Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Italicized Commas: Seriously?

I give tours here at YLS, and one of the questions I get from prospective & admitted students once in a while is "What *don't* you like about the school?"

Usually, I say something like, "Well, the undergrads take over the dining hall most days, making the wait to get a tasty chicken wrap sandwich unbearable [even though we can cut in line in front of them at the check-out, until a couple classmates - including one commenter below - pointed it out to me, I had thought that no such privilege exists in the service lines]."

As of today, I have a new answer, which I should have been using all along: I HATE source citing. For the (luckily) uninitiated, source citing involves verifying the validity of each and every source used by an article's author for content accuracy, and then making sure the citation's format has been properly Bluebooked (so-called because of the ridiculously-detailed set of rules established by various law journal editorial boards and collected for our reference in the Bluebook). It really, truly sucks. I'm not kidding that today I heard a serious conversation about which commas in a particular citation should be italicized - to think that that bit of knowledge may have pushed some other piece of info out of my brain is just frightening.

I'm a pretty detail-oriented person, but my goodness - beyond the basic ability of a reader to track down a source, I could not care less about whether there's a uniform system of citation of legal scholarship, and certainly, I didn't care to spend even a small part of the last four hours of my day today making sure that some author has accurately formatted, according to Rule 18.5, the citation for the TV series 'Queer Eye.' [Some nice person at Cornell has given a quick overview of the basic citation rules here, if you want to torture yourself some time.]

I'm working on two journals this semester, and in general I like the other aspects of journal work: reviewing submissions and discussing whether they should be published, and even hunting for books in the depths of the library. But source citing would be the end of me, if it weren't for the presence of some good friends (to distract from the boring work) and yummy treats (to bribe us & keep up working). It's looking more and more likely that I won't even bother trying to join the Yale Law Journal (the only journal here that makes you apply for membership, through a competitive process)...there are much more interesting things to spend my time on around here.

***

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Grades!

So, unlike SB, we have actual grades for the fall semester, and they were released to us last week. Well, I say "actual grades" - I should say "fake grades, but with more options for doing badly than a Yale 1st semester 1L". The new grading system accounts for the fact that most of us, when we got with our grades, reacted with...not fear...not glee...but...confusion. Never before have I looked at my transcripts and not known what to think. The feeling was not universal. Both the kids who got 5 Low Passes and the kids who got 5 High Passes knew what was up. Still, the rest of us had almost no idea.

But, as someone who has gotten some pretty bad grades over the course of her lifetime (I'm not talking about a B, all you college over-achievers out there, I'm talking about bad grades), I'll rejoice in the fact that I appear not to have failed property, and move on. To less confusing pastures, like the job market, where I understand exactly what's going on - lots of rejection. Hopefully, employers will share in the general befuddlement over grades, and hire me on the spot, thinking I'm going to be valedictorian.

Sunday, February 15, 2009

Cruel Summer?

When orientation started, the big questions were usually variations on a theme: "Where did you go to school?" "Where are you from?" "What kind of law do you want to do?"

Now that we all know each other better (and "what kind of law" you want to do becomes at least somewhat self-evident on the basis of the courses you're taking, not to mention the journals, clinics, and other extra-curriculars you've chosen to do), the question has turned to "What're you doing this summer?"

Admittedly, there's a sense of uncertainty in the air. This summer is perhaps shaping up different than others, simply on the basis of the economy. Law firms are cutting jobs, meaning there's an inevitable trickle-down effect...summer associates aren't be hired at the same rates by big firms, meaning that there's more competition for government and non-profit jobs, too.

Luckily (for us), we're somewhat better-insulated than many other schools. A number of my friends accepted jobs at big firms back in December. Others have accepted offers at various US Attorneys Offices from coast to coast. People are working for circuit court judges. Or for other countries' supreme courts. Or for non-profits with which they've built a relationship through the Pro Bono Network here at school. Or they've arranged to volunteer abroad in something completely non-law-related.

It's not really, then, that you can't *get* a job which is causing a number of people around here to worry...rather, it's that we don't yet *have* jobs (or, in my case, due to a bunch of mis-matched deadlines, I have been playing summer job roulette by turning down offers while [perhaps foolishly?] anticipating the possibility of other ones yet to come). Because I am interested in kind of a niche specialty (which, in some cases, means that jobs I'm interviewing for aren't even "law" jobs), the magic 'December 1' date for 1L applications didn't really apply, and now I'm trying to make a number of important decisions, but there are just too many things to think about! What to do. Where to do it. Who to do it with: private, government, non-profit.

The Career Development Office and the new public interest adviser try their best to help us navigate the mess that is the summer job search (including hosting an on-campus interview day, which netted me some interesting conversation and an awesome firm-logo coffee thermos(!), but so far no job offers), but sometimes it's hard to calm yourself when you need to figure out how to get to and live in another city (most people don't stay here in New Haven for the summer unless they're working in the school's clinic or perhaps as a research assistant to a professor, so you've got to sublet your apartment here, too) - all in exactly 3 months from now.

Hopefully, I'll have my job situation all wrapped up by the end of next week...I have two more interviews in two different cities between now and then, and I've been promised that I'll be able to make a fully-informed decision by March 1st at the very latest. At the same time, I'm kind of tempted to just move to the Mediterranean or South Africa for the summer - so who knows.

**

Monday, February 9, 2009

Meeting the Other

Around this time, 1L students at HLS start engaging with the other. That's right - those mysterious folks from different sections that you pass in the hallways but knew nothing about. Your class suddenly grows from 80 to 500+, and the transition is...well...relatively painless. Why? Because most people still seemed attached to their sections. No one is quite ready to move on. There's a whole big frightening world of new people out there, and we already went through one traumatic transition this year.

So, how to get acquainted? I think there are the following options:
(1) Engage in group projects with people from other sections (this is annoying, but probably safer than engaging in a group project with people from your own section that you have to see at least six times in any given week)
(2) Tipsily make their acquaintance at bar review. I have not tried this, but I've heard that the consequences are decidly mixed.
(3) Ignore them until next year, when you'll have no choice but to get to know eachother.

I'm not going to reveal which (or which combination of 1 and 3) that I'm going for. In other news, trying to find a job sucks. A lot. I knew all that stuff about the "competition being over" was demonstrably false. Still, I could have lived with being the counter-example.

Curious about Life at CLS?

If you're sick of hearing only about Harvard & Yale (or you just want to read some interesting reflections on life as a 1L), check out this awesome new blog by our friend, Columbia 1L:

http://columbiaonel.blogspot.com/

***

Gunning with an AK-47

Every prospective law student has heard lore about "gunners " - even Wikipedia has an entertaining description. I kind of assumed that we'd have a good share of them here, since there are SO many uber-smart people - surely, *somebody* would want everyone else to know how smart he/she is, too.

In a way, though, there's an assumption that everyone here is pretty intelligent. So most people don't feel the need to show off. Some of the smartest people I know here don't talk in class. Ever. Last semester, with the exception of one or two people in two of my three larger (about 50-60 student) classes, everyone was pretty calm and reserved - saying things when they were important, but generally letting the professor guide the discussion. [The few exceptions, of course, were pretty blatantly obvious...and led everyone else to kind of snicker about those particular individuals' desire to hear themselves talk.] In general, I felt pretty lucky, though...nobody was a gunner to the point of driving me insane, and the professors managed class discussion well enough so that the same people didn't talk all the time.

This semester, things have changed for the worse. In one of my classes, there are 2 or 3 individuals that make probably 65-75% of the comments in class. And they're not particularly brilliant comments, either. They're often what everyone else is thinking, but everyone else doesn't feel the need to share with 80 other people. If they're not saying what everyone else is thinking, the likelihood of anyone else caring is (generously) slightly greater than zero, and the content of their comments ranges from delirious philosophical babbling to wacky hypotheticals.

As a result, I've pretty much stopped paying attention in this particular class. I sit waaaaay on the left side of the room, and since the professor doesn't cold call, there's no worry of needing to participate if I don't want to. I've admittedly already stopped doing all the reading (b/c, really, something's gotta give with my clinic work taking over my life)...and since it's a "black letter law" class, I can probably just relatively blow it off and study some hornbooks at the end of the semester and be fine. Obviously, this is where the "no grades" system here is a good thing - I'll take my "P" and move right along, thankyouverymuch.

***

Monday, February 2, 2009

And so it begins, all over again

A new semester, a new computer, and a frustrating inability to find a job. This is the trifecta of a second semester law school student (well, I guess not everyone poured a full cup of water on their old computer...)

Is becoming a 1.5L better than just being a plain old 1L? I don't know. It's hard to tell, but classes do seem a lot less stressful. Being cold-called is less intimidating, you know the other kids, and even the reading seems shorter. Of course, the real work hasn't really begun yet, so check in with me in about a month.

In other news, Boston continues cold and snow-covered. I've started having dreams at night about falling asleep somewhere very sunny and warm. Recently, I watched someone with knee-high rain boots step into a sleet-filled puddle that was just a little to deep (really, we do have puddles that big in Boston.) On the other hand, my plants have started blooming. My biology PHD friend explained that they had to get cold and deal with shorter sunlight, a.k.a. being vernalized (I'm definitely not spelling that right) before they could bloom. So, I guess that's my silver lining of the Boston winter and my high note to end on.