing.

Being a law student has been a fantastic luxury, and I'll miss it when I'm no longer one. But that's not really the problem. The problem is one of nomenclature: if I'm not a law student anymore, then what am I?

Let's assume that I take and pass the bar without problem. Let's presume that I take a typically "lawyerish" job as a litigator. Does that make me a lawyer? Does it so singularly define my existence? It's just a job, right? Like being a webmaster was? Being a webmaster was what I used to do for a living. But it wasn't me. And yet I feel that once I graduate, once I no longer have "law student" to define me, people will instead look to define me with the lawyer label.

Unfortunately, it's not nearly as good. Whereas people smile with friendly nods at law students, they cringe and make crude jokes about lawyers. While being a lawyer can consume one's life more than even being a law student can, it seems to do so without the rewards or learning and discovery and potential. It just seems to consume it.

I can hardly say I'm excited by this prospect. I do not want to become a well-paid professional shell of a person. I do not want to feel that with my three years of fun behind me I now must get serious, and that being serious involves being so consumed by a profession that it swallows up any speck of potential to actually do some good.

It's not to say I don't want to work as a lawyer. I did pursue this education with the idea that the credential could allow me to use this particular profession as an avenue for making a difference. It's more that I don't want my incredible project of learning as much as I can, of thinking about the big issues, of improving myself to become the best and most potent person I can be to grind to a halt the minute they hand me my JD. I want to keep working on these things forever.

What do you call a person like that?

Classes begin tomorrow, but lots of people are back at school today getting ready.

It's been a strange afternoon for me. In some ways everything is familiar. But in many ways I feel like a stranger.

For instance, I can't believe how many people I don't even recognize. There's an entire class of 1Ls and lots of 2Ls I didn't meet last year, but who now all will be in my classes. Meanwhile my mind keeps playing tricks on me, as I keep expecting to see all the people I used to see last semester. "Hey, that's-- oh, of course it's not..."

And then there's the bathrooms, which have been redone. This is a nice change, but also a little concerning because some of them have been reallocated (eg, ladies' rooms may no longer be ladies rooms) and I'm a little concerned about blundering into the wrong one out of old habit.

Today I also finally got my locker assignment. I'd had the same one for the first two years, but 3Ls get their own elsewhere (actually I effectively had my own before, since the person I was sharing with never bothered to use it, but now I got to have my own officially to myself). I'm used to having lockers in the basement (high school, Bucerius, even earlier years at BUSL) but this one is in the deepest bowels of the basement in a semi-darkened room. As I tentatively crawled the corridors looking for it, I suddenly felt like I was in a teen horror flick. Or at least some common adolescent nightmare, as I struggled to find my locker. (I did manage to find it eventually. The question, however, is whether I'll be able to manage to find it again...)

Meanwhile half my classes have already assigned homework, and tonight will be spent reading it. BU is quickly feeling like BU again...

Edit: It's also looking like BU again. While the Bucerius building was much more aesthetically pleasing than the BUSL one, I'd forgotten about the view. I'd written the above during the day but was still at school after the sun set. As I was leaving the view from the window caught my eye: the blinking Boston skyline and the shimmering Charles River, all laid out before me. I definitely don't seem to be in Germany anymore...

Edited subsequently a little more as well.

Have you ever watched Extreme Makeover: Home Edition and wondered how these poor families would ever manage to pay the taxes on these enormous "renovations?"

I have.

It never made sense to me that these people would be able to accept all this without incurring an unaffordable tax liability.

Anyway, I've often wondered about it. But wonder no more: it's explained in my tax casebook*!

"To avoid tax consequences, ABC 'leases' the home for a short period and pays the 'rent' in the form of home improvements. Lawyers advised the recipients that no taxes are owed, claiming, that the payments fall under the exception of section 280A, which permits the rental of homes for 15 days with no tax consequences. Paying no taxes on the receipt of so much largesse just seems too good to be true."

That's all the book says, at least that we've gotten to so far. I do get the impression, though, that the authors don't think so much of ABC's strategy.

Meanwhile, the following paragraph is also amusing:

"The first Survivor winner Richard Hatch took an entirely different approach. He simply failed to report his million dollar winnings. He must have assumed that all IRS employees were among the 100 people in the United States who did not watch the finale of the show. But he was wrong.

Anyway, if all that isn't interesting enough, apparently tomorrow we're also studying George W. Bush's 2004 tax return.

* Federal Income Taxation: Principles and Policies, Fifth Edition by Michael J. Graetz and Deborah H. Schenk. Foundation Press, 2005. (Although for reasons I don't understand there are also copyright dates ranging from 1940 to 2002. Go figure.)

I'm currently sitting in Antitrust. How did this happen? I'm not even enrolled in this course! For the second time this year I've been induced to try out a class I wasn't intending to take for silly reasons. This time the reasons are slightly less silly, and it worked out well the last time, so I figured, what the hell...

What the hell indeed. What happens if I like the class? I'd have to drop something. But what?

- Telecom? It would make my schedule much nicer to not have this single MW class. But I've always wanted to know this kind of stuff.

- Tax? This is probably the most gratuitous course in my schedule, but I really like the professor and the casebook. It would be nice to dispose of the Friday morning classes, but I think I'd miss it if I didn't have it.

- Trademark? Given my IP predilection, I don't think dropping this course would be possible. It would also remove any chance of fullfilling the IP concentration.

- Crim pro? Perhaps??? I was all set to take it, but maybe this is the course to weigh Antitrust against. It's similar in my schedule (a TTh class) but on that basis Antitrust is better because it comes earlier in the day when I'm more functional.

Oh well. I'll go to everything and then decide tomorrow.

Title changed on edit.

My little frolic and detour into Antitrust seems to have ended. I like my classes just as they are.

Though I've heard good things about the Trial Advocacy class, I've definitely decided not to do it in favor of the Criminal Procedure. And who was I kidding? Crim Pro is so the class for me… It would be a disgrace to my civil libertarian cred if I didn't do it. Plus the prof is really good (he's from BC, and comes highly recommended from people I know at BC), and has been raising in class all the right issues. This week has mostly been introductory material (the issues as opposed to the cases) and I'm sure it will get more intense from here, but it will be worth it.

Trademark class is fine, and I like my tax class. My telecom class meanwhile has morphed from a lecture to a three-person seminar. This change is ok with me, but I'm nervous someone is going to make the class disband (in which case perhaps I go back to Antitrust?). So far though there have been a lot of assurances that we can go forward as is. There are some definite upsides to this situation: it will be a more intensive learning environment, and we'll do a paper rather than an exam. That last part is good because the exam had been scheduled the day after another one in a week where there would have been three. In theory with the paper I may gain some schedule flexibility. On the other hand, this class is going to end up being a lot more work. On top of the paper I'll HAVE to do all the work, since it will be particularly conspicuous if I haven't. On the other, other hand, however, I'll end up learning more. And that's good, right?

In the meantime, here is a pretty picture of my lovely schedule:

Note that it does not include when I'm supposed to get everything else done I need to. January will suck utterly and completely in particular as I simultaneously try not to fall behind in my classes, edit two papers, write a moot court brief, organize a colloquium, and perhaps even apply for some jobs. And don't forget the necessary scratching of that incessant blogging itch…

I'm spending this weekend slogging through the drafting of a moot court brief. It's extremely painful and arduous, and it makes me wonder what I was thinking by signing up to do this kind of thing for a living…

I am, however, incredibly well-organized. Vastly more organized than I've ever been on any of these sorts of projects in law school before. Rather than having printouts of articles and cases strewn about, I have them all nicely collated in a binder, replete with tab labels for easy consultation.

I credit my time spent in Germany for this work-flow transformation. I've noticed that Europeans in general – hell, probably anyone not American – have distinctive cultural habits in how they organize the papers in their lives. Lots of plastic folders – and I mean LOTS of plastic folders (no papers are ever NOT in plastic folders…) – and sometimes cute little binders and such.

Yes, Americans do use binders and folders. And some Americans are naturally very tidy in their organizational skills. But not so universally, and not quite in the same way. The binders and folders don't look the same. They don't even FEEL the same. That certain meticulousness for handling these kinds of papers happens much more instinctively in the tactile world of European paper products than in the American one.

Still, having noted the habits, I tried out adopting some of them while I was in Germany. In particular I got a bunch of single-subject binder-folders. Report folders, we might call their rough equivalents in the US, although these necessarily required the papers be hole-punched rather than pinched between those plastic spines of their distant American cousins. And they were cheaper, meaning that people used them more often than they would in the US. Including me! I organized almost all my papers in these tiny little plastic binders that only cost 25 cents each at Budni. And as soon as I'd done so I felt this amazing sensation of bliss, as my papers were now all very orderly and not in their usual state of dog-eared semi-confusion.

I have decided that this sort of fastidiousness should be continued even though I'm back in the US, albeit in a more American idiom using American paper products and such. (I couldn't use European ones anyway since they are all designed for A4 paper.) As a result: my moot court binder. It's truly impressive, if I do say so myself.

I wonder though how long I can keep up this new-found neatness. Perhaps indefinitely? However, I worry that though my personality may finally be ready to permanently absorb this new tendency, it will run into conflict with another part of my personality, namely cheapness. For those lovely labels I used on my binder – those lovely labels that enable that incredibly convenient easy case consultation – were made with the most flimsy of sticky paper tabs that are bound to rip, tear, spindle, and/or self-mutilate in the slightest of breezes. But I used them because I already had them lying around, and I am too cheap to buy new ones before the old ones are used up. The fact that they will completely and imminently self-destruct and consequently thoroughly undermine my noble attempts at organization is not a fact that I choose to acknowledge the existence of. Besides, not only am I cheap but I'm also lazy: buying new ones would have involved leaving the house, and I don't wanna…

Anyway, these tabs of questionable quality came from Germany. How could I go wrong with that kind of European pedigree? Apart from the fact that they were purchased at Wal-Mart, of course…

My day ended up sucking for a number of reasons I'm not inclined to go into at the moment. However, to give you some sense of the general crappiness endured, I'll leave you with the following sentences:

+ Your dysfunction does not entitle you to yell at me, and

+ I hope eating rancid peanut butter is not fatal.

All in all, a banner day...

The moot court brief is done and mailed off. It might even be decent. We'll find out in a month (or so) after it's been scored.

It was a little aggravating though. The submission rules were extremely precise. Except when they were extremely ambiguous. Sometimes on the same point… I don't think we'll lose any points for not dotting any proverbial i's properly, but then, I've never done one of these competitions before so who knows. (I've done moot courts before, but all intramural. This is the first time I've done an extra-mural one.)

I don't want to talk too specifically about the material right now because we haven't been scored yet, and they're supposed to be graded blindly. But in February when it's all over and done with I hope to. In certain ways it was an interesting exercise, the brief writing.

Anyway, this week is for catching up on all the things avoided while we cranked it out. Next week we'll prepare our oral arguments, and then spend the remaining time practicing.

Stay tuned…

One of the things that upset me last week was finding out that the colloquium I've worked so hard on has been cancelled. I suppose the most upsetting thing was that I was not consulted in making the decision, which strikes me as a little strange seeing how I was the Colloquium Director. I'm also tremendously disappointed. Not only is all the effort I put in now down the drain with nothing to show for it, but a really cool event now isn't going to happen.

I am not entirely sure that this result was inevitable. We'd finally started turning a corner on getting some of the logistics together, and I had complete confidence in my ability to put together an event. (I've done things like this several times before.) On the other hand, the production of our journal was starting to get impacted, and it's possible that these resulting complications may have been too difficult to surmount.

Still, although it is nice to get my cycles back, I nevertheless think that this was something we could have pulled off - and would have been glad we did.

Back before I had any idea what law school would be like, when I was still living in California, I decided that for a successful law school experience I should make sure that my professors all knew my name right away. I decided this would be best achieved if I were conspicuously labeled, so I thought about how best to do that.

In the end I opted to get a hat with my name on it. But from where? It's not like you can just walk into any store and get a hat with "Cathy" spelled out on it. So I thought about getting it custom made, but all the hat shops I found wanted $30 to do it, and there was no way I was going to pay $30 to execute on this admittedly silly idea.

But then I found this tiny little one-man shop in a South Bay strip mall that normally made custom uniforms for little league teams and such. He had a drawer full of blank hats that cost about $7. I picked out a blue one, and then paid about 50 cents (10 cents per letter) to have some nice, yellow block letters ironed onto it. He did an expert job - aligning all 5 letters neatly and trimming down the serifs so that all the letters would fit. And it the whole thing only ended up costing me about $8.

But once I arrived at school for the beginning of my 1L year I discovered that not only was it not at all difficult for my professors to learn my name without the aid of my hat, but the name they preferred to use was "Ms. Gellis." Helping them all immediately learn that my name was Cathy was therefore of only marginal utility.

Until today, two and a half years later…

The other day my crim pro professor (who, being from a different school, had never met me before this semester) cold called on me. I ignored him, and not just because I wasn't prepared… I ignored him because he called me "Catherine," and it just doesn't occur to me to respond to that name. I've spent my entire life eschewing its inherent formality and insisting on going by Cathy. So even if I were to decide it might be nice to be a Catherine for a change, I'm just not conditioned to respond to it. When people say "Catherine," it's always several moments that pass before I eventually look around bewilderedly and ask, "Oh, you mean me?"

Fortunately, I had the perfect fix for this problem, and today when the professor called on me I was ready. And I don't just mean because I'd actually done (most of) the reading.

It was actually kind of a ream that he called on me at all, since he'd also called on me Tuesday. But I think he wanted to refer to something I'd said in an earlier class. "Catherine, what do you think about this?" he asked. There was a pause before he found me sitting up in the back row. "There you are. You usually sit in the front row, but I see you back there."

"Yes, and do you see my hat?"

"The hat that says 'Cathy'?"

"Yeah."

"I guess this means that I should call you 'Cathy' and not 'Catherine,' huh?"

"Right."

"Did you wear that hat today just for me?"

"Yep."

"Really!" I think he was touched.

Anyway, I still had to answer the question. And I imagine I'll have to answer more questions as the semester goes on. In fact, I suspect he'll make a particular point to call on me, now that he knows who I am. And now I'll have no excuse to ignore him, since he'll be using the right name.

But other than that, my plan worked perfectly.

Well, I was right. January has turned out to be a taxing month, and it's taking a visible toll on my blog. I don't feel like I'm writing particularly well these days. Words just don't seem to flow nicely. I want to keep blogging anyway because I think the exercise will help loosen up the works, but on the other hand, I don't want to litter my blog with semi-literate crap. As it is I think I've been overdoing it with the light posts and have not posted enough meaty, thoughtful posts in recent weeks. It is much harder to do them, although not because I don't have anything to say. I actually have several ideas for serious posts, but I find they require more attention than I'm able to give them. The more serious the subject, the more important it is that I not write sloppily, and it's just been hard to find enough time to tackle such a subject properly. Or at least with enough time to edit it so I can make sure that I don't post something I regret. Especially when the words haven't been coming out smoothly I find myself much more nervous about blogging poorly. Which just makes me more tense so it's more difficult to write. So I don't write, and it makes me more tense…

It is one of the paradoxes of law school, that the busier I am the more I need to make time to write, even if it is at the expense of something else. When I don't do it, the mental gears start to seize up and it's hard to get through my other work. Blogging helps keep my brain working smoothly, and that's important for everything I need to do.

I've decided not to worry too much about trying to find a job while I'm still in law school. While the lack of an anticipated source income is a concern, my larger concern is that my education - which I've devoted three years and tens of thousands of dollars to pursuing - has been repeatedly undermined by the recurrent distraction of needing to find a job. To that I say, "Enough." And unlike my first two years, when I had a very specific need to have a job right after school let out for the summer, I currently have more breathing room. What with the bar, I have no plans to work before September anyway. So this year I intend to ride out my remaining semester 100% dedicated to the work, and opportunity, I have before me.*

Still, every so often I hear about something too good to pass up. Last night I applied to one of those positions. I feel a little stupid since I applied at the very end of the application period (I meant to apply as soon as I heard about it, but best laid plans and all that…), but I still met the deadline. It's a job I'd absolutely love to have, a complete fruition of my aspirations in coming to law school. I suspect I'll have to beat other great and idealistic candidates off with a stick to get it, but if I can at least get an interview I'll be very happy. Thus I'm worried about not having applied sooner, but on paper I've got great credentials so we'll see what happens.

Today I realized though that it was a significant moment in my Great Change when I sent it off: it was the first grown-up REAL LAWYER job I've ever applied to. Even though applying to jobs is a detestable, stressful activity (I hate writing cover letters…) I almost found myself feeling empowered with this one in a way that I'd not felt with any of the summer jobs I'd applied to any other year. With them, I always felt so humble. "You guys are the lawyers… Is there anything I can do to help?" But now, *I'LL* be the lawyer. *I'LL* get to do real work.

I find that prospect incredibly exciting. I think that means I'm ready.

* I also didn't even bother trying to do a job search from Germany due to it being completely impractical and seeing how being in Germany was all about being in Germany.

Several blogs have been discussing the enormous expense of law school and questioning whether students are making an intelligent financial choice by going to law school. The concern is whether students' resulting earning power will be enough to pay off their debt. It's a fair question, but on its own too simple to evaluate the overall wisdom of going to law school because it reduces the benefit of law school to the singular purpose of acquiring a high-paying job.

It's not to say that money isn't important. I myself would really like it if I had enough money to pay off my law school debt so that I could have more options with fewer encumbrances post-graduation. But I would still not want to make acquiring money my number one priority. Other things matter more.

There are students, I think, who do consider making money to be the most important thing and chose law school largely because of its perceived benefit to their earning power. These are the people who need to be most concerned about whether it truly is in their financial interests to choose this path, since if law school ends up being more of a financial liability than an asset, it will end up having been a giant waste of time and money for them with no other returned value.

But for the people who went to law school for something bigger, I think this bottom-line analysis is too limited. There is more to get out of the experience than a salary, and that something more may itself be worth the cost.

For me, I went to law school because I wanted the education. I wanted to learn as much as I could, in the best environment I could manage. And I did this because I wanted to make a difference in the world. Not to make a zillion dollars - I could have stayed in the tech sector if that was all I cared about - but to become equipped to do something important (at least something more important than I felt I was able to accomplish staying within the tech sector). It was going to cost what it was going to cost, and *not* going, to me, would have cost even more.

I've also always had the sense that if you do things you care about, the money will follow. My experience has born this out - it's how I ended up in the tech sector in the first place. In the course of pursuing my passions - namely, an interest in mass media - I ended up learning the skills necessary to have a career in Internet media. I didn't learn them because I was gunning for those nice Silicon Valley tech salaries; I just followed my passions and things fell into place along the way.

But I saw many other people who, once the boom got going, got into technology solely because of the promise of a good salary. These then were the people who were most negatively affected when those jobs dried up. It wasn't just that it was more difficult for them to switch skillsets and adapt to new opportunities; they had to get over their sense of betrayal. Hadn't they done what they needed to get a good job? So what happened?

Nobody likes losing their job. I didn't either. And it's not a bad thing to want to be financially comfortable. What IS a bad thing though is to get deluded into believing there's any guarantees. At least as far as money is concerned. You can't bank on the certainty of salaries, but you can bank on yourself. If you do the things you like to do, that interest you, that inspire you, your choices can pay off, and often in more ways than one.

I ended up breaking my policy of not looking at my grades by looking at the ones that came from Bucerius. I wish I hadn't: I found that being aware of them made me much more petty and preoccupied about them than was constructive. They don't even count for my BU GPA, but I found myself sucked into worrying about each and every one, making sure it was fair, getting annoyed when it wasn't…

I was induced to do this because at Bucerius, unlike at BU, you could appeal grades and it seemed a little irresponsible to me not to at least look at them to see if such an appeal were necessary. For the most part I decided not to bother with an appeal. One grade sucked, but I knew I did poorly on the final so it was probably somewhat fair. Some grades were very nice (turns out I did do as well on my International Commercial Transactions exam as I thought), and most were sort of blah in the middle. Not bad blah, per se, just blah and not worth the angst of trying to nudge up a tick.

The grade for the German Law Survey course was (and is) a source of great annoyance, however. I liked the class, material-wise, because it was interesting to be exposed to all sorts of aspects of German law. It wasn't a class where one could develop any particular expertise in it, but it was nice to get some insight into how German law worked. The problem was that, from a logistical standpoint, the class was impossible. There were 8 subjects spread over about 6 lecturers. No one professor had any ownership of the course, and no two professors taught their material the same way. Some gave a few clues about what they'd look for on the exams, but it was still vague and uneven. For some subjects we were apparently to walk through an IRAC analysis (based on one two-hour lecture), while for others we were to just have an overall sense of what was going on. And until we saw the exams themselves, we didn't know which was which.

We were told that we only had to do the exams for 6 of the subjects so we didn't have to study for all 8, but I decided to study for all 8 anyway since I had no idea what each subject's exam question(s) would be like. It turned out it was a good thing I did, because I completely blanked on criminal law (whose lecture(s) I had attended) and had to do competition law instead (whose lectures I did not attend, but for which I'd found good notes to study from). It was a mess and ultimately one of the hardest courses I'd ever had to study for in law school. For most other classes the material blends together into one whole. It's not so important, for example, to explicitly study the second week's worth of lectures for the final, because chances are that material has been rolled into later material. Not so for German Law, where each class served as it's own discrete source of exam material. Meaning that you needed to attend, understand, and meticulously study each and every class's worth of material, with no idea or real ability to tell which parts would appear on the test.

Sensing that this class was going to turn out to be a logistical disaster, I tried to take it P/NP. Let's just worry about learning what I can and not get distracted by the administrative aspect. Unfortunately I couldn't do that because I had to take at least 6 courses for grades, and at the time of the add/drop deadline for this particular course (when grading option selections were also due) I didn't know that I'd be able to get into a 7th class. It turns out that I did, but at that point I couldn't change the grading option. The problem is that at Bucerius classes don't all begin and end at the same time. They have staggered starts throughout the semester, so each course has its own deadlines. Unfortunately that makes it impossible for students to plan prudently because they don't know which classes they will end up taking. I have discussed this problem with the school, and hopefully they'll change the policy for subsequent years so that students are not penalized for their inability to prognosticate, but this year we were not so fortunate.

The result for me was that I did well on a couple of the exam parts and abysmally on some others. OK, fine, that's the way the chips (annoyingly) fell. But my torts exam part was an enigma, with a mediocre grade that seems completely detatched from any realistic measure of my understanding of the material. I fully expected it to be the one subject that would give me the least trouble. I'd studied the material in another class, I'd even gone so far as to blog about it as a study mechanism… if there was one thing I was going to take away about German Law, it was how they deal with torts. Still, the exam came back with a B. A single solitary B with no explanation whatsoever about why that was a fair grade. While all the other exams had some sort of comments on them, this one had nothing. Nothing to say what was wrong, nothing to say what was missing… nothing at all. So of course I appealed it, but it was really difficult to base the appeal on anything since there was nothing to base an appeal on! I was forced to rely on ethos to say that it was likely that I understood the material, and without any other feedback there was no reason to doubt it.

It didn't work. They refused my appeal, and I have no idea why. Nor do I have any idea what was wrong with the exam. I could have a gigantic gap in my understanding of German tort law (which the B grade would seem to suggest) yet I have absolutely no idea what it might be.

Anyway, this brief foray into checking grades has further assured me that I'm better off ignoring them. They are of questionable value in measuring anything useful, and an unnecessary, unhelpful, and unpleasant intrusion into one's education. I had a great time in Germany and the program was a great addition to my curriculum. But the experience will forever be negatively tinted by these frustrations. I would have been much better off if I'd never let them enter the equation.

Edit 2/13: Apparently in reconsidering my torts exam grade I was given comments, which I received last week. Sadly legible comments are still somewhat lacking. I was able to make out the criticism that I wasn't specific enough, but I'm still not entirely sure what to make out of that. In this particular case I don't know what more I might have said, although I suppose there are some suggestions encapsulated in the other cryptic squiggles that came along with my returned essay...

On the one hand my life seems simpler than normal: just four classes, a moot court competition, two journal projects, bar exam applications, job hunting, and other miscellaneous tasks. Well, for me this is simple…

The problem is that things are leaking out beyond the timeslots I've set out for them. The journal stuff, for example, is taking eons longer than it should. As a result I've been missing classes while I try to get it done. But because it's the Project That Just Won't Go Away it's ending up being a lot of classes. Or at least it feels like a lot of classes. It's mostly Crim Pro that's taking the hit, although sometimes Tax does too. As a result I'm getting a little behind. Hopefully not TOO behind, but some catch-up will be involved for both. On the upside I'm only about a week behind in Tax, and I'm not behind at all in Telecom Law (mostly because it would be really conspicuous since there's only three people in the class), and I just have a tad to catch up on in Trademark.

But in the meantime I did manage to do something new and exciting today: I participated in a German conversation group with some friends at school. It was a little disheartening though; I was terrible. My active vocabulary is like swiss cheese. I couldn't even remember days of the week or pronouns. On the upside, my passive vocabulary was pretty good. The other people were fairly fluent, yet I could understand probably 85% or so of what they were saying. So adding to my list of Things To Do: get out my German book and do some review…

Oh, and plan a trip to Germany. Apparently I need a tune-up.

(It also wouldn't be such a bad idea to swing by France too.)

I had to write a two-page essay on my time in Germany in order to get credit for doing the Bucerius program. I'm not sure there's much in it that I haven't already blogged about, but why waste a perfectly good piece of writing...

Edit 9/23/08: Actually, it was not a perfectly good piece of writing. Re-reading it today it was pretty terrible. So I've edited it a bit in order to be able to link back to it from subsequent posts referencing Bucerius without feeling *too* embarrassed by it...

There is something about actually living in a foreign country for over a month that's a fundamentally different experience than merely being a tourist there for a lesser duration. As a tourist the place you visit is put on display for you, whereas as a resident it engulfs you as your home.

Hamburg was a nice place to call home. The city is very orderly: clean, safe, and easy to traverse. Well, at least by mass transit, it is; the streetplan is really quite labyrinth. It was a happy day when I finally could figure out how to get to other parts of the city than just home and school…

I shared an apartment with another girl in the international program. It was a nice apartment in an older building in the Eimsbuettel section of the city. It had been modernized and had a full kitchen, a bathroom with shower, and we each had our own rooms.

The girl we rented it from was a medical student who spent the term in Australia, and she also lent me her bike, which was fun to ride around town (except for the labyrinth streets - see above). Hamburg is an easy town to bike around - everyone does it, there's tons of places to lock up bikes, and you can even ride in special lanes on the sidewalks.

My days were mostly spent at school, even on weekends. (It was the only place where I had Internet access.) The building was open to us 24/7 with our card key. It was a nice building, with verdant grounds and a renovated interior. Classrooms were outfitted with some of the latest AV technology. The building also had a cafeteria that served reasonably edible and affordable lunches (although perhaps not as edible or affordable as the University of Hamburg cafeteria, where we could also eat at a discount). [Edit 9/23/08: There has since been a renovation to the campus, which turned the old cafeteria into a coffee shop and added a new one in the addition.] Other cheap places to eat were the "Essen und Trinken" food hall at nearby Gaensemarkt and the various Doener-kebab shops around town. There was nothing in the immediate vicinity of the school, which was a problem on weekends when the school was closed, but the Dammtor train station was an easy walk in one direction and the Gaensemarkt area in the other. Gaensemarkt also had a town square area where various civic events would take place, like political rallies (I saw the one for the Green Party, but managed to miss the one by the Nazi Party…) and seasonal markets.

It was not necessary to speak German to get around town, although it helped. When I first got there I hardly knew any German, and it was weird being functionally illiterate. For instance, I could see signs bearing admonitions not to do things, but I couldn't figure out what it was that I wasn't supposed to do… There were also smaller shops, like bike shops, where it was hard to do business without knowing German. German was not required at all, however, for anything connected to school. All the academic staff, faculty, and students spoke English. The German students in particular spoke incredibly fluent English, including figures of speech and slang.

But there were opportunities to learn the local language. The school arranged for several series of classes on-site and negotiated discounts with another language institute in the neighborhood for additional ones. I also did my own self-study and review. The result of all this effort was that by the time I left, I could function in German when I needed to.

This I did on top of all my regular law classes, all but one of which were in English. The way the international program worked is that all the international students were offered a choice of about 12 courses to take over the course of the semester. In theory they followed three scheduling patterns, running either the first half of the term, the second half, or over both halves. (All classes were worth two ABA credits, so the ones that ran longer just met less frequently.) In reality however they tended to begin and end on a staggered basis.

Most classes were taken with other international students (there were about 70, about two-thirds of whom were American and the other third from other countries around the world), but a few were taken with other German students. "International commercial transactions" was taught to both groups, and I also did a French class (in French) and a moot court class (in English, dealing with the Vis Moot Court for international arbitration) from the regular German students' course catalog.

The class schedule was a little complicated - classes wouldn't necessarily meet at the same time, week by week - but they tended to cluster around the middle so that people would have time to travel on the end. Lots of people traveled quite a bit - my roommate was gone practically every weekend - but I ended up only taking two trips: a quick one to Ireland before I came home, and a long weekend one to Poland. That last trip was particularly profound for me as I went to the town where part of my family is from. It made me feel particularly rooted to Europe in a way I hadn't before, walking in the footsteps of my great-grandma (for whom I'd been named) 100 years after her.

There was also a school-sponsored trip to Berlin, although I didn't go on it. In retrospect I probably should have - it sounded like a good trip - but I did other things to connect with the local people I was spending my time with. Every week the school would have various speakers and other events at the school. Some of these events were in English, which made it easy to attend, but sometimes I went even when they were in German. One such event was a showing of a Holocaust propaganda movie, something allowed in Germany only when it could be presented in an educational way. It was interesting: I couldn't understand a word of what I was hearing, and yet I understood plenty.

I also got involved with extracurricular activities, like playing soccer. I played with the men in pick-up games and on the women's team they sent to the inter-scholastic sports competition at another private college in Germany, WHU. Schools from all over Europe sent teams there for a weekend of sports and partying. I took a pass on the partying, but it was nice to use it as an opportunity to get out of Hamburg and see a bit more of Germany - though not like a tourist. It was better than being a tourist, because rather than seeing Germany through its museums, you could come to know Germany through seeing how Germans actually lived.

Classes were cancelled yesterday for the holiday, so instead in the afternoon I went to MIT for an alumni function. A Cal alumni function. Alums in the area had been conscripted to help review applications for a leadership scholarship for incoming Cal students.

It was an interesting thing to do, and not something I'd ever done before. The only somewhat comprable experience I could think of was perhaps grading the journal write-on competition last year. The exercise gave me some insight into what applications must look like to admissions committees, along with related insights for things I should do to make sure I stand out the next time I have to submit an application somewhere. All the students whose applications we were looking at were bright, accomplished students, but some came across better than others. Each application had an essay component, and all of them were reasonably well-written to some degree. But some really did stand out. Sometimes it was because the student applicants had already found that nice, delicate voice in their writing that was evocative without being overbearing. And some stood out because they contained true insight into what leadership really is along with a solid understanding of how the student's experience had demonstrated it. And some applications exemplified both.

There was no set definition for leadership put forth by the scholarship organizers. It was left up to each candidate to define it for themselves and then explain how their experience related. But I was less impressed by those who simply talked about their years of being on student council as being the perfect illustration of leadership. In some ways I thought these students demonstrated the least grasp of what leadership was, as if they expected that by simply having attained these positions they had perfectly epitomized it.

It was the students who had done other things and could extrapolate from them what it was that exemplified leadership that were much more compelling applicants. Particularly the ones that recognized that leadership was not best reflected in simply asserting their own talents but rather through how they empowered others to assert theirs.

Of course, that could be my own bias. Other readers could value other things more, and I wasn't the sole reader of any of the applications (three people read each). Also there will be interviews for finalists before the scholarship is awarded. My understanding is that this process was designed to help narrow down the applicant pool.

But it's to the credit of the Alumni Association that I was able to be involved in the first place. I take my connection to my school very seriously, but it isn't always easy to stay connected to it, especially living so far away. Efforts like these to keep its alums connected and contributing serves everyone connected to that fabulous community.

Dated when written. Posted 2/26.

I'm a little concerned: I can't seem to find my passport. This is a problem, because I would like to use my passport in the near future. Plus I really like my passport. It has five more years of validity, it doesn't have an RFID chip in it, and it's got all sorts of neat stamps in it from all my recent travels. Those stamps currently include at least six different alphabets in it: Latin, Cyrillic, Thai, Cambodian, Hebrew, Japanese. So not only do I not want to have to go through the aggravation of replacing it, but I'll miss not having it as a souvenir of my life. (I even just got new pages for it and everything…)

What really bugs me, though, is that I shouldn't have lost it. My room may be a chaotic disaster, mostly because I have more stuff crammed into it than can be effectively organized, but one of the things that WAS organized was my passport. In other words, while I don't always have places to put things away, the passport DID have a place to be put away. It lived in a certain drawer. It's lived in that drawer for several years. I never have had to tear apart my room looking for it, because it has always been right there in that drawer. Except right now it's not, and I don't have the slightest idea why (or where it's gone to instead).

The bigger problem, however, is that all of a sudden I generally can't seem to keep track of my stuff. This bothers me, not just because I don't like losing my stuff, but because I'm not a flake and normally I'm really good at keeping track of my stuff. But my life situation keeps straining my ability to do so. Think about it: there have been times in recent months when I've had my possessions in at least three states and two countries! (Or sometimes two states and three countries...) Anway, who can keep track of THAT??? I've got things at my mom's, things at my dad's… Plus all this traveling… It's all really interfering with my ability to take a mental snapshot of where I am and what I'm doing when I put things down. And as a result I can't find things the next time I need them, since I lack any recollection of where I was when I last saw them.

Meanwhile, it's not just the passport I can't find. I also can't find a sleeping bag (It's huge! How can I lose THAT?) and a jacket. I THOUGHT I had both of them here with me at my mom's. But they are nowhere to be found. Instead I'm starting to fear that there's a vortex in my room somewhere, swallowing up all my things. Unfortunately it is the only theory that can really explain where they might have gone. I'm really at a loss to come up with any other alternative. Which is too bad, because if I could, I could probably also find them. But I can't…

Edit 3/1: I FOUND THE PASSPORT!!!! Yay! It had wandered off and parked itself under a bin on a shelf. WHY it decided to do that, I may never know. But upon retrieval I spanked it soundly and sent it to bed without dinner in punishment for its intransigence, and it is now back in its correct spot.

The moot court competition we've worked so hard to prepare for finally took place last week. It was the First Amendment Moot Court competition, and took place at Vanderbilt Law School and the First Amendment Center in Nashville.

We put in a lot of effort into the whole thing, and it was absolutely worth it. It may be one of the singularly most educational things I've ever done at law school. First we wrote a brief, and then after we sent it in we had about a month to work on our arguments. Although we briefed for the respondent we (as did everyone) had to argue both sides. Before the competition held six practice sessions, including four before a live bench, and continued to hone our arguments as we progressed through the competition.

The competition had us compete three times on the first day and once on the second day. Scores were then totaled and 8 teams (out of 39) continued on. Sadly we weren't one of those teams, although I suspect we were somewhat near the cusp. We generally felt we had done well, although admittedly not perfectly. I was more nervous for the first argument than I would have liked to have been, and the judges for our second argument seemed particularly tough nuts to crack. But the other arguments were strong and throughout we got some great compliments from the judges afterwards.

Both of us were commended for taking an unsympathetic government position and making it sympathetic (when we were arguing for the government, of course…). Mike was also commended for his excellent command of a very complicated case - I think he pretty much had every word of the majority, concurrence, and dissent, as well as any subsequent cases that referred to it, all queued up in his head.

My favorite compliment came from the entire panel of judges of one round who told me that I had a lot of "courage" (and "balls") for hanging in on a lot of tough questions. "You're a real fastball hitter," one said, which completely made my day. In truth I loved the questions. I much rather have a really tough panel than a quiet bench. It's in the silences when the nervousness sets in, but tough questions don't intimidate me - I love rising to the challenge.

Next week I think they'll send us our scores so we can get a better idea of where we may have come up short. My guess, having also watched the competitors from the finals, is that we may have been a little rough around the edges. Nothing too serious - had this been an actual appellate argument I think we would have done a perfectly fine job advocating for our client - but what the finalists had that we didn't necessarily was a certain polish and suaveness. The kind of calm, controlled, fluid presence I've been working on with my improv classes and the copyright and rhetoric class. I rarely had trouble knowing what needed to be said, or even how to spin it, but I wasn't always able to articulate it as smoothly as I know I'm ordinarily capable of when I'm feeling less nervous. It was like my brain would seize up a bit and the words wouldn't quite roll off my tongue so easily. Overall I think I'm vastly better at overcoming this than I was before law school, but it's something I want to keep working on.

Still, even though it's disappointing we didn't continue, it was a terrific experience. We both have a ton more confidence in our ability to do appellate advocacy, as well as a ton of experience that most people just don't have. I've now done 6 formal oral arguments (one from first year, one from last year, and then these four from last week), or 10 if I include the practice ones we did. I like it; I'd like to do it some more.

Further stoking our interest in continuing to do appellate advocacy is that we won Runner-Up Best Brief at the First Amendment Moot Court competition. It's a great honor we had to beat out 37 other teams for and a great validation of our efforts.

It's also nice to have some sort independent verification that we can write well. I take my writing very seriously (as does Mike, although he's not so serious about blogging…), and it's nice to have the affirmation that I actually can do it decently when I try.

Some things I think we did right in our brief included omitting any extraneous facts or arguments. Some briefs may have taken a more scattershot approach, throwing in any legal fact that may have seemed to lean in favor of the respondent's position. Whereas ours had two clear parts: one, that the prevailing case directly supported the respondent's position with a three-tiered explanation describing how, and two, that even if the Court for whatever reason chose to ignore precedent and choose an alternative approach, that the facts of this case would still support the respondent's position. (Admittedly, however, it may have been harder for those who had to argue for the petitioner to divide that argument so cleanly.) And we stayed focused on the bottom line: having the court affirm the lower court's decision. We didn't put anything in that wouldn't get the court to that point.

We also managed to temper the tone. It was really easy given the law in this area to go too "high-level" in our argument and end up writing a survey of the law instead of a persuasive document. To some extent we still had to write expositively, but we managed to rein it in and keep it tied to the argument. We also wrote the section headers so that if you read them straight through they would form a summary of the argument, and we did a decent job of proofreading the whole thing, since those stupid nits can undo you. I notice on re-reading that we apparently missed a Word-induced typo, but otherwise we did pretty well. Our Bluebooking is pretty good too.

Also, though it's not like I think this really had all that much to do with it, I'd made a kick-ass cover for the brief thanks to owning an install of Adobe Acrobat. I was able to find a cover page from a previous Best Brief and "updated" it so that it reflected the current case caption. Pretty clever…

Anyway, writing the brief was annoying and hard, but it's invigorating to know that we can do it well. It gives us a lot of confidence to go out and write them again.

You have no idea how glad I am that I will not have to be taking the MPRE this weekend. Knock it off at the earliest opportunity. Trust me on this...

(Just ignore my earlier kvetching; it all worked out, after all...)

I've got a pile of renewal notices from the ABA staring at me. I've blown them off for almost a year, refusing to rejoin in protest of their curriculum policy, which I find reprehensible.

I'm starting to wonder if this is the best course of action though.

1) Discounts. I think this is the weakest reason to join an organization, but it is a factor to consider. Ultimately there's very few discounts that I could benefit from, especially at this late renewal date, but one is a discount on the PMBR review. I think the discount is slightly more than the cost of ABA renewal, so there would be a savings overall, although very minimal. I'm also not comfortable with the idea of saving myself money at the expense of a principle.

2) Are my concerns best advanced by refusing to join? The ABA does a lot of stuff. Sometimes I think it performs a valuable service; sometimes I think it's a menace. In my rough estimation, it seems like it's recently been a menace more often than it was valuable, but when I thought it was valuable, I thought it was really valuable.

The fact of the matter is that the ABA is a large organization and it does command focus on the practice, perhaps effectively. Might it make sense to join and try to change it from within? Or would joining inadvertently send a message of acceptance to its more negative policies?

Right now my question is limited to whether or not to maintain my student membership. But soon they will come asking me to be a real-life grown-up member. What then? Should the answer change when the membership is no longer so easy to afford?

I suppose there's also the question of the networking value it could offer, of particular relevance right now since I don't have a job. But I wonder how great an advantage it truly provides. I once considered going to an IP-related event that was happening in San Francisco last year, when I was just a convenient BART ride away, but it was hideously expensive. There seemed to be no real advantage to being a student member at all.

Which raises the question of whether the ABA can actually satisfy any of my needs, now or in the future, and whether it's an unforgivable shortcoming if it cannot.

Edit 3/10: There's a thread on the Volokh Conspiracy about other objections to the ABA.

I went to see a former professor to get a refresher on some constitutional law concepts.

"You need this for your moot court paper?"

"No, that's done. I just want to be armed with the knowledge I'll need when I'm finally let loose in the world."

"Ah, well before that there's the bar..." and then he proceeded to give me a whole bunch of advice on how to deal with that. Unsolicited, although not unappreciated. I guess...

I guess it means that This Is Really Happening. And Soon. This formerly-hypothetical obstacle now looms in my future, between where I am now and anywhere I eventually hope to be.

We got our scores back from the moot court competition. It's a little hard to read too much into them: rounds where we got better comments (and compliments) ended up scored lower than the ones where we got more criticized; scores tended to drop over the course of the competition (suggesting that initial ones may have been inflated, because we're certain we were improving as we went forward); and someone who practically had every word of the leading case memorized somehow ended up getting dinged on "knowledge of the issues"…

But for the most part I'm ok with my scores. I can't quite tell where they fall in relation to the rest of the field, but objectively they do seem to suggest I have a certain competence at this.

The advice my professor gave me for the bar (particularly with respect to the subject of criminal procedure) was to know the cases. Really know them. The bar doesn't allow you to bring in outlines and notes, so it's entirely a memorization game.

Law school mostly isn't. But then again, in large part the law itself isn't either. You'd be tempting a malpractice verdict if you ever acted without double-checking the language of a statute or case you were relying on. On the other hand, it's good to have statutes and cases queued up in your head so that you can know what might be applicable without having to research an issue from scratch. But that large knowledge base is something built by experience - something law students just don't have very much of.

For law students, law school is a way to get a lay of the land. To understand generally how the law works, and to get some insight into how specific areas operate. But the sheer volume of material we are exposed to, and the wide variety of topics that are covered, prevent us from building up large mental libraries of law. Plus the binge-purge method of progressing through semester after semester also doesn't encourage a lot of long-term recollection.

Still, things do stick to some degree. I'm continually amazed how much actually has. Now that I have some idea of how the pieces all work together, things I'd learned earlier are constantly being recalled and reinforced as I see new ways to apply them.

But looking back on my education, I wish I'd made more of a point to memorize more. I feel like I generally put more emphasis in thinking about how the law worked than remembering the specific mechanics. Now, given a choice, I think it's better to err that way. There's no point in memorizing a lot of specific rules if you don't really understand the principles of how and why they work behind them - at least not in the American legal system (in civil law systems the opposite may be true, and students are often expected to remember chapter and verse of piles of statutes). But sometimes I still wonder if I would have found my legal studies easier if I'd made memorization more of a priority.

Edited 3/17.

I just got an email that the New York bar exam materials will be available next week. I wish they'd been available earlier; last week I had to do New Jersey's to meet the deadline for relatively cheaper enrollment fees, and it would have been nice to have been able to take care of both all at once.

For people unfamiliar with the bar, there are two parts to the application process - although some states deal with them separately. There is the actual signing up to take the test, and then there is the moral character application, or whatever the particular state happens to call it, where you have to document large swathes of your life and then the state checks you out to make sure you are "fit" to practice law. States usually request at least 10 years worth of addresses and previous jobs (some want more), and you can imagine what a headache it is to remember and research all of it.

Fortunately New Jersey only wanted 10 years worth, which meant I didn't have to dig all the way back through all my undergraduate years (although I think I'll have to in the future for some of the other states I'll be applying to). Also, thanks to the fact that a) until recently I rarely moved, b) the fact that I'm a packrat, and c) the Internet Archive I was able to get most of it together without too much trouble (though other states may be more difficult if they want more particulars). But it was a fairly unpleasant experience nonetheless.

The problem is, the exercise of gathering this information forced me to revisit a couple of jobs from early in my career that I would prefer to forget about, they were so unpleasant. I don't mean that they had annoyances - every job has its ups and downs, and I'm not such a prima donna that I expect complete vocational perfection. But I do expect to be treated with a modicum of respect, and sadly there were a handful of jobs years ago where it was missing.

What troubles me most when I think about them is how I allowed myself to be bullied by my bosses. In two of the most poignant examples, I worked for small companies, and reported directly to their founders. I wouldn't say that this situation is always a problem, but it is risky when there's no layer of bureaucracy to protect you from a difficult boss. Whether a job situation like this will work out is entirely dependent on how well the boss is able to communicate their expectations, and how much they value you. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say, "how much do they not irrationally undervalue you," since it would never seem to be in their interests to disempower their employees, yet for whatever reason that's what some of them do. At least that's what a few of them did to me.

In a way their behavior was so egregiously wrong as to almost be laughable. But my discomfort stems from a sense that I did not do enough to stand up for myself sooner. With hindsight I can see that the only way to deal with these jobs was to leave them, but it took me a long time to accept that it was absolutely, positively ok to do that. Necessary, even. And not at all my fault. How could it possibly be my fault that my salary showed up three weeks late every month? How could it possibly be my fault that my boss refused to read my emails and cancelled every meeting I made with him? How could it be my fault that he never accepted any of my technical explanations and always looked to my (male) colleagues to verify it?

These are examples from my French job, but the other few horrid jobs had similar strange examples of behavior by my boss that made it impossible for me to succeed at the job. In all these jobs it was just a matter of time before I was able to recognize the situation and stop hitting my head against the wall trying to do the impossible and make the situation different.

And, of course, I'm certainly not talking about all my jobs. As I got more experienced and more confident I was able to choose better situations from the outset and then navigate them successfully. But when I was young and naïve, I was vulnerable to wishful thinking about what I thought the job could be that often blinded me to the reality of what the job actually was.

I don't like thinking about that period because I don't like remembering how much these jobs really hurt. For the French job I remember the specific moment where I suddenly realized that I was showing the same pathology as a battered spouse: being too afraid to stand up for myself, then finally working up the courage to do so, only to back off when my boss through me enough of a bone that I could rationalize how things were going to somehow magically get better - when inevitably they wouldn't, and the cycle would repeat. It's not a time in my life I'm particularly proud of.

But I did ultimate break free, and that's good to remember, especially as I set off for a new career notorious for employer dysfunction. I am ok with working hard and long hours; I am ok with the work being hard. But I am not ok with being a psychic punching bag for disrespectful employers. I've already paid my dues on that score, and I'm not paying anymore. Because what experience has taught me is that I don't have to. There is nothing so wonderful about a soul-crushing job that can warrant putting up with it. When you're young and inexperienced it's hard to believe that you actually have a choice. But the gift of experience is being able to know for sure that you do.

Backdated to when I started writing this. Posted 3/25.

Remember when I said that I'd gotten involved the Vis Moot Court team at Bucerius? Well this week was one of the competitions - in Hong Kong.

Truth be told, probably a big reason why I got involved in the first place was that there might be the chance to go to Hong Kong. It's amazing how much work I'm willing to take on to satisfy my dromomania… Because to be honest, the original appeal wasn't the subject matter. The Vis Moot Court competition is a mock international commercial arbitration proceeding. What did I care about that? It's not like the word "commercial" gets my blood pumping. But "international" does, so I thought I'd go along for the ride.

It is really great that Bucerius is so open to the international students. We had our own self-contained program, but we were regularly invited to join the regular German students in all their activities. One of them was the moot court course, and parallel to that the chance to join the team. The problem, though, is that because our program was separate the schedule didn't dovetail very well with the German students' schedule. So when it came time to writing the memo, I didn't really contribute as much as I felt I really should have been able to. I did do a little and I suppose the final brief has a few of my fingerprints on it somewhere, but ultimately the German students did most of it because we just couldn't get the schedules to overlap enough so that I could effectively help.

I was a little disappointed. Not so much because I didn't get to do the work (because on the upside it meant I didn't HAVE to do the work) but because I felt like a free-rider who really hadn't earned her keep. So as I was getting ready to leave Germany I went by the office of the instructor organizing the team and apologized for not having done more, and figured with that we would part ways. But he was having none of it, and made it clear that if I wanted to (there was no obligation) I was welcome to join them when they argued in Hong Kong or Vienna.

So I went home and thought about it. And then January happened with its mind-boggling workload and then he and I lost touch for a while and I thought maybe that would be that. But then about a month or so ago everything started falling back into place, and I ended up booking a ticket.

Unfortunately the best fare I could find for an itinerary that didn't have me missing too much school didn't quite sync up with the competition schedule. I ended up getting there two days too early, and then had to leave today (the competition runs through Sunday). But still, it was absolutely worth it. Never mind the travel opportunity, it's been a phenomenally educational experience. I've realized, it's not the "commerciality" that makes it all interesting. In fact this competition has really nothing to do with the transactional lawyering and deal brokering activities whose tedium I fear. Rather, it's all about dispute resolution. Process. Advocacy. Internationality. All the things I really do find interesting. And even though I was only there for a few days, I was able to learn a ton about all of them through what I was able to observe.

For one, the whole exercise has made me more familiar with instruments for regulating private international law. Things like UNCITRAL and UNIDROIT and INCOTERMS and, of course, the CISG (UN Convention for the International Sale of Goods) make a lot more sense to me today than they did a year ago.

Secondly it was interesting to get a feel for how these kinds of proceedings actually work, should I ever find myself appearing in one. To an American law student "moot court" usually means appellate advocacy, and to be sure there are many skills applicable in both forums. Still, there are a few fundamental differences. One is that the arbitrators, unlike judges, themselves derive their authority to resolve the dispute from the consent of the parties. They either agreed to arbitration from the outset when they drafted their original contract, or they didn't object when one party brought an arbitration action against them. Another difference is that there is a bit less formality to the process: everyone sits throughout, there's no bailiff, and the actual process of the proceeding has more flexibility and fewer rules governing it. And, perhaps most significantly, the arbitration proceeding bears more hallmarks of a lower-court trial than an appellate one in that it is less about resolving an issue of law and more about resolving an issue of fact. Now there is law involved: the CISG, for instance, sets forth rules for whom is entitled to what. But what's subject to argument is how the instant facts conform to those rules, not for the tribunal to decide how the CISG should be interpreted.

The other fascinating thing in watching the arbitrations (I ultimately watched three rounds of them) was comparing how the culture of the law students participating affected how they performed. Some of the differences were subtle manifestations in body language. For instance, the Americans, primarily used to appearing before appellate panels, tended to be very stiff as we are taught to be in those circumstances. The Indian students meanwhile tended to make sharp finger gesticulations in ways that seem culturally familiar to them. But ultimately, of everyone that I watched (two German teams, two Australian teams, an American team and an Indian one), the Australians universally seemed most comfortable at the table, relaxed in their body language but forceful in their oral presentation.

The other main difference in culture affected how the law students attacked and presented the problem. The German students, as civil law students, are very comfortable with statutory language. They are used to parsing it (to a vastly greater degree than American law students ever have to), and they have much more faith in it. In other words, to a German student a rule is a rule; there's not much room around the edges to interpret it. Whereas for a common law student (those from places where the legal system was inherited from Britain) we're used to there being lots of fuzziness around those rules and so we tend to argue more holistically about how to clarify that fuzziness. The effect is that a German student is more likely to present an argument in stricter IRAC form: here's the rule, and here's how the facts support it. Whereas a common law lawyer may take a more global approach to it. Which is not to say that they avoid the rules - they certainly govern how the facts should be considered. But it was interesting to note how the American students brought up in their argument terms like, "burdens of proof," "duties of care," and "reasonable reliance," as these are the concepts that we so often use to tackle a legal problem. It is much less intuitive to a German student to approach it from this angle (although to Bucerius's credit their arguments did incorporate some more typically common law techniques, like raising at the outset a broader question of fairness and asking the tribunal to consider all subsequent points through that lens).

Even though I didn't participate in the arguments myself, I tried to make myself useful in other ways, offering critiques of the team's practice arguments and scooping out some of the other sessions to get a sense for other techniques and what the arbitrators were like. And if nothing else I did help the team learn how to correctly pronounce "Syracuse," the name of one of our competitors…

But coming away from the event I'm really aware of how much I like oral advocacy, in whatever form it comes in. If I wasn't before this semester, as a result of both moot courts I now realize that this is something I'd really like to do a lot more of.

It dawned on me that the other two times I've gone to Asia, the day I've arrived in the US I've been able to go see a Huey Lewis and the News concert. Well I got back this morning - NOW WHERE'S MY CONCERT????

Actually, it looks like a case of delayed gratification - they'll be touring this summer after all. Primarily in a double-bill with the band Chicago. I don't quite understand Huey's predilection for all things named Chicago, and it's making conversations on the fan board a little complicated, but I guess this could be interesting. I guess... HLN has at least promised concert-goers a full set, which is good, because I'd hate to go to a HLN show and have a Chicago one break out instead. I don't have anything against Chicago, but I'm not inclined to go out of my way to see them (which I clearly am willing to do with respect to the News).

But if I have any real objection to this proposed tour, it is that it kind of conflicts with the bar. Fortunately not too badly - it looks like I can see two shows before the bar and two right after it. But the really stupid thing is that they are doing two shows right here in Boston - BUT ON THE DAY OF THE BAR. And I'm not planning on taking the bar here.

Hmph. Some "bar band" they are...

Hong Kong was very nice, but now it's time to get down to business and get this law school thing behind me. The next month is going to be extremely intense: I have to get caught up in and outline three classes, as well as pass their exams; I have to write a paper for another class; and I have to edit another major paper. Plus I suspect there may be some more demands imposed upon me along the way, and I need to work around another upcoming trip (albeit a short one). I'll also need to finish up registering for the bar and generally getting the summer in order.

It would be nice in the course of all this to find a job, but I'm going to have to put that on the backburner. I'll do some searching, but I'm not going to drive myself crazy with it - there's just too much to get through in the upcoming weeks. In one sense it makes me nervous to put off, just because it would be nice to know what happens to me as of August. But on the other hand, I think it's just as well that I haven't looked too in-depth yet. Every day I learn more and more about what I think I'd like to do. It would have been stupid if I'd sewn up a job before I figured out what kind of job it was that I wanted.

So what I've decided to do is this: regardless of any job, I'll take the bar in New York and New Jersey. I may end up in the region anyway, but my fear is that if I move back to California before having taken those bars I may never come back. I always want to have living and working there to be an easy and available option for me, so this seems like a good plan to ensure that it will be. Also it seems like a good idea to do two bars this summer in order to up the odds that I'll at least be able to practice somewhere. If I did California it would involve putting all my eggs in a rather difficult basket, so this plan - taking two bars with just one study effort - seems more prudent.

But just as I want NY/NJ to always be an option for me, I also want California to be one as well. So my plan is to do the California bar in February as a matter of course. Granted this plan gets messed up if I end up needing to retake NY or NJ, but hopefully that won't happen. And I feel good with the idea of getting all of these horrible things done with as soon as possible so that I can get on with my professional life.

So this is the plan with regard to the bar and is not affected by any job I may happen to get before August. The problem is, what happens if by August I don't have a job?

The truth of the matter is that if I look at the situation calmly, it is better to have no job come August than the wrong job. It keeps me up nights, worrying that I might settle for an expedient paycheck and inadvertently derail my career from the outset. I've come too far and made too many sacrifices to allow that to happen, so I'll need to be on guard. The pressure the other way, of course, is money. My debt load is enormous (though fairly typical for a law student at a private school, and thankfully absent any undergraduate debt) but the good news is that I'm not completely destitute. I'd had a big chunk of savings that I never touched during law school. Instead I'd opted to take the maximum amount in loans and banked the cash for a rainy day - namely the gap between school and a job. In theory this strategy cost me some money in interest charges as the loan interest cost slightly more than earned interest on the savings, but the differential isn't too bad. Plus it hedged against uncertainty. The fact of the matter is that when I get out of school, I'll be able to start paying the loans off, job or no job. And that takes a ton of pressure off. It also means that if I end up in a lower-paying job it will be bearable, as I can drain the savings to make payments on the loans and then work out a sensible budget based on my salary.

Still, one way or another, I want a paycheck by September. So what I've decided to do is not panic: if I can't get a job I feel is really right, I will do temp work and supplement it with volunteer projects to help develop my skill set. Now, granted, I still have to figure out where and with whom I will do all this, which is no simple task. But I think it's a viable plan, and just having a viable plan makes me feel much better.

From the New Jersey Board of Bar Examiners:

The Board of Bar Examiners has assigned you a Candidate Identification Number, which, upon admission to the bar, will become your Attorney Identification Number. (Emphasis mine)

Wow! Me! Attorney! Up till now these have been two completely separate concepts...

Well, before I pass out from shock, I'll need to figure out how to get myself fingerprinted and sort out the rest of the paperwork if I'm going to really pull off this "attorney" thing. Oh yeah, and pass my classes...

They came on campus yesterday to scare all the 3Ls into taking their course(s). Question: Is it worth it?

Now, they did a very good job explaining the importance of doing well on the MBE*. But doesn't BarBri take care of that? Is there anything to be gained by taking this too?

The pitch made the argument that PMBR materials varied somewhat from BarBri's. Its outlines and questions apparently are derived from treatises and horn books, which, they say, is where the real MBE questions come from. And they say their practice questions look more like actual MBE questions in terms of form and length.

Nonetheless I feel like the sales pitch is done in the same way companies sell worried parents expensive things they don't need. "Yes, it costs money... but isn't your CHILD worth it???" They gave the example of John Kennedy Jr. not passing the NY bar until he took the PMBR to get over the MBE hump. "Yes, our course costs money... but isn't it worth it to pass the BAR???"

The PMBR offers two classes (near as I can tell): a 6-day boot camp pre-BarBri, and a 3-day one either during it or after it. In one sense the 6-day one could be useful; by running everything past you that's you'll need to know during the 6 days, it may be more likely to stick when it comes at you again in BarBri. On the other hand, having taken courses covering many of the bar subjects already, there may already have been much of that preparation.

The other class is a 3-day one that comes after BarBri and serves as a refresher.

The 6-day course costs $795, or $695 with ABA membership. The 3-day costs $395/$325, or $195 if added to the 6-day. You can also buy materials separately.

I've heard conflicting opinions on whether it's worth doing the PMBR, but I'm open to more advice on the subject. Myself, I think the 6-day course is not worth it (if for no other reason than it interferes with the precious little bit of law school recovery time available prior to heading into all this). But I am giving serious thought to the 3-day. Still, more guidance on this would be appreciated.

In the meantime, the pitch did include an interesting mention: they told us that they've been sued for copyright infringement. I'm sure they did this preemptively in order to forestall the inevitable questions on the subject and to allow them to spin their own position. First they told us that they won two of the suits, but then they raised the question of how questions based on legal treatises could be copyrighted at all. But that's neither here nor there. What I found really interesting was how they said that as a result of doing discovery in the lawsuits they were able to find out more about how the exam is written in order to prepare a better course…

* Note for non-law people: the MBE is the Multi-state Bar Exam, an enormous multiple choice section of the bar taken by people in almost every state. It takes up one full day of the exam. (On the other day(s) of the exam you write essay questions on law more directly connected to that particular state.) BarBri is one of the major commercial bar review courses out there, that everyone ends up taking because we're all scared lemmings and possibly also because we don't have any choice...

Someone emailed me the other day to ask about my career plans. I ended up saying that I was looking for a position doing litigation (true), in IP (true), particularly copyright (also true). I then went on to say that if I could get a position where internationality was also involved, all the better (this is true too).

But what I wonder on retrospect is why I didn't say I was interested in cyberlaw generally. My interest in IP itself is an outgrowth of that. I do very much want to develop expertise in copyright law, but at the same time I'm still interested in all the First Amendment and privacy issues, etc., involved with cyberlaw generally.

Anyway, I just wanted to set the record straight. And make a mental note to improve my elevator pitch…

Lovely. Just as things start to heat up, all my technology is starting to break down:

- The blog's been giving me 500 (server misconfiguration) errors - not always, but often;
- My personal email account has been preventing me from logging in - not always, but often;
- My school email has not been letting me log in - not always, but often; and
- I'm starting to get spontaneous blue screens of death on my laptop - not always, but often.

I'm starting to have an annoyingly strong sensation of deja vu - not always, but often...

Despite being rained on and mostly losing (but only mostly! not entirely!) the trip was fun. While everyone else from BUSL took the chartered bus down to Virginia (a 15 hour trip or so), I, as usual, flew.

After our last game yesterday I boarded the bus to say good-bye to my team before leaving to drive back to the airport. The bus driver asked me, "Oh, you flew?"

"Yeah."

"You made a good decision. This," he said, referring to the 15-hour bus ride, "Is just nuts. Self-torture."

He turned his gaze towards my teammates on the bus. "You're all gonna be lawyers?"

"Yep."

He then looked directly at me. "You I'd hire."

I think I'll be passing it over this year, however. If I can't even manage to celebrate my upcoming birthday, which I suspect will be the case (stupid $%&^ finals...) the holiday just doesn't stand a chance. Next April, though, everything will all be different…

On the upside, things are slowly getting checked off my list. My life becomes much saner as of May 5 but between now and then there's hours and hours of work to do. Roughly speaking I might be on-track, but it's a little touch and go. Especially because some of my projects involve writing, and it's hard to massage the muse to have her perform on schedule. But one of the projects I needed her for was shipped off today, and I'm enjoying the palpable relief of that weight being off my shoulders.

As a side note, I'm starting to get antsy about looking for a job, but realistically I just can't do anything on that front until May 8.

I've been meaning to get my MPRE scores transferred to NY and NJ (I'd had them originally sent to California), but hadn't gotten around to it until now.

But given that the address to send the transfer request is in Iowa City, perhaps it's just as well that I held off...

When I graduated from Cal I was able to order some really nice graduation announcements as part of the commencement package (cap and gown rental) from the school bookstore. The bookstore here, too, offered a package of personalized announcements with cap and gown rental. Great! Right?

Not so much… Not only does the cap and gown rental cost an arm and a leg (we don't even get to keep it!) but the graduation announcements are disappointing. The ones at Cal were really nice: they were custom printing on nice, heavy card material and even came with etiquette envelopes… The ones at BU are on nice paper, true, with an inlaid BU seal, but they're 8.5 x 11 pieces of paper that are run through an inkjet printer(!), that I then have to fold (which is impossible to do neatly), and also lists the time of graduation as 11am on Nickerson Field (which is true for the undergrads) and not 6pm in Agganis Arena (which is true for me).

Meanwhile the law school is giving out free ones with better information (and likely better quality), but I really wanted to get ones with my name on them. I decided this was important to me (a) because I earned it, dammit! and (b) because I wanted to send them out to people I've lost touch with after I moved across the country in order to renew the connection. So ultimately it won't matter too much that the information is kind of wrong since it's not like they're coming. But it does bother me that I feel like I'm sending out crap. And expensive crap, no less.

It's so irritating. I'm not the kind of person who generally insists on having the Rolls-Royce of things. Basic functionality is usually completely fine (if not also more desirable). But every so often I like to get something nice, so it's incredibly annoying to be foiled on that rare occasion when it's actually important to me.

Dear Fellow Law students, never ever pay BarBri before you get your bar loan. Behold my tale of woe:

I called today to get a bar loan. Thus far, the lender has loved me, giving me their best rates. As it should. I've been meticulous about maintaining my credit since I was 17. But lo! My bar loan was approved at a worse rate! How could this be?

I called them. Apparently my credit score from Experian was a lot lower today than it was last year. Odd. I'd pulled all my credit reports a month ago, and there was nothing wrong with any of them. The woman from the lender refused to give me my score numbers ("It's proprietary," she said. "If we told you what the numbers were, you'd be able to figure out on what basis we give our interest rates." Huh? If I got the numbers straight from Experian, wouldn't I be able to figure it out too? And it's not like my FICO scores are YOUR proprietary information…), but she did say that the one thing that stood out was that my revolving credit was $3000 higher this year than last.

Know why? Because I paid for BarBri! In advance of getting the loan! Why not? I had the cash, it needed to be paid… I'd put it on my credit card (gotten frequent flier miles) and then paid off the card. Along with the extra $1100 from the PIP auction, which turned out not to save me any money (because I'd locked in a lower BarBri rate three years ago), but was ok because I'd been able to sell the discount coupon to someone else. Except it was not ok, because it meant I was carrying an extra $1100 on the card when my balance was reported to Experian.

Bad move, because it apparently killed my FICO score.

So I decided to call Experian to find out if it was really what killed my score, and if so, what could be done about it. What a nightmare that was. I called every number for them I could find and COULD NOT GET a human being. It was evil. So then I called their corporate number, where the woman who answered told me that if I called back the 800 number and interrupted the annoying voice prompt with "speak to an agent" I could actually get one. The prompt would of course never ask me if I wanted one, but if I knew the secret handshake I could get one anyway.

I called back, interrupted the evil dismembered voice, and managed to get an agent. Who wasn't particularly helpful, since he apparently couldn't see my score either. But he did tell me that it could POSSIBLY go back up if Experian was informed that the revolving credit balance was much lower (it's currently only $500). Call the credit card company, he said, and get them to submit an out-of-cycle update. We'll get that, he said, and then the FICO score should automatically reflect it.

But the credit card company refused to do this. Wouldn't be fair, yadda yadda yadda. Cry me a river. They did offer to write a letter to the lender to tell them my balance was updated, but since it refuses to do anything without a FICO score, it would be meaningless.

Aargh…

It is ridiculous. I'm a slave to three different and incompatible systems, I can't get access to my own financial information, and yet I can pay for the privilege (through the higher interest) of having paid my bills on time…

So now I can either take the bar loan as is, or wait until May when my credit card company will send Experian better information, at which point I can reapply with the lender, HOPE that the FICO score will have gone back up, and PRAY that the extra credit inquiry will not pull it back down. Meanwhile, having paid those bills, I could really use the money.

Isn't America great?

I had a rough day today...

Transcript of a subsequent instant message chat:

Mike: I'll bet some antitrust law would make you feel better.

Me: Don't get me started on how evil companies are

Mike: Wouldn't outlining the relevant law make you feel better?

Mike: mmmm?

Me: nope

Me: Well,

Me: I. Companies are evil

Me: That's all you need

Mike: Shouldn't there at least be an "II."?

Me: II. No, really. They are!

Mike: ok, good. I'll put that on my exam and see how that works.

Me: You wouldn't be wrong

OK, to be fair, not every vendor I talked to today was horrible. Verizon and Blue Shield, for instance, were actually quite reasonable, employing people who were able to think outside the box, so to speak. However, everything was still a headache to deal with. And, incidentally, there's not a moment that goes by that Fidelity Investments doesn't think up some way to screw up my life.

Modernity's hard...

Dear Self,

I know you don't care much for the pretense of fashion. That's fine; it's your own style and you're true to yourself. And it's getting to be the end of semester and everyone lets themselves go. Plus, really, who's got time to do laundry?

But, dude, the drunken colorblind fratboy look is sooo not you. Do try to at least put a little effort into this whole "getting dressed thing."

Love,
Me

The other day at school I was trying to convince a friend of mine to do something. He kept throwing up excuses, and I kept mowing them down.

Finally he said to me, "You know, you should be a lawyer."

I had my last class yesterday. This could very well be my last formal class ever. It's a significant moment, and one I have no time to pay any attention to...

Between now and May 2, my life will be jam-packed with work and stress. Three finals and one paper. (Then some journal stuff, although I don't need to do that in order to graduate or quite so soon.)

So blogging may be light by consequence. Or not... I have a few posts I've been working on that I might finish, and I might write some other significant posts if I can whip them up easily in one go. I don't suspect I'll have time to finesse anything, so if I'm not sure I've quite articulated myself fully, I'll probably hold off posting them for a while. But I may post some quick things here and there anyway, just to tide everyone over.

As long as I'm poring over tax law, I might as well point out how my tax law casebook answered one of those nagging questions that's been rattling in my head for quite some time. Or at least ever since I saw a particular episode of MacGyver…

In this episode, the poor hapless people MacGyver ended up heroically saving from a flaming oil well were not drilling for oil on their own land - they were renting the land and it was a huge plot point that the lease was about to expire but they hadn't yet struck oil so they were pressured to continue even though things were unsafe... etc. etc.

Anyway, I always thought there was something wrong with that arrangement. If they were only renting the land, wouldn't the landlord, who owns the land, get to keep the oil?

Not so, apparently. Per Footnote 1 of Commissioner v. P.G. Lake, Inc., "[a]n oil and gas lease ordinarily conveys the entire mineral interest, less any royalty interest retained by the lessor."

So it turned out it wasn't just another Hollywood distortion - who knew? They really could keep the oil!

Thanks, tax law casebook! I can now set my mind at ease…

Let me tell you how it will be;
There's one for you, nineteen for me.
'Cause I'm the taxman,
Yeah, I'm the taxman.

- "Taxman," from the Beatles REVOLVER

Today was my first exam: tax law (or should I say, "Introduction to Federal Income Tax"). I probably shouldn't talk too much about it since there may be people who have yet to take it, but the immediate thought that comes to mind is, "Oof." I have no idea how I did. None. Well, one essay I feel ok about but I'm not sure about the other. And then there were the 25 multiple choice questions…

I think there is a universal sense that the prof in question is a great prof. Totally not scary, easy to understand, great to take classes with... Who gives really tough exams. I did my corporations class with him, and I remember that exam being pretty intense. Not so much because it was hard, but just because it wasn't feasible to answer everything in the time allotted. He'd thought he'd given us more than we needed, but I was still typing away right up till the end. This class, today, was sort of the reverse of that: better on timing, but I felt like I had less to say (which is probably bad...). We had 90 minutes to do 25 multiple choice questions, then a half hour of mandatory outlining time, and then 90 minutes to do two essays. I finished the multiple choice with about 2 seconds to spare, and the essays with about 20. Whether it will suffice, we'll find out. I did find myself thinking during the test, though, "Thank goodness for the curve…"

(I, of course, have no idea how he grades...)

I find that the further into the Great Change I get, the less patience I have for incorrect characterizations of the law on television. Last night was no exception: during the course of the West Wing episode, the character Josh tries to woo the character Sam Seaborn, now a high powered attorney in LA, back to DC. The problem? Sam's about to get married, and his fiancée is also an attorney. If we move, he complains, "She'll have to retake the bar."

Actually, no. She can waive in. And this is pretty common knowledge among law students and attorneys (we're always happy to find jurisdictions where we can practice without taking the damn test…). Just apparently not also West Wing writers…

And then don't get me started on The Closer, an episode of which could easily serve as my Criminal Procedure final exam as sort of an issue-spotting, "How many Constitutional violations do you see here?" It really gives me a sick feeling, watching shows like that, because they are all about focusing your empathy on the cute little police examiner just doin' her job getting the bad guys in whatever spunky way she needs to…

When it's not the police officers who need our concern as much as it's the rights of the accused, especially since it won't seem nearly so entertaining when some similarly wayward police officer subverts your civil liberties in order to wrongly prosecute you.

I went out to dinner with some friends last night to celebrate another friend's birthday. She's pretty much done with everything she needs to do for law school… ever… and has been a little bored. This leads her to propose spontaneous weekend trips to Montreal, which, fun as they might be, is so not gonna happen right now… She also likes to talk about upcoming career plans, where we're all going to be… and consequently makes me melt down with stress since I have no clue and can't do anything about it at the moment. But I don't mean to be antisocial. So for her birthday, I gave her a coupon for five minutes of conversation on the subject. I think I can handle that. Or at least I'm willing to make the sacrifice for a friend…

Anyway, dinner was fun and we started reminiscing about how we'd all met the first year. One friend remembered it quite specifically, "I hadn't known you five minutes before you'd invited me to a Huey Lewis and the News concert." Hmm. Interesting first impression… Well, as it happens I just invited him to another one. I'm nothing if not consistent…

By the way, the subject header has nothing to do with any of this, except that it was a toast made during dinner that actually had made sense in context. It's the first time I've ever encountered that particular sentence, but it's quite possible it won't be the last…

It seems that I seems that I share my birthday with the shipping container! Wow! This is almost as exciting as sharing my birthday with the WIPO-sponsored "World Intellectual Property Day"... And it is definitely better than sharing it with the anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster.

However, it still sucks as a birthday as a law student. My whole special day is passing me by, and all I get to do is study. Although I did have a slight change of pace in the morning: I proctored an exam. I'd never proctored an exam before, but I'd certainly been proctored before… They had rules about which exams you could do (if I remember correctly, you couldn't proctor an exam for a class you hadn't taken yet but might) but otherwise no rules preventing other law students from proctoring law school exams. In fact, I think it made sense for law students to do it. Because we've taken exams before, we know how to navigate their bureaucratic proctoring complexities in a way to minimize the stress for the test-takers. Whereas the undergrads they hire when they can't get enough law students... not so much.

It's not a bad job actually, because once you get everyone going you end up with a couple of quiet hours for your own studying. And you get paid $10/hr to do it. Not a bad deal, and I wish I'd signed up earlier so I could have gotten more hours. I've come to greatly miss this whole "working for a living" thing and can't wait for my $35 paycheck…

My crim pro final is now history. At least for me. Not so much for the professor who still has to grade it.

As opposed to most of my exams it was only slightly open-book: we could only bring two sides of 8.5x11 pieces of paper. Which led to some really tiny writing... (My mom's printer that can print multiple pages on one sheet was also quite helpful for this…) At first I thought this requirement was really irritating. But pedagogically, it turned out to be really helpful. So much mental processing was required to condense a semester's worth of material into such a small space that by the time I got to the exam I was pretty familiar with exactly where every word was on my two pages. On the other hand, the exercise did require cutting and pasting, which was a little silly. I don't mean cutting and pasting within Word - I mean cutting and pasting with tape and scissors...

I fully intend to post some thoughts about the blogging colloquium, but this may not happen before I finally come up for air after my last final on Tuesday. I do already have some drafts of things I couldn't help myself from writing... but I think they require more attention before posting and I can't justify making their editing a priority right now. Right now I have a paper to churn out - a paper I already have some pieces of but is otherwise resisting my best attempts to finish.

I think I will need to try some psychological trickery to make it happen. Since my current mood equates writing a paper with "not fun," and writing blog posts with "fun," I think I'll need to pretend that each section of my paper is its own blog post and see if that helps light a fire under me.

Edit: Is this what Prof. Barnett meant yesterday about "flight from scholarship"??? Hmm....

Just a quick post to gripe about my paper.

I really liked my telecom law class - full of interesting and important stuff. The problem though was that we didn't get to the cool Internet stuff until the very end, which meant we couldn't write our interesting Internet regulation papers until the very end either when we finally had some idea what was going on. Yeah, I guess we could have started earlier if we'd written about some stodgy old telephony topic, but where's the fun in that??? Unfortunately this situation has led to a horrible time crunch in April as we had to do the entire paper while also preparing for our exams. Plus because the Internet material didn't come until the end of the semester when all the ambient end-of-semester stress had kicked in, it was harder to get a good grip on this very technical and confusing stuff. (Believe me when I say it's confusing - even the Supreme Court gets it wrong...)

Thus my paper is driving me up the wall. I do like what I'm writing about, and I even like the way I'm writing it (for the most part - I need to take a break right now though because my writing is losing its crispness). But it's such incredible slogging to get all the cites together because everything is all over the place and I haven't gotten a feel for where. With other papers I'll have worked with the material long enough to get a sense of what is contained in which materials where so that when I need a substantiation for some thought in my head I can recall which document contained it. Unfortunately I can't really do that with this topic, so I'm having to look through way more material than I have time to search. The result, I fear, is that I will have an under-cited paper. In a sense that won't be too bad because it's mostly statements of my opinion that will lack footnotes. On the other hand, opinions are predicated on facts, and I think it's a good practice to give pointers to those facts so that readers can evaluate whether they agree that they support the stated opinion.

The way things stand right now, though, I think readers will just have to trust me...

Anyway, this thing is due tomorrow - or for all practical purposes the end of today since I have different work to do tomorrow. I'll do the best I can on it and then hand it in, but hopefully someday I'll have the time to go over it again and clean it up some more. I'm writing on an important regulatory topic - network neutrality - and saying important things about it. But interestingly, I've written almost an entire paper on it, and yet never mentioned the term... I think that's ok, just an interesting point to note. Common carriage, however, has been well-hammered home.

Oh, and I've not mentioned a word about vampires either. Which you might suspect because I'm writing a paper on Internet regulation and not vampire regulation. Except you'd be amazed at how many telecom regulatory topics can be effectively analogized with vampires. Our professor was incredibly expert at doing so, and it was really quite educational...

The paper has been sent off. It doesn't suck blood, but that doesn't mean it doesn't suck at all... Well, I'm tired and it's easy to be self-critical. Plus just because there may be a hole doesn't mean there isn't also lots of donut around it... Still, I would have liked more than a month to have written it, which effectively is all I had.

Anyway, it's done. Now on with trademark law that I will be cramming into my brain for the rest of the day. In 24 hours, this will all be done, but mussn't think about that now...

Just a quick note to mention

I AM DONE!

Details later, but for now note the exuberance...

The last few days have been really taxing. A ton of work, not a ton of time to do it, nor a ton of sleep, and an increasingly bright light at the end of the tunnel. It was getting really hard not to look at it - I felt like I was trying to avoid looking at an eclipse* - but it was too dangerous to even allow myself a glimpse. There was too much to get through and I was afraid I never would if I started looking past it. I just had to keep my head down and keep doing what I've been doing these past three years - but will never have to do again.

Anyway, I think I went out on a high note - the last test today seemed to go pretty well and I kept my focus through it. Mercifully it was also pretty short (only 2.5 hours, while some are 3-4), because soon afterwards I became a blithering idiot as the dawning realization of closure began to set in. In fact I think I'm subdued now only because I'm so exhausted.

I did, however, scrape together the energy to do a few cartwheels in the school lobby. It seemed like the appropriate physical response to the occasion.

* (Incidentally, there was an eclipse the day I sat for the LSAT. After the test I made a pinhole camera with my exam instruction sheet and pencil so I actually could look at it.)

Well it doesn't mean that I'm off lying on a beach somewhere (dammit). Though it did mean that I could sleep in today. And you know what? I'm gonna sleep in tomorrow too...

But my todo list is still pretty long. These are some of the things on it for the rest of the month:

1) Catch up on all the stuff that has been neglected for the past days, weeks, months, three years...

2) Two journal projects. Definitely law school related, but not tied to my degree. If I never did them, I could still graduate. But then people would get mad at me, and that would be bad.

3) Job hunt. I've got a trip booked to California, and I've just figured out how to get myself to NJ for a week too. But first I need to send out resumes, which I'll do next week.

4) Bar review. Starts (for me) the 23rd. This is one of the reasons I'm glad I'm done so early (even though it made April a little intense) because I can't imagine what it would be like to go straight from finals to bar review like I know some students do. At least now I've got three weeks to reset and catch-up on things before diving in. Plus I just discovered that I can buy myself a little more time to get some of these other things done because it turns out I can start Bar Bri in a different location than I'll take the rest of it. Meaning that bar review and the NJ job hunt can happen simultaneously (since I'll otherwise be doing Bar Bri in Boston). Which is good, because I was wondering how I was going to squeeze that in…

5) Socialize. "Senior week" is next week and the SBA organized a bunch of events, so that will be fun, and I hope to hang out with some 2L friends too. The fact that this may be my last chance to see people in a long time, if not ever, is sort of weighing heavily in my mind…

6) Travel. I have a trip planned for this weekend that I'm really excited about, but more on that later.

7) Blog. I still need to finish my posts on the colloquium, and I've got a lot of other backlogged ideas that I should finally have the time to explore.

8) Graduate.

9) Read a non-law related book. Perhaps even "fiction."

10) Think about what it really means to be "done." It's quite the dramatic change...

Anyway, I guess that's not so bad: only 10 things on my list. Totally manageable, right?

In the years before I decided to go to law school I had a boyfriend who was a law student. He hated it. For him law school was a miserable, isolating, demoralizing experience (and the resulting toll it took a big reason why he is now an ex).

But nonetheless convinced that law school could still work for me, in the years after our break-up I decided on my own to go anyway. We didn't talk much after the split, but shortly before I got in the car to come out to Massachusetts we met for one last conversation, during which he gave me the following advice: "Don't try to do it alone." Looking back on his law school experience he greatly regretted that he hadn't gotten more connected to his peers. I don't know if that was a result of school climate or personal approach - it was likely some combination of both - but the result was that it didn't work for him at all, and I could see that. I could always see how it had made an already incredibly taxing experience all that much harder.

Anyway, he gave me the advice and I sort of shrugged it off. I was fully intending to do law school my way, and I fully believed, self-righteously, that it would work out better for me. (Actually, I think he did too.) But in retrospect I'm glad he gave it, because without it I think I might have tackled this whole project with a lot more obstinate pride than would have been good for me. As a person who's very good at keeping her own company, I think it was good to have had that reminder to be open to people. And I'm glad I was - I'm glad I haven't had to do this alone. I'm not sure I could have. Whether it's been having people to share notes with, or commiserate with, or celebrate birthdays with, etc., law school has been so much more enjoyable for having had people to share it with.

It is, of course, to my school's credit that it does not foster such a competitive environment that students feel the need to turn against each other. On the contrary, in my three years here I've encountered a tremendous openness and generosity on the part of students from all years. There is definitely a strong tradition of mentorship that the school helps foster, and I hope it continues. It's a great antidote to law school's inherent arduousness and makes it a pleasant place to be.

But as a result of all this camaraderie, there's going to be a lot of people I will miss when we're all out in the world. Be they friends for life, friendly acquaintances, or even the people who just smile with familiarity when we pass in the hall, I'm glad to have known them all.

During my trip to Memphis I had a little bit of time to walk around the city. I mostly got to the Beale Street area, but I also made a foray to the famous Peabody Hotel nearby. The Peabody Hotel has a distinctive feature: ducks in its lobby. Ages and ages ago the proprietors thought it would be funny to have live ducks in their lobby, so now they do. And every day, twice a day, the ducks officially march from wherever they ordinarily live to the fountain, and then back, along a red carpet. I managed to miss the march to the fountain by 15 minutes...

But by the time I did show up they were splashing around the marble pond. The pond was separated from the carpeted floor by an area of marble tile adorned by two temporary brass signs. I was talking to my dad on the phone, describing the scene to him, and decided to go see what the signs said. Turns out they were "slippery when wet" signs, albeit a bit more ornate than the typical plastic "piso mojado" signs you normally see. The brass was etched with the familiar warning, along with an engraving illustrating a duck slipping on a puddle.

Which turned out to be somewhat ironic when I noticed a duck slip and fall off the marble ledge of the pond. I mentioned this to my dad. "Maybe that's why they made the signs the way they did, to warn the ducks to be careful. Perhaps there had been a lawsuit," he offered.

"Right," I concurred. "It was about whether the reasonable duck would have been put on sufficient notice of the risk."

There was a pause.

"Wait, did I just say, 'the reasonable duck'? *sigh* I think law school has damaged me..."

As a 1L I made lists of things I wanted to get out of the law school experience. I typed them up and then stashed them away on my computer, hardly looking at them since - until today.

By and large, I think I did most of these things, although possibly not in the form that I had anticipated. For instance, I had wanted to organize some technology policy advocacy groups. Instead I joined and then later ran the IP Law Society student group. So I didn't ignore the inclination, but I adapted it to something more reasonable that I could handle. I suppose this also means I reprioritized it, since if it had been really important to me I probably would have found a way to get it done the way I had originally envisioned, but I don't think it connotes a failing that I modified my expectations along the way. Especially if that was the only practical way to even begin to satisfy the aspiration at all.

My lists also include studying abroad, which I did, although not necessarily in the countries that I had planned. I had thought about Paris, and then about England upon hearing about the program there. In the end I chickened out on France, didn't get to do the England program, but then the German program came along, long after I'd made my initial list, and I did that instead. This is a perfectly satisfactory adaptation; the point was to go somewhere, and I did.

One possible downside to going abroad, however, is that I really wanted to learn a lot about international IP law, and I didn't get to do nearly as much as I'd have liked. I was hoping to get it during my study abroad program, but the IP offering at Bucerius was fairly basic. And on top of that, it kept me away from BU during the semester when a formal international IP course was taught. On the other hand, my 1L summer job was all about international copyright, so I haven't gone completely without an education in this area. It's just that, in recognizing its importance, I would have liked to have already developed more expertise in it.

My lists also included the desire to concentrate in either IP or International Law. In the end I completed the requirements for the IP one (even with having been away for a semester). I also indicated interest in doing a dual MA degree. Technically I still have the opportunity to complete the program for International Relations, but I'm not sure I'll be pursuing that opportunity. I did already turn down the opportunity to do the dual degree in Communications mostly out of concern that the program wouldn't be theoretical enough. I don't really need to learn the journalism or information technology businesses at this point of my life. Been there, done that, and I'd rather move on to dealing with regulatory issues, which I'm not sure the program could really help me do.

There are a few other curriculum opportunities on my list that I'm disappointed I didn't get to pursue. For instance, I didn't get to do a clinic (I was particularly interested in legislative), nor did I get to do an externship. (I'd always wanted to do one with a judge.) I did, however, get to do a trial advocacy course, and the bottom line is that these are the opportunities that got sacrificed in order that I could go abroad.

The list also includes being active in particular student groups, which for the most part I was not. But on the other hand, the groups themselves weren't all that active. I was active in the one I really cared about and showed up to others' events, so I'm satisfied on this front.

My intentions also included being on a journal, which I've done, and writing, which I've also done. I was hoping to produce more tangible and publishable papers, but (a) some of that aspiration has given way to blogging, and (b) I may still produce some. It's a continuing aspiration that will last beyond graduation.

Two other activities I thought about doing included being a research assistant, which I technically was (although I took the mention off my resume since I didn't feel like I had much to show for it), and doing moot court. Moot court I have definitely done and am very satisfied on that front…

And then there are two other personal items: take an improv class, which I did, and get regular exercise. That last one needs some work. I wasn't a complete bump on a log - I got some exercise - but particularly this past semester I was much more sedentary than I wanted to be. When I think about the active life I want to lead I realize I haven't fully done what I need to have it, so I'll have to make some adjustments on that front going forward.

But the list is just a snapshot of what I thought law school might be like. Its weakness is that it was made before I had any idea what it actually *would* be like. All things considered, however, I think I did a good job following through on my intentions. If anything, though, the list is incomplete because it doesn't include all the things I did accomplish. For instance, travel is nowhere on that. But I went to Cambodia, Israel, Japan, Hong Kong, the Balkans, Poland… plus several new American states. I kept my swim teaching certification current, I made friends and contacts, I kept my blog up, and I explored several other new skills and talents that I hadn't before coming to law school (e.g., languages, snowboarding, and some others). To say nothing of further develop other skills like writing and oral presentation.

So overall, yeah, I'm satisfied. But now I need a new list.

I didn't learn everything I wanted to at law school, but this is what I did learn:

1L year -
Civil Procedure
Crim Law
Torts
Property
Contract Law
Constitutional Law

2L year -
Copyright
Patent Law
IP Trial Advocacy
Antitrust and IP
Copyright and Rhetoric
Evidence
Professional Responsibility
EU Law
International Law Process I & II
Corporations

3L year @ Bucerius -
German Law
Intellectual Property
International Commercial Transactions
Comparative Constitutional Law
Comparative Tort Law
Conflict of Laws
Alternative Dispute Resolution

3L year -
Criminal Procedure
Federal Income Tax
Trademark Law
Telecom Law

Along with the three US moot courts and the international commercial arbitration moot court, French and German courses, a legal research and writing course, and my journal I'm pretty satisfied with the breadth.

Edit: Looking at it in retrospect it looks like I got a lot of international law and IP law, plus some basic practice and business courses thrown in. I would have liked to have had more civil liberties-type courses, but I did get some background in them in Con Law, Crim Pro, and the First Amendment moot court exercise. And that's the kind of material that I'll end up continuing to learn on my own volition (if not also through practice). Much more so than, say, tax...

Two years ago my sister graduated with her master's from a Boston area school, and the weather was just as dreary for her graduation then as it is this weekend for mine. I suppose that's fair. But I think my dad is going to put his foot down and refuse to attend any more of his daughters' Boston-based graduate school commencement ceremonies since he gets such lousy weather every time he shleps up up for it.

Edit 5/14: Actually, the weather for mine is worse. In fact, the weather for all my graduations has been worse than the weather for hers - even undergrad. Which is soooo unfair!

Today was graduation. I now am the proud owner of an enormous degree.

I was a little "meh" on the ceremony. Partly because it was anticlimactic, partly because of my mood, and partly because at the reception afterwards you could either eat, or meet friends and faculty, but not both and barely either (especially lugging around the degree).

But in the back of the program were the thank yous by students who had given to the class gift. This year the class of 2006 raised money for the loan forgiveness program. People could give as much as they wanted, but as long as they gave at least $20.06 the school arranged for them to honor someone who had supported them through law school. The honor took the form of a mention in the commencement program, and a certificate of appreciation mailed to the honoree.

At first I wasn't sure whom to honor. I briefly considered my parents, and then rejected that idea seeing how I wasn't a little kid anymore - I was doing this law school thing on my own. Plus because my parents are divorced and wouldn't be able to share the certificate I didn't want to have to pick one over the other.

But then it dawned on me I was being a disgraceful daughter. Yes, I'm a grown-up and this wasn't undergrad and I could have done law school entirely on my own. But the fact of the matter is that I didn't. My mom has been an important part of my law school life and done a ton to support me, from relieving me of every day errands and chores, to making my dinner, to giving me rides to school when my books were too heavy, to handling my mail when I was in Germany, etc. (To say nothing of sparing me from having to deal with crummy roommates again…)

So I listed her name with my donation. Not to say I couldn't have done it without her, but to acknowledge that I didn't do it without her. I was very lucky to have had the support that I did, and I appreciate it.

My project is finally done. I ended up staying up until 4am to finish it, which basically destroyed the possibility of being productive today, but at long last the thing is finally(?) done and out of my hair. Law school now has closure. (Didn't I already graduate and take the bar, you say? Yeah, well, these things happen...)

Anyway, I did do a little today, going through some of my stuff to decide what to pack for California, jettison, or save for my eventual(?) permanent(?) move. I'm trying to be ruthless so I can pare down my possessions to a manageable, moveable quantity, but it's hard.* Of course, sometimes it's a matter of timing. For instance, I'd saved a lot of my law books. I guess I regarded them as references, and truth be told I actually did refer to a couple of on a few occasions long after the course was over. But not all of them, and today I realized that, particularly for the first year courses, I really do have most of that stuff in my head. I think I was saving things like my torts and contracts books as crutches, but now that I've done all that bar review and been tested on it, I don't think I need them anymore.

I also got rid of a lot of books I'd had since my undergraduate days. Not all of them - some of them I do like having around - but the ones I never got around to reading for class and 10+ years later have still never read... At this point I don't think I'm ever going to read them, so out they go...

Then of what's left I tried to decide what I should pack up to move with me now, and what I should leave behind. The idea of leaving stuff behind really irks me. What's the point in owning stuff if you can't use it? This kind of situation has been plaguing me for the past 3 years as I've had my belongings strewn about the globe in at least 2-3 states and often as many countries... I suspect it may be some time before I settle down somewhere permanently, but I do look forward to the day when I can get everything consolidated in one place...

* In the "timing is everything" department my trip to China came in handy for this reduction exercise. My t-shirt collection had become bloated, full of increasingly ratty specimens that have been through the wash too many times. So for my packing strategy I picked out about a dozen that were in need of permanent retirement and brought them. That way, instead of needing to cram them back into my suitcase, I could just leave them behind and reclaim room for souvenirs. Pretty clever, huh? Except that everywhere I went in China the hotel staff was very nice and very honest and kept running after me after I'd checked out to tell me I'd forgotten something...