and to all a good night

My neighborhood is a swarm of lights. Some of them are your standard colored bulbs, the ones I remember and love from my childhood. Others are much fancier, with a disco rhythm and pulsating multi-colored beats. One house has a tasteful display of blue, green, and white lights, and another has garish yet carefully constructed blinking, multi-colored star.

The Croatian family with the toddling granddaughter has candles in the windows. The Indian family is pragmatic: their holiday lights are the same as their Diwali lights, which adorned their house earlier this year. There are a few nacimientos in the yards of the Mexican families. We all smile and nod at each other as we pass on our walks. Good will does not need translation.

My best wishes to all of you. I'll be back in the New Year.

ethical lawyers and haiku

It's not often that one sees a joint recommendation from Scheherazade, Denise Howell, and Ernie. While I'd seen many references to his old blog, David Giacalone was on hiatus when I started blogging. He's back, though, and I can see why he has the following he does. Check out his blog on ethics and haiku at ethicalEsq & haikuEsq.

Maybe I'm biased because it's haiku. The one and only poetry award I ever won was for a haiku I wrote when I was seven. Since then, my poetry career has gone downhill. Thank goodness for law school.

Long and scaly crocodile

Swimming in the Nile

Are you snake or fish?

(T., aged seven)

legal questions

I was at a birthday brunch over the weekend when somebody asked me a legal question about marital property.

"I'm just a first year student," I protested. "I just studied this in Property, but that's all I know. I'm not even sure about that much." I decided against telling her about my giggly reaction to my Property final.

She smiled encouragingly, "Oh, I don't mind. You know more about it than I do."

Shrugging, I cautiously picked my way through an answer, heavily prefaced with warnings about my status as a first-year law student.

"Oh," the woman who had asked me said, "that's interesting. Thanks." Satisfied, she moved over to the remaining lox and cream cheese. I munched my spice muffin, considering my answer to my first request for a legal answer.

Engineering and law have a commonality: with adept use of the language, it's possible to sound far more knowledgeable than one actually is. I've usually been able to deflect software questions by saying, truthfully, that I don't know much about Windows. Coding questions never came from a layperson, only from other programmers, so I felt more comfortable using engineering terms.

I think I managed to sound unconfident enough that she won't rely on my answer, but at the same time impart some smidgen of legal truth. I hope so, at least. I certainly don't feel qualified to answer legal questions.

upgrades

On Windows, they terrify me. On Linux, they don't terrify me, but they require prior technical knowledge and expertise.

On Macs, however, they just happen. I could be technically illiterate and still smoothly upgrade my Mac.

Today I upgraded my iBook to Panther. I had never upgraded to Jaguar, since I was living abroad when it came out, and by the time I got back to the U.S. it made more sense to wait for Panther.

I'm impressed. Panther is slick and fast. I haven't installed the developer tools yet, but it's awfully tempting. I want to write me some software!

Meanwhile, I've been trying out some new blog-reading software, NetNewsWire. I like it better than BlogLines so far, though, unlike BlogLines, it's not free.

Once again, however, I'm puzzled by the number of blogs that I read that don't include a news feed. Do other blog-hosting sites charge for an RSS feed?

I'm not hung up about a feed like some of my friends, who won't read blogs that don't have feeds, but blogreaders are awfully convenient.

Anyhow. Back to Panther. It's good. Yay for the engineers and designers at Apple.

evil lurks everywhere

Sauron wasn't defeated after all.

He may appear to have been defeated, but in fact he became Executive Vice President of Evil and Noxious Toys at Mattel, Inc. Only an vicious genius could produce this, Sauron's ultimate revenge.

For my more sensitive readers, who may not be able to handle upsetting images, I warn you that link leads to Barbie Arwen. Even more horrifically, they have taken Aragorn and turned him into Barbie's eunuch sidekick, Ken. I repeat, they have made Aragorn into Ken.

I'm glad I didn't see this before I took my exams. My poor head could not have handled the dissonance.

(Thanks go to John Scalzi for sounding the warning.)

recovery

Law school requires sacrifice, my most recent sacrifice being that while LOTR:ROTK has been out for three whole days I have not yet seen it.

The night it came out, I was studying for my Civil Procedure exam. Last night was our section party, a frantically celebratory affair attended by almost the entire section. My husband, who came to the party last night and met many of my friends for the first time, had wisely suggested that today I might be too tired to really be able to enjoy the movie.

He was right. Today I have slept, eaten healthy food, read a novel, and slept again. I made red snapper with a sesame/garlic sauce for dinner tonight, and we ate together at a normal time. Crazy, that.

I expect to be fully human again tomorrow.

battle F1L is over!

(Apologies to Iron Chef.)

It's done! It's done! It's done!

After Civ Pro was finished, I ran into a friend and fellow section-mate in the elevator. I asked him, "Are you glad it's over?"

He said, "Yes, but I'm surprised my reaction is so muted. I thought I'd be estatic, but I'm not." He shrugged.

That was my initial reaction as well. I was a bit numb, I think. I thought I'd close my exam, and I would feel this surge of joy. I didn't, though. Mostly, I yawned. I was tired. The Civil Procedure exam was hard.

But now, after two glasses of cheap red wine from the party that our school put on for us, and lots of hugs and grins from my friends, I'm very happy. It's finally sinking in that I don't have to get up and study tomorrow morning.

Now, we're all going out to celebrate.

Cheers, everybody! Battle F1L is over!

empirical evidence

I hadn't quite realized how motivational a panic attack can be. While I do not believe this is the optimal approach for conservation of sanity and health, it is certainy an interesting methodology. I studied for nine hours straight today, minus one half hour break at 4:00 pm.

I am so ready for the post-exam party. My section has been planning a party for weeks now. My section is awesome.

Just one measly exam left before drunken libations can begin!

Think Civil Procedure thoughts, and not just for me. Send some thoughts in AmbImb's and BT's general directions as well. Share that Civ Pro love!

fighting the panic

As I mentioned, my Civil Procedure exam tomorrow is the one for which I'm the least prepared.

I've managed not to freak out too much this exam season. I've been very tired at times, but not generally panicked. However, I've seen students break down in tears, heard about screaming matches with their loved ones, or watched them go out on all-night drinking binges. It's a response to the stress. I suspect this is a function of age; I probably would have been an unmanageable, shivering bundle of nerves eight years ago as well. Life experience is an excellent stress-management teacher.

But for Civil Procedure, I've lost my zen. I'm not watching the stressbunnies; I am a stressbunny. Thankfully it's a closed book exam, so the amount of material we're expected to know is at least limited, but it's still a hell of a lot of material. I have to force myself to calm down, force myself to not panic if I miss something on a practice exam.

Back to the books now. Send me zen wishes. I need them.

should i keep my casebooks?

Question for all you more experienced law students and lawyers: is there any reason to keep your casebooks? Do you ever look at them again?

The buyback rate is pathetic, so what I'm really asking is whether it's worth storing these huge paperweights. I have a fear of clutter and hate keeping things that would be better used by somebody else. At the same time, getting rid of books is painful, so if I might find them useful, I could be persuaded to keep them.

Any thoughts?

back in the saddle

One more left, Civil Procedure on Thursday.

This is the exam I am least prepared for, though on the other hand it was one of my favorite classes.

I had to make some strategic choices when preparing in November. I had been steadily outlining all courses, but at a certain point I had to choose between finishing outlining and concentrating on the exams at the beginning of the exam period.

I decided to put my energies into Crim Law and Property, because those exams were 100% of my grade. Contracts and Civ Pro are only 25% of the final grade because they're technically midterms. (Those courses are year-long courses.) After those two, I focused on Contracts, because it was my first exam and I thought that performing well on the first would be psychologically beneficial. Of course, now I know that it's impossible to know how you did, but at least I didn't come out of Contracts utterly convinced I failed. I think that would have negatively affected all of my other exams.

Back to work for me now.

the giggles

You know an exam was hard when you finish typing, you look at your friends sitting nearby, and you all start laughing. I looked at M., and he giggled.

"What the HELL was that?"

D. was laughing so hard she couldn't speak properly. "Oh my God, oh my God" was about all she could gasp out.

I had Property today. Nine page exam, or maybe seven. I don't remember. Three hours. One fact pattern. Enough issues raised to keep an expensive lawyer employed for months, and no clear question to answer ("after discussing X, discuss any other information that Mr. Z may need to know or find relevant.")

All of my friends went drinking afterwards, and though I was sorely tempted to join them, I didn't want to wait for the alcohol to wear off before starting the long ride home. But I'm home now, and I'm really, really enjoying this glass of red wine.

exam dreams

My subconscious mostly has behaved since I explicitly requested a cessation of exam dreams.

Who knew you could lecture your Id?

Last night, however, I dreamed that the EU asked me to resolve their nagging constitutional issues in three hours. I was allowed a one-page cheat sheet. Tony Blair was supposed to be the proctor, but Joschka Fischer swapped with him at the last minute. Very agreeable man in my dreams, but a stickler with the timer.

Using theories of consideration and unjust enrichment, I argued that the EU should adopt Chinese as its official language to prevent unjust enrichment of the UK and thereby allowing Poland the bargaining power it seeks. It seemed very logical at the time.

I'm going to be so glad when this week is over.

something missed

Biting Tongue posted an out-of-the office email from the Indian co-worker of BT's partner, E.

For the most part, I prefer law school to engineering school, but this letter reminds me of one area in which engineering school is far superior: the cultural and social mix. I miss the variety. Law school is largely mono-cultural; most students are American, and if they aren't, they're extensively U.S.-educated. Furthermore, they're generally from the same socio-economic background.

In engineering school, by contrast, I went to school with students of many different ethnic and cultural backgrounds. The only diversity that engineering lacked was gender diversity; I'm still not entirely used to being one of many women in a class instead of the only one. But other than gender, engineering students were by far a more varied and eclectic bunch.

Part of this is probably that the study of law itself is a very country-specific practice. The language of law varies from country to country, but the language of mathematics is universal. Furthermore, law requires far more facility with English than engineering does. A struggling English speaker can be an excellent engineer and learn English as he goes along. It would be almost impossible for a lawyer to take the same path.

I loved working and studying with people from all over the world. I think that's something I'm going to miss in law.

list-making

Ten things that are more interesting than Property right now:

1. Watching my cat chew on her claws.
2. Debating if cat is more effective nail-biter than I am, or whether presence of pointy claws and teeth actually defeats efficacy of nail-biting.
3. Organizing my closet and moaning about lack of good clothing.
4. Responding to email I've neglected over the past month.
5. Blogging.
6. Reading other people's blogs (does that count as blogging? Hm...).
7. Choosing a new background photo for my laptop.
8. Laundry, all sorts of laundry. I heart laundry these days.
9. Random Google searches on the names of high school classmates.
10. Seeing whether my cat objects if I touch her ears while she sleeps. Can be a fun game as I see how many ear touches provoke ear flapping. Helps to have very patient cat.

study buddies

My highly sensitive cat hates Property. This may have to do with the neurotic, passionate hatred he has for anything that takes our time away from proper adoration of him. He was willing to put up with Contracts and Crim Law, but he's drawing the line at Property.

As is my wont, I'm talking out loud to myself with some regularity while I study. He sits on the desk, glowering at me.

"Dammit, don't mix up springing and shifting interests. Which one is it?"

"Rowwwwwwr."

"Shut up. I didn't ask you."

He eyes me, flicks his gray tail derisively at me, and settles back down.

"Shifting, springing, shifting, springing... oh yeah, it's springing."

He blinks slowly at me. "Rowwwwwwwr." I swear he rolls his eyes.

"I said I didn't ask you."

My husband calls out, with mild concern, "Sweetie, you're talking with the cat again." Husband, I believe, is somewhat concerned with my mental state at this point.

Later I went down to dinner. When I came back, I found teeth marks in my notes. I tell you, he hates Property.

sagittarian conspiracy

Scheherazade discovered a little grouping of Sagittarians. Due to her diligent detective work, I've learned that the legal blogger crowd is brimming with Sagittarians.

For my engineering and math friends who are now having heart palpitations, please rest assured that I have not forgotten the Pigeonhole Principle. I realize that by the Pigeonhole Principle, in my list of twenty-four legal blogs, and including my own blog, at least three of us have to be born under the same sign, Nov. 22 to Dec. 21. Assume that Denise Howell's new baby Tyler is a stand-in for Denise. Four out of twenty-five were born on or within these dates, which is within statistical norms. (I'm assuming uniform birth distribution for the purposes of this post, which I'm not sure is actually accurate.)

So, sure, it's statistically normal, but since there are so few in-crowds that I can actually join, I'm going to claim this one.

crim law is dead

One more down!

That was a long exam. Three and a half hours, closed book. I was exhausted by the end of it. My hands and back were sore from typing and hunching over the computer. But I'll be recovered by tomorrow. I just did a cardio workout to get my cramped muscles moving again. Tonight I'm meeting my father for a belated birthday dinner, thus blessedly taking my mind off of homicide and my next exam, Property.

As for the exam itself, well, I've never been the person who waltzes out of an exam knowing that I aced it. (Who are those aliens, anyhow?) I can always see something I did wrong. No sense thinking about it.

I don't think I flunked, and I feel that I addressed at least a reasonable percentage of the issues that the professor raised. That's about all I'm willing to commit to at this point.

Onwards to Property! But first, a birthday dinner.

crim law today

For me, and I believe for my reader sugahroo.

Send us homicidal thoughts, please.

bad health care

Does anybody in criminal law fact patterns ever receive decent health care?

I've done three different practice questions now, and every single one says something like "Joe, who would have died anyhow, received negligent medical care in the ambulence which hastened his death." Or, "Doctors said that Patty would have lived but for negligent care in the hospital."

I see what they're getting at (causation) but I think it's kind of funny that none of these poor people ever get a decent doctor or ambulence ride.

perspective

My husband's company had a large layoff today. While he survived, many of the people we have known for years did not.

Nothing like hearing that friends have lost their jobs right before Christmas to make exams seem like small, silly things. Yeah, exams are tough. But losing your job when you've got a newborn kid? Harder. Losing your job when you're sixty-three years old in an industry that effectively doesn't hire aging engineers? Harder.

I know that some of you who got laid off read my blog. I'm so sorry. I am thinking of you.

it can strike twice (part two)

So handwrite he did. Afterwards, he said it wasn't that bad.

He was much more collected than I would have been. I smiled encouragingly at him, and he shrugged, smiled back, and moved his useless computer to one side. He was calm. I was very impressed.

I was not calm. I did more breathing and sent frantic "Do NOT fail! Do NOT fail!" thoughts towards my computer. At this point, all of the students sitting within two feet of me had experienced some sort of technical failure. It was not a highly reassuring situation.

The proctor counted down and we began.

Time flew by. I wrote quickly and I spotted a lot of issues. I didn't finish early, but I didn't run out of time, and I wasn't utterly stumped by any of them. My computer, thankfully, did not fail.

Afterwards, my friends and I deliberately avoided talking about the exam. We didn't want to go into the next one thinking that we'd missed an issue on Contracts. As my friend S. said with a shrug, "I don't think I flunked, and that's good enough for now."

However, I survived the pre-exam lightning, and that's got to count for something. I owe all of you a huge, huge thank you for your protective prayers, good thoughts, and good karma.

Onwards to Crim Law!

it can strike twice (part one)

(In two parts so I can get in a little studying.)

This morning, I woke up early. I threw open all the windows to the streaming sun, did some yoga, made a three-egg omelette for breakfast, downed some vitamins and fresh coffee, and walked to school.

I went to the exam room early since I'm picky about where I sit. The nervous energy in the room and in the hallway was palpable. My heart beat a little faster, though that could have been the coffee. I closed my eyes and took some long, deep breaths.

Then exam nightmare lightning struck.

The two students in front of me were talking quietly when one of them asked the other, "Does this plug actually work? My screen seems a little dim!"

The other unplugged her power supply and plugged it back in. No change. The laptop was running off of battery power.

"Oh my God. This row doesn't have power." They moved immediately, luckily discovering the problem with ten minutes to spare and with desks remaining.

I took another deep, slow breath. I had almost sat at that desk when I came into the classroom, but I spontaneously chose a different one at the last moment. I checked my computer; my row had power.

I am a Mac/UNIX person. The exam software only runs on Windows, so the computer I was using was new to me, a used laptop I'd bought from a friend. I would not have noticed if it was running on the battery, and I hadn't thought to check. The battery life is only about an hour. It would have failed in the middle of the exam.

More breathing. Ten minutes to go. Then the student to my left called over one of the SofTest consultants. (As an indication of how bad this software is, or how bad Windows is, my school appears to hire consultants who are on call during exam days to debug failures.)

They conferred. Another consultant came in. There were now four minutes remaining. They pressed some secret key combinations and rebooted the machine. Nothing worked.

My poor neighbor was suffering through my only real exam nightmare. I don't trust Windows software not to fail. I can't handwrite after years of typing, so typing the exam was my only choice. That left an uncontrollable variable in the equation: Windows and an unknown piece of software.

Two minutes left. There was some whispering. The consultants shook their heads. They reached a decision. Calling over the proctors, the hapless student was handed bluebooks. He would have to handwrite his exam.

diving in

In a few moments, my husband and I will leave our house, drive to my apartment near school, drop off my stuff, meet my sister for dinner, and then I will say goodbye to my husband.

Tomorrow, Contracts.

Pray for UCC blessings, which frankly sounds like something I would want to wish on anybody, but that's law school for you.

Consideration! Offer! Acceptance! Battle of the Forms! Statute of Frauds! Go!

today's a little different

I'm spending today like I've spent every other day this week. My books are open, my hands are sore, and my mind is absorbing yet more legal details.

Today, however, has a little golden edging. I'm still studying, but I have welcome interruptions from my friends and family in the form of phone calls, email, and even some very cool, very mysterious parcels. It's my birthday.

But the best part of today is that it marks our tenth anniversary.

Ten years ago, we'd been spending a lot of time together. We went for long walks by the ocean. We slipped off to cozy little coffee shops for hours of conversation. He was a graduate engineering student, and he helped me with my homework when I struggled. All the signs were present, but we were both too shy to admit it.

Ten years ago this evening marks the moment when he showed up on my door with a dozen long-stemmed red roses for my birthday.

I had a final the next morning, so he didn't stay long. We both hemmed and hawed a little bit and parted with a chaste hug. But we both knew something had changed. No man brings a dozen blood red roses for his gal pal.

Forget studying. I called one of my best friends and spent an hour on the phone with her deconstructing the very sweet card that came with the flowers. There wasn't much to deconstruct, actually, as he was quite clear, but these things require consultation with one's female friends and sisters.

After the phone call, I went and nervously knocked on his door.

And that's where it all began.

sweet dreams and good thoughts

Last night I didn't dream about exams for the first time in days.

Maybe my Id just needed a good talking-to.

Of course, it might have been the intervals-only spinning class I did at 5:30 pm as well. My teacher decided that I needed some motivation for exams and the whole class paid for my exam angst by doing forty-five minutes of thirty-second intervals.

Speaking of sweet dreams, JCA over at Sua Sponte has started an exam good karma/prayer chain/benediction wave, depending on your religious preference.

I think it's a lovely idea, and I, along with many other 1L's, posted my exam schedule up. However, I'm going to post it here too in a blatent attempt to gather yet more good thoughts during exams.

Dec. 8th - Contracts

Dec. 11th - Crim Law

Dec. 15th - Property

Dec. 18th - Civ Pro

If you have good thoughts to spare on those days, send 'em my way.

an open letter to my subconscious

Dear Iddie (do you mind if I call you that?),

I know we're all pitching in here for the upcoming exam season. The RSI-inflicted wrists keep typing, despite the tenderness. The brain keeps absorbing more information, despite the fact that it's very saturated right now.

And, lest you think I am ungrateful, let me say that I appreciate your heroic efforts. I know it must take a lot of creative effort to come up with a new variation on exam dreams every night.

However, I think perhaps you might want to redirect your efforts. For example, I really don't have a fear that I'm going to show up naked on exam day. Nor do I fear that I will start writing code in my Property exam. I am NOT WORRIED about that. That one where the exam was held in Japan and then it turned out that the exam was a stream-of-consciousness quote from an undiscovered James Joyce novel about the Uniform Commerical Code? Brilliant directorship in that piece, but wasted as far as a real fear.

Perhaps you could simply redirect your energies. I suggest reviewing all the rules of personal jurisdiction for Civil Procedure. That would be very helpful. Or why don't you go over the mens rea elements of homicide? That'd be right up your alley!

Or, perhaps, you could dream of fuzzy kittens. We all like fuzzy kittens. Nice, cuddly, non-law-related, fuzzy kittens who don't take exams. That would be very nice.

Hugs.

T.

makes you wonder

I'm studying like a maniac for Contracts (Dec. 8th) and Crim (Dec. 11th).

One result of this study is that now that I know the framework well, I notice things that I hadn't noticed before. For example, I caught the following line in one of my study guides:

Under the Saxon laws, rape was a felony punishable by death. For a short time in the thirteenth century, it was treated as only a trespass punishable by two years' imprisonment and a fine. Subsequently, the offense was treated again as a capital crime. (Understanding Criminal Law, Joshua Dressler, p. 571, 3rd Edition, with apologies to my LWR teacher for the bad format of this citation.)

That's all it says. No explanation, just a citation.

I don't have time to track this down, but I have to admit that I am terribly curious about what happened in thirteenth century England to cause rape to be downgraded to essentially a property crime, and then upgraded a few years later.

props for the docs

While studying causation tonight for Criminal Law, I reviewed the case of United States v. Hamilton (District of Columbia, 1960). In this case, the defendant beat up the victim, who was taken to the hospital. The victim subsequently died when he pulled tubes from his throat and asphyxiated. The defendant was eventually convicted of manslaughter.

My favorite quote from the case:

Promptly upon arrival at the hospital, the deceased came into the competent hands of the Chief Resident of the Neurological Service, who impressed the Court as a completely dedicated and entirely devoted physician.

The doctor gets a gold star from the Court!

hurrah for validation

One of the things that first year law students are repeatedly told is that they Must Outline. We hear whispers of the nasty fate of those students who didn't outline. I hear some of them vaporized into tiny little pieces of shimmery dust in their seats during the exam. Those who only outlined a little bit were felled by wild, law-student-eating hyenas that picked them out of the crowd as they left the exam room.

Accordingly, not wanting to turn into dust or be eaten by hyenas, we all create these outlines of varying lengths for each course. There is palpable fear of those who have 90-page outlines and secret relief when somebody admits that their outline is bare-bones as well.

Me being the mildly compulsive type that I am, I started outlining at the end of September and have worked on them regularly since then. Thankfully, they are now almost done. They are quite detailed, mostly because I am fairly obsessive about details. They are thirty to fifty pages each, of questionable organization. I'm not exactly an innate outliner.

But, at the back of my mind, I always worried that I was wasting time. My friend D. summed it up when he sighed, "I dunno... it just feels like busywork."

Yesterday I took one of Prof. Contract's old exams. Today I went over the answers with him and my friend S., who also took the exam.

The incredibly validating result? I spotted all of the correct issues on the questions that covered what I'd outlined! The only major one I missed was from the last two weeks of class, which I haven't outlined yet.

Now I'm all fired up to finish these babies.