30 before 30, redux

Okay, so I've got about three weeks until my job starts. I want to make the most of this time! What better way to kick off the summer than to review the 30 Before 30 list I created last year for my 28th birthday and try to knock out a few things. I should go ahead and add some as well, since I really only listed like 22, I think?

Here it is:

1) Read the New Testament [I'm halfway there...]
2) Plant a (herb?) garden
3) Perfect grandma's chicken and rice [Well... I cooked it again, but I'm not sure I quite perfected it!]
4) Learn to cook Ajiaco
5) Attend Catholic mass in Italian Latin and Spanish (neighborhood churches around here do that sort of thing) [Latin mass attended; next up, Spanish!]
6) Get a Brazilian wax [This was supposed to be the 'gimme' for my wedding, but I kinda sorta chickened out...]
7) Be able to do a new hairstyle (no ponytails) [I learned how to properly blow-dry my hair and straighten it... I'm counting that as a win.]
8) Introduce T to my Colombian relatives [This New Years....]
9) Learn to hem / basic sewing
10) Record my dad's life story
11) Visit my bro in CO or wherever he is [Did it last December!!]
12) Run in a race [Gonna train to run the big city 10k next May!]
13) Play on an intramural/community sports team
14) Get a bike
15) Go back country camping
16) Go fishing
17) Spend a night dancing at a Latin music club [I've danced my behind off at a couple places this year :)]
18) Shoot a roll of film & frame a new picture for my walls
19) Take a Tae Kwon Do class
20) Take a yoga class
21) Publish a zine
22) Ride a wave on a surf board
NEW ADDITIONS
23) Take accordion lessons
24) Be a regular volunteer
25) Visit at least two local museums
26) Do an agility course with E
27) Play blackjack in a casino
28) Get a spray tan
29) Visit a farm with my mom
30) Take a road trip with T

Ok.... this is gonna be fun! I haven't gotten far yet, but I can definitely tackle these items within the next year and some change. This time last year, I had fallen down the stairs and hurt my leg, gotten sick with bronchitis and was about to lose two family members, one completely unexpectedly; and I was planning a wedding to boot. This summer, I pray, will be more relaxing, slower-paced and inspiring. Woo hoo!

End of 2L year

Wow. Watched my husband dance shirtless with Best Man. Ate wayyyyyy too many green beans to count. Apparently forgot how the can of green beans got opened. And then started surfing the internet while T walked the dog.

Summer, here I am!

Skip the meat.

If you find yourself walking along a busy, but unfamiliar, stretch of highway, looking for something to eat in a hurry, I have a tip for you. It's always prefereable to eat at a roadside restaurant of the Tastee Freez variety, with no indoor seating and a giant homemade sign advertising its world-famous [insert food/drink here]. That much should go without saying. However, if the roadside americana decor includes a proud proclamation that "We use government inspected meats ONLY!" then for the love of God...skip the burger! (Stock up on the root beer though. That s#$t is good!)



This PSA brought to you by JE, the hungriest person stuck in Jersey waiting for the train to Atlantic City on a Saturday afternoon.

In the Matter of S-G-

S.G., potential ghostwriter of 9th Circuit judicial opinions, is sending emails to her fellow HLS friends just to clarify that "hey! you guys! i'm not as NOT-RACIST as i came across at dinner! really! i am absolutely NOT convinced that 100 black babies would be as smart as 100 white babies if they all grew up together on Space Mountain."

Okay, okay. That's not exactly what she said. I mean, she didn't say "black," she said "African-American"! But, seriously, here's part of it:

"African Americans tend to have darker skin. Irish people are more likely to have red hair. (Now on to the more controversial:) Women tend to perform less well in math due at least in part to prenatal levels of testosterone, which also account for variations in mathematics performance within genders.

This suggests to me that at least some part of intelligence is genetic, just like identical twins raised apart tend to have very similar IQs and just like I think my babies will be geniuses and beautiful individuals whether I raise them or give them to an orphanage in Nigeria. I don’t think it is that controversial of an opinion to say I think it is at least possible that African Americans are less intelligent on a genetic level, and I didn’t mean to shy away from that opinion at dinner."

To read the whole thing, (click here.)

This woman is on Harvard Law Review and has a Judicial Clerkship in the 9th Circuit. And I'm not saying that a private e-mail she sent to her friends should disqualify her from those positions. It happens, as often does, that her offensive emails landed on a pair of eyes that didn't like what they saw, and someone took it upon him or herself to share what they read. The point... ahem

THE POINT is that there are so many people, so many very intellectually capable, white bright people, that go to law school and remain so IGNORANT of how basic concepts like ethnocentricty and socioeconomic status work. And so many of these people, sadly, never become AWARE... because you just don't need to know about racism* or privilege to do well in law school. You don't.

And considering the legal system is so deeply entrenched in privilege and social problems, that's just effing sad.

And by the way... a shout out to Above the Law. Because wow. This guy is for serious? Really?? Don't get me started on the commentary by America's next generation of Hot Shot Lawyers. (Sample: "Why is it fine to say that most African-Americans have better sprint times and are quicker, due to a higher proportion of Type II muscle fibers, and have bigger junk (come on, does anyone doubt this), yet it's not fine to acknowledge what decades of research have shown over and over again regarding African-Americans' IQs?")

* Or sexism or ableism or genderism or classism or any of the other -isms that Lat over at ATL think are so darn unhelpful to talk about in an academic debate

ETA: I took out the (publicly available) name of the person who wrote the email because I wish to focus on the culture of law schools, not the individual whose remarks sparked this particular controversy.

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!

Elephants in tiny firetrap apartments

Scene: After dinner on a weeknight. I am laying on the floor in our living room. T is on the couch. The elephant is chilling in my grandma's green chair. We have decided to Talk About It.

It seemed (has seemed for a while now) like one of those issues that we just don't see the same way. I feel completely misunderstood. He feels villanized. The elephant is starting to actually believe that noone sees him. We go round and round and always end up more miserable than we began. How do we change this dynamic?

As T says, we're a good team. We haven't shied away from making some big, tough, decisions in the past. There have been times of sacrifice for both of us. Times when the choice was to either compromise on something big, or say goodbye. Together we've defeated some pretty scary monsters, so why is this pesky, gentle (kind of cute) elephant so hard to get rid of?

Back to the scene. I've made the opening volley and T has returned:

JE: "So, do you want to Talk About It?"

T: "Sure. Let's do it."

JE: "What happened?"

T: "I just feel..." and then we're off.

T and I have complementary strengths. My strength is in planning, seeing the big picture, being unfazed by the red tape and fearlessly charging ahead. I've got an "it'll all work out...and if it doesn't, we'll deal" attitude. That's what allowed me to travel the Americas while I was madly in love with a sophmore in college. It's what put me back in school at 27, the time when (I always thought) you're supposed to be On Your Way, not Making a Major Detour. I'm a leaper.

T's strength is in the details. He knows that if you leave the house without your tickets, you're not getting into the dance. While I'm dreaming up how we're going to use our fat tax refund to achieve our financial goals, he's the one actually filing the taxes. He's been a successful small business owner for over 7 years - and that requires a lot of organization and meticulousness. If he didn't have his act together, his vendors wouldn't get paid, his customers wouldn't get their orders and what little we have would probably belong to the government. T is a builder.

Of course, both of our strengths come with downsides that have the potential to be our fatal flaws. They're obvious, right? I forget to look before I leap. (Or read the sign before I park... hence many $40 parking tickets.) T sometimes waits too long to leap. (Or can't decide whether to take a Friday off work... hence paying last-minute prices on a ticket to Denver.) And since we've been doing this for a while now, it's pretty easy for me to spot T's weaknesses, and for him to spot mine. It's maybe a little harder for us to spot our own.

So we've got this elephant we need to get out of the room. And T wants to take its measurements and think about whether the downstairs neighbors are going to be disturbed by the sound of a 2-ton animal clomping around our apartment. And I'm all, "We gotta get this thing out, NOW!" Ready to shove the damn thing through the window, even though he won't fit and would fall three stories to the concrete, hurt himself and most likely take out the front wall to our apartment in the process. T reminds me that we don't HATE this elephant, we want to be gentle, plus we need to recover our security deposit. And I remind him that a giant elephant in the middle of the room makes it hard to see the TV, not to mention our lease says we're only allowed one (1) animal in the apartment.

(to be continued... I'm late for my last class of 2L year)