Groupies

When I was trying to decide where to go to school, one of the things that was most attractive to me about Yale is the "small group" system of instruction for 1Ls. During the first few days of orientation were were kept in suspense about "whose group" we were in...but then when we got our class assignments, people had an instant identity as part of one of the 12-13 (I'm not actually sure how many there are) small groups of 15ish people.

Each small group has all of their classes together, and one class that is ONLY those 15 people plus a professor and two or three TAs (3L students who are primarily there to serve as mentors/buddies and legal writing helpers - ours like to take us bowling and out drinking, and occasionally they give us tips about how to write memos, or what classes to take, or how to get our dream summer job). The professors really make an effort to get to know the people in their small groups, and they tend to serve as a good first letter of recommendation writer...plus, the seminar style of the small group class is awesome (especially for con law, which is my small group class, where discussion really helps you work through complicated issues).

By default, the people in your small group are the people you see most often. Literally, every single day. Sometimes for 6 hours of class! So you have to like, or at least be able to tolerate, the people in your SG.

I really really love my small group! It took us a while to get bonded at the beginning of the semester, in part because we all also had friends in other small groups and through activities...we were pretty independent, as a bunch. But as we began to get tougher assignments and as we spent more time together, we found out that we all get along really well...luckily, nobody in our small group is a "gunner" in our larger classes, so we have begun to make snarky comments to each other on gchat during class making fun of said people who seem to want to just listen to themselves talk. You'd be amazed how much bonding can go on in a group gchat window!

We've also started hanging out a lot more outside of class...this week, we went out for drinks three nights in a row! It helped, of course, that we just turned in our big project for the semester - our "open universe" mock appellate court brief. So it's time to - finally! - relax, breathe, sleep, and socialize again. This weekend is the annual Harvard-Yale football game (and the annual HLS/YLS basketball game!), so a bunch of people are making the trek up to Cambridge, myself included. Go Bulldogs!

Election Day Post-Mortem

Now, 24 hours later, the gravity of last night still hasn't really sunken in for me. Of course, it was the topic of conversation all day today - most classes spent a significant portion of the class period, if not all of it, discussing the presidential election, the in-limbo Senate races, and the various ballot initiatives (Arkansas, really?!?). Still, inauguration day is a couple months away...and my heart ached to be back home in DC last night as the returns were coming in, as much as I loved watching the historic event with my classmates.

While lots of people went to smaller viewing parties at friends' homes, a bunch of people also watched the night's events at school. We had fruit, cookies, lemon bars, and abundant bottled water to get us through...I added a couple bottles of Mountain Dew, since it had already been a pretty long day (full disclosure: I didn't have class till 1, but woke up at 8:30 naturally...still, I made myself stay in bed till 11:30 because I knew I'd be a wreck otherwise). Most people were constantly refreshing CNN, MSNBC, FOX, and fivethirtyeight on their laptops - one girl's dad apparently works at CBS News, so he gave us the "insider" word that they were going to call it for Obama a couple minutes before 11. (Of course, we fivethirtyeight addicts already knew that PA/VA/OH - or any combination of two of the above, or maybe even just one - was going to be enough).

Celebration ensued. Interestingly, a TON of the LLM students were in attendance, and they seemed near the most excited! The African-American crew was also elated, as expected...but honestly I think the general population at school didn't see this as a "race thing" as much as a "human/national progress" thing [there are, of course, conservatives at school - a vocal minority, to be sure - but by this point in the night, most of them had realized what McCain's camp knew weeks ago: the man is old, Palin's a wacko, and Grant Park wasn't set up to be the location of a concession speech; moreover, nobody can deny the historic nature of the win].

There was champagne! Corks were popping! One bottle was apparently brought back after a failed attempt to celebrate in 2004.

We watched the speeches. I was misty-eyed the whole time, but I was crying unabashedly by the end. Oh, to be in that park...but the energy was still electric.

We walked home, my roommates and I, only to find along the way that a ton of the university's students had assembled on Old Campus to celebrate. They didn't get the same treatment as some kids in Baltimore did (Don't tase me!), but they were jubillant nonetheless - the enthusiasm was undeniable as people ran to greet one another and be a part of the hysteria.

Today, our professors were tired (they stayed up, too!), we were tired, and we uniformly hadn't done our reading as assigned...but it didn't seem to matter. There were lots of Obama t-shirts and stickers and buttons on display - some worn by those just now returning from their posts doing voter protection in key battleground states. We speculated about possible SCOTUS nominations...we debated the dress...and we were shocked that Ms. Palin apparently knows less about Africa than I know about moose hunting...but in the end, we still have writing assignments to attend to, resumes to revise for the impending summer job search, and sourcecites to do...

***

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?

Comebacks and Back-Ups

Today ended as any good fall Monday should: Gossip Girl (Tivo-ed, and viewed in a room of ten women and three - yes, three - men...oddly, approximately the same gender breakdown was evident at last night's viewing of the season premier of Entourage) sandwiched between snippets of the season's first edition of Monday Night Football. [Blissfully, three of my professors have deigned it appropriate to regularly assign what seems to be comparatively minimal reading assignments, and I don't have the other class on Tuesdays...plus, after six hours in class today topped off with two hellish hours on the phone with the internet so-called "provider" that refuses to provide till SATURDAY -- even though we called to set up service two WEEKS ago -- I felt some relaxing was appropriate...]

Biggest news of the day comes from the NFL, as two of the off-season's top stories - one of which is quite close to my heart - played out. Tom Brady, the Pats' fearless leader in the face of a crushing Super Bowl defeat, is missing the rest of the season due to a knee injury suffered in yesterday's season opener. I can't say I'm *too* sorry for him, as he's got nurse Gisele to tend to his health...likely after extensive ACL surgery. His back-up did well enough on the radio show, so who knows how the rest of the season will play out? As a transplanted New Englander, I don't really care; as an already-allied fan of another storied team, I hope they lose every game.

Then, after Brett Favre led his new Jet pack [lowercase p] to victory yesterday, Aaron Rodgers turned in an impressive completion rate in his first win of his professional career, four years after becoming Brett's back-up. I couldn't be more proud of the guy - but he could use a good shave along with some training in talking to the press. Still, if you keep beating the Vikings (and Lions, and Bears, and...Cowboys?), you won't hear any complaints from Titletown, Aaron.

***

Brett's got a comeback that seems so far, so good. I can't say my own return to school has been so easygoing. I think I sort of forgot how to be a student. Planning my day [productively...naps may or may not count as productive, as the semester progresses] around huge breaks in class? Reading and underlining? These are skills that I haven't really needed much during the past year, and suddenly we're thrown to the wolves. (Wolves that mercifully don't dole out grades first semester, but still...) Other than a few days in chemistry freshman year, I can't remember the last time when I really had to try hard to keep up with the flow of arguments and information in class; here, though, I can't seem to let my attention drift to Gmail for even a few seconds without losing the professors' momentum. It's an exhilarating feeling, really, to be surrounded with people that know so much more about this stuff than I do, and to be able to listen to their ideas - at some point, though, I'll probably be asked to say something rather than to just sit and absorb.

Technologically, too, I need to get back on the cutting-edge wagon. My Google Calendar has suddenly been called onto the field, and its color-coded appointments and blocks of time are rapidly proliferating across the coming weeks. My adeptness with its integrative functions is growing...if only my internet signal wasn't (gasp!) stolen and (grr!) spotty...so I guess for now I'll also keep a paper copy back-up; there's something so satisfying about physically crossing off a task in a day planner that I don't think I'll ever be able to give up.

One additional accomplishment/recommendation: Got/get an external hard drive. I picked up this super-cute, super-simple one from SimpleTech, and Time Machine has it running flawlessly.

...don't lose all of the work that will seemingly get done once I get back into the swing of things: check.