I'm getting a JD!

I got my paper back yesterday. I passed with a much higher grade than I could've imagined. :P My feelings about that are mixed, however. I'm eternally grateful I was able to do well in a class I had expected to bomb. But I wonder if it's not going to contribute to my slack attitude and give me another excuse to procrastinate on future projects.

Whatever the case, I graduate from law school in two days. Holy hell! It's all still so surreal.

Law school isn't hard

Yesterday when I was leaving my clinical office, I rode down on the elevator with my supervising attorney and another attorney from the office. They were leaving for the day, and I was headed home to continue work on my giant research paper and to cram for my final on Friday. I looked at them chit-chatting and said, "I'm so jealous of you guys. You don't have finals to study for."

They laughed. Scoffed, more like it. Their workload is so immense, and the consequences for not doing their best work far exceeds mine. When they screw up on a deadline, their clients get deported. When I screw up, I get half a letter grade off. It reminds me of what an attorney I know said to me during the very first week of law school: "Law school isn't hard. Being a lawyer is hard."

Of course, I'm still riddled with anxiety over this paper and my exams, and the few cases from clinic that I still have to finish before I go. And the loose ends that must be tied up here and there (and everywhere) before I can graduate. I'm still paranoid that something will happen at the last minute and I won't be allowed to walk across that stage. Even thinking about it to type this short paragraph makes my heart quicken with nerves.

But I'm putting one foot in front of the other and trusting that it will work out. I've been given a lot of support from friends and family, who remember a similar panic from when I was wrapping up undergrad eight (EIGHT?!) years ago. It's their encouragement that gives me strength, and their advice rings in my ears as I try to just get it done.

Yesterday a client came to my neighborhood to drop off a critical document we needed for deadline. I met her in the parking lot of the convenience store by my house. When I got there, she was standing outside smoking with her sister. As we talked, they both drilled me with questions about the process of getting her immigration relief. How long will she have to wait to hear back? What happens next? Who will guide her through the process? Will my organization still be her attorney after I leave? When can she work? And the hardest question of all: What do I think the outcome of her case will be? I tried to give her the best answers I knew off the top of my head, crafting responses that would make sense with her limited English and that would give her the confidence to be a good witness without creating false expectations about the certainty of a positive outcome.

Then I got the best encouragement I've received so far. My client's sister, who herself has an attorney and has dealt with many through her family, said that I would make a great lawyer. She praised my ability to explain things to them in terms they understood, and said she really appreciated that I hadn't lost sight of her sister's humanity. Really. That's what she said. After we said goodbye, I went back to my apartment smiling. If I get my law degree, and if I become a lawyer, it will be thanks to the inspiration of people like my client's family, and all the immigrant families I've known who have fought to put down roots in their communities, sometimes despite the quite hostile terrain. And in the end, no matter how hard it gets, I'll try to remember that I've got it pretty good.

The last mile

It's exhausting. But I'm starting to see a faint flicker of light off in the distance. Could it be the end of the tunnel?

I wonder if when it's all over, and I look back at my time in law school, it'll seem like one long fever dream.

The future, in terms both long and short.

It's been so long since I've updated, especially with anything beyond "Oh, it's finals. Life sucks." So long, in fact, that I don't really feel like updating now.

But update I will. For posterity, as always.

Finals ended on Friday, and it's Monday today. So really, it's only been a few days since my semester ended, but it already feels like an eternity ago. Immediately after my last final (4:30 pm on a Friday... fun!) I grabbed a couple law school buddies and we met up with T who was having his holiday party after-party at a bar downtown. That led to more drinks, two pizzas, some fries and a homemade sausage sandwich, all consumed at various stops between the first bar and my apartment. I wound up at home several hours later, quite full, slightly tipsy and very ready for sleep.

Saturday consisted of watching old Christmas cartoon classics (the lesser-known, racist ones, because that's all they had on Netflix Instant Watch) while I purged my study nook of all my old notebooks, outlines, books and assorted papers. I also managed to purge my closet, which started out at the beginning of the semester looking so neat and tidy, but ended up the apparent victim of a deadly tornado. After throwing every single shirt, suit jacket and dirty sock onto the bed, I sorted clothes into "trash", "giveaway" and "keep" and then stopped, leaving the tornado debris all over the room. Hah. Finishing projects is not one of my strengths.

We went on a date Saturday night, though, which was awesome. T had brought a bottle of wine home a few days ago, which I stared at longingly for the last 3 days of studying, having realized that I absolutely cannot be productive if I've had a glass of merlot. T, the wine and I made up the street to a BYO thai restaurant, where the waiter immediately whisked the bottle away to be opened, only to return moments later with the cap unscrewed. "Didn't realize this was screw-top," he said, as we all looked down and laughed awkwardly.

And speaking of awkward, the post-finals reconnection is always a little awkward, because I've basically spent the last three weeks ignoring T while he goes about his business and I sink into a pit of despair and self-pity out of which I refuse to be helped. All of a sudden, with finals over, I'm ready to return to our amazing marriage, our passionate love and fond affection for one another, and I'm inevitably frustrated that life is not immediately back to normal, my husband isn't attentive to my every need and our conversation doesn't flow the way I remember it. It takes time to cultivate the closeness that I've shrugged off for the entire last month of school. And that is why our Saturday night date, despite my initial misgivings, was so lovely.

After dinner, wine and dessert, we made our way uptown to a local art theater to see Tiny Furniture. I could write a whole other blog post about why I thought Tiny Furniture was awesome. But suffice it to say that there aren't enough movies told from the point of view of a 22-year old normal-sized girl who isn't sure why she's living with her parents or working at a restaurant after having just earned a college degree, but is pretty sure that's okay for now and the answer isn't about finding the right guy or getting a makeover. I highly recommend it, and I'll leave it at that.

So anyway, after Saturday, the rest of the weekend (aka Sunday) was just a bunch of me and T poking around the house, planning for our upcoming trips, alternating between getting things done (me: put the clothes away, t: pack orders) and laying around (me: listen to savage love podcasts, t: nap). We went over to our friends' house to eat dinner and watch more old Christmas movies, came home and went to bed.

Where does that leave me?

Well, pretty much trying to fight off a sinus infection and avoid the freezing, freezing death cold of the Big City, while continuing to be semi-productive in planning for my future, in terms both short and long. (Short: trip to T's family's rental house for Xmas, then 2 weeks in Colombia. Long: another college graduation that may or may not lead to a paying job.) I'm putting together a homemade Christmas present for everyone in my life, and telling myself that is a form of productivity. And I'm carefully spacing out my consumption of Tylenol Head Congestion pills and Theraflu Warming Elixer (or whatever it's call). And forcing myself to update my blog.

Thanks, God

I prayed for calm last night. Lately my body feels like it's falling apart: persistent leg pain, chest tightness, crampiness, sporadic sinus problems, increasing waistline, exhaustion. While there's no doubt that I need to see a doctor for a physical soon, as it's been a while, I know myself well enough to believe that many of these symptoms are stress related.

I've been reading through the New Testament, as that's part of my 30 Before 30 list. I know I've mentioned it from time to time here. A while back, I read something where Paul was exhorting one of the many churches he wrote to that they should pray often and ask God for many things, as that was a testament to their faith. (Something like that. I'm paraphrasing.) I'm past that book, whichever one it was, and on to Timothy (Timothy 5 last night - with a lot of instructions on how to deal with widows in the church). But anyway... I read Timothy 5 and then turned off the light, and realized that it was going to be another night of struggling to breath deeply and fall asleep. So I prayed for calm.

I feel better this morning. I usually do after nights like that. I have a takehome exam due at 8 o'clock tonight and then it's cramming the absolute last bit of knowledge I can stuff into my brain about federal courts (hopefully I have room for half a syllabus) before my Wednesday exam. And then, finally, my Human Rights exam on Friday, which I'm just throwing my hands up in the air for and hoping that my past knowledge about human rights and international law will help me somewhat. So it's gonna be a crazy week. But I know that I can do it.

I tend to be my own worst enemy, playing around on the computer to the last minute, feeling sorry for myself for not doing anything while actively choosing not to do anything, etc. But today, I've done more in the first three hours of the day than I did any other morning over the last two weeks. And I'm not too terribly worried about these exams. So, thank you God, for listening to my prayer and helping me through this little hump.

My struggle

Other law students in my classes have a serious advantage on me this semester. It all comes down to my struggle: inability to focus. This is serious. I stare my computer for hours, wasting away time playing WordTwist or obsessively scouring facebook for new or missed updates from people I haven't spoken to in years. I read about feminism and racism and chat with Fox News readers in the comments section of the DREAM Act articles. (My new nickname, which I like to think of as a term of endearment: "Troll.")

What I don't do is work. I should be either (a) outlining for my two remaining seated exams or (b) completing my take-home exam due on Monday night. On any given day, however, I spend anywhere from 2-4 total hours doing actual, honest-to-God work. On days that I don't have something due the next morning, that number hovers around 2. And it's inexcusable given that I have the entire day to get work done.

This isn't some cheery, "oh, you know LAW SCHOOL" post about how annoying this work is and how much of it there is. This is a real struggle that I'm dealing with. I'm so proud of myself when I get twenty minutes of work done that I take the next hour off, which inevitably ends up in me getting into something that distracts me until dinnertime or some other clear break in the day.

The thing is that I'm smart. I know that I am. I'm very capable of learning new and complex concepts and I learn them well under pressure. But it's a razor-thin line between "works well under pressure" and "waited to the last minute and paid for it." I'm pretty good at walking that line, but I can be clumsy. And even when I gracefully tip-toe my way to firmer ground, it's a nerve-wracking and time-consuming experience. And I can't help but wonder how I'd do if I wasn't constantly fighting this internal battle.

Some of this may just be an innate difficulty concentrating. Some of it may have to do with poor time management, and the desne reading material. Some of it may have to do with my resentment of law school, a passive-aggressive refusal to take this all seriously. Some of this is probably burnout. And some of this problem may even harken back to childhood, a regressive re-experiencing of the pressure that was placed upon me as "the Smart One" in my family at a very young age. Some of this all may be excuses. I suspect all of the above are true, to some degree.

All I know is that the longer I sit here distracting myself, the worse I feel. And the madder I get that it's another Friday night, another one of a limited number of weekends in my life that will be dedicated to this struggle. I feel like I'm missing out on life, and that, for me, is the hardest part of law school. Even as a 3L.

Si Dios quiere

Yeah, so I failed at the NaBloPoMo. But hey, at least I tried. Maybe if I'm lucky, I'll get to try again next year and do even better. Si Dios quiere. Si Dios quiere. God willing. That's something my relatives in Colombia say all the time. Most people I know from Latin America say that. It makes me realize how often I speak about the future as if it's a given, as if it's entirely up to me whether or not something will happen. And then I remember that it's not, and it's not. So.

Anyway, lots has been going on up in this little firetrap apartment. For one, we bought tickets to go to Colombia. We meaning me and T. For the first time EVER, T is going to Colombia, and I am going with the love of my life! I've never gone to Colombia with anyone else, although the last time I was there (last summer, for a weekend), my brother was there too. The first time I went to Colombia was the summer before my senior year of college, and I remember riding in a bus around the lurching curves of the Pan-American Highway, descending into the piping hot valley just under the devil's nose (literally, "La Nariz del Diablo"). I was thinking about my friends from college, daydreaming of the day that I'd get to bring one of them with me and show off this amazing place. Funnily enough, I hadn't even met the boy I was dreaming of taking yet. That wouldn't be for another couple months.

But back to it. We got our tickets, and we're going for two weeks, just after Christmas and extending into the new year. We had our usual argument that happens every time we buy tickets to go anywhere: "Let's come back Monday!" "No, we should come back Friday." "No! Monday!" "No! Friday!" And so on and so forth. (See Last Year, Trip to Denver.) Argument ensued. Mistakes were made. Apologies offered and accepted. Sheepish looks exchanged. And now we're done.

In other news, finals. I'm slightly better off this semester than last, in that I knew the last week of classes was happening before we were halfway through it. And because I did reading for more of the semester than I didn't. Rough estimate. But the night insomnia and anxiety are kicking into high gear as the first exam approaches (Monday) and my outline is looking smaller and smaller the larger the test day looms before me. I just can't wait to be done.

Thanksgiving was good. Quiet. The best parts were hanging with my parents for several days in a row, and getting together with all my friends from high school for the first time in ages. (My wedding doesn't count, because I didn't get to hang with them. Plus not everyone was there.)

Now I'm just rambling. Can you guess why? Time to stop putting off blowdrying my hair, walking the dog and gathering my books. Time to get to it. In just a couple of weeks, I'll be past this and on to the job search. Si Dios quiere.

"I'll admit, I'm a bad law student."

T & I spent the weekend on a getaway with my parents, at their invitation. We had a lovely fluffy bed with pillows like clouds, our modern room painted in hip colors like green and orange (ahem - our wedding colors). The trip was a four-hour drive to a mountain town crisscrossed by railroad tracks and bodies of water. There was a pool and a hot tub, state of the art exercise equipment and an enormous flat-screen t.v. In short, it was a recipe for relaxation.

This morning, say around four a.m., I woke myself up talking in my sleep. Apparently I also woke up T, who groggily asked me why I was talking about being a bad law student.

Without missing a beat, I explained: "Oh, I was just begging two of my professors not to fail me for forgetting to come to their classes all semester and bombing their finals."

Dream? Prophecy? Does it matter? For the first time, I understand why some of my classmates have no interest in seeing their grades when they're posted. I could go the rest of my life without knowing how I did this past semester. Just please, let's move past these post-finals nightmares and on with our lives, shall we?

So. Turns out an 8 hour take home...

...not that bad! Wow, I didn't expect those would be the next words on this blog.

I'm dreading Immigration on Friday, but that's only because I did about 0.5% of the required reading. (In all fairness, he required over 1000 pages of reading. So that's, what, 5 pages? Eesh.) It should be the opposite of today's Corps: short and very, very painful. Oh well, at least I speak Spanish...

Bad Law Student, be a Good Law Student

Okay, maybe one day I'll come back to finish my last post. But life, eh? Especially life in the lead-up to finals.

I'm sitting on the floor of the living room (from this blog, you'd think that's where I spend all my time), working on my Corporations outline. Because I'm one of those Bad Law Students who doesn't have their outline finished the day before the exam. I'm trying to ignore the voice in my head, taunting, "If you don't know it by now, you might as well forget it." Because I didn't know it by the day before my exams the last few semesters either, and I did okay.

I learned some major lessons this semester though. This Spring 2L year has been nothing like my other semesters, and not in a good way. I could blame it on my new laptop (I always handwrote before). I could blame it on my psychiatrist who basically laughed in my face at the beginning of the semester when I expressed concern about having ADD. I could blame it on the awesome winter break I had and the Xmas gift of Super Mario Wii, both of which were hard to put down. How about "all of the above"?

Whatever the case, when I sat down to finally get serious with my casebooks and *really* study for finals, I found exactly what I knew I was going to find all along. I'd avoided it but the day had finally come. Yes, when I cracked open Law of Agency and Corporations, this is what I found: Nothing. Blindingly white pages. Opening the file that supposedly contained my notes? Gobbledeegook. What?! What have I been doing all semester?!

Maybe I was expecting that somebody would see me frittering my time away and say, "hey, JE, you really need to get serious. You're going to be TESTED on all this stuff." Maybe I secretly thought, "The only thing that can wake me from this trance is to fall flat on my face." Maybe I believed that it didn't matter how hard I worked or didn't work, the grades would be random anyway.

I want to make a set of resolutions to myself for next semester. I've got a summer to refresh and recharge. I want to go back to being the hard-working, earnest student I was before this semester. I want to believe that I can get back my law school mojo. I don't want to carry around my old high school "too cool to study, too smart to fail" attitude, but I don't want to knock my teeth out on the concrete in order to rid myself of that mentality.

I may or may not be able to regain my Good Law Student badge, but if I even want a shot, here's what I must do next semester:

1. Throw out all my old highlighters with varying amounts of ink.
2. Buy a brand new pack - 6 colors: blue, yellow, pink, green, orange, purple.
3. Buy a bunch of pens with good ink flow.
4. Label the notebooks you bought this past semester and never used - put the name of one class on each.
5. Buy all your books before class starts.
6. Hand write your notes every day.
7. Don't bring your laptop to school.
8. If you have your laptop at school for some reason, activate Freedom for the entire time you plan to be on campus.
9. Highlight while you read.

Well. That's about it. Now back to cobbling together an outline for Corps before my 8-hour take home exam tomorrow. Best of luck to all youse students out there mucking your way through your own finals hell!

A post not worth reading

Boring law school update: I finished my PR exam, my mock trial and the final paper for my serial writing course. Three "regular" (if you count an 8-hour take home exam regular) finals left and this I can finally chuck this semester into the wastebin, where I've been pretending it's been all along.

Aside from that, I've just been thanking my lucky stars that I snagged a man who knows how to communicate, doesn't hold it against me or shut down when I start to cry, tells me exactly why he's mad at me and is willing to spend 2 hours talking out a meltdown with me the next day.

Huh. "Meltdown." If I did a search for that word in my blog, I'd be willing to bet that it's come up every finals season so far. Should've seen it coming from a mile away.

What else? What else? I'm thinking about post-graduation possibilities. I'm thinking about immigration and whether this is something I'll want to practice. Pros include a high potential of getting paying work right out of school, maybe being able to start my own practice even, and really being able to help people in the community I had in mind when I left for law school. Cons include the very real possibility that it is drugery and not exciting work. I'm not sure. Haven't started my summer internship, but I suspect the pressure will be on before the end of the summer to figure out what exactly I want to do. Suckers. Nobody puts JE in a corner!

Crawling out of the hole

Ok, ok. I feel better now. Trial's over. We only prevailed on one of our four counts, if you go by the jury's verdict. But if you go by how badly I owned my cross-examination of the defense's star witness, I'd say we kicked royal behind. :P I love cross-examining. I got good feedback on my closing too, though I caught myself vouching a couple of times, which is a big no-no according to my last semester trial ad professor.

At the end of the trial, as we were packing up to head to the bar, the Judge asked me to hang back a second. "Ms. JE, can I speak with you privately a moment?" It took me a little while to figure out how to reach him, on account of we were in an Article III courtroom, and I still don't understand how the Judge gets to his bench.

Anyway, I eventually figure out where the secret door in the wood panel wall was located. So I slipped back stage, where the Judge in his black robes told me I should audition for Trial Team. He thinks I have skillz and need to build on them. I didn't get into it with him how I was brutally rejected this past fall. I was too flattered that he was going to give my name to the Team coordinators as one of his recommendations. That's a win in my book!

Now I am done with two of my six classes, and when I get this final paper in on Tuesday, I'll be halfway there. I just ran into 3L at the coffee shop where I'm writing this, and she said, "If you think you're doing the bare minimum now, just wait. Next year, you'll be taking slacking to a new level." Somehow, that's comforting to me. Haha.

With my new prescription filled (and 6 refills, to boot!), warm days, a few classes under my best and the weekend ahead of me, things are feeling slightly better round these parts.

fast and loose

is how i do my takehome finals. T-minus 2 hours 16 minutes until it's due, and I'm about 60% done. Law school just don't seem to matter that much, you know?

Night to myself

I was at the law library until 1 a.m. yesterday.

*Cue Pinnochio voice*

"I'm a real, live law student!"

That's how I felt, and exhilerated and satisfied, as I rode the $10 cab ride back to our little firetrap in the middle of the night. I told my best friend this morning over g-chat about it. The conversation went something like this:

JE: Sorry I didn't listen to your voice mail yet. I was at the library until 1 a.m. working on a paper last night.
JE: I was the last person leaving to leave the building.
BFF: Aww... you're such a good student!
BFF: Or... If I know you as well as I think I do...
BFF: You just procrastinated.

Leave it to the best friend to keep it real. Ha!

Anyway, having put out that mini-fire, I recieved a text from T this afternoon: "I completely forgot I have a game tonight." Meaning, he is going to an NBA game, because he and Best Man and another Dude Friend bought a 6-pack of tickets a while back, well before they realized "their team" was hopeless. At least, that's the impression I get. I really hate non-NCAA March Madness basketball. Bo-oring!

I'm chipper because T's game nights mean JE's quiet evenings at home. It dawned on me that if I had been keeping up with the assigned reading in my Immigration Law class, I would be on course to finish the entire 1500-page book by the end of the semester. Seeing as how I gave up trying to read a long time ago (around the time I realized his lectures were a verbatim recitation of each assignment, with no expectation in student participation) I am starting to panic about how I can possibly prepare for his exam.

With that in mind, here is a list of the things I'll probably do tonight while T is at the stadium bar stadium(!):

* Eat an avocado. There's one sitting on the microwave oven begging to be peeled and consumed.
* Watch old episodes of the Office or 30 Rock.
* Read the syllabus for my two classes tomorrow.
* Think a lot about starting to reading for my two classes tomorrow.
* Check the sales on Gilt.com obsessively.
* Try to earn some quick change on Mechanical Turks
* Nap
* Check my friends' status updates on Facebook.
* Read the first case for Corporations right around the time T is getting back from the game.

Ahhh... so restful.

Who is JE Guide to Life?

I never used to understand why people posted about their blogs being boring. I've always just done a blog to do a blog. To have a place to put down thoughts, and secretly entertain the thought that Someone Out There cared. (Someone Out There typically being my future self.) But lately, I can't shake the feeling that my blog is just plain boring.

Maybe that has something to do with my recent obsession with other people's blogs. Just to give you an idea of how obsessed I've been with blogs, I'm going to link every word of this paragraph, starting now, with various blogs I've landed upon over the past week or so. I'm just pulling them out of my history.

Lately I've been reading a gazillion blogs about newlyweds and new families (i.e. "we just had a babyyyy!" blogs). I am interested in these blogs because they show a different life than the one I have now. These are blogs centered entirely around the matrimony or the wedded bliss or the TTC journey. These aren't blogs of women (or men) who happen to be married or mothers. These are people who choose to center their online identity on their family status. I am thinking a lot about that.

What is my online identity? Do I even have one? Amongst the many law school blogs out there, I think mine does not stand out, largely because I'm not really writing much about law school. I'm not a mom so I'm not a MILP. Law school is not my primary identity. I'm married, but even though the engagement, planning, ceremony and honeymoon all happened over the course of the past blogging year, it barely registered a blip on JE Guide to Life. I didn't write it all down here, largely because I didn't feel compelled to. I own a dog, but he's not my Fur Baby and I don't have much to say about him either.

What do I have to say? Maybe nothing much. I don't like to post my deepest thoughts and feelings on this blog because I tend to be a private person, and I have no idea who from Real Life is reading. (Thanks for staying on the DL, by the way, Real Life friends :) I prefer to control who knows what I'm thinking and why and when I'm thinking it. Unfortunately, that makes for a boring blog.

Sometimes, funny things happen in my budding marriage that make me want to write them down in here. Sometimes, I look at the dog, smile and feel like I should say something about him here. Sometimes, bad things happen and I want to talk about them. Sometimes, school gets the better of me and I must vent or explode. But mostly, I guess I'm just gazing at my own shoes, being not that interesting, and hoping that as the posts add up, they'll paint the picture of my life.

And for posterity's sake... Today I had a lovely meal with a couple of out of town friends, including our friend who married us in August, at a really fancy restaurant for prix fixed Restaurant Week lunch. Was late to immigration after already having skipped a class, five days into the semester. Go me! Logged on to find the last of my grades awaiting me... an "A" in political and civil rights... WOAH! YAY! A "C+" in employment law. Fuuuuuuuuuu.... Dammit. Thought to myself: "So this is why they don't give us our grades until the new semester starts. To keep us from drinking ourselves into oblivion during the winter break." I got home intending to walk the dog briefly and crawl in bed. (I'm sick.) He dropped a gross watery something into the grass, and when we got home, retreated immediately to T's office. I followed him to discover a foul-smelling pile of goo on the carpet. I am waiting for T to come home with the papertowels so I can clean up his mess. Yuck. I have a ton of Civ Pro reading to do, and my Corporations book hasn't come in. Can I take my Theraflu yet?

After the fact pattern

Post-finals life has been chugging along quite nicely, but it's not without its adjustments. On the relationship front, it seems that as soon as the time is called on my last exam, I awaken from my study-induced stupor to notice all the shortcomings in our day-to-day life that T has no doubt been trying to call my attention to since around mid-October.

"We don't spend any quality time together," I whine. "Why do you come to bed so late?"

T patiently explains to me that he is not used to me actually wanting him around, especially in the evenings, when I am notoriously at my most cranky. When we leave to meet friends at a bar, and he suggest that he bring my set of keys, I glare at him. "Why? Do you think I'm going to come back early, without you?"

Without blinking he responds, "Yes. I guess so."

Like a petulant kid, I pout, "You'd better get used to me being around all night. I'm not going to leave early so you can hang out without me anymore."

"I can get used to that. I'd like that," he demures. "I just forgot for a second."

I like to pretend it's rough, realizing that the world has been revolving without me for the last two months, but the fact is that I'm in utter delight most of the time. Random squealing may be prompted by any of the following: getting under a blanket on the couch, taking down a box of instant cocoa, pulling the wrapping paper out of the closet, watching T change into pajamas, putting a leash on the dog, etc. As T says, I'm easy to please.

There are less than pleasant things going on right now. I'm fearful, truth be told, because of some troubling test results that my mom received a couple of weeks ago. The full implication of the results won't be known until after the holidays, though, so there's not much I can do. When I first found out, I spent a day shivering and fighting worry-induced nausea, staring off into space. This was while I still had to exams left to take. I prayed about it, and tried to let it go. After about a day, I found myself able to resume enjoying life. I'm still a little scared, but I'm taking it as my cue to practice not being in control, and to just live.

There are also super exciting things. My trial advocacy professor put me in touch with someone at our local public defender office who does work with immigrants in the criminal justice system. As anyone who has ever known a non-citizen living in the States knows, the legal system in this country has a completely separate set of consequences for people without citizenship. I am excited and encouraged to have made a connection with someone working on the front lines of this crossroad, and have even been invited to shadow the person at an upcoming hearing! Very good news, indeed. These days when I see the fruits of my decision to go to law school take shape, I am always so grateful for the choices that brought me here. Of course, it would have been impossible without T's unwavering support, which I realize more and more each day. But now I'm starting to sound like an Oscar acceptance speech.

Speaking of prizes, there is one other exciting development in my life. Last night, T, Best Man, Best Woman, another friend and I played Quizzo and actually WON! After many, many failed attempts, and an overflowing collection of consolation prizes (i.e. crappy books like "Dummies Guide to i-Pods" and a history of the Lilith Fair), we managed to snag a round of free drinks and a bunch of knock-off Yuengling swag. Supposedly, our picture is posted on the mirror behind the bar for the next week. Boo yes!

And that's life, post-finals.

Massive Storm Slams East Coast!

yep. that about says it all.

sitting where at my computer, if i turn my head to the left, i see dusty white snowflakes flying by like they are on some kind of invisible highway, and they have someplace important to go. it's awesome.

t and i are about to brave the living winter weather alert to walk downtown and do some christmas shopping. it may be less than a week to go, but i'm going to enjoy every last hour of this holiday season come hell or high water. finals may have forced me to put it off, but it could never suck dry all my christmas spirit! besides, who knows what next year's holiday season will be like. from one year to the next, it's too easy to take these things for granted. i'm just going to try and soak up all that we're blessed with this year, while we have it.

on that note, i better get my scarf and hat on.

Ahhhhhhhhh

Shaving your legs.
Saying "I'm sorry."
Not falling down stairs.

What do these 3 things have in common?

Here's a hint.

Ready or not...

Even though I told T this morning that I was going to take my last exam on Friday to give myself a final day to review, I have changed my mind. I went to the coffee shop with an old E&E this afternoon and was surprised to see two girls sitting at a couple of tables with their fat old casebooks. By this late in the game, I figured I'd be the only one studying. I asked them what school they went to. Turns out they go to mine.

We chatted about how much it sucks to still have exams to take while everyone else is already immersed in the holiday spirit(s). I confided that I was taking my last exam tomorrow (Friday). This provoked a response of perfectly equal parts pity and confusion. Why would you do that?

Indeed. Why would I? I have too much other stuff to do. So, ready or not, Political and Civil Rights, here I come!

Among the many (many) things I look forward to finally completing when I'm done with this horrid exam cycle: finish sending thank-you notes from the wedding (omg, for real?! yes, for real); write back the people who i am ashamed to even think of because i haven't talked to them since the wedding; respond to the helpful job leads i was given ages ago; see about getting a wedding album done up for my parents for xmas; come up with creative non-monetary gifts for everyone else; oh jeez. so much more.

The first shall be last

This is the semester that will not die. My original plan was to be done early, while all the rest of the suckers slaved away during the second half of exam week. It happened that all four of my exams were scheduled during the first week, and although I could postpone some, I had no plans to put off the inevitable. After all, my brother was graduating from college on December 12th, after many long years of equivocating over whether to put forth the effort to get the degree. On top of that, one of my 30 things to do before turning 30 was to get out to Denver to visit him. I was planning on boarding a plane on Friday with nothing but a change of clothes and a fifty dollar bill with which to get my brother hammered.

Then my first exam happened on Monday. I was able to fight off the strong urge to go straight to the bar to drink my troubles (i.e. 1500-word limits!) into oblivion. As any survivor of a law school exam will know, that is no small feat. However, the only reason I was able to stay sober was because I had a date to study with a classmate for my evidence exam, a mere 40 hours away. After we were through, thoughts of the "free slot" exam I had planned to take the next day took on a laughable tone. Instead of studying, I hung up Christmas decorations with T and we watched more Deadwood. Post-Evidence exam on Wednesday, I had all but vowed in blood that I'd be postponing ONE exam until the next week. I was still ready to take on Employment Law on Friday.

Then I remembered rush hour traffic. To be more precise, my friend reminded me that the airport we were planning to fly out of on Friday at 7:00 takes an hour and fifteen minutes to get to without traffic. My exam was due to let out at 5:30. It was postpone exam #2 or miss brother's graduation (and lose out on a bunch of money). I made a beeline to the Dean of Academic Affairs.

So. Flashforward one week and here I am about ready to take an exam at 6:00 so I can come home to cram for my final final exam on Thursday (or, horrors!... Friday??). Thus I am fulfilling at least the second half of the biblical prophecy: The last shall be first, and the first shall be last. May I never secretly gloat over finishing my finals before other law students again.