Things I've Been Doing Instead of Studying for Finals

I only have two final exams this semester, because a) I'm in a clinic, which only gets a credit/no credit designation; b) see a), but for a journal; c) one of my classes was finished halfway through the semester, so I took the exam just after spring break.

As such, I am now doing everything BUT studying for my two exams. [I don't really feel anxious about these two exams - yet - in part because it's kind of arbitrary, I think, whether I'll get an Honors or a Pass grade in both of them. I *could* work hard to get an H in either/both, but I'm just not sure I care that much.]

Some things I've done instead:
* Graded papers for the undergrad class that I'm TAing. This is torture. Some of these kids CAN NOT write. They're juniors & seniors at Yale, and yet they have trouble forming complete sentences or creating logical arguments. Sometimes I wish that I read the papers while slightly buzzed, but that would be irresponsible TAing, I imagine, and I'm not getting paid the big bucks to be an irresponsible TA. If you want to talk about being irresponsible, look no further than one of my students, who after getting a week-and-a-half extension on the only graded assignment of the semester, insisted at 11pm that she needed a "few more hours" to polish her paper that I had told her was do-or-die due at 12 midnight because I needed to read it & grade it before going to bed/getting up uber-early to get on a train [see below]. At 1:08am, my plea of "Please, for the love of my sleep schedule, send me what you have now!") was met with "Just 15 more minutes, promise!" Those 15 more minutes turned int0 30, which resulted in a not-too-happy SB. The paper was, to put it lightly, underwhelming. I found out today that she's taking the class pass-fail. "Underwhelming" = she passed (and with a pretty good grade!), because I'm a really really nice TA. [To be fair, a couple of the papers have actually been quite good. Hooray!]

* Went to NYC. Twice. In 30 hours. I have to get a special tourist visa to travel to South America later this month because the Consulate General of a certain soccer-crazed country demands outrageous fees and rather excessive procedure, in retaliation for the US doing the same to their citizens. Fair enough, I suppose, but I don't make US immigration policy! In any case, I had to either make two trips to NYC to drop off and pick up my visa, or pay a bundle to a private company to do it for me. It turns out to be cheaper to take the Metro North and do it myself. Ironically, the first studying I've done this finals period happened when I opened a Property hornbook on the train and again in the Consulate waiting room.

* Packed my room and moved my stuff into storage and a different apartment. Our subletters needed our apartment on a certain date, which just so happened to be a date before we really wanted to vacate. So I'm now subletting someone else's apartment for the week, because I figured I'd be more productive here in New Haven than somewhere more exotic. Productivity has not been particularly high, however. On the upside, there are nice neighbors & it kind of feels like being in a hotel for a week.

* Organized a few summer events with YLS alumni for a student group I'm involved in. Wished that I'd actually be in densely-populated cities this summer, so that I could go to the events.

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Procrastination Playlist

My revised "final" brief is due in 16 hours, 'flexibly.' [One weird thing about YLS is that deadlines/rules seem not to exist. Students freely hand in papers hours, days, weeks, semesters, even years late (I know one 3L who has a paper outstanding from two years ago, and he's in no rush to finish it)...and professors don't bat an eye. Deadlines, in other words, seem pretty false. Especially this semester (pass/fail grading in all classes): if we hand in a brief "late," what are they going to do - fail us??] Let's just say that I'm far from finished with my revisions. I may have just spent a few hours shopping online/cleaning my room/hanging out pre-Bar Review with some fellow 1Ls. And I took a gloriously long nap this afternoon. As I mentioned to someone at dinner earlier tonight, basically any incentive structure I may have had coming into this semester is kaput.

After ushering my friends out the door under the guise of "briefing," I sat down to do some edits. And failed. In the interest of further procrastination, I thought: "Well, I guess I could write a blog post..." but I had really no idea what to write about. So I present to you the playlist that's been on loop for me the past few days. A great sorta-hipster friend of mine sent me (via snail mail! it still exists!) a mix CD of some of her newest favorites...and I, trusting her hipster taste, have been bopping along ever since [NB: I'm not a huge fan of ALL of the songs below, but making a playlist is an art, I'm told, so I'm presenting it here in full...].

1. My Dick - Mickey Avalon
2. Way Too Much - Chromeo
3. Many Moons - Janelle Monae
4. Something/Blue Jay Way - The Beatles
5. Fake Palindromes - Andrew Bird
6. If You Fall - Azure Ray
7. If She Wants Me - Belle & Sebastian
8. It's Not You It's Me - Coconut Records
9. The Wildfire - Mando Diao
10. Before I Fall to Pieces - Razorlight
11. Tired of Being Sorry - Ringside
12. You Were Always the One - The Cribs
13. Dropkick Queen of the Weekend - The Dudes
14. Skull and Bones - The Ordinary Boys
15. Old Enough - The Raconteurs
16. Either Way - Wilco
17. A-Punk - Vampire Weekend
18. Ayo Technology - Milew
19. Tenderoni - Chromeo
20. Forever Lost - The Magic Numbers
21. All 'Cause of You - The 88

And now, back to "edits"...

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