Good Intentions

*pokes head out of ground*

Well. It seems I have a blog here, just languishing. For that,  I apologize. I will make an effort to update it this semester and beyond.

Law school has started. It’s possible I have too much on my plate. This week has already felt 100 years long. Will I make it? Let’s find out.

1L year will be over tomorrow at noon. I just have to get through an Administrative Law final.

I can do this.

I absolutely promise that I will regularly update this blog after finals. Things have been way too hectic recently.

In passing, I’ll mention that my partner and I made it to our moot court competition finals. We were the Appellant, the State of Texas. We lost, but a lot of people believe we got robbed. And there might have been some judicial bias, but whatever. It’s over; we entered the competition on a lark and a whim and had no idea we’d make it so far. It was a hoot.

Moot court definitely isn’t for me, though.

Anyway. I’ll try to see if I can mention what kind of work I’ll be doing at by judicial internship this summer; I don’t want to violate any confidentiality, so I’ll find out.

Stay tuned ’til after finals!

Oh, holy of holies. Spring Break. A full week without thinking about law school. OR IS IT?

I know some people (who shall remain nameless) will probably spend the whole week outlining or something insane. And that IS insane.

I mean, my basic plan is to (perhaps) catch up on reading and (perhaps) start studying for finals. But I am fully aware that there is a strong chance those things will not happen.

In other news, the only thing I must do this week is mock trial practice. Not so bad.

Anyway, fellow law students, it’s time to relax. Just a little.

So instead of finishing my motion to suppress evidence, I’ve decided to blog. Who’s surprised?

I was chatting with a friend today about how cliqueish law school is. It’s high school redux. I’m not particularly pleased about this (and I’m relatively sure that every law student ever blogs about this fact), since I was under the impression I graduated from high school four years ago.

Digression: Four years ago? Holy hell. Time certainly flies. It’s almost been a year since I was in Europe. This is getting scary now.

Anyway, we were remarking on the fact that people will do low things when they want their self-esteem boosted. My goal in law school has been to get in, do my best, fly under the radar of the catty and Type A personalities, learn some stuff, meet some people, and get out. Others are trying to relive their glory days in high school.

It’s time to move on, people. We’re in professional school, and the legal community here is small. People will remember you for years if you rub them the wrong way. Don’t mess this up before you even get a chance to really mess it up (read: in front of a judge).

That’s “age-ed” and “learn-ed,” up there. I have to be snooty about words. Because I majored in words.

Well anyway, second week of this semester and already I’m getting swamped. My schedule does lend itself to allowing me some leeway in reading (read: using breaks between classes to read), which is nice. This happened last semester as well, but moreso here.

Three of my four substantive law professors are–how shall I put this–old.

And I don’t mean this in a bad way. They’re just old people. Prof. ConLaw is an older lady; this is her final semester teaching. She’s Jewish, which I find amusing–being a Hebrew myself–and she is very enthusiastic and even bombastic in her teaching style. An anecdote:

Prof: *starts to explain the Cohen case* “…What were these three Jews doing selling lottery tickets? Shameful! I’ll just cover up their names…”

She’s like that all the time.

Prof. Property is amusing as well and has an interesting teaching style: He draws cartoons up on the board. Yep. They help us understand. Really. They do. Also he’s focusing a lot on theory and less on black-letter law, which is a departure from last semester.

Prof. CrimLaw is ALSO entertaining, and might be the most entertaining. Observe:

Prof: “So I will be calling on you so we can have a discussion, and you can all have a discussion with each other…unless you’re all complete dullards.”

Gems, I tell you! Comedic gems!

Prof. Admin is a pretty interesting guy. He used a coin to create a binary number to decide who won some books he gave away. Quite amusing and enjoyable.

Anyway, hopefully this semester chugs along at a nice pace and doesn’t kill me. Fingers crossed.

Wow. I want to apologize to my two or three readers for the lack of content. Basically I took exams and then went into hiding.

Speaking of exams, I’m fairly satisfied with how I did. Ahead of the curve in two classes, at the mean in one, behind the mean in the last one. Not so shabby, especially for not doing any outlining. For this semester, I think I will start absorbing commercial outlines earlier–perhaps all through the course.  Also I want to take better notes; fall semester’s were sometimes atrocious. (In Torts, I’d often write, “Whoops, you didn’t write anything for this case.” Yeah, way to go Me, you’re not helping.)

Anyway, break is still going; we’re down to a week left. I’m looking forward to classes, which is probably sadistic. I love Constitutional Law, and I’m really interested in both Criminal Law and Administrative Law–the latter being taught by none other than Sasha Volokh (from The Volokh Conspiracy blog, to your right). Should be a very interesting and demanding semester. I’ll keep my three readers posted.

Finals are upon us, finally. (That has a nice ring to it, I feel.)

My first one is Contracts, and I’m in the process of studying now. Our prof is letting us bring in anything we want, as long as it’s written and not digital. So that means supplemental outlines! Ha. Especially useful for me, since *gasp* I’m not outlining.

That’s right. For this semester, I’m eschewing the infamous “outlining” and seeing how my normal study habits work out for me. If they don’t work, I’ll switch to something else in the future. But, I am hoping they do work. They’ve gotten me this far, and I’ve come to realize that law school is, in fact, not much different from any other type of school where professors don’t actually teach and the book is fairly obfuscating.

I’ll post updates here when I’m frustrated with or bored from studying. Cheerio.

So, there was some kind of election yesterday, and I guess some guy won. I mean, that’s cool and all.

Oh wait, it was historic, because he was black? Wow, go America!

I’ve been reading a lot of Republicans and conservatives bleat and moan about how this will be the end of America because of TEH SOCIALISMS. Irony is a foreigh concept to them, considering we just nationalized our investment banking industry. Hm.

Anyway, law school is hitting that evil yet sweet stretch where everything is starting to crash down on top of me. Let’s see if he can remain sane, shall we?

I surely hope so.

EDIT: Perhaps I should clarify my position in case any of the two people who read this blog wander by. In principle, I am socially liberal and fiscally conservative. Government should basically leave me alone, and take what it absolutely NEEDS and no more in taxes to fund things: roads, police, some government programs, etc. My main problem with Republicans is that they want to more or less tell me how to live: who I can marry, what to do with my body, etc. I’m not fine with that. They also like to erode civil liberties in the name of SECURITY and PATRIOTISM, and there are strange intolerant undertones that run through certain sections (read: Religious Right).

Democrats annoy me less, because they are less about telling me what to do. They want to take more of my money, and I can actually accept that, because at heart I am a Hamiltonian Federalist and I believe in a strong federal government. Sorry. The states have shown they like to screw things up (see: Civil War, desegregation). But other than the tax issues, Democrats aren’t going to tell me what to do with my life. They’re going to leave me alone, and help out minorities and the poor. That’s neat. Go for it.

What I’d REALLY love is for this election to break apart the Republican party into: Social Conservatives and Fiscal Conservatives. And then the FCs can join the Libertarian party and make it legitimate and a true third party, and I will vote Libertarian in a heartbeat. Right now, though, the Libertarian party is run by crazy people who do not believe in government AT ALL, and those people need to be shouted down by a rational majority.

As far as this election goes: I liked John McCain circa 2000. He was a true maverick (sorry) back then, as his policies really broke with the mainstream Republicans, and he was a huge proponent of honest and transparent government. 2008 McCain went 180 degrees in the other direction to pander to the fringe right, who have fucked up the country anyway for the past 8 years. Bush, by the way, was an abject failure, both at home and abroad. It’s hard to see that any other way; I’d love to hear real, rational, fact-checked arguments to the contrary. Obama, while I am not happy with all of his policies, and also realizing that everything he promised will basically never happen, appealed to me more than McCain, including his tax plan, his Constitutional Law professor background, his rhetorical skills, and the fact that the Democrats annoy me much less than the Republicans. That’s it. Obama is not my Messiah, he’s not Jesus, he’s not my savior, he is just a different direction for the country.

And seriously. We will all be fine in four years, for good or ill. If Obama manages to fuck up the country MORE than Bush, I will eat my hat.*

*Exaggeration

That’s what Prof. CivPro said after he ominously intoned my name during class today. And I was kinda shocked, because he did, indeed, pronounce that correctly.

Anyway, it wasn’t too too bad. He switched midstream from interrogating someone else, so that threw me off some. And, of course, I answered “I don’t know” a good number of times, but I feel it was justified, because I legitimately didn’t know. I mixed it up a few times with an “I’m not sure,” which is also legitimate, because I was not.

What irked me a little is when I tried to quote the Supreme Court from the decision, and he cut me off, saying he did not want me to quote the court, he wanted “an argument.” Well, sir, my argument is what the Supreme Court argued, so I would be remiss if I didn’t quote them.

And then, of course, not 5 minutes later, someone said EXACTLY what the court said–and by extension what I was trying to say–and he told that person they were right. Bah.

I understand why professors feel the need to cut us lowly students off: power, ego, trying to control the conversation, sake of brevity. But at the same time, AT LEAST let me get my answer to your question out before you interrupt or shoot me down! I’m not as dumb as I look–and that’s pretty dumb, sure. But I’m really not! I had an answer, you just cut me off too soon. Sigh.

Torts is canceled today, hence why I’m blogging and not in class. Waiting for LRW. Want to go home. So tired.

Final debate is tonight. Let’s see whose minds are changed after it.

My prediction? Nobody’s.