Happy Halloween! (And Happy Birthday, Mom!)

Overheard on the way to school today:

(Undergrad) girl, complaining to parking enforcement officer outside of Starbucks, as she's just been ticketed for a parking violation: But it's Halloween!

Officer: You still have to follow the parking laws, ma'am.

Girl: But it's Hall-o-ween. Like, it's a hol-i-day.

Officer: Not exactly. [Something about it not being a real holiday...]

Girl: F***in' Halloween! Thirty bucks?!?

Class Isn't All Fun & Games...Sometimes It's Cake, too.

This week we're [at my school, and at Cat's] on fall break - woot. I had been anxiously awaiting vacation for the past couple weeks. I'll admit - I skipped a couple classes this past week (we had a memo due! I hadn't slept! there were gunshots! - but really, on Wednesday, I *did* have a really bad headache, RP, I promise!). NOBODY, though, skipped torts @ 8:30 on Friday morning, the day before break. There was important business to be done afterward - Saturday was Guido's 76th birthday, and there was a party to be had! I've included some pictures below:

* Here's the cake: Guido's a proud Italian, and the whole party had an Italian theme - we sang "Happy Birthday" in Italian, there was a coffee bar, and of course, there was an Italian flag on the cake.


* Here's Guido, posing with the stuffed animal "J.S.", the pig-like dog. "J.S." makes regular appearances in hypotheticals. He's also featured on the t-shirt everyone's sporting in these pictures, which were commissioned especially for the occasion: they depict a number of the cast of characters that are commonly mentioned in class. I'll wager the shirts become a hot commodity - who wouldn't want one?!?


* Here's most of our class (1Ls and a few LLMs), wearing our cool t-shirts!

Learning to Read Again

In keeping with SB's studious theme (a theme I could adopt right now) I thought I'd write a little bit about reading. Reading in law school is definitely not like reading in college. There is a lot less of it, but it's super dense, and you have to understand pretty much all of it in case you get cold-called. This is difficult, because reading case books is boring. Boring in the kind of way where you sit down to read in the library and wake up two hours later still on the first page. To try to combat this problem I:
(a) fortify myself with a bag of M&Ms or animal crackers
(b) skim the reading once to get a sense of where it's going
(c) read it in depth, taking notes in the margins (this is more to keep myself awake than anything else), and
(d) quickly brief the fact pattern, the legal question, and the holding/rationale (what I brief varies from class to class).

Of course, this is not possible on days when I'm desperately trying to catch up on two days worth of reading during the lunch break. Then, I generally opt for just trying to remember the party names. SB, what's your strategy?

Essential Elements of Writing in Law School

The following things, I have come to note over the past three weeks, are (not an exhaustive list of) essentials to have on hand when writing a paper for law school:

* Post-It flags. They mark important passages in case law. They also can help create an artificial sense of accomplishment when, if you remove the flags as you insert their corresponding points into your paper, you accumulate a pile of discarded/completed flags.

* Laptop charger/power cord. Obviously. My computer can make it through 4ish hours of class without being plugged in, which seems pretty decent...but Rome wasn't built in a day.

* A big glass of water. Or juice. Or lemonade. Not vodka. Staying hydrated is important. For me, more important than being caffeinated.

* Saline solution or eye drops to keep my eyes hydrated. I think my eyes are getting worse, honestly, but regardless, they are certainly drier now that I live in New England. That is a problem come 3am.

* Chocolate, or something else sweet to make me feel better when I realize that I am, in fact, still awake at 3am because, let's face it, this paper isn't writing itself...

Columbus, You Creep, I'm Pretty Grateful Right Now

Yay for federal holidays! (Even those celebrating a man who maybe shouldn't be celebrated that much.) I think the craziness of law school just makes the time off that much better. Yesterday, I went apple picking with some friends, which was pretty much the greatest thing ever. Although I nearly killed myself falling out of a tree, I am now the very proud owner of a bag of Concord apples, and am concocting plans about applesauce. Today, some other 1Ls and I are going shopping for winter clothes. The Californians in my class are looking distinctly nervous about the approaching deep freeze.

So, it is possible to be a law student and have fun. Who would have guessed? A friend of mine who is also a 1L told me he spends at least 8 hours day asleep, makes sure he exercises, and spends his weekends just walking around the city with his wife. That, I think, is the right way to do law school.

Love at First Sight

This weekend was alumni/reunion weekend at school. A bunch of old people (and a few young people) showed up to see their former classmates and professors and to see what the school is like today. They got to sit on panel discussions and hear lectures, take tours of the law school (and the building acquired by the law school, to be opened in a few years - presumably, to encourage them to donate to its development). They also got to hear a particularly esteemed fellow graduate talk on Saturday afternoon - your good friend and mine Bill Clinton stopped by to talk a bit about his time in law school, the current financial crisis, the upcoming election, and his work since leaving office. Overall, it was a really good speech - we heard about how he met Hillary in the law school library (she couldn't come this weekend because she's campaigning for Barack - something "much more important" - a comment about which received thunderous applause from the audience), and about how he missed class a lot to help with campaigns. It seems he was quite a maverick in his time.

To put it simply, I am absolutely in love with Bill Clinton. I have been in love with him forever. I'll admit, my 14-year-old self was somewhat enraptured when the Starr report came out - I read the whole thing cover-to-cover in one sitting [and I'll freely cop to having been more than a little bit jealous of Monica]. I was flabbergasted when a friend of mine quit his job with Bill's office in Harlem last fall - who says no when asked to off Bill's dry cleaning and getting his watch fixed?!? I may have gotten a little teary-eyed when, on Saturday, he told us all to "do what [we] like, and help others" because that will ultimately make us happy.

It's really amazing to spend the weekend surrounded by people - Fmr. President Clinton is just one example - who have made such awesome contributions to society after having sat in my chair, taken my classes, and been in my same student groups. It's simultaneously encouraging (look at everything you can go on to do!) and intimidating (can you ever achieve the scale that these people have?)...but it's thrilling, regardless.

Why I Hate My Bluebook

This weekend, I spent about 7 hours checking footnotes on three pages of an article that will be published in one of the school law journals. This is called "subciting", but should be renamed "a miserable way to waste a Sunday."

First, I found the works that had been referred to in the footnotes. Then I tried to figure out if the facts being footnoted were correct. This took .5 hours. The other 6.5 hours was spent ensuring that the footnotes were in the correct format according to the Blue Book. I had only 20 footnotes to check, but there were three problems: (1) the Bluebook has 400 pages (2) all of my sources were in a foreign language, and (3) I had no idea what I was doing.

On the bright side, we get a free coffee mug from the dean tomorrow. Also, on the actual bright side, it seems that my former housemates, including SB, are coming to town on Friday. Sweet!

Breaking News!

1. Most people in law school (and professors at law school) are flamingly liberal. In class yesterday, somebody responded to, "How do we fix that?" with "Elect Barack Obama the next president of the United States," and nobody laughed or giggled or reacted at all. It was just taken as fact.

2. My "memo" is now "completed." It is probably not actually a memo, and most certainly is not completed. It is, however, only a draft of an ungraded assignment in a class in which we're all-but-guaranteed to pass.

3. I will now fall asleep at the ungodly hour of 11pm, which is 6 hours earlier than I went to bed last night.