Tuesday, January 27, 2009

All Good Things Must Come to an End

Sorry for a period of relative (posting) inactivity. Luckily, the last week or so was spent in a state of relative intellectual inactivity (for both Cat & me, as both our schools had vacation until classes resumed yesterday).

Quick update: I spent "vacation" in Massachusetts. My last final (con law - which we could take anywhere in the world, thanks to the magic of the internet) was, somewhat ironically, on the morning of January 20th. After relatively blowing off that exam (reason explained more below) and watching the inaugural events while baking cookies, I had a few unencumbered days in Boston, give or take a few meetings and some summer job search nonsense. Got to see some people I love: my long-lost college roommate whose boyfriend just transferred to HLS; my former classmate who worked with me in DC last year and moved to Boston in August; Cat(!!) and her boyfriend; another friend who is doing his PhD at MIT [and who I know reads this - See, you're famous now!]. After a few more days of seeing friends and some volunteering, I had to come back Sunday evening, totally unprepared for the onslaught of beginning-of-semester craziness.

Buying books. Choosing classes. Starting clinic. Figuring out how to get paid for my TAing job. Figuring out how to get my student loan money refunded so I can pay rent. Lots of fun stuff.

In short: my new classes (two small 20ish person courses - one of which has VERY little to do with law, one large "black letter" class, and clinic) are awesome so far. Since I've only been to each one once, not too much to say yet...but I think it'll make a huge difference that we get to pick all our classes this semester - so I can't blame anyone but myself if I don't like the material/don't do the reading.

On the flip side, this semester will require some marginal amount of work beyond what was expected of us last semester (which was all "pass/fail"), since we now get graded with either "honors" or "pass." So I should redouble my efforts to stay caught up with reading, and to go to class regularly. I'll keep you updated as to how long that lasts...I have a feeling clinic might become a big time commitment that pushes some other things out, but I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing as my clinic involves doing stuff that I'm truly interested in.

A bunch of people have asked about how finals wrapped up. In sum: they're done, and not getting a grade makes it super-easy not to ever think about them again. In more detail:

Torts: First law school exam ever. More details here.

Contracts: Since contracts & procedure were both self-scheduled (we could take them any time we wanted between January 7th and January 21st), some people took this pretty early on to get it over with...our professor suggested that she'd do no more than take a cursory glance at our exams, so there wasn't much worry about knocking it out of the park. After reading over a couple of other people's/Lexis's outlines, I took this at 1am-3am one day. The fact pattern was truly interesting...I'd be interested to see the model answer, as I think there were a number of ways to go with it.

Procedure: It would not be an overstatement to call this the relative bane of my existence as far as exams went. We had to do a take-home essay before starting the timed portion, and I had kind of blissfully forgotten about that during the holidays. I ended up writing something relatively cogent (maybe?) examining the Guantanamo habeas proceedings from a feminist perspective. The actual timed portion of the exam (3.5 hours) had a rather extensive issue spotting question, and a relatively painless (read: we'd harped on the issue for DAYS in class) policy question. In the end, I kind of psyched myself out for this exam (the only one for which a professor is giving personalized feedback to everyone in the class, without students asking specifically)...but hopefully the extra two days of "studying" resulted in me not embarassing myself (meaning, after I actually read an outline, I knew that a state's attachment rule had nothing to do with the stapling/binding of filings).

Con Law: By the time the 20th rolled around, I was SUPER-glad that my professor had told us that he wasn't going to read our exams. He told us we didn't need to write anything, in fact. It was "for [us], not [him]," and if we wanted feedback, he'd give us comments...but there was no need to prove we knew con law on an exam, as he knew from our small group seminar that we all knew con law. Sweet. As a result, a few people just wrote "Thanks for a great semester!" or something similar...and the rest of us sort of halfway wrote something relating to the questions.

So yeah. That's the end of first semester 1L. Now we're in the big leagues, taking all our classes with 2Ls and 3Ls and getting more involved in activities and clinics. If the last two days are any indication, that's going to mean 10-12 hour days at school...no easy welcome to spring semester, I guess.

***

Sunday, January 18, 2009

Non-Law Rant: Why isn't there an Esquire for Women?

Once upon a time, when I [and Cat!] lived in a house full of men, one of the roommates had a subscription to Esquire. (And Details, but meh.) Since all of our various publications (among them: the Economist, Vanity Fair, the New York Times, the Washington Post, Newsweek, Marie Claire) ended up at the base of the functional-but-never-used fireplace in the front living room, at some point on some "I'm bored" Sunday, I picked up a copy of Esquire, and fell in love.

Not with the man on the cover (I honestly can't even tell you who the cover feature was that month). With the *content.* You see, unlike your garden variety "women's interest" magazine (the aforementioned Esquire's-sister-publication Cosmopolitan, Marie Claire, Allure, Elle), Esquire actually treats its readers like intelligent human beings. It makes allusions to political goings-on, and expects you to understand the reference, rather than assuming you're so uninformed you need soundbites to seem plugged-in at cocktail parties. Specifically, it asks you to know (and care!) about (gasp!) the economy [and economics, and the fact that Wall Street is in trouble]. The war(s). American foreign policy. Other things that any educated, employed American should hopefully have a clue about.

Esquire also does a pretty good job of featuring good reporting, interesting first-person writing, and the occasional awesome fiction piece. I don't mind skimming the first few men's style pages of each issue to get to the real meat (which isn't hidden under 50+ pages of fashion ads and perfume samples). Plus, the general editorial voice is actually really, genuinely funny...music reviews and pop culture references seem light when appropriate and soulful when they should be. Overall, good stuff on every page.

Sure, Esquire also has some pictures of scantily-clad women in every issue. So what? They're usually interesting, relatively unknown women who are currently starring in funny/entertaining/topical movies that I'd actually like to see, in contrast with, oh, another rehashing of how "Angelina's a really bad person for stealing my husband" with Jennifer Aniston whenever she has another romantic comedy coming out. And Esquire has a page or two devoted to "Women We Love." Not a dozen pages about those women's supposed beauty secrets.

Here's the thing...I actually feel smarter - like I've learned something - after reading Esquire (full disclosure: I recently used some MyCokeRewards points to get a subscription for myself, and if this month's letters to the editor are any indication, women make up a devoted subset of the magazine's circulation numbers). I can't remember the last time I felt the same way after picking up Cosmo.

So the question is: why isn't there a female version of Esquire?? If Marie Claire is the closest there is, somebody in the (yeah, the economy's tanking and publishing's been going down since even before that but still...) magazine world should step in and fill this niche. Educated, intelligent women would, I'd wager, be a pretty good market to corner - they're wealthy and control an awful lot of spending power, compared to the girls that buy supermarket tabloids, etc. You could put in a fair amount of content aimed at getting them to consume luxury goods (after all, we educated/intelligent women like nice things, too), but think Vanity Fair aimed at a slightly more feminine audience, with pieces that are a bit shorter (I LOVE VF, but it's often a plane indulgence, when I have a chunk of time to go cover-to-cover, rather than a casual read). Useful information, interesting things, and just a touch of style...but heavy on the substance.

I'd buy it. And I'd pay real money, too. Not just MyCokeRewards points.

***

Sunday, January 11, 2009

Things I Did Not Know About Contracts (Until Now)

After two days of doing literally nothing productive other than grocery shopping and going to the gym, I am making myself study for contracts. It turns out (not exactly unpredictably) that I didn't learn all that much in contracts class. Here are some interesting things I have learned about contracts so far in my exam preparation:

Louisiana is the only state that has not signed onto the Uniform Commercial Code.

Generally, courts hold that in telephonic or face-to-face communications in which an offer is made, the offer lapses when the conversation terminates in the absence of a clear indication that the offer remains open beyond the conversation.

A party that was intoxicated when the contract was made may avoid the contract only if the other party had reason to know that, by reason of intoxication, the party was unable to understand the nature and consequences of the transaction or was unable to act in a reasonable manner in relation to the transaction.

Where a party's duty is conditioned on his own approval of the other party's performance, courts generally enforce such condition – even if the other party will suffer forfeiture – where approval concerns a matter of aesthetics or taste, and the disapproval is based on honest dissatisfaction.

Cool, eh?

***

p.s. It turns out, I didn't need to know any of those things for my contracts exam. Oh well.

Saturday, January 10, 2009

Recipe For Avoiding Disease During Exams

Yes, really a recipe. I've been drinking the following on the recommendation of one of my many aunties, and it surprisingly works. Also, really really surprisingly, it does not taste atrocious. In fact, it tastes...well...tasty.

The recipe is as follows:
Peel and cut up some ginger root and put it in a cup
Add about a 1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon, a little bit of sugar, some lemon juice, and some cayenne pepper.
Pour boiling water over, let it steep, and try to enjoy.

Apparently the cayenne pepper and lemon juice have some magic cold-fighting properties, and ginger and cinnamon are just really good for you.

Friday, January 9, 2009

Not Dead Yet (Part II)

(1) I'm VERY glad to hear that Cat is not dead. I am also glad to hear that her dinner-maker and support-giver made it through, too - I was a bit worried about him in the whole ordeal. :)

(2) I am also happy to report that I am not dead. In other words, torts was not nearly as painful as it could have been. It turns out not reading over my (stolen from someone who took it in 2006) outline until 11:30pm the night before the 9am exam was not (quite) a recipe for disaster. In all honesty, once I got into the room and sat down with some coffee & an apple that the school gives out during finals - and forced my brain to pretend it wasn't still asleep - the exam was actually kind of (gasp!) fun?...by that I mean that the fact pattern on the first issue-spotting question was pretty interesting, and the second question (which asked us to respond to a series of questions about a written opinion) was interesting, too (though in retrospect I realize I neglected to fully answer the overarching question because I got caught up in the smaller questions - oh well). The time flew by, I uploaded my file to the exam web site, and then my small group went out for lunch and drinks to celebrate the completion of our first exam. And then I took a nap.

Now, onto Contracts...

**

Wednesday, January 7, 2009

Not Dead Yet

Although, I may be almost there. We had two 8 hour exams in three days, and have a shorter one on Friday. 8 hour exam number 1 was reasonable. 8 hour exam number 2 was awful awful awful. However, now that I have gone through 16 hours of law school exams, I feel qualified to offer some advice on the topic:
(1) Have a working transportable computer that can connect to the internet...no, I haven't got one of these.
(2) Find someone you are very attached to (and is hopefully irrationally attached to you) and get them to offer constant moral support and home cooked dinners...I have got one of these.
(3) Take practice exams.
(4) Breath.
(5) Recall worse things will happen and have happened to you in life. I personally find this comforting, but I guess it might not work for everyone.
(6) Realize at some point other than the day before the exam that the more you study, the less unpleasant taking the exam will be. Also realize that an unprepared for law school exam can be very very unpleasant. This may require referring back to 4.

Today is D-Day

Not as in "divorce day," which apparently describes what happens in the first week(s) of January every year in the UK (and maybe in the US?)...instead, the first exam of my law school career. [Cat's already had hers, I believe, but since I haven't seen her online/talked to her since, I'm assuming it killed her, until notified otherwise. I am very sad. Perhaps too sad to take my own exam??]

Let's just say that I haven't done much studying. Weeks spent at my parents' house and my former house, respectively, proved less-than-productive in the best way (got to sleep, see lots of friends, do lots of shopping, eat lots of good food, etc.). However, I may have heeded upperclassmen's "Don't Study! It's pass/pass!" advice a *bit* too much...so today is crunch time. I'll let you know if I am in fact the first person in 50 years to fail Guido Calabresi's torts class [but since we don't get our "grades" back till March/April, pardon the delay in passing along word of my demise].

Wish me luck.

Saturday, January 3, 2009

Winter in Boston

I am (at least in theory) frantically studying for exams. Using that as an excuse for my laziness, I'm just going to put up a picture of Harvard Yard in the winter, which is gorgeous.