a happiness infusion

As longtime readers of my blog know, I rarely write about my political views. This mostly reflects ambivalence on my part; positions that I thought I held absolutely and clearly when I was twenty-one are not nearly so absolute and clear ten years later. I can't write coherently on issues that are darkly muddled to me.

Sometimes, however, there is clarity and light. Sometimes, there is visible truth.

Over the Valentine's Day weekend, I drove to San Francisco to support the gay and lesbian couples getting married.

It was a drizzly dishrag of a day when I arrived at City Hall. My friend T. ran around handing out cheap umbrellas to damp brides, fussing over carefully coiffed hair and makeup. The line stretched for blocks, but the mood was upbeat and happy. At the entrance of City Hall, florists handed out lovely arrangements to random couples, bouquets that had been sent "To any happy couple" from well-wishers around the world.

There were children everywhere. Families had come from all over the country to show their support. Kids handed out daisies to grooms and helped their parents distribute bagels to the waiting couples.

The few protesters that I saw were ugly, both physically and morally. My friend D., looking at one particularly unattractive woman stiffly waving a neo-Nazi flag, muttered, "I think they're just jealous because nobody will marry them!" Looking at the twisted, lonely faces, I agreed.

Later I slipped inside through the inevitable metal detectors and armed guards. I was struck by the grinning faces I saw. I've never been in a government building where everybody was happy.

On the steps in front of me, two men nervously recited their vows, one of them choking up a little over the words. The small crowd sighed as the men exchanged rings.

The entire wedding was over in a few minutes, and the minister beamed. "I pronounce you spouses for life!" The men gently exchanged a kiss, closed their eyes, and rested their foreheads against each other.

I burst into tears. The woman next to me, sniffling as well, silently handed me a tissue. An elderly man patted my arm, tears splattering down his cheeks. None of us knew each other, but we watched a few more weddings together, crying during every single one.

When I finally left, I couldn't stop grinning. That morning was a happiness infusion, a jolt of pure joy. Sometimes, there is truth and clarity.

what to do

Over the course of job interviews for this summer, I've had lawyers ask me what I want to do. Do you want to be a litigator? A transactional attorney? Or maybe do patent work? Public interest? Government work?

To which I answer, honestly, "I don't know." My internal snotty child also adds, "How should I know after six months of law school?" Luckily I keep my internal snotty child on a very tight leash; after all, it's a fair question.

I wouldn't have thought about litigation before law school, but I've had a lot of fun sparring during mock oral arguments. Furthermore, my professors have encouraged me in that direction. When I mentioned to one of them that I wasn't sure I wanted to be combative every day for my job, she laughed and said, "It's all about negotiation these days. You'd love it."

While I'm all for public interest work in theory, in reality I am not sure I have the patience for it. Over the years I've volunteered with various non-profits. My experience has made me very cautious about non-profits as a career option: the frequent lack of connection to financial reality that I found was frustrating, and the holier-than-thou personality of some, though of course not all, of the employees was grating. I feel like I should have liked it more than I did.

I think I probably don't want to to patent work, but even with that I'm not sure. Patent work seems to involve a lot of time spent alone reading and writing patents. I prefer interaction, a lot of teamwork. However, not knowing anything about patent work, it's very hard to say.

I don't mind the lower salary for government work in comparison to firms, and the decent 9-5 hours sound appealing. Furthermore, due to the lack of deep pockets in a lot of government work, I've heard that beginning government attorneys get a tremendous amount of experience that only senior attorneys get in law firms.

I entered law school thinking that I would eventually be a transactional attorney, but now I'm not so sure about that either. I don't know much about what tranactional attorneys do.

Or maybe, just maybe, I'll graduate from law school but discover I don't want to be a lawyer at all. I don't think that will happen -- I like this too much to abandon it -- but I'm open to the possiblity.

I hope to get some clarification after this summer. It's exciting, having options, even if they're currently far away and cloudy ones.

hitting the shuffle button

Whenever one is doing something that's time-consuming and thought-provoking, it's important to have the correct music, right? It's important enough to warrant spending, um, more time than one should the night before one's moot court brief is due?

Borrowing from John Scalzi, I selected my entire iTunes library and set it to random shuffle. Here are the first two iterations at this game, which I'm finding endlessly amusing in face of my imminent brief deadline.

Round 1

1. New York, New York - Frank Sinatra

2. Speechless - Kruder & Dorfmeister

3. Page One - Lemon Jelly

4. Du Hast - Rammstein

5. Roads - Portishead

6. Mr. Man (Duet with Jimmy Cozier) - Alicia Keys

7. Whispering Hills - Ottmar Liebert

8. War of Man - Neil Young

9. E Chiove - Andrea Bocelli

10. You Better Go Now - Billie Holiday

Round 2

1. So Danco Amor (Stan Getz & Joan Gilberto)

2. Goudod/Bach: Ave Maria - Yoyo Ma & Bobby McFerrin

3. Mysterons - Portishead (a repeat player!)

4. (Da Le) Yaleo - Santana

5. La Isla Bonita - Madonna

6. Lucid - I Can't Help Myself - Remix by Moose PF Project

7. Wasted Time (The Reprise) - The Eagles

8. Hide & Seek - Kruder & Dorfmeister (another repeat player!)

9. Three to Get Ready - Dave Brubeck Quartet

10. Five Foot Two - my Dad, playing jazz on the piano.

I must stop now. Really.

stress food

The past week has been very busy. Normal schoolwork continues, but on top of that there are job interviews, moot court, financial aid applications, and life in general. When my despised moot court brief is finally turned in, I think I shall dance my way out of school.

It's not just me. All my friends are feeling the pinch right now.

Without any formal group decision-making on the subject, we have apparently decided to combat the stress with food. On Wednesday, D. unexpectedly brought brownies to class. These weren't just any brownies. These were so dark with bittersweet chocolate that they were almost black, but saved from being utterly overwhelming with the faint orange zest she used to complement the chocolate. They were heavenly.

On Thursday, T. made some excellent chocolate chip cookies for her organization's bake sale, but saved a batch for all of us. "I think we need it more than they need to raise money," she concluded. Munching on the cookies after Torts, we had to agree.

On Friday, A. invited us all over to her house for a pizza party. She generously bought the pizza for everybody, saying that it was a thank you gift for "going through this with me!" We all ate melty cheese pizza and rejoiced that the week was over.

I think it's my turn. What should I make? I am looking for something with high procrastination value but nonetheless something that isn't too time-consuming.

what would we do without web quizzes

Yet another quiz with which to distract myself:

Yankee or Dixie?

I'm 58% Dixie, which is barely into the Dixie category.

professorial feedback

I picked up my graded exams today.

For the most part, they were only interesting as a memory of what I did and what I was thinking. There were some comments from the professors, some checkmarks here and there, a few numbers, and some underlined text.

There was, however, one comment that stood out. Next to one apparently offensive paragraph in my Civil Procedure exam, Prof. Civ Pro wrote the following:

"No!!! No!!! & No!!!!!"

Well, alrighty then. I guess I got that wrong.

it's nice to be wrong

It turns out that I maligned the government unfairly, or at least mostly unfairly.

Several hours after I posted, during which I pulled apart all of my tax and financial documents in an effort to find the mysterious PIN, my mailbox dinged. The FAFSA website, in its munificence, had declined to wait a full three business days before sending me my PIN. There it was, in my mailbox. Furthermore, it was clearly not a number that I had picked. I would never pick such a malformed number for my PIN. My memory and complex PIN-picking algorithms had not failed me.

A figure here, a figure there, and woosh! All my personal financial data was sent over a presumably secure connection to the great FAFSA database.

I was so grateful that I willingly participated in FAFSA's consumer survey. I did mention that three business days seemed rather excessive, and might lead worried applicants to commit rash acts such as dumping all of that applicant's recent financial documents into a pile on the bedroom floor in an effort to find their PIN. Not that I did that, of course.

good enough for government work

My FAFSA, the student aid application, is due on Tuesday. I thought it wouldn't be a problem. I gathered the requested information and filled out the worksheet. All that remained was to enter the information onto the online form.

At least, that's what I thought. It turns out that I couldn't remember my PIN, which I picked last year.

No problem, I thought. There is a handy online form. I'll simply ask the helpful FAFSA people to email me my PIN. I filled out the form and submitted it.

The FAFSA website responded with a cheery little message letting me know that it would take three business days to email me my PIN. Three days! How on earth can an electronic system take three business days?

The website requires a PIN, a social security number, and other personal information in order to submit the form. In other words, there is obviously a database connected to the website which knows my PIN. They send out a confirmation email as soon as the form is submitted, demonstrating an ability to send email. They have all the needed information to do a PIN lookup instantaneously. And yet they need three business days. It boggles the mind.

I have no idea what I'm going to do, because three business days takes me beyond the due date. It's my own damn fault for not submitting the application earlier, I know, but it never occurred to me that their online system would require three days of processing time. I guess I will throw myself upon the mercy of the Financial Aid office on Tuesdsay and beg them for an extension.

girly activities

One of the unexpected pleasures of law school has been my introduction to the world of girlfriends.

Due to my immersion in engineering during my young adult years, I sort of skipped the whole adult girlfriend thing. I have a few very close female friends, but for the most part my larger social group has been male. They are great friends, but they are not good shoppers, hair consultants, or makeup consultants. That was okay for me while I was in engineering. I have a defective shopping gene and don't get the joy of crowding into an overpriced retail establishment to purchase a carefully corporate-created image so I can feel individual.

However, approximately half of my section is female, and I've made some very good friends. My friends are very stylish; I am not. Early on, I explained my fear of shopping to them.

"Oh," my friend D. said, "you just don't know how to shop."

That startled me. I had no idea there was a correct method to shopping.

"I think," B. pondered, " that we have to do an intervention before you're permanently harmed by all those years in engineering."

D. nodded her agreement.

That's how we ended up in Macy's and Anthropologie on Thursday afternoon. And, to my great surprise, I had a lot of fun. I ended up with some sassy black pumps and a snazzy red cashmere sweater. Our conversation about law school, when it even came up, was strictly limited to cheery gossip about the complicated social life that swirls around the school. We bought ice cream and then window-shopped. We discussed clothing, hair coloring, and B.'s boyfriend. We wandered into Sephora to poke around the makeup bins. It was an altogether delightful afternoon.

The things one learns in law school!

learning the trade

Moot Court is in full swing these days.

I picked a case that sounded interesting and a class time that was amenable to my morning-person tendencies. The case is a criminal procedure case that involves a 17-year-old murder suspect who wasn't read his Miranda rights in an "informational interview" at the police station. He spilled the beans in the interview, and on the basis of that evidence was convicted of murder.

My professor, also chosen because she came highly recommended, passionately believes the kid was railroaded. She has enthusiastically described arguments that the kid's defenders should use, she has used less than complementary terms when describing the police, and she has frequently referred to the abuse of police discretion.

Unfortunately for me, I am defending the police. This makes class time uncomfortable. I leave class feeling sleazy, as if I'm defending evil incarnate.

Furthermore, after plowing through hundreds of pages of evidence, I'm not sure it's so clear he was railroaded. My personal sympathies would probably tend to lie with the kid, but even accounting for my own views, it's just not a clear case. This realization was somewhat comforting, as I had been seriously questioning the Supreme Court for taking on a simple case of police abuse. However, since the Supremes probably don't care overly much about my satisfaction with their decision, my more problematic issue is that I somehow have to write a brief for a professor who doesn't believe the police have an ethical or legitimate case.

I know that one of the most difficult parts of being a lawyer is defending people you don't like. I'm trying to look upon this class as practice, but it's a struggle.

neurosis of the month club

This weekend one of my patient non-law-school friends, C., listened to my book dilemma.

I don't like writing in books. The only time I ever highlight in my books is when the professor explicitly quotes from the book, my thought being that my professor is far more likely to know which parts of the case should be highlighted. Also, if a professor likes a particular passage well enough to have it memorized, it's probably a bit more important than the rest.

However, this particular neurosis is expensive, because it means I rarely buy used books. I cannot stand books full of other students' random highlights. Therefore, I always get to the bookstore early and go through every single used book in an attempt to find the most pristine one.

Last semester, this paid off. I found two used books with nary a mark to be found. This semester, however, I only found one slightly battered book. It had marks, but they were in pencil.

I debated. The price was good, but would the pencil drive me batty? I decided to take a chance.

I was wrong. The pencil marks do drive me batty. So I compulsively erase them. As I read, I sit there, special rubber eraser in hand, and erase. I find it weirdly satisfying.

After I finished this whole story, C. laughed.

"Okay, T., you win my most obsessive friend of the month award. Congratulations."

small world

For today's Torts class we were assigned a case about spammers and trespass.

I started skimming it. "Blah, blah, blah, action for trespass, damage from loss of disk space and time spent processing spam." I've read some of the legal arguments against spam before, and I wasn't paying too much attention.

Then the judge mentioned the expert testimony of a software developer whom the judge named. It stopped me cold. I reread the name a few times to make sure I had it right.

The name was that of a former co-worker, somebody I had worked with briefly several years ago.

The software engineering world is so, so small.

In other news, alert reader christophermrphy correctly points out that I missed a square date. 01/01/01 is indeed a perfectly square date, and a lovely one at that. Thank you!

law school decision time myths

Myth #1: It's only money. This is naïve. Freedom from debt means the ability to take off a few years to travel the world, to work for a non-profit, to write a novel, or to have kids. In my case, it meant the ability to return to law school, something that I could not have done if I had a large debt from my prior education. Consider debt acquisition carefully, because that debt may govern your choices for years.

Myth #2: They only teach black-letter law there. I consider this statement asinine, but people do believe it. I usually hear it from people at a school with rank X, speaking about a school with rank Y, where X>Y. I've heard it both about my school and from people here regarding other schools.

What you learn depends on you, not your school. If you're inspired, you'll learn a lot besides black letter law. You'll learn history, grand sweeping policy arguments, minute details of statutory interpretation, and more. If you're uninterested, it won't matter where you go. You'll learn the black-letter minimum you need to get through. Pretending that school will make you magically interested in law is silly, as is broadly classifying all educational experiences at a school by its rank.

Myth #3: You'll get a well-paying job, so it's worth it. Look at the bar passage rates of your school. Look at the location. Look at firms that hire there. And look at the nature of those well-paying jobs. Don't assume you'll get a high-roller job, or that you'll want one.

Myth #4: Apply to the top schools, and go to the best one that sends an admittance. I had no interest in uprooting my husband and myself to follow the Holy Grail of Rank. People attend law schools for different reasons. Focusing blindly on rank betrays a lack of creativity, as if there is no imaginable reason why one might choose against it. Have the courage, if it's best for you, to go against the rank mythology.

Myth #5: Rank is bad. This may seem contradictory to #4, but rank isn't inherently bad. Just think carefully about it, as in this cogent argument for a higher-ranked school. Decide what rank means for you, not what you're told it means.

Just think about who is telling you what, this post included. The ivory tower is not immune to capitalism; look at what you're being sold. Walk away if it's not right. And, if it is right, enjoy it.

square date

Today I'm happy because the date is numerically cool.

02/02/04

It's both a square and a sum!

2 * 2 = 4
2 + 2 = 4

By my calculation, the last square date was 09/09/81, since 9 * 9 = 81. The next one will be 03/03/09, so you had better enjoy today. Square dates are rare.

Okay, it doesn't take much to make me happy.

places i've been

Thanks to my parents' penchant for piling all of us kids into the Vanagon and trundling around the country, I've visited a lot of states.

That having been said, I send a cheery wave to the South! Clearly I need to do some serious visiting down there. Plus Alaska. *waves*

create your own visited states map or write about it on the open travel guide

remarkably well-preserved

On Friday night, I attended my friend D.'s 22nd birthday party. I had a great time, but I realized as we ate dinner that I hadn't attended the 22nd birthday party of somebody who wasn't related to me in years.

One of the advantages of going back to school when you're in your thirties is that random people who meet you always assume that you're their age. I haven't been mistaken for 23 in years, but it's happened several times in law school. This is wonderfully flattering, even if I rationally know that it's entirely situational. However, there is always a bit of awkwardness when my true age is revealed.

At the party, I was talking with D's high school friend, N., about good birthday parties. I mentioned that my husband threw me a 30th birthday party that was one of the most fun parties I've ever attended.

"You're 30?" She was surprised.

"No, um, actually I am older than 30."

"Really?"

I nodded.

N. asked, curious now about my advanced age, "So what years do you think were the best?"

It's an interesting question, and I thought about it, but eventually decided that the answer was too complex to summarize. "I'm pretty happy now, actually," I concluded.

N. smiled. "I'm just glad to hear that it's not all downhill after 24!"