Good Intentions

And now, for your reading pleasure, Things That Annoy Me (in no particular order):

1. People who espouse their opinions in class. This might shock you–I know, it shocked me too–but I am not paying a Brazilian dollars for law school to hear what you think about a given case/issue/current event/theory/constitutional principle/life event/whatever. If I cared any less, I’d be dead. And even then I’d find some way to rise from the dead and care even less than that. In all honesty, I don’t even want to hear your opinions outside of class–I’m looking at you, People Who Talk Too Loudly in the Carrells–but I especially don’t want to hear it in class. Really. Just shut the hell up and continue frantically taking notes.

2. Professors who ask for student opinions in class. Seriously? You care what we think? Shut up and be a pedagogue; I’m not paying you to pretend to teach by asking incredibly open-ended questions to which there are no real answers. I am not taking Random Gunner’s test, I am taking YOUR TEST. So I only care what YOU THINK.

3. Gunners. Shut the hell up. Seriously.

4. Houston drivers. You all suck. Every last one of you. I know epileptic ADD puppies who can drive better than you can. Use your damn signals! Stay in your damn lane! Drive the damned speed limit!

5. UH parking. You suck so much that sometimes I channel Madelyn Kahn in Clue and “flames…from the side of my face, just…flames…” Instead of putting up an overpriced and ugly “graduate student lofts” building, why not pave some of the gravel/useless areas of campus and put up parking lots? Or economize and build some gigantic-ass parking structures, perhaps by greasing the palms of the City of Houston to have them use their eminent domain powers to condemn, oh, I don’t know, the random Chinese food restaurant on campus, or the generic student church (yes, I went there). Just…do something productive, or I swear by Greyskull that I will not be giving you a red cent of my money in 10 years.

That is all for now. I’m sure there will be more. Oh yes, there will be more.

I don’t even know if I consider this blog a “blawg,” or a law blog. I mean, I’m new at this law thing and anything I could talk about would be either a) pretty boring to non-law students, or b) pretty rudimentary to the already-established law students who may be reading this blog (although I’m not particularly convinced they are).

So, because of that, I tend to not talk about THE LAW. I talk about whatever’s on my mind. Which is really to your detriment, Dear Reader.

The situation on campus hasn’t improved really, even though the president of UH sent a glowing email about how wonderful it is that Cougars are helping Houstonians and other Cougars. That point is a good one, actually; I’ve been surprised that the normally assholeish and insular Houstonian has been reaching out to his or her fellow Houstonian. It’s somewhat heartwarming, even for one with an icy and black heart like myself.

Finally, it’s the weekend. And I have a few things to do. Like study, of course, and my roommate’s recital is on Sunday. Oh, and I’m helping witness for some law students who are doing a mock trial competition. I get to be the plaintiff. Sweet. I love suing people!

It seems that Hurricane Ike totally knocked Houston and the surrounding areas on their asses. My heart definitely goes out to Galveston and Bolivar Peninsula residents. That area is so trashed; it’s tragic.

Of course, I was trapped in a suburb of Houston all weekend at my parents’ house, which has had no power since early Saturday morning. You don’t know how reliant you are on power until you don’t have it. My mom’s been ok, but my dad’s going through withdrawal from television. Kind of amusing, really.

My apartment in Houston, however, has seen better days. Currently, the entire ceiling in the living room has been completely gutted by repairmen because of the extensive water damage due to a leaky roof. A good number of shingles blew off all the rooves in the complex, which goes to show that shoddy roofsmanship just causes more problems later on. Luckily, the management here has been on the ball and began repairing apartments immediately.

That doesn’t change the fact that my living room is covered in disgusting and somehow depressingly gray insulation with giant patches carved out of the ceiling.

And now that brings me to school. I’m so disappointed with UH. They gave us all of one day for any kind of recovery before they swung open their dilapidated doors to “welcome” its students back into its jacked-up bosom. Thanks, UH, for opening campus when:

• The signal lights around campus are mostly not working, thus causing huge problems for both pedestrians–or the moving targets–and cars. This also brings up the issue that no one in Houston seems to know how to react to a broken signal, so they kind of slow to a stop and then gun it through the intersection. Great.
• There are a huge number of downed trees on campus, with some merely falling over, others being sliced vertically or horizontally in half by Ike, and still others being twisted and gnarled and uprooted. Not really anyone has begun cleaning up campus, and it’s now been open for four days.
• There have been few amenities on campus outside of opening the rec center for showers. This kind of obscures the issue of many students not having power, water, and perhaps even gas since that as well is now becoming scarce. Soon there will be some opportunity cost equations going on amongst the students: Do I use the remaining gas in my car to go to school, or to buy food? I think you know the answer.

Anyway, I don’t think UH has handled this well. Many school districts have canceled class until next Monday. This does bring up the inevitable “Will we have to extend the semester?” hand-wringing, but I don’t mind if we DID do that. I would rather be able to sort my life out some after a major hurricane than be anxiously shoved back into class with a “Oh, it’s kinda optional” caveat thrown in. Because, let’s face it, if the law school profs are teaching, I need to be there. That’s just how it goes. The Dean of the UHLC should have canceled class on his own accord. I’m sure he has that power.

Ahem. That was my diversion from reading CivPro, so back I go into that. Have a good night.

Yeah, I am. Kinda sucks. Trying to get back into the groove of being a student. A student! Wow. Not an employee anymore. I can’t leave my work at home, I have to sit down after class and do it. So…bizarre.

The parking at UH absolutely chokes on a bag of dicks. My CivPro class doesn’t start until 1030am, so I leave my apartment at 930. Traffic is all right, so I get to UH at around 950. Great, because I have to go to the library to print something out for LRW.

(Because my printer is dead. Absolutely kicked the fucking printer bucket, bought the printer farm, went to the printer heaven in the sky. You get the idea. Epsons, by the way, kinda suck. Or at least mine did; I had that clunky thing for four years. Time for a new one. You win, Printer Cabal. For now.)

So I cruise through the parking lot in front of the law school…and of course there is no parking. Plenty of faculty parking, of course; those metaphorically-verdant fields of spaces just beckon to poor, maligned students to park there. I don’t think UHLC even HAS the faculty to fill that lot. Bah.

I then sidle on over to an adjacent lot. Still nothing. Still a faculty lot there that is mostly empty, about three cars there, with myriad empty spaces. Bah again.

I finally end up parking in an obscure and far-away spot in the music building area because, hey, I hate myself and want to lug my shit in 95 degree weather. On the small plus side, I basically stumbled upon the spot in which I parked. In fact, I actually said “Mine!” out loud when I saw it. As if those other greedy bastards around me could hear.

Bad form, UH. Let’s work on the parking situation some. Start knocking down the shit in the Third Ward, put in some structures and more busses. Let’s get it together. This might be why you’re having trouble keeping people on campus, because there is nowhere to park.

As an administrative point, on my blog here I will be referring to my professors as “Prof (Subject),” to preserve some small level of anonymity. You could probably figure it out if you were so inclined, but I’m banking on the fact that you ain’t so inclined.

Life continues tomorrow, natch.

Phew, that was a bit of a break.

So, here I am, with only 8 more days of work left and then the real fun begins: the agonizing countdown to orientation and the first day of class. I’ve actually finally received my schedule from UH, so that’s somewhat comforting. Except comforting is the wrong word; really what I mean is terrifying. But in a giddy, schoolchild kind of way.

You know, like back in elementary school when you’d get your teacher assignment and you’d scan the room looking for someone you know but then that slow-dawning horror of realization crosses your mind like a dusky shadow, that no, you don’t know anyone in this class and you never will, no, you will be the pariah, the outcast, eating your peanut butter and jelly sandwich alone every single solitary day of elementary school, alone, alone, all alone.

Or maybe it was just me? Ha.

Anyway, the sched is fairly ok. I start at 9:00 MTTh, 9:30 on Friday, and 10:30 on Wednesday. Not too shabby. Torts, Contracts, Legal Research, and Procedure. Fun stuff, right?

Right.

I was looking at the orientation schedule for UH, and it’s two days long. Not so bad, right? Well, for the first day’s schedule, it goes from 8am til around 4pm…ALL IN ONE ROOM. No other room is listed. I hope we don’t have to sit on our asses for 8 hours in the auditorium. That would suck a skosh.

Only 8 more workdays left, and it seems my tasks are drying up. That’s a good sign, right? Well, not so good for boredom. On the plus side, blogging at work is fun!