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.