thoughts

(1) i need to update my other blog

(2) something about getting a job for the summer....

(3) i'm getting married!!!!

(4) there is no little voice in the back of my head telling me i should be studying.

(5) so this is that feeling i've been missing for a while.... the one about feeling like life is awesome and there are so many things to appreciate and enjoy. wow. i've missed this. it feel so good.

Morning of...

Last exam in 72 minutes. Then, my first semester of law school will be over!!

And, turns out I'm getting hitched!

Fire, brimstone and the end of the semester

Just came from the coffee shop a block over. It's become a semi-routine to go over every "morning" (noon) with the dog and get a cafe au lait to start my study day. Every day, the place is packed full of future dentists and doctors, philosophy professors, and today's movers and shakers in the urban business world. I usually take my coffee to go because it's so damn hard to find a place to sit, and even when I do, the conversations going on around me are too irresistible not to eavesdrop.

How odd. Today, I went in, and the place was completely empty. Except for the guy behind the counter, it was just me and the dog in there. I felt a pang of jealousy, because all those other people must be done with their finals, back to work or off to play for their winter break. And here I am, trying to jumpstart myself into studying for Crim. At least this is the least difficult of my exams (or so I think). After Friday at 12:30, it'll all be over.

I almost made it through the first semester without breaking down. I really felt like this was one of those "fun" challenges. This past weekend, with T out of town, I got a lot of work done and drove myself only a little crazy by staying cloistered up in the apartment all day and night. Or so I thought. When T came home on Sunday night, I promptly melted down. And not in the sweet, "oh, please help me, this is so hard," way. I think there may be some smoke stains on the wall, because I'm pretty sure I was spewing fire and brimstone with my breath. This was the kind of meltdown chock full of comments like, "This was all one big mistake! I'm sorry I ever decided to go to law school!" and "Excuuuuuse ME for not having my head buried in the books all day every day. How dare you tell me how to spend my time!" (To an innocent comment from my better half about wanting to take advantage of our shared down time to go on the occasional date.)

This semester has overstayed its welcome. And now I know why people say the first year is so hard. Thank God I can see the light.

Maybe I jinxed myself. I didn't plan to write on here twice today, but then one of those things happened that made me remember that law school exams are really not that important. And also that life sometimes just sucks. Times like these, it's easy to feel. I feel angry sad and more sad.

Staying one step ahead (of myself)

It's 12:42 pm. That means the sun is still kind of shining through the front windows of my apartment. That means its relatively early in the day. So I've come up with this plan: if I post here early, I won't spend time later in the day trolling around the blog, thinking about whether to post. Because I wouldn't dare post twice in one day, right? Right??

I'm not sure if I seriously wasted the day yesterday, or it just feels like it because I finally got to King Koopa on Super Mario Bros. 3. Considering all I had to do was read contracts all day, and considering T's trip to Richmond has left me with the whole apartment to myself, it's understandable that I would go back and forth between the E&E and Wii.

But what I'm really doing is killing time until Monday. My exam is Tuesday, but on Monday, exciting things are going to happen around here. "Exciting" as in I-am-not-stressing-exams-that-much-because-I'm-distracted -by-my-excitement "exciting." So. Til then: no more posting.

Black Letter Law

Black Letter Law (to the tune of "Red Letter Day" by The Get Up Kids)
You've got some nerve I never knew
What with the time that I devoted to learning you.
They said you'd be much clearer now.
But you're just a phase I've gotten over anyhow.
Be over! I'm not getting it, again.
I hide in the covers, from torts and all the others.
But you keep finding... But you keep finding me
I trusted misleading mnemonics worth repeating.
How could you do this to me?
Black letter law I can't learn.
Just want the grade that I deserve.
They said you'd be much clearer since
I bought the Restatements.
That was a lie. Who promises what, when did he sign?
What happens if he falls down?
Be over now.
I think I should try....
Try and forget it.
Be over.
Dear God.
I hide in the covers, from contracts like the others.
But you keep haunting... you keep haunting me
If I trusted misleading promises worth repeating.
Could you be liable to me?

There was something about a rabid pig.....*

I am done with Torts... woo hoo! woo hoo! I'm bouncing around in my seat, and the words I type here are actually a great little ditty in my head that I will no doubt be singing over and over to T for the next 24 hours. Until I realize that contracts is up next. But that's for later. Right now... woo hoo! woo hoo!

I still have a lot to type about! But I came on here to talk about why I decided to go to law school. Not because I need to explain it to anyone. Just because I remembered the other night, laying in bed, and I want to remember it again. You see... just a year and a half ago, I was sadly realizing that my job sucked. I was a human resources coordinator for an LLC that had no previous "real" HR person. It was a tough job, first of all because I met with a lot of resistance, and second of all because I didn't really enjoy where my priorities had to fall in the position (making the company save money). The job I'd had before was for a family run company, so I got to pretty much make impassioned pleas to my boss that this safety measure or that HR initiative would be good for employees and, thus, good for business. It was a lot more fun, plus I got to practice my spanish every day and learned a lot about immigrant culture.

Anyway, my boss at the HR job approached me and told me that the company was moving in a direction that would involve a major reworking of my position. It meant I would be involved with project coordination and, basically, a lot of letter writing and administrative tasks. Not what I had in mind. He told me I could stay and they would be happy, or I could leave if it wasn't what I had in mind. This is after five months on the job. Yeah. The perils of signing on with a small venture capital firm.

So, I went home that day both happy and bewildered. It was a great chance to get out of my job, but I had no idea what I wanted to do. I briefly entertained some jobs in construction and other safety jobs, similar (I thought) to what I was doing before. But when I turned down a great opportunity because it was at a meat packing plant, I realized I needed to get my sh*t together. That's when the baby dreams started.

Wouldn't it be nice, I thought to myself, if I had a baby? Wouldn't it be great to get to introduce this hypothetical baby to all my great music? How awesome would it be to get to love on that cute thing all day? What if I got married? What would the wedding be like? Etc. etc. I was in therapy at the time, but it didn't take a therapist for me to see that I was trying to fill some kind of void.

Not that having a baby or getting married was something I didn't really want. It's just... it's not what I was looking for. I was actually looking for, I don't know... something. Something meaningful? I started asking myself: Well, if you were to have this "baby" then what kind of mother would you want to be to it? I started thinking about the example I'd want to set for my future kids. I started thinking about the example my parents set for me. And then I started thinking about all the things I wanted to do for a living. I started thinking about standing up for the people I cared out.

Finally, I started thinking about law school. Not because I want to be a lawyer because it would set such a good example for my (future) kids. It's just that I realized that I need to do what's going to make me happy *for me*. Because it wouldn't ever be fair to have a kid just to make myself happy (not to mention that whole big issue of convincing that other person to go along with your plans...). I remembered that I needed to figure out what was going to fulfill me, what was going to make me feel like I was being the best person I could be, so that my kids would see that's important. And they would value their own choices as well.

So in the end, and with a whole lot of other factors thrown in for good measure, I did decide to go to law school. What an abridged version this is. But ultimately, I like the idea of saying that I went to law school for my kids. Cause I think that's what I'm doing? Going to make myself happy. So that I can have a job that supports this family and also keeps me sane. So T can do what he needs to do to keep himself happy, and stay sane himself. And so eventually, one day, we can grow this happy family. Making the right choices now means having that shot at winding up in the right place in the future. So, grades? Screw them. They aren't why I'm here. I'm just here to make sure I have the options I need. And right now, I'm feeling pretty lucky to be where I'm at.

*...I was going to title my first post-Torts exam blog with the very bizarre last line of my Torts class notes. But I don't remember what that weird last line was, and I don't feel like looking it up.

Panic! at the Dining Room Table

The fear has kicked in. This has been an incredibly busy week for reasons I will have to get into later... right now I am stuck trying to go through all the cases we read this semester, to see if I can get anything out of them at the last minute. I'm mostly concerned that I won't be able to sit still for the four hours it's going to take me to get through the exam tomorrow. First exam: Torts.

Oh no...

Fell asleep way too early last night to wake up so late this morning. Studied old Torts exams with a couple classmates today which did nothing but make me feel frustrated and unaccomplished. Came home, played Wii, ate with T at Whole Foods, got back to find our friends E and H on the front stoop. Drank rye whisky and PBR and played more Wii all night. Now, I'm going to bed feeling like an idiot. Tomorrow best be better.

On the other hand, I got a random e-mail from some people I had written a while back, about a potential internship in Mexico over the summer. Not that going to Mexico is anything that seems feasible to me at this time. But I feel flattered nonetheless. And feeling flattered is not something that happens often these days.

blog and roll

yay! my "first" "final" is tomorrow. by "first" I mean first since class ended. we had a pass/fail litigation basics exam a few weeks back, so i've already had the pleasure of sitting through one exam. and by "final" I mean a test. but it's not a graded test, so the extent of my preparation for this final was to read over an outline that was created by me and three other classmates, with varying degrees of success. my module, i like to think, was very helpful. still, this is the least stressful of the tests that are coming up over the next three weeks.

which is why i am sitting at the computer finally getting around to adding some links to my blog. there are a bunch of blogs that i like to read, mostly law blogs, but some that are just random blogs i accidentally stumbled across. slowly but surely, i plan to add to the list. this is actually a productive use of my time, because i won't spend several minutes each day clicking through other people's sites in order to find the blogs i want to read.

i wonder if i should be doing more to get ready for this test. but i kind of feel like if i don't know it by now, cramming for the next hour isn't going to do much to help. so: glass of water, maybe a round of super mario bros. 3 and then to bed. but i won't fool myself. this may be the last night of normal sleep i have. after tomorrow, i suspect my days are going to get darker.

For real

I just read my last post, and I realize that it's the kind of obnoxious "study-update" that I love/hate reading on other 1L blogs. I actually said to one of my classmates, who had me cornered in the computer lab the other day and asked me point blank if I was finished outlining, "I'm not going to answer that question. I don't talk about what I've done and I don't want to know what you've done." Probably sounded way too arrogant, but I just couldn't deal with politeness in that moment. I was trying to get home. It was late and rainy.

For all the bitching I've done, I do enjoy the rush of finals. Especially in the wintertime, when there's really no good reason to be outside doing other things anyway. Today, I actually felt sad at the end of Contracts, our last Contracts class of the semester. Later, I felt slightly less sad at the end of our Crim Law class, only because our professor, who rules, promised to meet our class at a bar after our final (the last one) is over. Tomorrow, when our last Torts class ends at 10:20, I'm sure I'll hardly even feel a thing.

It's just frightening how quickly time flies. Or maybe it's just bizarre to experience "student" life again. I remember last fall when I was taking an HR course through work. It was on the U of R campus, and I'd go at night after work let out. When the class ended each Wednesday, I would get in my car and drive home, silently pondering the brick walkways and cozy study nooks scattered all over campus. I would remember what student life was like, because then student life meant college, which was way over for me. No thanks. Don't want to go back. But still nice, the memory.

And now this? I'm back in it all over again? It feels, still, sometimes, as if I am in a dream where I have to relive school. Except I'm not reliving anything. I'm living this experience for the first time: this city, this apartment, this age (27), this stage in my relationship with T, with my parents, my friends... It's completely new. So why does it feel so familiar?

the big picture

Today it was rainy and I accidentally slept until 12:50. When I woke up and heard the wind slapping rain against the windows, I knew I wasn't dragging myself over to campus to study for my one pass/fail exam on Thursday. (Must study at school because my book, which I haven't opened in months, is still in my locker.) It was an "in" day. So I stayed in.

T made a delicious breakfast, like our old-school breakfasts from Richmond, minus the fake meat that we haven't been able to bring ourselves to buy up here. (And at $5.00 for four sausage patties, can you blame us?) We played pool on the Wii, my brand-new present to myself for getting into law school seven months ago. Afterward, I took a luxuriously long hot shower. The kind of hot shower that can only be appreciated on a cold rainy day after days upon days of studying in a dirty pink bathrobe. And I even got dressed!

With such a good start to the day, I managed to get a lot of outlining done. For the first time since perhaps the very beginning of the semester (if then), all the pieces feel like they are coming together with torts. I hate saying this, but I kind of enjoy outlining. It's a step back, a chance to see the Big Picture of the course. And for me, it's in seeing the big picture that I can appreciate the value of a confusing, sometimes painful, occasionally hilarious but mostly just complicated concept. If it weren't for the big picture, I'd be screwed. So yeah, outlining is coming along, and so is everything else.