law student version of sending my child to war

Dear Apple Technician,

Please, please please take good care of my baby. She is in a very vulnerable state at the moment, what with the combination of not working correctly and me oscillating between screaming and crying jags every time she does not work correctly. She is my trusty and loyal sidekick, my partner in crime, the love of my (law school) life. Be kind. Treat her well. I've put her through a lot of trials and tribulations over the last year and a half, and I'd like to see her make it at least until I graduate and find a job. Send her back to me new and improved as fast as you can.

Also? Though I am in the midst of a massive pre-send-off backup of my data, please PLEASE for the love of all that is holy try not to delete any of my shit. I am a law student, not a tech guru, and I make no claims of actually knowing what I am doing when it comes to backing up my documents, music and pictures. And all those other random but essential files that live in non-obvious places. In other words, please send my baby back intact, aside from the broken parts.

Sincerely,

(NotCurrently)Laughing

hiatus shmi-bite me-atus

You might say that I have been on a hiatus from blogging. You would be correct. I launched myself into winter break with the pointed goal of Doing Nothing for 4 solid weeks and I'm happy to say that I succeeded, with one notable exception. I did spend a lot of time with my new boyfriend, who I'll call Jack Bauer. He is incomparably delightful, but that's enough gushing for now.

Today I made a discovery about an apparent misconception that I've had since starting law school. I always thought that the loud people in the library were 1Ls - those without a clear understanding of law school etiquette and hierarchy, who had no basis for understanding their volume level. And I have been wrong this whole time! The loud people in the library are actually 3Ls - they don't really care that much about reading for their classes, but they're sort of in the habit of being in the library, and the bar exam isn't close enough yet for them to actually be preparing. I'm not yet sure what to do with this new found knowledge, as it stretches my sense of law school etiquette and hierarchy to glare mercilessly at a bunch of 3Ls. More to follow, and I promise it will be sooner than last time.

internet "research"

You know you've crossed some sort of internet-stalking line when you find things while "researching" somebody online that you want to share with them, but in order to do so you'd have to admit to your technological-pokings-around - and not in the "yeah I checked out your pictures when you friended me" kind of way. But come on, when someone else who has the exact same name has put only books about magical demons on their amazon wish list, how can I be expected to not make a joke about that?

In a related note, lots of people who have private Facebook profiles do not have private pictures. I mean lots and lots, especially those who are not paranoid law students worried about getting a job someday. I also think that most people don't think about the setting "friends of friends" as still containing complete strangers. I start break tomorrow afternoon and it is going to take Herculean efforts to keep from going any further into the internetz.

it's a series of tubes

Ok, I love me some lolcats as much as anybody else (not true, I probably love them more), but have you ever read the comments on those posts? Holy literacy rate, I want to punch those people.

Also, while I'm on the subject of griping about my otherwise favorite study distractions, I've always wondered: who are the people taking the People of Walmart pictures? They have to be in Walmart to take the picture, or at least lurking around the parking lot - aren't they making fun of themselves in a roundabout way? Or worse, are they just douchey hipster college students doing recon so that they can bask in the glory of their photo being posted on the site? Does it assuage the conscience of people like me when we do go into Walmart? "Hey it's not so bad, maybe I'll see a crazy person I can take a picture of with my overpriced phone!"

This is a perfect example of why I should not be left alone to study on a Friday night, without the company of booze or attractive men: because when left to my own devices I over-analyze everything that is fun about the internet.

moment of panic

Every time I have to do a research assignment for work, there is a moment early on in the process when I am looking at the research question and I just think to myself, "I have no fucking clue what my boss is asking for." I know I need to ask some questions to clarify what it is I'm supposed to be looking for, but in order to ask good questions I need to have some understanding of what I'm doing. In order to have some understanding of what I'm doing, I need to know a little bit more than zero, that is if I want to keep my job. And so I spend a couple of hours spinning my wheels, grasping at search terms and obscure ALRs until I have enough of a shadow of an idea to ask those clarifying questions. Does this happen to anybody other than me?

patience is my strong suit

In my experience, the anxiety of waiting for a guy to call is only eclipsed by the anxiety of waiting for the Awesome Job I Applied For to call. And I only submitted my application like 3 minutes ago. Welcome to my own particular brand of crazy, Internet. Make yourself comfortable, we could be here a while.

list of suck

Things About Which I Am Not Particularly Pleased At The Moment:

1. Not getting any interviews yet.
2. Also not yet getting called back by the cute boy I spent the weekend with.
3. Having a cold.
4. Being broke.
5. The fact that there are no more classes to take from my favorite professor.
6. Acne.
7. The fact that finals are right around the corner.

the "work" and corresponding "death"

I'm pretty sure that I have pulled more all-nighters in the last 3 months of being a 2L than I ever did as an undergrad. I know I'm not the first to say this, and I won't be the last, but crap-on-a-cracker this 2L "work you to death" thing is no joke. And mere weeks ago I was going on and on about not letting law school take over my entire life. Ha. Ha. Defeat is funnier in the wee hours of the morning, don't you think?

Also, as a result of the overworkèdness, if another one of the 1Ls in the writing class I TA for comes up to me to complain about how much work they have, I may have to punch them. Except take out the "may" from that last sentence and substitute it with "will, without hesitation." So 1Ls? You are on notice: it's not Halloween zombies you need to watch out for, it's bloodshot 2Ls who look like zombies. Don't say you haven't been warned.

pickle

I am in a research pickle. Everything that I have found gives an extremely clear answer to the research question: "no". But my boss thinks that the answer should be "yes," and is bound and determined that I should find that "yes" if I just do more research. At what point do I stop billing and again give the unsatisfactory answer of "no" even after being told to "look harder"?

adventures in "reply all"

Today in the library, I received the following email:
_____
To: Laughing, Guy-Friend ...list of other people
From: StudyGroupGuy
Subject: Party!

Hey study group! I am having a party next weekend, it would be cool if you all came!

_____

I then replied to Guy-Friend:
_____
To: Guy-Friend
From: Laughing
Subject: RE: Party!

OMG! Cute boy in our study group is having a party!
_____

Then Guy-Friend replied to me:
_____
To: Laughing
From: Guy-Friend
Subject: RE: Re: Party!

Laughing, you clicked Reply All....
_____

And then PANIC PANIC PANIC PANIC PANIC PANIC PANIC PANIC PANIC PANIC PANIC PANIC PANIC PANIC PANIC PANIC PANIC PANIC PANIC PANIC PANIC PANIC PANIC PANIC PANIC PANIC PANIC PANIC PANIC PANIC PANIC PANIC PANIC PANIC PANIC PANIC PANIC PANIC PANIC PANIC PANIC PANIC PANIC PANIC PANIC PANIC PANIC PANIC PANIC
_____

And then I received this:
_____
To: Laughing
From: Guy-Friend
Subject: RE: Re: Re: Party!

Haha! Just joking!
_____

And then I spent the afternoon scheming about leaving flaming bags of poo on Guy-Friend's doorstep.

financial aid success!!

It only took about 15 tries, but the financial aid office has finally gotten their shit together and decided to let me borrow more than $2000 to live on this semester. Yay! No more ramen for me, I'm upgrading to PB&J! Wooohoooo!!!

In completely unrelated news, "Velvet Wendolyn" has emailed me to let me know that she (she?) wants to sell me some viagara and cialis. Someone with that kind of a name is exactly who I would expect to be peddling such wares, except that I would expect her to be doing so at the kinky tent at the renaissance festival, not through such modern means as email.

of shoes--and ships--and sealing wax

In the year I've been blogging, I have tried to make it a point to make this a primarily "law school blog." In some ways I needed the structure, and in some ways I did it to protect my identity from my classmates. But this summer has most decidedly Not been about law school, and so I haven't had much to write about. Instead, this summer has seemed to be about how my relationship is unraveling before my eyes, which is something I've been in denial of, embarrassed by, and mostly just afraid of. It has been something that I've hoped wouldn't happen, and something that I definitely didn't want to broadcast to the internet.

Maybe I was wrong to think that I could contain these spheres of my life apart from one another. What is currently happening in my relationship is affected by me being in law school, and how I feel about being in law school is in part affected by my relationship. There is a venn diagram there, and the overlapping part is a black hole of shittiness. It's a bleak outlook, and perhaps a controversial way to say "Welcome 1Ls!"

School starts up again soon though, which gives me something to look forward to (and perhaps some good blog fodder?). Despite my all-around dislike of last year I'm actually excited about school again - about my classes, about meeting new people, about the jobs and internships I have lined up, about the friends I've made, and about simply no longer being a 1L. I hope you'll stick around to laugh with and at me.

best and worst of the first

I got tagged! And despite my steady readership of other people's blogs, it took me about 15 minutes to figure out what the fuck it meant when Shake wrote "I tagged you!" I thought, "spray paint?" or maybe "facebook?" A while later, and with a healthy helping of "duh" I realized that oh, hey, tagging is a thing people do on their blogs. Oh yeah.

Aside from that, this exercise was difficult for me. It was difficult to look back and try and decide between all the bad memories, and to try and remember the not so many good ones. This year of school has been rough and though I've had fun at times, nothing in particular has stood out for me as making all the crappy stuff worth it. But hey, let's get the bad news over with first....

The Worst: On the day that I turned my final brief in for my writing class, I also got back a practice midterm from a class I had been doing pretty well in. While he was handing back the midterms, my professor mentioned that there was one that he had trouble reading, and so he had asked the writing tutor to read it and comment. And of course it was mine. And of course the writing comments were the first thing I read. And of course, I lost my shit. Writing has always been one of my strongest academic skills, and it tore me to shreds. I thought about quitting school, I thought that I was going to fail out. I was mad at my professor and mad at myself, and I couldn't stop thinking about the paper I had just turned in. I read the midterm, and it was poorly written, and so I beat myself up some more. I tried my best to put it behind me, to not think about it, to act as if it had been a fluke.

The Best: I hate to bring this to grades, but this experience is only the Best because of how it relates to the Worst. The day after my last final I went in to pick up my graded brief from my writing professor (yes, the one that I turned in on that awful day). Right there on the front of my grading sheet, my professor had written that my brief was the best one in the class. I hope to never forget that feeling. I could absolutely not hold it in. In fact, I'm pretty sure I actually squeaked, right there in the law building hallway, in the middle of finals, one big loud "EEEEEEE!" I have never been so happy to get an A in my entire life, and I have also never been so worried about doing poorly on something. Plus, it was a great feeling that the first grade I got this semester was such a good one (especially compared to last semester, when my first grade was by far the worst). It has given me more confidence at my internship, in my ability to be an attorney, and in my ability to take a rough situation and still do well for myself.

I'm going rogue and tagging some who has finished a bit more school than me: (In)Sanity Gal.

cleanliness is next to .... calmness?

Not to sound too smarmy, but sometimes what I really need is just to spend a few minutes cleaning up my apartment.

I've always been a person who, under stress, makes a huge mess in my surroundings: papers laid everywhere, clothing strewn about, coffee mugs left out, etc. I've always made excuses: I'm so busy/stressed/have so much to accomplish that I cannot even begin to think about being neat, let alone actually cleaning up the mess that I've made. That "solution" has always worked just fine for me, at least until law school.

"Stress-messy" was still my M.O. last semester, at least during the week. Now, I'm beginning to think that this may be a poor strategy for me. Instead of calming me down because I have one less task to worry about, I think deep down the mess stresses me out. Cleaning can be really cathartic for me, and in the last few weeks I've found that its much better than surfing the internet or watching tv is at making me feel like I've had a break and am ready to do more schoolwork.

Maybe this is a tiny piece of the wisdom/calm that the 2Ls have found? I know that they are waaay busier than 1Ls, but for the most part they seem to also do a waaay better job at balancing school, life and job than we do.

clusterfrackery

...is when you get to the top of the parking garage ramp, press the button so that it will dispense a ticket and open the gate and instead the message pops up: "tickets jammed". And there is no attendant. And the gate does not move. And you must try and reverse and u-turn down the steep ramp before anyone traps you in there. And you need to get on the train actually very soon. And so you drive home (?!) to park and get on the train there. And this last "and" is just intended to make all you hard line grammarians cringe again.

As you can tell, I've returned from spring break with a bang.

I gave myself a real break this time - I didn't read, outline, or write. It felt good, and I needed the mental and emotional break. Unfortunately it has been followed by the rather jarring realization that - frack frack frack - there are only 5 more weeks of class. Ooh. Hmm. I need to catch up on con law. Yes.

It doesn't help that I agreed to do a bunch of really really time consuming stuff this week. Instead, I'm trying to focus on the positive. Like this stuff:

1. Not only have I scored a majorly awesome summer internship, I have also managed to snag one for the fall. (Don't be too jealous, neither are paid)
2. The fact that the cat kept me up all fracking night last night means that I'll sleep like the dead tonight.
3. I'm making onion soup tomorrow. Nom slurp nom.
4. I found a grocery store gift certificate that my mom gave me for Christmas that I had previously lost. Free food!
5. I have a new favorite word. Can you guess what it is? In related news, a new disc of battle-nerd ga-nerd-ica arrives in the mail tomorrow.

things I have done tonight that are not reading for con law

It is well established that I am neurotic. Its the butt of many, many jokes. I have deep appreciation for anyone who can tolerate me despite it. So I know. Ok? I KNoooOW.

Tonight, while reading for con law (really! I was! I swear!) I looked over at my phone and happened to glance what can only be referred to as an extremely unwelcome intruder. Yes, that means a fucking spider. A large fucking spider.

If you've been reading since I started school, you'll know that I kind of have a thing about spiders. You know, a crippling spastic anxiety fear thing. I recently learned that the freaky looking red spiders that I usually see are "harmless." While I take issue with that description, I'm relieved to know that they are at least not poisonous. The one positive thing that I'll say about winter is that it has been relatively spider free. Until now.

This particular fucker was not of the "harmless" red variety, but is about the same size. He was in a place on the wall that made stomping or squarshing kind of awkward, so I went and got a cup to trap him in. But no! He was fucking fast, and darted behind a bookshelf. (You see where this is going right? Right? Exactly).

So I moved the bookshelf, stalking him for about 15 minutes. (Once I made a dinner guest help me move the couch because a spider went under there.) I grabbed an old nalgene. I had never considered this before, but these nasty old water bottles I use are basically just spider containment devices in waiting. And after multiple jobs at the wall, and then the carpet, and then some general freaking out when he made a run towards my feet, success.

Look:














Oh, you can't really see it that well? How about this:














Now the only decision I have to make is whether to give the water bottle to the cat to play with for a few days or to just throw it out now.

let the sun shine in

Oh, dear sweet readers, I have tested the limits of your patience and tolerance in this past month. And no wonder - February sucks. February is the month in which I go from occasionally mopey to full blown S.A.D. I went down the (non-medicated) rabbit hole, complete with 5-7 hours a day of television, nearly no social contact with anyone other than BF, and oscillation between insomnia and over-sleep. On top of that, I added an unhealthy dose of self-loathing compounded by having to respond to classmates' questions with: no, I have not secured a summer job, thankyouveryeffingmuch. Looking back at my blog writing from February I'm glad now that I hit the save button more often than I hit the publish button, because egad I wrote some pretty self-indulgent I'm-so-sad shit.

So here's to looking up. Here's to March being a (literally) brighter month. Things are off to a great start - I actually felt like I accomplished something this weekend, but didn't make myself miserable in the process. The days are getting longer and warmer, and not even daylight savings time can take the spring out of my step, bitchez. Plus, I promise not to go all sad & crazy-like for at least another 11 months. So, you and me - we're cool, right?

not laughing

I've been extra complainy lately, I know. February has been a tough month - lots of school work, lots of stress, very little let up. But yo? It is hard to not be complainy when the shit just keeps hitting the fan in such spectacular fashion.

Latest example: this is the weekend before my motion brief is due. It was also BF's birthday, so I took yesterday off and planned to work diligently, all day long, on my brief today. In theory it was an excellent plan. Excellent, until this morning when I discovered that my hot water heater was leaking - soaking the living room and office room floor, carpet, and furniture. So instead of writing and editing and revising and perfecting my citations, I spent the bulk of the day wrangling with various maintenance technicians, moving furniture, and overseeing the carpet pad replacement, carpet shampooing, baseboard removal and water heater repair. And now my apartment is host to two very fucking loud industrial fans to dry the carpet and walls out.

I keep telling myself that it could have been worse. I could have not noticed for a couple of days, the water damage could have been so bad as to force me to move out of this godforsaken apartment into another godforsaken apartment on a different floor. But if that had happened I think I could have legitimately gotten an extension. This is just inconvenient enough to butt up against the limit of suck-it-up-and-finish-your-brief. Its just enough to waste the entire fucking day on, its just enough to bring me a hair's breadth from losing my shit.

Edited to add: The cat's dislike of the industrial fans is even stronger than my own. Poor kitty :(

this is the song that never ends

Law school is the song that never ends. Doing well in law school is all about your ability to tolerate always having something to do. Not just something that you could be doing but something that you need to do, something that you really ought to be doing.

I am discovering that I have a very low tolerance for that sort of thing. I need a foreseeable end, a lull, a break. I like lists because you can see everything and cross things off and then you're done. I can push myself to workworkworkwork when I know after its over I won't have anything to do. That's why I've always been such a procrastinator - I'm really only willing to put forth the time and energy when I'm going to be immediately rewarded with a break. And until law school, this was a pretty successful system. In work and undergrad things came in cycles. There was down-time. There were days when I had a lot to do and days when I truly had nothing to do. I was used to it and so I got good at it.

In law school, I've always got something that I need to do. When he's here on the weekends, BF asks me if I have a lot of work to do, and my answer is always "yes." It builds - neglect one thing for the sake of something else and you'll end up behind in everything. It wears on me. At the same time I recognize that this is how law school is, and I need to get to a point where it doesn't bother me. Any suggestions?

things I need to do

The following are some things that I need to do, listed not in the order in which I need to do them, but in the order of what is stressing me out the most. I am apparently only organized in my neuroses.

1. Sweep the bathroom floor. Actually, just clean the whole bathroom.
2. Write thank you cards for my interviewers. FUCK I just remembered this one.
3. Figure out how to get lower interest rates on my credit cards. For about 2 seconds, consider moving back in with my parents.
4. Get a new blade for the totally bombtastic cat brush that has recently become too dull to collect any actual cat hair.
5. (related to #4) Vacuum.
6. Wash dishes.
7. Organize (ie decipher) Property notes. Gah.
8. Do I have another sinus infection? Fuck.
9. Find someone who will accept my free and eager labor for the summer. Harder than it sounds.
10. Exercise. Am becoming squishy.
11. Holy shit its almost March.
12. Holy double shit scholarship application due soon.
13. Do laundry.
14. Need to get boss to send me more stuff to work on. Five hours a week doesn't pay the bills.
15. Buy BF birthday present.
16. Oh yeah, I have a draft due for my brief tomorrow.

Things I have actually spent my time doing tonight, in order of how much stupid time they took:
1. Internet.
2. Two blog posts (duh).
3. Cook and eat whole artichoke. Yum!
4. Watch Law & Order.
5. Play with the cat.
6. Outline my brief for tomorrow.