mastering avoidance

It is the official end of classes which means it is also the unofficial beginning of staying the fuck away from the law building. I've even cleaned out my locker. What with the cold weather I am already less inclined to leave the house, and if my netflix continue to ship I may become a real law school hermit. I've decided that my quarantine should also include facebook, because there is only so much "Susie is done with all her outlines!!!" or "Billy is spending 14 hours in the lawbrary :)" that I can take before my eyeballs start vibrating inside their sockets, and I really do need to go easy on my eyeballs. So, between not leaving the house and no facebook, I'll probably be doing a lot more blogging with a lot less substance! Yay!

But people who are already done with their outlines? Apparently I am quite out-done in the hermit department because I am not nearly finished. And seriously? Its still 2 weeks until the FIRST exam, and we're not done until halfway through Decembers. How many practice tests can you really take? As for me, I'm going to try and stick with slow and steady (and relatively calm) wins the race. Or at least slow and steady lands in the top half and gets to keep her scholarship.

More than anything I can't wait to start break. With visions of sugarplums (nintendo, actually hanging out with my BF, baking, reading for fun and eating Mom's food) already dancing in my head I know its going to be a long 3 and a half weeks. I just have to try and remember that the more focused I am, the faster it will go.

things I do not like about civ pro installment #726

words that start with i- and end with -pleader

blogging under the influence

Blogging under the influence is very slow because I do not want to make typos, so I am doing a lot of delete button pressing. Today was the END of this semester's Legal Writing. WOOOOO. I am happy. And live puppy cam (have you seen live shiba inu puppies?!: they make civ pro so much less depressing) And so I drank some wine.

Here are things I have thought about this week:

1. My cat has the same reaction to the smell of vinegar as she does to the smell of Emergen-C, which makes me question my cold-fighting tactics.
2. Having to go back into my memo and put an extra space at the end of every sentence is bullshit. Anyone with Office2008 for Macs know how to get that shit auto-formatted?
2. Actually: legal citations can suck it.
3. If there is one way to spot a 1L it is to observe the printing area the week a memo is due.
4. Despite #2, I might actually be interested in law review (something I resisted for a long, long time). We will see.
5. It takes a lot less to get me drunk these days.
6. But I am a much better cook.
7. I would probably be even more of a pathetic cat lady without a cat because having a cat gives me an outlet for a lot of my loneliness.
8. I am having some sort of weird skin reaction to something. My face-skin is suddenly bumpy, but the bumps are not visible. This morning it covered my chin up to my mouth, but now it is all the way up to the top of my cheeks. At what point do I start to freak?
9. I love my state.
10. But I do not love stupid career services saying that they want to know where we are interested in practicing so that they can help us get jobs in those places, except that when I am interested in my home town which is only an hour away from law school city, then I am On My Own.
11. I am kinda good at peer pressure.
12. I don't feel bad about that. Should I?
13. Also actually: career services can suck it.
14. I have approximately $50 with which to buy all my Christmas presents. Uh Oh.
15. I have lost my student ID. Shit shit shit shit shit shit shit shit shit. I need my student ID to get the free public transportation. Shit. Also (see #14) I do not have enough money to get a new one with.
16. I have a strange and disgusting urge to use See and See e.g. in real life. Because I am awkward.
17. I lurve wine.
18. Oomlats would make English so much more fun.
19. I would enjoy law school so much more if I got to pick my classes.
20. Someone dropped out a week before finals! Whoa! Weird! Expensive! UnBElievable.
21. I am going to have to drag my butt out of bed way earlier next semester. I need a gradual brightening SAD lamp.
22. I said butt and not ass. I maybe am becoming a lady.
23. No motherfucking way.
24. I am entering a profession that requires pantyhose. SHIT.
25. There should be a day when men are required to wear pantyhose. And then we would never ever have to wear it again.
26. Why are there about 15 seasons of Law & Order but only 6 seasons on dvd?
27. Also, I lurve netflix.
28. Also, I lurve my cat.
29. Except when she kills my orchids.
30. But then sometimes she helps me find bugs.
31. Law school paranoia has given me a weird finger-save-command-urge. I have Command-S'ed this page like 18 times.
32. Wow my typing is a lot better now than it was in June. The handwriting has kind of tanked though.
33. I could never be a vegan because cheese is one of my chief joys in life.
34. Also because of Thanksgiving turkey.
35. Is it wrong to wish that I could go to my own parent's instead of BF's parents for Thanksgiving?
36. The first year I attempt a Thanksgiving on my own I will judge myself against Pieces of April.
37. Right now I stick to bringing the wine.
38. Law school is better than grad school because we get a lot of free lunch.
39. But when my friends in grad school compare law school and grad school and act like they are the same thing I want to punch them in their well-rested faces.
40. I have a law job sort of, starting the day after finals. More to come later.
41. Since I have moved my jade plant, my orchid, and my wonky cool euphorbia have died. Sad.
42. I need a community gardening plot soooooooo bad.
43. I do not belive that we should bail out the auto industry.
44. But I do believe I should learn to make sweet potato pie.
45. Civ Pro (and maybe Crim Pro but I have no experience) should be taught as practical skills courses like Legal Writing.
46. I am somewhat OCD and need 5o items to complete this list.
47. Sometimes I leave the puppy cam on in a tab and forget about it, and then I am a little weirded out when I hear wimpering from my speakers.
48. It is egg nog time! Yay!
49. Which means it is almost Girl Scout Cookie Time!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
50. Law school has turned me from sort of a nerd into a complete nutter. Is that a tort?

memomg

Legal writing has turned me into a wreck. Have not showered for 2 days. Skipped school today to write this beast of memo, which would not have been that beastly if the research hadn't taken up 3/4 of the time that I had set out for the whole thing.

Also, law school has turned my apartment into a wreck. Well, law school and a broken dishwasher. Dishes keep coming out with white filmy stuff (detergent? hard water stains? who the fuck knows), and teensy food particles, and yet we keep trying to run it, hoping MAYBE THIS TIME it will work. Have gone through a remarkable amount of vinegar and baking soda in past 2 days (same days in which I have not showered or left the house). Have tried handwashing dishes that come out of dishwasher, and lucky for me I only have to wash them 3 TIMES before all the weird shit comes off. In hopes that dishwasher would magically fix itself, BF and I kept using dishes without handwashing them this weekend. All dishes now dirty, including silverware. May starve for lack of utensils. No money to eat out. Please send help or pizza.

Will report back after memo has been conquered.

PLEASE

Please please please go and Barack the Vote today.

bug front: nothing to report, law school front: assvice

I resist saying that there have been fewer bugs lately, because they probably have freaky psychic powers and would know that I had let my guard down and then they would come out in droves. So...I'll just say that I'm glad for a few below freezing nights.

I've already read a few other bloggers' posts giving advice to future 1Ls. Generally it strikes me as the blind leading the blind, or as some thinly veiled attempt to talk about characteristics or behaviors that the blogger finds annoying (which I can definitely get on board with). Either way, its a bandwagon I've decided to jump onto. Future 1Ls can take the following as advice, former 1Ls can take it as commentary and anyone else can take it as one woman's short-sighted and naive insight.

More than anything else that I can say, law school is not what I expected. I did not expect to enjoy my classes (at least for the first year) and I really do. I expected to be terribly intimidated by the socratic method and I'm not. I expected that the level of competition would motivate me to study nearly constantly and it doesn't. I expected to derive a lot of energy from that competition and I find that it drains every bit of energy and motivation out of me. I expected that this blog would help me to deal with the crazies that I encounter and it instead magnifies my irritation. I never expected to miss my hometown for a second. I expected competition to be more overt. I expected there to be more jerks. I did not expect to struggle so much with these damn outlines.

I say this because I am a planner. I was sure that I knew what I was in for. I read every single entry of every single law school blog I could find. I bought or borrowed countless pre-law school books. Its fair to say that I knew that I would spend a significant amount of time studying, that I knew that dealing with grades would be mentally and emotionally difficult, and that I knew there would be competition. What I didn't know, what has had the most impact, is that I didn't know how I would react.

Its bizarre in a lot of ways to reflect on how I've reacted to the various situations, academic and otherwise, that law school has thrown at me. Doing that reflection is one of the reasons I started this blog, and yet I can already tell that in one tiny way I have started to outgrow one of the purposes of my blog. I expected to use this space to vent about fricking morons in my classes, and to be fair I've taken the opportunity to do that a few times (and I'll probably do it a few more times). But I've also realized that the act of remembering some stupid thing for long enough to blog about it means that I just have time to think about the thing and stew. Instead of chilling I reinvest in the drama and then complain about how ohmygodnooneevergivesanythingup. Yes, I'm put off by my classmates' propensities to be know-it-alls and by the fact that most people think that your business is their business, but I get a lot more sleep if I don't keep rerunning things thinking "How can I make this funny or interesting enough to put on the internet?"

So my assvice? Don't hold on to things in law school. Don't hold on to the feeling of the first legal writing grade (barf) or the way that everyone was weird during orientation. Don't hold on to the passive-aggressive comments of the people who do better or of the people who do worse than you. Don't hold on to the fact that some people are incredibly friendly one minute and incredibly icy the next. Don't hold on to the kind of law you think you want to practice (at least not to the exclusion of all else). Don't hold on to the fact that you were always the person who got all As. Don't hold on to being able to speak well in class, and don't hold on to sounding like a freaking idiot. Time is limited in law school and free time even more so. All I'm saying is that if you're going to hold on to something, make sure its worth it.