Nice Thanksgiving

Had a nice, though not too relaxed, Thanksgiving, mainly due to the fact that a 10-page open memo is due right after the break. Damn you, Law School! (More specifically the First Year Lawyering class).

I did a lot of research and writing, but then again, I also played a lot of Resident Evil 4. So, maybe I really shouldn't complain too much.

Boyfriend's parents came to visit us, and spent Thanksgiving night here. Thankfully, we decided to forego turkey in favor of chicken for the Thanksigivng meal, since neither Boyfriend's father nor I like turkey. Obviously, I didn't do any cooking. :D Instead, Boyfriend and her mother got the chicken from Boston Chicken, which was very good (we ordered a turkey from there last year also, which was very good, considering that it was a turkey.). I opened a bottle of my favorite carmenere, and a good time was had by all.

On Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving, I met up with JK, my college boyfriend and still a good friend of mine, who is a 3L in "that other school". JK is doing well; just got a clerkship with a controversial DC appellate court judge. JK was very conservative in college, and has a conservative dad who is an appelate court judge. He complained about politicized the entire clerkship application process was, and how with his last name no one but conservative judges would even give him a chance. JK was also depressed because he hadn't seen his girlfriend, who is from LA, in more than 5 weeks. I did my best to cheer him up.

Since I had my van, we went to IKEA to pick out a bed for him. While there, he said loudly that he didn't want anything at the foot of the bed for "having sex" purposes. I shushed him but it was too late. People stared. Ay...

Thanksgiving itself was uneventful. It if it were up to me, I would have drunk a lot more wine But since Boyfriend's parents were here, I had to restrain myself.

I actually vaguely missed law school, minus all the work, obviously. Leaving tomorrow back to B-Town. Am feeling excited to go back.

I Give Thanks

I read through some of my old posts today. It is wonderful to read what I was thinking and doing four, five, six months ago. I'm glad I have a record of this period of my life.

And you, my readers, are most of the reason why I keep on posting day after day. Thank you for your interest in me. Thank you for sharing random moments in my life. Thank you for giving me a reason to write. Thank you.

Missing Friend

I was doing a practice exam for civ pro when my cell phone rang. The caller ID showed that it was from a restricted number. It was probably a wrong number. I hesitated before picking up.

On the other end of the line, an unfamiliar woman's voice, accented and anxious.

"Who is this?"

"This is PB."

"This is N's mother. I am calling you because I found your phone number in N's address book. N is missing and I'm looking for him."

"Oh my God!" I gasped into the phone. N is an old college friend of mine. We kept in touch fitfully after college; saw each other once or twice but sometimes talked on the phone for hours. The last time I spoke to him, however, was a few months ago, and since law school began, I have been terrible at keeping up with all my college friends, and haven't spoken to him at all.

His mother was clearly distraught but fighting to keep calm. It took me a while to understand what had happened. She said that N had left with some college friends for Kentucky to visit another friend a few weeks ago and was due to return yesterday. But when he didn't come back she got very worried. She's now frantically trying to track him down.

In college, N wasn't the most responsible of people. He often missed scheduled lunch dates with no explanation or missed deadlines. Still, it was worrisome, and I felt for his mother.

"How do you know N? Are you his college friend."

"Yes, I graduated in the same year as him," I told her. "Class of 2001."

"Do you know M?" she asked me. "Do you know G? They also went to the same school. This is who N was supposed to visit in Kentucky."

I didn't know either of these people. But after she gave me G's last name, I was able to log into the alumni directory, and found her listed phone number. I also gave her Dickie's number, in case he knows something (and some people) that I don't.

"Thank you so so so much," she said, sounding like she was about to cry. I wished her luck and told her to let me know if there was anything else I could do. After hanging up the phone, I called N's cell phone. There wasn't even a ring tone. Just silence. It was creepy.

When Boyfriend got home from shopping I told him what had happened. "Hopefully she's already called the police," he said. I hadn't even thought of that. I hope it wouldn't come to this. Hopefully N was just being his irresponsible self and will sheepishly materialize later today, with an apologetic smile and no good explanation.

N, I hope you are okay. Wherever you are, call your mom! She's worried sick about you.

Tax!

Okay, so just performed some elaborate process of elimination on the elective choices.

First, crossed out all the courses that conflict with my required courses for next semester. That was 11 courses.

Second, crossed out all courses taught by visiting prof. Sorry, but quality not guaranteed and hard to build long-term relationship. That was 11 courses.

Third, noted courses with assistant / associate profs or lecturers rather than fully tenured profs. That was 6. Checked those profs out. Some seem okay, but the subject matter didn't really interest me (Jewish law, migrant law, and UN law) . Another has no evaluations and is terribly young (as in, 4 years older than me. Eliminate.)

Fourth: eliminatd the one course that required a competitive application process, for which the deadline has already passed. :P

That left 11 courses to consider, which are actually 8 substantive courses, since some has more than one sections. I checked each of the profs out, and crossed out the ones that received bad ratings, or for whom I couldn't find ratings (which means they haven't taught for a while...) That eliminated 2.

Then eliminated 1 course b/c it will be co-taught by 3 professors. In my experience those classes are usually schizophrenic and disorganized, and it's hard to build a relationship with any one of the profs.

Then eliminated all courses whose subject matter I'm not terribly interested in (health care).

This left 5 courses: tax, globalization, conflict of laws, local law, and "law and mind" (I have no idea what that last one is, either.)

After this very scientific process (thank you, thank you), tax is currently on the top of my list.

Now I just need to hope that I get it in the lottery.

Electives

So, at my law school, 1Ls can take an elective apart from the two required first year courses second semester. I took a look at the (surprisingly short) list of available courses for 1L today. The list was pretty uninspiring. There are 40 classes we could choose from. 25% of them conflicted with my required courses (so no con law, corporations, race relations law, real estate law, or philanthropy and the law for me.)

This leaves 30 courses to choose from.

Dinner now. (Boyfriend bought sushi!) More on this later.

The Game

So, guess we lost The Game again. It's like the fifth year in a row or something. Shame on the 'Dogs. Good thing I didn't go and watch it, because it was cold and the game apparently went into triple overtime and it's so depressing to lose after all that.

...Though I sure could use a good drink right about now...

(For those of you who know what I'm talking about, Bow-wow-wow!)

Momentous Day

Today was possibly the most momentous day I have had in my law school career. No, I did not ace or fail an exam or did an important piece of legal scholarship. Nor did I have an epiphany about what I want to do with my legal degree or decide what elective I want to take next semester, although I have been actively thinking of such questions.

Instead, I went out with some friends and pierced my ears.

Yes, you see, I have spent 26 years on this earth as a normal, heterosexual female without having had any body piercing whatsoever. In high school, when other girls came to school with dangling earrings, I could only look on in envy. (I had other fashion problems back then, but enough about that.) So, my body was piercing virgin territory. My parents were strict (esp. my mom, who detested anything feminine and non-unisexual.) So my ear lobes remained whole and unpierced.

In college and beyond, I had considerable freedom, but squeamishness took over. Even though I entertained the idea of getting some piercings now and then, I never went through with it because I... am... afraid... of... pain...

But law school has cured me of all that. Ha! I feel invincible after several chapters of civ pro reading!! If I survived many classes harping endlessly on the Fourth Amendment, I could survive ANYTHING! Nothing can stop me! I want to wear those sparkling chandelier earrings NOW!

As it turns out, I won't be able to wear them for another six weeks. Instead, I have gotten these discrete flower-shaped duds on my ears at the moment. They look very cute, but I won't be able to take them off for another forty-one days. Plenty of time to pick out some sexy earrings.

And that is what I did today. (And dim sun with J and her husband and AC and a lot of shocking sex talk coming from AC and shopping afterwards at H&M together and buying cute earmuffs, but how can I talk about that when I have pierced ears?!?!?).

Harry Potter 4 Was Awesome

Not just saying this because I'm a Harry Potter fan. The movie was the best of the HP movies and a ton of fun. Very well paced; appropriate dark at places but plenty of funny scenes; Awesome special effects!

Just came back from opening night where the house was packed. See it if you haven't already done so!

You Know What I Hate??

People who sniffle, SWALLOW, and who still don't blow their nose.

This guy who sits next to me was doing this FOR THE ENTIRE CLASS during crim. I was so grossed out that I moved away from him halfway through class, after enduring 40 minutes it. I didn't care whether he was offended. I hope he was, because it was just RUDE to do what he did.

Anyway, that was my gripe of the day.

Section Game Night

Our section game night was tonight. I brought my Scrabble game. ABS set up a poker tournament. Since I don't know anything about poker, I (wisely) decided to stick with the game I know. (S tried to teach me last night, to no avail.) Our crim law professor came and played scrabble with us for a while. We had four teams. JM, the girl in my study group, played on a team with me. JR and MB were on the same team; JE and PG were on the same team, and Prof. M and AD were on the same team. JM and I kept on grabbing shitty, shitty letters, sometimes all vowels. We came in third. Prof M. and AD's team came in second, and the grand winner was JR and MB. Grrrrr...

Then played speed chess with S. In spite of his gross mistakes in the beginning (including losing his queen AND one rook to me within the first 15 moves of the game), time got me in the end. I never claimed to be a good chess player (and J, you know this!).

In case my life sounds like nothing but fun and games to you, this evening I also buckled down after coming home and read 40 pages of torts. Well, okay, that really wasn't that hard since the subject matter -- product liability -- is very interesting. Also, Wednesdays are always a bitch, since there are three back-to-back classes today. Torts was pretty interesting; crim law was unbearably boring; and in civ pro we had a mock trial relitigating Asahi, where my very colorful and flamingly gay friend L argued for the original plaintiff. A good time was had by all.

Back to reading... (see? I'm a good girl...)

The Nerdiest Game Ever

Today was a good day. In the morning we had crim. After that, I had my business law reading group with our very young, recently tenured and endowed, and very attractive Indian professor, who received his JD/MBA from my law school only seven years ago.

We talked a bit about junk bonds trading and the rise of Mike Milken, then, somehow, ended up discussing why law school graduates tend not to have as much passion and love for what they do as business school graduates. My theory is that law is a much more stratified and prestige-oriented profession than business, and the three years of law school is basically a brain-washing process that forces you to accept the values and gradations of the rest of the law community. This is why we are so obsessed with rankings -- which school is #1, which law firm is #1, which journal is more prestigious, which judge is a bigger "feeder judge", whose professors get cited more often, etc.

Someone else made the point that the type of people who are lawyers are more risk-averse and only chose law out of anxiety and fear but anything they really love. So of course most of they are not going to really love anything they really do in the profession, either.

Anyway, I know these things are hard to generalize and harder to resolve, but the conversation got me thinking nonetheless. I am pretty happy with law school so far. I hope it's not all downhill from here. I guess I have a responsibility to make sure that it's not.

After my reading group, I went to a game appointment with S, ABS, and another person from our section, JE, to play Twilight Emperium in the law school cafeteria. This game is extremely nerdy and VERY elaborate. We needed a very large table in order to accommodate all the game pieces, and the whole game took about 3.5 hours.

The game is straight out of the tradition of Lord of the Rings and Star Trek, and it's like an intergalectic version of Civilization, with players controlling planets and vying for domination... the rules are extremely complex and took me a while to master, so I won't bore you with them here. Even from the look of it, it was the nerdiest game ever, and as R (another person who occasionally played the game with us) would say, you can judge a game's nerdiness by how many new and invented words it requires you to say while playing it. And this game has a ton of invented words. Just as an example: I controlled the Nuula people. 'Nuff said.

S attacked the Nuulas in the middle of the game. Epic battle ensued. I fend him off (with some extremely lucky moves and dice rolling), but the resources that we wasted (war is so wasteful!) caused ABS to forge ahead and to win. JE came in second. I came in third. S, for his treacherousness, came in last. :D

After that, JE went home to read. ABS, S, and I decided to walk to a Vietnamese restaurant in the Square. We had a very relaxed dinner (perhaps too relaxed). After that, I took a little detour and went to ABS's apartment to see his cat Pandora, then finally went home circa 8 to begin my reading.

Secton Politics, 1L Job Fair

It's been warm in the past few days, which is nice, especially since I know that winter is just around the corner. I worn a cotton dress today -- feels so much like spring. But I have my snow boots ready.

Three things that are of note today. First, I decided to invite my entire section to go to see the Harry Potter movie with me. Boyfriend is not a big Harry Potter fan and finds the entire line of Harry Potter products excruciatingly boring. Thank God I now have friends who disagree!

So, I wrote an email to the entire section inviting them. It's kind of unusual of me to do this, because usually I am ultra-sensitive and fear rejection. But I figured that if no one responds I will just chalk it up to the fact that they are not Harry Potter fans. :)

But so far, 8 people responded. So I now have to look into tickets, schedules, etc.

Second, I organized a study group last week and today it met for the first time in the library! We did practice exam questions and then talked about them with each other. It was a lot of fun and very helpful, as well.

The formation of this study group was a little agonizing. Initially, I wanted to just invite my best friend from the section, J, to do this. But then I thought, there are so many smart people in the section. Perhaps we should invite more. So I wrote J an email and suggested a few names, including R, D, JM, and S. I told her that I'd like to limit the number of participants to five because beyond that it was too unwieldy and hard to communicate.

J wrote back and said that it was a really good idea. She did say though that she wondered whether S would be too unfocused to really study. I was planning a meeting once a week where everyone would do practice exam questions and come together to discuss them, and this requires a little bit of discipline. S (to my knowledge) is the hard-drinking type who always manages to get his work done though not in a steady way. Anyway, after speaking to her, I decided to only invite R, JM, and D. All of them responded and said that they loved the idea. But I was immediately worried that my other friends in the section would be insulted that they weren't invited into our study group.

I know. I'm neurotic about these things. But I really do hate anything divisive or exclusive. I want everyone to get along and, more importantly, to get along with ME. But the truth of the matter is, I can't include everyone in the study group, and I had to choose. So oh well.

But anyway, that's the story of the study group. We met for the first time today and it went really well. Everyone was focused and on and had good things to say. The dynamics were really good. I am proud and happy though am a little sad that S, A, ABS, and a bunch of other friends were not included. S had lunch with us today and learned about the study group. He didn't say anything, but I wonder how he felt.

Third thing of note was that there was a 1L job fair tonight at school, where 2Ls and 3Ls who worked for public interest organizations talked to 1Ls about their experience working at various organizations. It was informative and got me thinking seriously about working abroad for the summer. My law school guarantees funding for all the 1Ls who want to do public interest work, and it seems like we have a lot of latitude in choosing what we want to do/where we want to go.

Okay, this is it for now. I can't believe I wrote so much. Should go to sleep now!

Slacker's Weekend

Spent the weekend mildly slacking off. I did all my work evetually, it just took me a long time, and I didn't get nearly as much work as I'd liked. But it was fun.

Satureday, went to the law school for brunch. Met S and another girl from our section there. Talked with S 'til nearly 3, not wanting to do work. S finally left. I was left alone in the dining hall and decided to buckle down. Worked on the memo for a few hours. It bored me to tears. If I ever hear the word "negligent marketing" or "negligent entrustment" again I think I'm going to puke.

Played a few rounds of pool with A in the evening in the poolroom, then went home. Boyfriend came home. I spent the rest of the evening checking citations on my stupid memo. Finally went to sleep around midnight.

Sunday -- Boyfriend wanted to watch football, so I went to school again -- good thing school is only 10 minutes away! Spent the entire day updating my civ pro outline, doing a civ pro sample problem, and then reading for crim law. These questions are HARD! I really need to buckle down and start getting the concepts straight in my head. Otherwise there's no way I'm going to get a good grade on these exams.

Came home, read crim some more, but kind of inefficiently. People kept on IMing me!! Why don't I just turn my AIM off? Because I'm a social being and fear loneliness and abandonment, and because I have no self-control whatsoever, and because the crim law really bored me and I was actually looking forward to chatting with various classmates and griping about how boring crim law has become. We finished the substantive section of our crim law course and are now studying criminal procedure. The cases we are reading are kind of dry... Perhaps I will explain another day.

Opera Night

Another Friday... Time is passing very quickly these days. This weekend is going to be a busy one, because another memo is due next Monday. So will probably spend most of this weekend revising and bluebooking.

This afternoon after class, I went to my friend D's house for our weekly Scrabble game. D's mother-in-law is also in town and came in the middle of the game with D's wife L. L looks very god, basically the same as she looked 7 years ago, which is pretty amazing. I lost the scrabble game by 17 points. :( We are scheduling a rematch and tiebreaker next Friday.

After that I walked to meet R and L from my section to go to the opera together in downtown B-town. We first had dinner at a great Vietnamese restaurant in Chinatown, and talked tons and tons of section gossip, then went to the opera, which was AMAZING! I never listened to operas that much before (except for many Wagner operas when I lived in Berlin) but this reminded me of how fun it is. Opera is so over the top -- big costumes; elaborate sets (although our set is kind of modern and sparse); great music... The main character, a soprano tonight was very very good, and certain scenes really brought tears to my eyes.

So, note to self: watch operas more often!!

Musical

Just came back from the bar with S. The evening was supposed to involve more people but it ended up just being the two of us. We had a very intense conversation over white russians for me and beers for him. Then he was gentlemanly and walked me home. Came home feeling very fond of him and happy in general.

Earlier tonight, went to see a very strange law school musical with J and ABS. The musical has nothing to do with law and as far as I could tell was just some law students who want to be actors putting together a show on a whim. The pretty Korean girl from our section stars in the musical and does a pretty good job. Other than that, the musical features some of the worst singing I've ever heard, hilarious acting, and a good time all around. The show is funny, sometimes intentionally and sometimes unintentionally, I laughed pretty hard. Also, it has an INSANE ending. I had a lot of fun...

Really should go to sleep now if I have any hope of making it to torts tomorrow.

Prison Sucks

You probably know this already, but I just wanted to reiterate this again. Prison. Sucks.

Try not to break the law so you don't have to go to prison.

Anyway, yes, I went on the tour for a medium-security prison today. It was one of the most depressing places I have ever been to. I guess this is good. We don't want our prisons to be enjoyable or anything. But still, the place was smelly, dirty, and soul-crushing.

We looked at the cells where inmates stayed in. The lack of privacy is astounding. The guards could go into the inmate's cell at any time. To demonstrate to us what kind of stuff inmates can or cannot keep, one of the guards lifted the box inside the cell for us and showed us what things the inmate had inside. A few girls in our group cringed. Later, we said that we felt bad that we were going through other people's stuff. Then someone else pointed out that it wasn't as if the inmates had that much expectations of privacy anyway. In fact, it was part of their punishment. To live under a microscope.

They were strip searched when they came in. Everything that was sent to them goes through this central office where it is scrutnized. The state gives them the clothes, the sheets, the boxes and the shelves that they are allowed to keep. The state is also allowed to go into their room at any time for any reason to search their belongings.

The prison was an all male prison. The dress code was white shirt and gray pants. The inmates were not as restricted as I thought they'd be. They moved around in the hallways and had an almost collegial relationship with their guards, who seemed to know them by name.

All the inmates watched us as we came and went. They leered at the women in the group. There were a lot of catcalls.

I felt very self-conscious. One of the people in my section joked (very politically incorrectly) that our prison trip was as if we were taking a fieldtrip to the zoo. But somehow, we felt like the animal on display. The eyes of the inmates were hungry, stripping us down. It occurred to me that a few of these people are probably in the prison for rape.

I felt oddly grateful for the guards. They were all pretty courteous and also protective. Before we went into one of the hallways with cells on either sides, the guards stood at the door and told everyone to go into their cells. The way he stood, with feet apart, hands on his waist, was so authoritative and strong. I was glad that he was there.

The air was bad in the buildings. The whole place smelled like a mixture of body odors, urine, and the kind of cheap cleaners they used in my junior high school building. We later joked that it was probably bulit, furnished, and cleaned by the same contractors who does all these jobs for the government.

There were many minorities there. Our tour guides explained to us that the prison we were visiting was more of a transfer station, for newly admitted inmates who needed to be classified and then moved elsewhere permanently. For this reason, the average time the inmates spend at the facility was six months. Although they saw a lot of the same people there again and again.

In between the buildings was a big yard, fenced in by wires. Many prisoners were playing basketball there. They stopped and gazed at us as we walked by. I noticed that there was not a tree anywhere, nor grass. The ground was gray. All the buildings looked wind-swept and gray too.

Elsewhere in the prison, in a large room that was normally used for chapel service, several hundred prisoners were watching "Passion of the Christ." As we peeked into the room, they also turned and looked at us hungrily. The movie was showing on a small 14-inch TV in the front. It occurred to me that they couldn't possibly all see the screen. The damned movie is in Aramaic, too, and they couldn't read the subtitles either. What were they all doing in there? I wondered.

"You think this place is depressing?" One of the tour guides, the deputy superintendent of the prison, said. "Well, even this can't seem to keep them away."

I suppose none of this should surprise me, but it still did. I was very glad when I left that place.

Looking Forward to Prison

Slept 13 hours last night! From 8:00 to 9:00 this morning. Feel very focused and refreshed today -- ready to work. Unlike my usual self. :)

Yesterday, spent the whole day doing some crim law final exms... They are so hard! I misread the directions to an problem and thought that the word limit was 1,000 words, so I ended up with 1,100 words... but reread the directions and realized that the word limit is actually 500 words, which is insane!

Today, had crim law class, which is now really about criminal procedure rather than substantive criminal law (we've officially entered the second half of the course on Tuesday). It was pretty intereting -- all Fourth Amendment stuff; no unreasonable search and seizure; no arrest warrants without probable cause, etc.

Then, went out to lunch with a group of my classmates to lunch with my civ pro professor. My law school has a budge for every professor to take students out to dinner. We went to a mexican restaurant, sat around a big table, and talked. Although her class is boring, Prof. D is actually very nice in person. She talked very frankly about university politics, told us that she hated civ pro herself when she was a 1L, and in general gave us advice about how to survive the first year of law school. There was a whole bunch of motivational stuff mixed in there as well ("you have the whole world open wide for you..."). All in all, it was a very good experience.

I have another lunch this Wednesday with my crim law professor. I was actually the one who organized this lunch, and I invited some of my friends at the section to join me. This should be fun as well.

Part of our section went to visit a state prison today. It's a trip organized by my crim law professor. I was slated to go tomorrow, and I'm really looking forward to the trip. Apparently, prison has a very strict dress code. Our prof sent us a total of 6-7 emails about the prohibited clothing items, which are very numerous. Here's a partial list:

-shorts, cut-offs,culottes
-halter tops
-tube tops
-half shirts or short blouses
-see-through clothing of any type
-sweat pants
-jogging suits
-skirt/dress with slit above knees or wrap-arounds, mini skirts
-tank tops, sleeveless garments
-low-cut blouses
-unlined or open pocket
-hats of any type, gloves, mittens, or scarves
-stretch pants, stirrup pants, spandex, other tight clothing
-camouflage fatigues, BDU's or cargo pants
-hospital type gowns/clothing/scrubs
-overalls (farmer jeans)
-torn clothing or clothing with holes
-excessively loose fitting or baggy clothing
-leg warmers
-t-shirts or shirts without collars
-clothing with elastic waist bands, elastic in the waist, wrist bands and/or pant legs, or draw-string clothing

Some items, on the other hand, are just bizaare. For instance, we are not allowed to wear "more than one pair of pants." Guys are not allowed to wear "black pants and white shirt". Are they afraid of waiters or something?? Also, like most restaurants, we are not allowed to go bare feet.

Anyway, I'll have to give some serious thought about what to wear tomorrow when I "go to prison".

Shopping!

Last night when I went to the deli to meet S, I ran into N, a pretty and petite Korean girl from our class. (Our section has 3 East Asian girls, myself included, but no East Asian guys. There are two Southeast Asian guys however, and no Southeast Asian girl. J, my bestfriend from the section, is half East-Asian and half Indian, so I'm not really sure where to place her in that category. Why do I care? I have no idea.)

Anyway, N said that she was going shopping today and asked if I wanted to come along. Being the shopaholic that I am, immediately agreed. So this morning at around 10:30, we met up and took the subway into the city. At first, we wanted to go to a famous outlet store downtown. But as we walkeed around there, we realized that we hated the place -- it was simply too disorganized and too crowded, and neither of us felt like looking through racks and overfilled bins to discover the one or two items that may be good among the tons and tons of mediocre clothing.

So, disappointed, we took the subway to another downtown spot where a nice shopping large center is, and immediately felt much better. The next hour and a half were spent splitting up and intensely shopping at BR, NM, JC, and BB. When we met up again, each of us had several large shopping bags in hand. :)

Came home and took a nap. Boyfriend came back from N-Town around 6, while I was still asleep. When I woke up, we decided to go out to dinner, and walked to this great restaurant nearby. Then came home, played some literati, and now am buckling down to work. :)

Past Two Days

Last two days have been fun... Last night, we had the section happy hour after class at a bar near my apartment. Then A, S, D, and R came to my apartment to watch the Apprentice. it was the first time anyone has been to my apartment, and they seemed to like it. J and her husband were going to come too, but at the last minute they flaked out. So it was just me and the guys.

S was a little drunk and was very loud. I was a bit afraid that he was going to annoy the neighbors. I have never really seen S like this, since usually he's shy and quiet. Well, this was interesting, and thankfully the neighbors did not call the police.

Tonight... I was going to go out for drinks with A, S, and some others, but at the last minute the plan petered out and instead I was in the campus cafe for a bit, reading for the civ pro assignment that I was supposed to have done by today's class. We are reading some intersting stuff on personal jurisdiction -- very complicated doctrinally and even though I read about all this over the summer I'm still struggling to keep up with the discussions in class. Then came home. Drank some wine. Around 8 S wrote and asked whether I wanted to grab a sandwich. We met at a little deli and talked for a while.

Came home and had more wine. Tried to read civ pro but couldn't really focus. Instead played many, many games of literati.

Should go to sleep now. I made plans to go shopping with this girl N in my section tomorrow morning, so it will be an early start for me! :)

Phew... Still Alive

This week was hellish. H-E-L-L-I-S-H, I tell you! I had about a gazilion projects to finish, several writing and research assignments, 40 citations (which equals roughly 40 hours of work, and no, (sadly), I'm not exaggerating at all), tons and tons of reading, and a bunch of obligations that I had to perform for my former company. Well, I can't believe that I survived. I have averaged between 4-5 hours of sleep per day, and drank tons and tons of coffee (to the point where I am jittery and anxious).

Thankfully, this busy period is drawing to a close temporarily, so I'll be back on my normal schedule of "just" reading for class and writing the occasional memo. Yay.

Don't want to mislead you, however, into thinking that the honeymoon with the law school is over. Law school is still great. I'm still enjoying all my classes. This is part of the reason why this past week has been so crazy. Many of my classmates would probably just have skipped classes to save time. But since classes are the highlights of my day, I simply refused to do that.

However, the honeymoon with law school is definitely over for SOME people in my section. Fewer and fewer peopel come to our early torts class, and some people skip classes for days. Also, my friend J tells me that some people are beginning to crack under the pressure (pressure?!? WHAT pressure?). Some people, for instance, feel afraid to speak up during class because they feel that other people judge them and will look down upon them if their comments are stupid. I felt genuinely surprised when J told me this. I thought that our section has a relatively good atmosphere, and if anything, I certainly couldn't care LESS what people think of me. My self image is not built on whether other people consider me intelligent. If anything, I'm probably considered to be a ditz by quite a few people in my class, and I rather like it. :D It's better than the image of an old spinster.

Anyway, I shouldl really go to sleep now. Something I haven't done... in a while...

Ugh.

Was subciting nearly all day. Definitely not my preferred way of spending the weekend. In the afternoon, Boyfriend and I walked to an art supplly store in the Square to buy some canvases, because I have been feeling like painting again for a while. I got two small canvases, to start. In the evening, in between subciting, I started painting. It's a lot of fun, and definitely relaxes me. I think picking up this hobby again will be good for my mental health.

Slept so little this weekend. Last night I didn't sleep until four, and woke up this morning around nine. The night before, I totalled six hours. So should go to bed early tonight because it will be a busy week ahead.

My favorite quarterback led his team to a 36:0 victory today. Isn't he adorable? Go Eli!

First Snow, Old Friends, Happiness

Winter in my new home is as legendary as they claim. It's not even November yet, and it is already snowing. When I went to the Square in the early afternoon, I was lazy and didn't wear my winter shoes. Instead, I ventured out in slippers, and paid dearly for my laziness.

By the time I finished doing errands, fat snowflakes were falling from the sky and it was icy cold. My poor feet were frozen by the time I got home.

But let me start from the beginning. Yesterday, after civ pro, I met up with long-lost friend D, who is doing his English PhD in the same university and who is one of my oldest friends from college. Those of you who know me from college know that I have a near mythical idealization and adoration of D, and this, well, hasn't changed. D is as suave and witty as ever, a perfect combination of gentility, intellect, and playfulness. I always feel slightly inadequate when I'm with him, but part of the goodness of D is that he makes you believe that he doesn't notices this, or doesn't care.

We went to a little coffeeshop in the Square where we talked for a long time, me about law school and him about his graduate program and his marriage to L, a picture-perfect romance which is part of the reason why I idolize and adore D. We then went to his apartment about 10 minutes from campus to play Scrabble.

D's apartment is very nice, large, airy, clean, tastefully decorated, with shelves full of books and New Yorkers strewn on the table, freshly cut flowers in the vase in the kitchen, a slightly sweet, homey smell ... exactly what you would expect from a very happily married man with a loving, intellgeint wife with a prestigious job, doing what he loves to do, at peace with himself and with life. On the shelves are also some wedding photos of D and L, laughing under the sun in a West Coast vineyard. I could not go to the wedding, partly because I have work, but also partly because I wanted the romance to stay a myth to me, as perfect and as incomprehensibly happy as a story. I do not want to get close to it, for fear of bringing it down to life.

Am I making sense? I do not want to see the mechanics of D and L constructing the realities of their romance brick by brick; I rather believe that it is a fairy-tale-like, otherworldly thing that is just there, because I take comfort in knowing and believing that such things exist in real life. I desperately want D to be perfectly happy so that I know perfect happiness is possible, even if I am not good enough to attain it. But perhaps I will be, one day.

After parting with D I walked home, read some crim law, drank a glass of wine, and tried to defeat my insomnia by playing literati. I woke up suitably early this morning, read for a bit, went shopping, and then tried to do some writing in the afternoon.

At 7:30 my friend J was having a potluck party, and she invited people from our section to go. I brought some food that Boyfriend had gotten from Costco, and also brought a bottle of sake. About half my section turned up, many with their SO or spouse. One with his baby. People mingled and eat and talked. It was a very good atmosphere. A group of us who like games played taboo, and many others watch. Taboo is a very fun game because people really draw the most random connections. And, of course, there are the obligatory law school connections. Some people in our section are very very good. A very good time was had by all.

I wondered whether I should bring Boyfriend, who is here from N-town today, and who hasn't met anyone from our section yet. He solved my probelm by saying that he didn't feel like going. So I went without him and stayed 'til about now.

j's apartment has been cleaned up and everything looks very nice -- shiny wood floors, pretty curtains, nice, brand new furniture. This is the second apartment I have seen in two days, and the two vaguely echo each other. J's husband, N, is a tall, very handsome and gregarious Indian man who complements J very well. Like D, J displays her wedding photo, and they are, once again, idyllic scenes, this time by the ocean, in a sunny West Coast city. I love these photos of happiness. I love looking at them. When people are un-self-consciously happy it always moves me.

Non-Native Speaker?

Reading for my crim law class; have just noticed that the Second Amendment does not seem to be a grammatical sentence. What the hell?

Eureka!

It's near midnight. I'm probably spending way too much time on this memo. BUT...

After two hours of working on this memo pretty intensely, I just had a series of revelations that I believe pushes this memo to another level. I'm talking about "eureka!" moments that suddenly illuminate everything and make everything come together and make total sense. I'm talking about moments where I finally understand why they are having us read the 8 different cases, and how these 8 cases all figure importantly into the argument I should make in the memo and how they are each unique and indispensable. I'm talking about a sense of euphoria you get when you solved a hard intellectual problem.

I'm probably getting way too excited about this. Most of you probably have no idea what I'm talking about. But... for now, this moment is pretty sweet. Onwards...

Secrets

Thursday is always a long day. I don't get out from class until 7 in the evening, and I usually still have tons of work to do. Today I have to finish revising my memo, which is due tomorrow. So looks like will be another late night for me.

Thursday is not all bad though. After class, it has become a tradition for S, A, and me to have dinner at the law school cafeteria. We then usually hang out a bit, then watch the Apprentice together while drinking various kinds of alcohol. Today I was supposed to supply a bottle of sake, but I got lazy and didn't want to go home to fetch it, so S volunteered his beer and vodka instead. We took the alcohol and went to A's dorm room, where we each had a drink or two while watching the apprentices scurrying to please the boss and The Donald chewing them out. It was a lot of fun.

I also discovered that A has a blog! He apparently has been keeping a diary every since he's a teenager, and now keeps a regular online diary for him and his friends where he keeps a faithful account of what he does every day. I immediately pulled the blog up on my computer, and there it is! I'm mentioned in there by name several times, and so is S.

It's funny to see yourself mentioned in a blog. A's blog doesn't really go into details about me, but just seeing my name there is a little freaky, like being in an alternate universe where you see yourself from a distance, from someone else's perspective.

I have to remind myself not to do anything crazy around A so it doesn't get recorded for all posterity. :)

I didn't tell A or S that I have a blog too. It's my secret.

Work!

Every day I resolve to sleep early. But every day I only get into bed after midnight. Today will probably be no exception.

I have readings to do, essays to write, memos to redraft, subciting to start and then finish, literati games to win (my only form of entertainment these days. Thank goodness I beat everyone I play with by about 100 points every time) and people to IM. Argh!

Have begun playing literati in my civ pro with other classmates. I know, horrible. But so far, I've been listening to the prof every third minutes and so and have found that I don't miss anything major. We'll see.

Boyfriend leaves for N-Town tomorrow again. :(

Meeting with Prof

Ventured into The Square to their Aveda Salon for a routine trim. The woman who cut my hair is my age and a graduate of a regional art institute. She was nice and we got to talking... Her mom came from the town I graduate high school from. Freaky! The haircut was satisfactory and I scheduled another appointment for this Saturday to get some highlights in my hair.

After that, wandered for a few hours in downtown looking at different stores. Bought an umbrella with the school insignia, and walked home.

I started getting nervous about the meeting with my crim law prof about 30 minutes before I had to leave. The reasons I wanted to meet with him were not the most conducive to conversation. I have been increasingly confused by his class and the way he conducts his classes. He would ask questions such as "Is this fair?" "Should we abolish the felony murder rule?" "Should we just not punish criminals based on the often fortuitous events of the resulting harm?" "Should we allow a battered woman to claim self-defense when she killed her husband in his sleep?" and other similar questions on which I just have NO INTUITION. Other classmates seem to be able to just immediately come up with an answer or at least an argument, my mind would be a swirl of arguments and counterargument and counter-counter arguments... in short, a mess.

How does one develop legal intuitions? And WHY is he asking us all these questions? Why does it matter what we think? Is he really just interested in having us rattle off predicable and often cliched arguments from both sides? Is that all we were supposed to do? Were we not supposed to be learning about some meta-rule that would help us decide among competing values of social policy, economics, morality, psychology?!? Is all we need to do making adequate arguments?

Anyway. To calm myself, I drank some camomille tea and listened to soothing music on my iPod. I calmed down gradually as I walked towards his office, and then --

The meeting went well. I won't go into details for fear of boring you (as if I haven't already done so with the previous paragraphs. :) ) but suffice to say that he was very friendly, very reassuring, very complimentary, even, certainly not awkward or strange. But, he didn't say anything terribly useful, nothing that I hadn't heard before, I guess, and the gist of his argument was just that I was doing fine, I was doing great, I was giving good comments in class, I should relax, and those legal intuitions will come to me sooner or later, and that any rate, the law is not a place to look for normative judgments. It looks to other discipline, such as sociology, or economics, to supply it with the empirical data to decide on the normative arguments. The law, said my prof, is a very "parasitic" discipline.

(And no, he is not talking about lawyers.)

On some level, I was strongly reminded of a similar conversation I had with another one of my professors, MR, when I was a freshman in college. At the time I was very distrubed, even distraught, about the possibility that there may not be an objective truth in philosophy. Yes, I know, how young I was!

As I left Professor M's office today, I thought to myself: how little I've come in 8 years! I am still troubled by the same things and never got over the lack of answers in some questions! I think I even said some of the exact same things as I did 8 years ago.

On a whim, I looked up MR. He had left my undergraduate college after my freshman year, supposedly to work at a vineyard in California. He remains one of my favorite professors in college, and I always wanted to write him a note to let him know how much I enjoyed his class and ow much influence he's had on me.

Google is awesome. In under 2 minutes, I found that MR is working now for a Canadian private girl's school, teaching Latin and philosophy.

Perhaps I should drop him an email, just to say hi...?

INSANE Weekend

Wow, this weekend was truly insanely busy. I worked for like 20 hours and still didn't get done all that I wanted to get done. I spent the entire Saturday outlining for two of my three classes, and then today reading for crim law and torts. (so far I only have about half of the week's reading finished, and havn't even touched civ pro yet!).

In the meanwhile, the second draft of the memo is due on Friday, and a writing assignment for crim law due the Monday after that. And tons and tons of readings left to do. Tomorrow I meet with my crim law professor and I am terrified at the prospect of speaking to him alone and sounding stupid. Somewhere in there I have to squeeze in a haircut and some trips to the post office. Argh!

On the upside, I went to DK's room this weekend to set up my TiVo with his phone line. (I don't have a landline myself, which is apparently a necessity for setting up TiVo.) Now it's all set up and ready to go. Yay!

Friday Night

Just got back from a bar, where I hung out with S, A, and R for the past three hours. J and her husband were also there. It's been a long week and I was feeling really tired. This group of people didn't really get along and the conversation was somewhat strained and consisted mainly of section gossip. ("Who is the prettiest girl in our section?" "Who would you hook up with?" "Who has she kissed?" etc., etc. , etc.) I was beginning to get bored after 1.5 hours, but people showed no sign of leaving and kept on ordering more drinks. I think they were determined to get drunk. Based on my hungover experience last week, I was careful to only have one drink and then just drank water. Finally, I decided to leave when S ordered a large pitcher of beer.

...

Walking home in the dark, I purposely took the route that would take me through campus, and peeked into the buildling where we have most of our classes. There is a hallway that is my favorite place on campus. Professor's black-and-white photos hung on the wall. Usually, people were always walking by and one can't look at the photos too carefully. But now, the hallways were deserted and I gazed at them for a while from the outside.

I like looking at these photos. They are so well done and show our professors in their best and most humane light. My school take these photos when the professor gets tenure, and hang them in the most traveled hallways in the entire school. My torts professor's photo, for instance, was taken more than 30 years ago, when he was a younger man (who already looked somewhat old) and not so grandfatherly. He is smiling one of his half-smiles that looks so wistful and almost sad, and he looks very wise.

Then there is my crim law professor from 20 years ago, his hair still dark, standing, with one hand in his pocket and another hand gesturing, looking away from the camera and seems caught in the middle of a sentence. The feature of his face in the photo is younger, most energetic, less settled, though you can already see the man that he was going to become 20 years later.

And then there is my civ pro professor, a woman in her 40s. The photo was taken from not so long ago. She is sitting, leaning forward slightly, holding a mug, looking straight at the camera with her large doe eyes, smiling. Anyone looking at the photo would notice her softness, elegance, and warmth.

I like looking at the photo of other professors too, some famous, some not so famous. The photographer always seems to capture them at the moment where they look most essentially themselves. Some look so wise. Others look so clever and sharp. Some look grave and calm while others are caught "in action". One older female professor looks so astonishingly pretty in her photo that I often look at it as I passed by, thinking how lucky it is that this moment of her beauty is seen by her students every day.

Why does my school hang these photos in the hallway? To celebrate our professors, certainly. Our school is nothing without their scholarship and their mentorship (is that a word?). But these photos also remind us of how human they are, the men and women who made their mark on the law school and on the world of law.

Black and white photos always evoke history, gravity, and memories, and these photos especially so. Looking at these photos, I always feel keenly aware that they belong to the history of this law school -- their contribution is celebrated and memorialized here.

And then -- I always secretly feel a little lucky that I belong to this extraordinary community, that I am allowed to walk among them, just for a little bit, for a little while.

I am exhausted now... should go to bed before I say sillier things. Good night, all.

Feeling Lucky

Went with some friends to the dorm of another person, A, in our section today. I don't know A too well, and didn't particularly feel like drinking. But Boyfriend went back to N-town today to take care of some business and I was feeling bored, so I went more out of inertia and peer pressure than any actual affirmative desire.

We drank some rum and coke in the lounge of the dorm room and watched the Apprentice, talking about nothing. Some other people dropped by and joined our group.

I was disciplined and came back around 10:00 to do my torts reading. The evening was fun but the dorms are NOT fun. Having been out of college for 4 years, I am now thoroughly grateful that I no longer live in one of those dorm rooms. In spite of the school's sizeable endowment, they must have not renovated this place for at least 30 years. The entire place was dingy and smelled like a cheap hotel. People constantly shouted and laughed in the hallways and I don't understand how anyone could go to sleep in there, or study. The social life must be easier for the dorm people than for the off-campus people in the first few weeks of school, but that doesn't matter once you settle into your section. In short, it was noisy and distracting and not at all comfortable.

It was part of the reason I came home so early, actually. The entire place depressed me a little bit.

It's really a sign of your age where you can no longer drink rum and coke in a dingy environment for more than an hour. I came back to my quiet, relatively clean, and very un-dorm-like apartment and was glad.

Small World

I'm sitting here in my law school cafe, and two people came in and sat right next to me. Portions of their conversations drifted over, and I immediately realized that they are talking about clerkshops for a 9th circuit court of appeals judge who also happens to be the father of my college boyfriend.

Alas, the small world of law...

Wit

My torts professor is the most adorable, grandfatherly man ever. He has been teaching at my law school for over 35 years.

Usually he is very good about letting class out on-time. (It's our crim law professor who always goes over 5-10 minutes). But today he talked and talked and talked. We were supposed to be let out at 10:15, but it was 10:25 and he was still talking.

People started getting fidgety and annoyed. We had crim law at 10:30, so basically the entire class was going to be late. (Though come to think of it, that would have been pretty funny, too.)

Finally, the professor stopped, looked at the clock, and muttered: "The class is supposed to be over at 10:15, isn't it?"

We nodded, and he said with a straight face:

"Okay, so we have another 24 hours or so."

I love this man.

Ultra random thoughts

I must have been really bored on the way from school to home today, because I started counting how many people, from when I can remember to now, that I have had a crush on.

I'm talking about those people whom I've spent at least a few days agonizing over, obsessing about, who had a significant impact on my quality of life in some way, who made life either more interesting or more miserable, or both. In other words, those people who made an emotional dent in me, who are not necessarily the same people with whom I had relationships. The duration of the "crush" could be as long as several years or as short as a few days.

So I have had 29 crushes in my whole life; the first one was when I was in second grade, on a little boy who was a neighbor of mine and who was in my class in school. Alas, he didn't reciprocate.

More than a few of these people are my classmates or colleagues. Several of these people are authority figures. 11 of them never had an inkling about my crush. A few of these crushes led to relationships. A few of these crushes led to rejections. Sniff.

Why did I think of this? I have no idea. Perhaps it's the delirium that always happens after 3 classes one after another. Wednesdays are my worst days in the week.

If you are ever wondering who those people are, email me and perhaps I will reveal a name or two. :)

Random Thoughts

My professor bites his nails.

Our section took a field trip to the federal appeals courthouse today, to observe a motion. It was very interesting. It's reassuring to see that all this stuff we learn in class is actually relevant and useful.

The professor sat right next to me, and this is when I noticed that he bites his nails.

I was amused. Here is a 50-ish man with very dignified white hair, a very nice suit, who is a former supreme court clerk and has about 20 years of teaching experiences behind him. And there he was, biting his nails. You could hear the sound of his nails coming off. You could see that all the nails on his fingers are bitten and uneven.

It actually made him very endearing. I guess it made him more human.

Life after JD

Done with Memo. This stupid memo took me like 20 freakin' hours! 18 hours to write the thing, 2 hours to edit it down from 11 pages to 8, because our prof "strictly enforces" the page limit. (Damn her!)

Need to start reading for classes...

Went to an interesting talk on life after JD today, where the speaker presented us with a lot of statistical data on the 4,000 young attorneys they tracked over the past few years. Here is what I took away from it:

- Women in law are a lot less happy than men in law
- Asians are a lot less happy than other racial groups in law, although they are also less likely to leave their current job.
- On the whole, between 50% -60% of people plan to leave their current employer within the next 2 years. Some large firms have turnover rates as high as 25% per year.
- Women lawyers have many fewer children compraed to the general population in their age group, whereas men lawyers do not have the overwhelming difference.
- People in all sectors, private, government, non-profit, etc., all work very hard, but somehow, mid-sized firms in DC work the hardest.
- People in government and public interest earn nothing but are happier about their job than people in the private sector, but not as much as you'd think.
- It really pays to go to a top 1-10 school.

Another hurricane may be coming! This is scary...

Memo Memo Memo (and Hangovers)

A second memo is due next Tuesday, and I have been working all weekend on it, to the exclusion of other readings and homeworks. Thank God I tried to finish more than a week's reading last week.

This memo seems harder and more complex than the last memo. We have a few more cases to read, including this 20-page long law review article and a very logn case and dissent.

My weekend is not as boring as it sounds, however. On Friday night I went out with a few guys from my section to a local bar, for a drinking event sponsored by a student social organization. After staying at that bar for a few hours, we took the subway to another bar, then a third bar, where we drunkenly played darts. Needless to say, the game lasted for a very long time.

We ran into another guy, D, from our section on the street, and went to his apartment, where we met his Vietnamese boyfriend. I never even knew D was gay before, but I think I was too drunk to be surprised.

All in all, I had about 5 white russians. My memory after going to D's apartment was very very hazy. I think at some point, two of the other guys left to go home, while me and another guy stayed and talked in D's apartment, but about what I have no idea. Then I think D's boyfriend ended up driving me and this other guy home. I staggered back to the apartment somehow and blabbered some stuff to Boyfriend before passing out on the bed. I may or may not have thrown up first in the toilet.

I woke up around five with a terrible taste in my mouth and a burning sensation in my throat. I also had a splitting headache. Stood up, brushed my teeth, drank some milk, and then passed out again on the bed. Woke up at 10 again, and felt like shit. Immediately went back to sleep, and slept 'til 2. This time when I woke up, I felt better. And felt even better after eating a bit. And that's when I began the memo.

And the rest is history.

So, this was the first time in a long time that I was seriously drunk. It reminded me of why I don't like being seriously drunk. Let's hope I remember this feeling by the next weekend.

Yay! And Yuck!

The yay part of today: apparently, the memo I wrote last week for Lawyering was liked by my TA and prof. It was a moderate uplift to my day. Too bad it's an insignificant grade for an insignificant assignment in a class that doesn't really matter.

Sigh...

The yuck part of today: during office hours for the student practice organization that I joined, I received an obscene phone call, with a guy going into excruciating details about how he masturbated in front of his lawyer who supposedly wore really short skirts where you can see her panties. Uh-huh... sure...

Normally, I'm not allowed to talk about what I do for this organization other than in the most general way. But here, I'm sure attorney-client privilege doesn't apply.

Yes... the exciting, varied life of a law student...

Insomnia

I am having trouble sleeping. I have had trouble ever since I slept 'til about noon last Saturday, which completely screwed up my sleeping schedule. So now, after two nights of lying awake 'til 3-4, I decided to use my supply of xanax pills, held over from my trip to China last April.

The drug was so powerful that I was knocked right out the first night I took it. The sleep was long and dreamless. After I woke up, I was still woozy and it took couple of hours for me to be back to normal.

I'm trying not to make a habit of it. I'm sure it's bad for you in many different ways. But as a temporary measure it's pretty effective.

In other news, another memo due next Tuesday! These things just never let up.

Finally, it's the Day of Atonement for those of you who observe it. I have committed many sins in the past year, all of which I have thought about today, and I'm not even Jewish.

First Year Lawyering

No law students I know (at my school and other schools) likes their first year lawyering class. My school officially overhauled and revamped its lawyering program this year, and 1Ls still hate it.

Maybe it's the sense that you work your ass off and still only get a pass/fail grade. Supposedly, you can get an "honors" in my school, but people are skeptical about how often they actually give it out, and whether it's actually worth the effort).

Maybe it's the minimal feedback they give us. The second research assignment is due tomorrow, but we haven't even gotten our first research assignment back yet. So whatever mistakes we made the first time around are likely to show up again the second time around.

Also, research is not easy. There are so many freakin' cases! Whenever I go on Lexis or Westlaw I feel like I'm drowning in the ocean of cases, and they haven't really explained that well how to swim. So researching is this huge blackhole that sucks all my time in, while I read through every single one of the 82 or so cases that showed up in my search to determine which 5 is the most relevant.

Everyone likes to bitch about our lawyering professor, too, who is not really a professor but a "fellow" who graduated from my school in 2001. She's a youngish looking plump woman whom for some reason no one likes. It's not as much her fault as the material she has to teach. Unlike torts or crim law or civ pro, where there are real intellectual issues that you can think over and debate about, researching and writing memos are just mechanical, stratified processes with no intellectual challenges whatsoever and very little creativity or analysis involved. It mostly just involves grunt work.

I think people hate it because it reminds them that although law school is interesting and fun, life as a real lawyer is dull and mechanial. It's ironic that while we are wrestling with thought-provoking and fascinating issues in our substantive law classes, 99.9% of our career as lawyers will be spent doing what we do in first-year lawyering. And most likely, our partners and supervisers wont' be even half as nice as our lawyering prof. Sad... and people don't like to be reminded of this fact.

Still, we should start getting used to this now.

Iiiiiiiiiii'm Back!

Okay cupcakes, I'm sorry for disappearing lately, swallowed by the black hole known as law school. Everything is good -- have not gone insane with the work yet; First memo and first research assignment have been turned in; I am managing to eat on a regularly basis; sleep 7-8 hours per night; am actually very ahead in my readings for class; Boyfriend and I are slowly adjusting to the new lifestyle... law school, so far, has been kind.

One mid-sized trauma I did have to deal with in the past few days was the realization that in his zeal to clean out our very cluttered N-town apartment, which was also being renovated in the past 2 years or so (don't ask), Boyfriend may have mistakenly thrown out my college desktop. Ouch, I know. It is not entirely his fault, and I am slowly but surely getting over it. But this little occurene definitely made me glad that I have my little online diary here. As I read through my posts for the past few months, I realized how valuable this forum is for me -- to vent, to whine, to make random comments... but more importantly, to memorialize, to hold on to these days which I know will be gone forever before I know it, just like college.

Since nearly every one of my (extremely, extremely small and extremely exclusive -- ha!) readership is a close friend, I don't feel constrained to hold things back. Which is probably why I sound neurotic and silly most of the time. But oh well, I am that way in real life too. :D

So, all this is a long way of saying that I will try not to pull a disappearing act like this anymore, and will try to post on a somewhat regular basis.

And YOU, dear reader. Thanks for reading!

Done with Subciting!

Yay! Yay! Yay!

That took way longer than 10 hours (which is supposedly the most a 1L is supposed to work on subciting.)

Will work on the final draft my memo now. It's such a beautiful day today. Perhaps I will take a walk with Boyfriend later this afternoon.

Friendships and Subciting and Weekend Plans (and Beyond)

Friday night... What better thing to do than subciting? Boyfriend and I drove back to N-Town as usual, and I have spent the past 3 hours finishing up my 6 citations. Once you get the hang of the Blue Book, it's really not that hard. Yes, I realize how pathetic I sound.

So here I am, sitting in my study, facing a table covered with law papers and notebooks and such, drinking red wine straight out of the bottle (how much of an alcoholic am I, really?), surfing the Internet, and planning vaguely to go to sleep in the next 30 minutes or so.

Life is pretty good. (Other than the fact that I'm subciting on a Friday night, that is.) So, more about last night. I was invited to go to a bar about half a block from my apartment and drink with a section mate, S, who is becoming a good friend.

S is from Texas. He is Indian and came to law school straight from college, which means he's about 5 years younger than me. (This makes me feel old and depressed; the fact that there are people who could barely drink in law school). We began chatting on IM and really hit it off. I was reminded a bit of the beginning of my friendship with another close friend of mine whose name also begins with an "S". S is quirky and funny, prone to deadpan humor, and has an adorable earnestness that could only really be charming in a guy his age. S is like the little brother that I've never had.

So S and I and another guy from our section, A, whom I don't know too well, hung out at the bar. I vowed that I would only stay for 30 minutes, but ended up staying for an hour and a half, while A and S rapidly downed 3-4 beers and I sipped down 2 cosmos. It was shortly before midnight when I got home, and any further plans of subciting were foiled, as were plans of reading for Torts and Civ Pro. Apparently, A and S stayed at the bar 'til about 2.

This morning, I miraculously got up and went to Torts. To my surprise, both A and S were there as well. Very impressive! About 10 people missed class again though, and DK, this guy who is vaguely part of my "group" at law school (yes, 3 weeks into law school and little cliques are already forming) never bothered showing for the entire day.

For someone who haven't read half the cases that we were supposed to have read, class was surprisingly comprehensible. The prof never calls on me, I think because he is afraid to pronounce my Chinese last name. (Either that, or he hates my guts.)

Then went to office hours with J for this student practice org that we joined. Then went to lunch. Then went to Civ Pro.

Civ Pro was as boring as it ever was, and fatigue hit right in the middle of it. S, (damn him!) took to sending me jokes through IM in the middle of the class. It was all I could do to not burst out laughing in the middle of the lecture. That would have been disastrous. Even the prof, as in love as she is with civ pro, would have realized that it wasn't on account of her wit that I was cracking up. So, trying to control my giggles (which is very hard when you are tired; try it sometime) made civ pro a lot more interesting, but it also meant that I did not hear a single word from the prof for the last 15 minutes of the class.

Tuesday is Rosh Hashanah and my Jewish crim law professor has cancelled class. So Boyfriend and I are going to stay in N-Town until then. I have grand plans for this weekend. My memo is due Monday. Then there is an entire week worth of reading to do (as well as today's reading to make up for).

Balancing Work and Play

Just came back from a nearby bar, where I met two of my section mates. It was a very fun time. I had two cranberry cosmos and we gossiped about our other section mates.

Unfortunately, I had to leave after "only" an hour and a half, despite the best efforts of my drinking mate, because I have to "subcite". Yep, got my assigment (10 citations) last night. Have spent 2 hours so far and did 3. Seven to go!

My Day

So people have begun not coming to class. This morning in my (admitted brutally early) 8:50 class about 10-15 people didn't show up.

Around 40 people (half the class) didn't show up for the second class, because two Supreme Court Justices are giving a talk at the law school that conflicted with the class, and the prof wouldn't reschedule the class.

Being a good girl, I attended class rather than went to watch the legal deities. I heard later from others that they were really entertaining. Our class was entertaining too. We talked about how entertainingly incoherent the concept of felony murder is.

Civ Pro was still soporific. I surfed the Internet and the guy behind me looked on. Some people in class, apparently, shop or even gamble online to pass the time. My friend J told me that a guy who sits in front of her incessantly plays online poker and this other girl is always shopping on the Coach and cosmetic websites. However, I don't think the wireless network at my school is that secure, so I would never send any personal info at school.

Went to a talk at the Fed Soc tonight, after sneaking into an anti-domestic violence meeting to get their free thai food. Yum...

Fun (Not)

Went to the mandatory training session for one of the journals I signed up for in the frenzies of last week. About 30-40 people attended, several from my section. The session featured ice cream sundaes. After everyone got the sundaes, it all went down hill from there. We were each handed a thick packet of instructions, and one of the editors went over specifically what "subciting" really means.

I had thought that "subciting" just meant checking to see whether a footnote is written in the correct format. Boy was I wrong.

Apparently, authors are very sloppy when it comes to footnotes. Some write them in the wrong format. Those would be the least of your problems. (Although, whether something should be classified as a press release or an Internet article is apparently really important.)

For those technical problems, we use the Blue Book, which is this thick book with nothing but arbitrary rules of how to cite cases, books, law journal articles, internet websites, television shows, you name it. It covers everything in excruciating minutae, from typeface to spacing, down to whether a comma or a period should be italicized. I'm not kidding.

Fun fun fun.

What surprised me, however, is that apparently, while subciting, we are expected to look at the entire footnote critically and decide whether it is appropriate as well as correct. When the author cites a case, for example, we are supposed to make sure the case is still current and hasn't been overruled. When the author summarizes a journal article, we are supposed to make sure he is correct about the main point of the article. When the author cites an entire article rather than lines from the article, we are supposed to make sure a "pinpoint citation" is not more appropriate.

When an author says "see Blah Blah Blah", we are supposed to make sure he doesn't mean "See also Blah Blah Blah" or "Cf Blah Blah Blah", which apparently has slightly different shades of meaning and therefore requires you to both understand HIS point and the point of the Blah Blah Blah he is citing.

Sometimes an author is mistaken about the relevance of a source to his central point. Sometimes authors exaggerates the level of support a source lends to his argument. Sometimes it's clear that an author has never read the source at all and just did a Google keyword search and listed whatever he found there. So apparently it's our job to read the source and then decide whether it should be used the way the author used it in his article.

This sucks when the source itself is a book.

For every citation, we are supposed to fill out an entire form, and address each of these concerns separately. This means that subciting is about 100 times more involved and time-consuming than I thought it was.

All this, when we haven't even gone through citations in our Legal Writing classes yet.

Time to rethink working for a journal? :(

Budding Alcoholic?

Boyfriend commented this morning (affectionately, of course) that I am "not that far from being an alcoholic". I of course protested. But secretly, I had to agree with him.

Just had another glass of wine. Plan to go to sleep... right... now...

Budding Conservative?

Since arriving at law school, I have found with some dismay that although I have always considered myself a liberal, compared to some of my classmates, my views are actually seem much more conservative. For instance, I don't have the knee-jerk reaction that conservatives are IDIOTS for holding the views they do on abortion, the Iraq war, George W., or policy towards business. Having worked at a start-up, I'm actually quite sympathetic to the interests of business.

I believe the study that shows that liberal and conservatives may differ most in temperament, that the difference in liberals and conservatives is the way they react emotionally to different arguments. This is basically a skeptical stance. I guess what I realized is that I'm not as committed to my liberal ideals as I thought I was.

So anyway, I signed up for the Federalist Society last week, out of curiosity. Let's see how long I can stand it.

My Sunday Night Thoughts

Can only write very briefly, because tomorrow I have to get up insanely early to go to C-town again and so need to go to sleep now. Drove back to N-town again for the weekend, which is becoming somewhat of a ritual for me and Boyfriend. I'm finding the drive somewhat irritating because there is always traffic, and also because it is now becoming disruptive (I had to miss both a section get-together AND training for some student practice organizations on Saturday). The good side of it is: I have a whole room to myself for studying. Not that this prevents me from slacking off or playing Resident Evil at alarming frequency.

Yesterday I spent much of the day writing our first memo. The memo was on a rather boring topic concerning a civil procedure question of relating back amended pleadings beyond the statute of limitation. This is way too much information for you, I know. Today I spent working on outlining what we went through in both crim law and torts for the past 3 weeks and then reading for crim law for tomorrow.

I know it sounds like a really boring weekend, but I actually really liked it. The materials that we are doing is really interesting and thought-provoking. In spite of my preparations and readings this summer, I still don't think I'm that good at thinking about this stuff. The philosophical questions whirl around my head and most of the time I really don't have an answer or even an intuition. But still, it's really interesting to think about, and I really tend to enjoy my readings (except for civ pro :) ).

I like being a student again, and I'm really happy to see that so far my classmates don't seem as competitive or aggressive as I had expected them to be. (Maybe I should wait around exam time...?) I enjoy going to classes, although I wish civ pro weren't at 1:15 in the afternoon when my energy level is at its lowest. I'm excited about the student orgs that I joined and I really hope that I can find my "cause" while in law school -- something that even a skeptic like me could believe in and strive for.

Wow, this turned out not to be the short post that I thougth I'd write. Just to continue on the sentimental route a bit (only possible after a big glass of wine): I am finding that I like and respect the law, much more so than I thought I would before coming to law school. The practice of law is not (yet) a skeptical exercise, nor is it just mechanical memorization of rules. There is a lot of analysis and thinking involved, and a lot of this material is much harder and deeper than I thought it would be. I am glad -- even proud -- that I am being inducted into the profession. Perhaps this is sounding too idealistic, but every case, every opinion I read, is someone taking these moral and legal issues seriously and struggling with his conscience.

I like the law. Now I just hope that law also likes me.

Busy, and It's My Fault

I really have to start prioritizing better, and to be less easily distracted. I have so far signed up for way too many journals and organizations than I can handle, and so I need to quickly narrow it down to 2-3. Also, now that I know the screenname of many of my classmates I have begun chatting online with some of them at night. Tonight I chatted with S for about 2 hours while trying to read crim law. It didn't work so well.

Driving back to N-Town, as usual, tomorrow evening.

Genes or Nepotism?

This Brian Leiter blog entry is from a few months ago, but I only discovered it today. The comments section lists the astounding number of law prof "families": law profs who are fathers and mothers and husbands and wives and sons and daughters of other law profs. I have gone to school with some members of these families, and am currently being taught by certain people mentioned here.

I'll leave you to draw your own conclusions from the raw data.

Rita

Another hurricane! Is this really the result of global warming, as some have suggested? I hope not...

Let's hope and pray those people down south are going to be all right in the next few days...

Choices, Choices.

Last night was the Journal Fair at the law school. The twelve journals of the law school set up booths in the room named after a very prominent law firm in the area.

(I was amused when I found out about the name of this room -- they certainly know the best way to raise their profile... Come to think of it, I am surprised that no other firm has thought of this.)

The Fair was extremely well attended. I had to hang around for nearly 15 minutes before I could sign up for the Human Rights Journal. Am I really interested in human rights issues? Not sure. Also, journals that deal with technology law, international law, and civil rights law sound quite interesting as well. For all of them, I followed a policy of "sign up now, ask questions later".

The dean came and spoke at the Journal Fair. Her theme was "you don't have to do this. You should only do things you feel like doing at the law school. Don't let peer pressure and myths about what law firms want dictate what you do with your time. If you realize that you are not interested, feel free to leave now."

Everyone stayed where they were.

Tonight was the "practice organization fair", where clinical programs and student practice organizations present on a panel about their work and encourage people to sign up. There are organizations that deal with prisoner issues. There are organizatiosn that represent the accused at preliminary hearings. There are tenant advocacy organizations. There are organizations that research and present panels on human rights issues.

I am going to sign up for a few of them as well, though on the whole, as strange as it sounds, the people who presented at the panel for these organizations don't seem as interesting as the people who work on journals. Clearly they are passionate about their cause, but... what is it? I can't quite put my finger on it. I came away feeling slightly depressed.

Perhaps it's a feeling that unlike me, who am yet to make up my mind about a lot of issues about the criminal justice system (or the legal system in general), these people have definitely made up their minds and know which side of the fence they stand on.

They have very definite views. They believe that the criminal justice system is unfair, the prisons don't treat prisoners fairly, that DAs and the government are corrupt, that people don't get fair representation. No doubt, much of these criticisms are true. But I feel a little claustrophobic when I hang out with people with such settled world view.

When I was an undergrad, I felt very depressed and upset about my skeptical outlook. But I am realizing increasingly that it is what makes me feel safe and open to the world. As long as I don't settle into any single ideologies or opinions, the world is filled with possibilities. As soon as I have to choose, the world seems to narrow.

Well, I suppose I have to choose sometime. And perhaps I will give one of these practice organizations a try.

Insomnia Strikes Again, So Here I Am

Driving back to C-Town early tomorrow morning. My first class is at 10:30, so need to leave around 6:30 to make sure I get there on time.

Well, this has been a successful weekend, if not exactly fun. I basically spent the entire time reading and taking notes for my classes. Even then, I only had time to do work for two of my classes, so I will have to do work for the other two during the week.

Yikes, I have a memo to write for Lawyering class already. This won't be fun. However, learning about how Lexis and Westlaw work has been really eye-opening. I can't imagine how lawyers did research before the computer age. How could they possibly have shepardized all those cases manually?!? Or searched for cases relevant to a particular topic?!? On the other hand, I suppose back then cases and statutes were not as technical and complex as they are now. Our legal system has definitely evolved in response to technological advances.

I'm actually kind of excited to start next week. The stuff we are learning and discussing is interesting in most cases. Our classmates are on the whole relaxed and nice. The few vocal people in our class are not annoying, though some of them could be less wordy.

I'm still figuring out what "niche" I belong to in law school. This is my mission in the coming week, to figure out which organizatiosn and/or journals I'm interested in. So far, I've gone to the meetings and open houses for a few organizations, but mostly just to get their free food. I feel like I'm ready to take on some more substantive stuff.

Impressive

Got up at 12:45 today, after driving back to N-Town last night and going to sleep around 1:30.

Reading for (what else?) crim law. I am going to make a real effort to finish all my reading assignments for next week over the weekend.

Am very amused by an opinion that I am reading (United States v. Bergman) where both the defense counsel and the judge who wrote the opinion invokes Kant...

Who said that knowledge of German philosophy is not useful?

Save Me From Civ Pro

Before I arrived in law school, I had read through Glannon's Civil Procedure hornbook AND listened to Arthur Miller's lecture (10.5 hours!) in its entirety. I feel like I have a pretty good grasp on the material, and couldn't understand why Civ Pro is reputedly the Most Dreaded Class of One L.

Now I do. Maybe it's because the profs who are attracted to Civ Pro all tend to have dry personalities or else they wouldn't have been interested in pleadings, pre-trial motions, and in rem jurisdiction questions. OR, maybe they all have inferiority complexes and really want to be Con Law profs, but for one reason or another have to make do with teaching civ pro.

Anyway, the past few classes of Civ Pro have been profoundly boring. Perhaps my hay fever / allergy contributes to my general grogginess, but I have been finding it hard to keep my eyes open. It's also hard to figure out what the prof's point is. She's a very nice woman, don't get me wrong, just a bit on the dry side. But seriously, do we really need to start with the mother of all big question in the FIRST WEEK OF CLASS -- "What is the meaning of due process?!?" Is she trying to make up for the fact that we don't have Con Law as a required course?!?

So anyway, I still have no idea what the standards of due process are. Most of the class "discussion" goes straight over my head. All the historical background reading is dry as hell. And as a result, I am very, very, very bored.

Formal Dinner

Formal dinner with the dean tonight. Actually, the invitation said "business casual", but since no one knew what that meant we took it conservatively.

The flamingly gay guy in our class wore a emboidered white shirt, white pants, and white shoes.

Had a lot of readings tonight. Three classes tomorrow!

2nd Week of Law School

Classes are going well, although some people have started chatting on their laptops during class. Reading is still manageable. I have finished my readings up til Wednesday so far, and am trying to finish the week's reading by tomorrow.

Went with two guys to the large mall on the other side of town today. I was able to control my shopaholic impulses until I got to H&M, but upon seeing soft and inexpensive sweaters and cute lingerie-styled tanks, I simply could not help myself. The three of us ate at the Cheesecake Factory. Yum!

Boyfriend is still away, so by myself tonight. Kind of enjoying the quiet, actually. Will go back to the readings now!

Exhausted

Just came back from a whole bunch of events that the Law School kindly planned for us 1Ls. It was a lot of fun and I got to talk to quite a few people that I didn't know very well in my classes. They were interesting.

Exhausted though. It's past midnight and I really need to go to sleep. Also just had a long conversation with my parents, who are visiting me in my new apartment for the weekend.

They are now sleeping on my beautiful foam bed. I am sleeping on the air mattress in the livingroom, which is surprisingly comfortable. Boyfriend went back to N-Town for the weekend. Sniff.

Inspired

It's Friday night. I'm staying home, listening to Enya, drinking red wine... and reading my criminal law casebook for next week.

Sounds nerdy, huh? In reality, this is basically what I did on Friday nights when I was working, too. It wasn't like Boyfriend and I went to parties or bars all that much. Sometimes we went out to dinner, but that's mainly just because our kitchen was usually too dirty or messy (or being renovated) for us to really properly cook.

We are both kind of anti-social, and find it much more enjoyable to stay home, have some wine, and watch TV. I sometimes read. Sometimes we talked about work. Sometimes I really did work, and on weekends too.

In college I worked much less hard, and slacked off a lot. I think this is why it is good to work for a few years before you go to law school. I would have been shocked at the amount of work involved in law school had I gone straight from undergrad to here. But so far I'm finding the workload surprisingly manageable and even enjoyable. It's certainly not more than working for the little start-up.

If anything, reading about interesting legal theories and rules is more fun than drafting a diplomatic yet firm email to a bothersome client.

Also reading a Guide on searching for public interest jobs published by my law school. The first-person accounts published in the guide are very informative, and I am feeling quite inspired.

This is probably the first day that I really feel that there is a wide range of opportunities open to me after I graduate law school. Perhaps I really can find something that interests me, even something I really believe in.

Looking forward to this weekend. My parents are visiting me in my new apartment, and I am eager to show them my new life. This means, however, that I'm going to read for a while longer tonight because I probably won't get any work done while they are here.

Things Are Going Well

So far, the workload is manageable. I do spend a fair amount of time each night reading, but the cases are interesting so time passes by very quickly.

Class discussion, thoug, has been disappointing so far. Many comments made by my classmates are non-sequiturs or only tangentially related to what has been discussed before. A typical scenario is this:

Professor: So, is X really an element of Y, or should some other standards be used?

Student: Well, this has nothing to do with whether X is an element of Y, but I just noticed that A is kind of similar to B.

Professor: Well... um... this is an interesting point...

He then either gets really side-tracked and spends 20 minutes talking about A and B, OR he makes a heroic effort to relate the problem of A and B back to X and Y.

This drives me crazy, and it happens half a dozen times during each class.

Hopefully, this is just people getting warmed up. But having a class discussion with 70+ people is like herding cats sometimes. It's nearly impossible to follow a theme through or to talk about anything in an in-depth, focused way.

But other than that, I'm having a much better time than I thougth I would.

Impressions on First Day of Class

Had our first class today! The professor was nice, but class moved more slowly than I thought it would, and nothing anyone said, including the professor, gave me a "wow!" moment.

Lots of people volunteered to answer questions. Class dynamics was very good -- much better than I imagined. Questions the prof asked weren't that hard though, and at times it was a little boring. No one in the first class, though, dared to play Solitaire or surf the Internet. I predict that it will be at least the third week before people begin to do that.

The cases seemed a lot more interesting when we read them than when we discussed them. I actually kind of enjoyed reading the cases, but class was still a bit mundane. Don't know, perhaps it was just a weird dynamic the first day.

Seats they assigned us were absurdly small -- couldn't fit my laptop, the casebook, and my binder all on there. Kept on bumping into people next to me.

This Made Me Laugh Out Loud

And from an opinion in my crim law casebook, no less! :D

"Pope [the defendant] moved that we strike from the State's brief and appendix a selection from the Year Book of 1484 written in Medieval Latin and references thereto. The State provided no translation and conceded a total lack of knowledge of what it meant. The motion is granted."

(Pope v. State, Maryland Court of Appeals 1979) (Sorry I don't really know how to cite cases yet.)

Today

Driving up again later today with some more furnitures and supplies that Boyfriend and I bought over the weekend. I am bringing up my easel and paint because I have been fantasizing about painting in between studying.

Also read for Torts and Crim Law, which were surprisingly enjoyable. Civ pro reading was substantially more dry and less exciting.

First "real" class tomorrow! I'm a little nervous.

Happy Labor Day!

You, um... laborers out there!

Oh. My. God.

Rehnquist just passed away. Now Bush gets to appoint TWO Supremes!

A Few Things I Learned Today

Back "home" for the long weekend, so I can recuperate and feel a bit of normalcy after two very stressful and overwhelming days. My three years of working for the little start-up has made me used to a lot of solitary work, and the constant interaction with strangers was very exhausting and not altogether pleasant.

Had dinner on Friday at my prof's very large and very gorgeous house. The entire day on Friday, in fact, was filled with a lot of free food and (not always good) alcohol. The girl from California whom I met on Thursday, J, and I hung out most of the time. Nearly everything reminded me of my first few days at my undergraduate college.

Today I had dinner / coffee with friend J, who is also in law school and a 3L. Talked about law school culture, strategies, and clerkships (J is applying for clerkships). Here are some pearls of wisdom from him:

- Even though people in law school may be nice to your face, people are often secretly very competitive and will do very morally dubious things to get ahead.

- When choosing friends in law school, it's very important (in fact, most important) to find people who are stable, self-assured, and not insecure. Whether or not they are smart or like the law or like law school etc., is all secondary or unimportant.

- Practice taking old exams, as early as possible.

- There will always be people who despise other people who appear to be enjoying or thriving in law school more than them. You need to decide early on how you are going to relate to these people and/or this practice.

(J., being very self-confident and assertive, decided that he would ignore these people and just do what he would always do. I'm not sure I'm quite so brave.)

- The clerkship process is INSANE. (Glad that I don't have to worry about that for a couple of years -- though even then it's not entirely a bad problem to have.)

Have been reading on and off my reading assigments for Tuesday (and slacking off a lot, sadly). Perhaps tomorrow I will work out a schedule for myself.

New Beginning

Sorry that I have been away for a while. Things has been really crazy, as I'm sure you can imagine. In the past week, Boyfriend and I moved into our new apartment, organized everything, found our favorite Starbucks, half worked out parking and other everyday living issues, had countless emotional discussions about my experience in law school, all of which took my energy away from posting an update of my life.

Today was the first day of orientation.

I met my classmates. They were really fine -- less diverse than I thought (but perhaps I just ended up with a particularly un-diverse group). Lots of people from California. There was one other girl from my undergraduate school, who graduated in the same year. After talking for a while we even identified a couple of people that we both knew.

Quite a few older students, too. It seems like everyone was 25 or 26. I thought I would feel old in law school. I didn't.

I have always disliked the self-conscious and awkward chit-chats of orientation -- "Where are you from?" "Where did you go undergrad?" "What did you do since graduation?" Everyone knows that real friendship only begins after classes begin, since that's when people buckle down and those differences in personality and lifestyle really begin to matter. So what's the point of asking everyone these questions anyway, when you know that your brain can't possibly hold all this info and you would forget 10 seconds after walking away from the person?

So I tried my best to avoid this kind of talk, and perhaps to some I was a little too non-committal. Ah well, they have 3 years to change that impression of me.

I did get into an in-depth conversation with a girl from a famous California school who has moved across the country with her husband and who has already done most, if not all, of the readings for our criminal law class for the entire year. Really liked her, actually. She seemed genuine and grounded and smart.

Orientation also involved a lot of being herded around. The prof gave a long speech in the beginning of the day about how great law school is and how we shouldn't be afraid to be subjected to the Socratic Method. Some people actually pulled out a notebook and took notes, while I just sat around feeling slightly bored, and then caught myself and surprised that I was bored. Was I always this jaded? I remember that in college, I may well have been one of those people who pulled out a notebook and took notes. Did 4 years of being out of college changed me and made me jaded? But everything the profs said sounded really obvious. I am still waiting for the real class to begin.

At certain points the orientation seemed a little disorganized. Like the "tour" we took around the campus was a joke, and our leader clearly didn't plan this very well.

Then we sat down and had a picnic. It was a beautiful day, and I looked around and felt amazed that this day has arrived so quickly. I'm really a law student! I will come to call this institution home. I will know these people around me well. I will be familiar with this city, navigate it with authority, and perhaps come to feel affection for it.

I am going to be here for the next three years.