Where hope goes to die

Finals sap my will to live. But I have found it helpful to reflect on times past when I still had a life worth living. Or at least blogging about, in something vaguely resembling a positive manner. For your enjoyment (sorry, only viewable to those with a myspace account), the oldies but goodies from my early blogging days. The older the post, the more spirit I still had left in me. The transition from happiness to hell is quite fascinating to witness. http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog&friendID=52579780
As if people really needed proof that law school is a soul crushing abyss...

It may or may not be the headlamp of an oncoming train...

Another semester is winding down. I wrote up my April calendar last week and it was almost jarring to see written down dates and times for my final exams. I haven't quite gotten into full blown panic mode yet, which is odd because next week is the last week of class before exams. I find that the anxiety-fest starts later and later each semester. I'm sure that's a good thing for my mental wellbeing. Not so sure it's a good thing for my level of preparation. Although if my steadily increasing GPA is any indication, I could use a lot less stress in my life. I think another reason why I'm not convulsing in a corner yet is because of the four exams I have to take, two are open book/open note, three of my classes are not going to be graded on the curve, and I found out today that another one of my exams is going to be flexed, so I can space them out more than I've been able to in the past. That is definitely a good feeling. And the most convincing reason as to why I feel okay about blogging right now, rather than committing to memory when ex parte communications are and are not alright in administrative law. This semester has been so crazy busy. I competed in two moot court competitions, passed the professional responsibility portion of the bar exam, judged rounds in the first year appellate competition, and wrote my third year paper. I get a little overwhelmed just thinking about it all, and yet I find that my incidence of seriously entertaining the notion of dropping out are becoming more infrequent. Don't get me wrong, I will probably consider dropping out until the moment they hand me my diploma. And I'm pretty sure that if I could go back and do it all over again, I really wouldn't have undertaken this particular adventure. However, being where I am now, with just one year to go, I'm really glad I've done something that was this hard; something that not everyone can do. Odd, I know. But in less than a month, I'll be a court-certified 3L, handling real cases at work rather than just trial prep for the attorneys, and I'll have a much deserved respite from this academic insanity. Just don't get me started on next year. I'm not quite sure how I'm going to get 15 credit hours with the classes they're offering in the fall, and keep my job and extracurriculars. For some reason, I've already taken most of the bar courses I need, which means I'm either going to have to take a ton of worthless 2 credit classes, or look into credit options at the business school or the liberal arts school. I'm considering taking another advanced spanish class, just to brush up, but a business class could be useful as well. Like I said, don't get me started. Because I really have no idea. I just know that it feels really good to have gotten to this point.

Sidelined

I love to run. For roughly the last 8 years it has been not only a mainstay of my fitness routine, but also a perfect and sane way to burn off the excess stress that always seems to pile up in my life. I can usually track the intensity of my life by my compulsive need to throw on my running shoes and hit the pavement. The month before finals is a good time to start clocking miles. Two weeks ago I bought a treadmill, which is quite possibly the most exciting purchase ever for a runner who lives in a rainy climate. I've been wanting a treadmill for some time, and finally I was able to afford one. And it's glorious. However, fate seems determined to not only rain on my parade, but also to crush all the floats, as I have managed to do some very unfortunate damage to my left knee. Over the course of my life I have been a dancer, a missionary, and a runner; all endeavors that caused my knees to do some hard core popping, but never anything serious. As a missionary my mantra was that if I could get out of bed, I could tract, and only when I was unable to walk would I call for a sick day. It didn't ever come to that, and when I came home, my knees toughened right back up. About two months ago I spent three consecutive days wearing the most uncomfortable pair of high heels imaginable because they just looked so good with my trial competition suit. Over the course of those three days, I started noticing a persistent, dull ache in my knees, which unfortunately did not go away when I changed back into my standard jeans and tennis shoes. A week later the pain was still cramping my style, so I decided to lay off the gym for a while to get over it. When I got my treadmill, I was sure that I would be ready to run again because nearly two months had passed since the offending incident, so I went for it. The first day my knee hurt like crazy, so I took a day in between to rest up. The second time was slightly better. The pain was noticeable, but not unbearable, so I figured I could run through it. That was pretty much the story all last week. Fast forward to yesterday. My knee started to bother me almost immediately, but I didn't pay attention. I was two miles into my run when I felt my knee twist suddenly and that dull persistent ache turned into something vaguely resembling a sledgehammer attack. My knee completely locked up and I think I'm left with no other option but to limp off to the sidelines for a while. This is utterly ridiculous, but I'm fairly certain my body is starting to fall apart. I wonder if there is strict products liability for manufacturing defects in the human body, because at this point I really wish I could sue someone to put me back in my rightful, runworthy position.

Five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred minutes and quarterlife realizations

The sky is a bizarre color right now. I'm not sure what to make of it. It's neither slate nor ashen...not even black. I think the right word is blue, but that just doesn't seem right. In February in Oregon, the sky should always be some variation on rainy. There's a tree outside the law school building that I noticed today on my way home. It stood out to me because it's rapidly turning pink. Could it be that winter is actually loosening its death grip on the land? It's a possibility. Time marches on. I came home today and actually had some extra time, which I fully intended to devote to studying for the MPRE. Instead I found myself reading a book of letters my dad had compiled for me of our correspondence while I was in Spain. It was a good opportunity for me to reflect on life. It's so full of ups and downs and quite often it just passes by while we're busy doing whatever it is we do. I've already mentioned before that my life has been somewhat of an exercise in survival mode recently. The fact is that I've been that way for about two years now. I'm so focused on surviving law school that everything else has taken a backseat. My theory is that I can get on with life once I cross this minor endeavor off of my "to do list." I know there is much to look forward to, not just after I graduate, but even now as I press on in my schooling. But sometimes I wish I could hit rewind and take life in reverse for a while. I miss being a missionary and having the clarity and perspective that comes with knowing exactly what your purpose is. I miss being an intern, with the self imposed sense of accomplishment that came with working in an important sounding job in the nation's capital. I miss summers at home with new friends and old, having random adventures at pointless jobs. I miss being a crazy, irresponsible, and sleep deprived college freshman, having all the fun random adventures that one can only have while living away from home for the first time. I'm absolutely positive this post has no point whatsoever. I think it's just that I've had a lot of wonderful experiences in my life and I've done pretty much everything I've set out to do, with law school being one of the last major stragglers on that to do list. It is by far the most grown up endeavor I've undertaken and by far the least fun. I think my point is I've really had a blast getting to where I am, but if law school is the tip of the adulthood ice burg, I don't think I really want to grow up.

Everything I needed to know about law school I learned from teaching primary...

For the last month, in addition to my work and school commitments, I've also been teaching a primary class at church, which consists of four and five year olds. There are 9 kids in my class. Every week for two hours on Sunday, I shelf my intelligence and play babysitter to a very precocious bunch. I think the title of "primary teacher" is a misnomer, because I really don't teach. It's quite impossible to teach children that small because they're impulsive, talkative, energetic, and unrestrained by social inhibitions that can only come with time. So my time in primary is spent talking in my "grown-up voice," struggling to keep the children in their chairs and encouraging them to raise their hand when they have something to say. This is of course completely pointless because once one person says something, seven other tiny voices chime in with variations on the exact same statement. It's quite possibly the most exhausting two hours of my week.
I had to teach a class yesterday on juvenile crime in the context of international children's rights. Before you point out the obvious, I know what you're thinking: "Children have rights?" In theory they do. And this particular class is a theory class. Anyway, as part of the grade in that class, everyone has to teach at least once. I think now would be a good time to voice my opposition to paying tuition for professors who foist the teaching responsibilities off on students. But that's not really the reason for this post. My International Children's Rights class consists of about 19 2Ls and 3Ls, and I have to say, by the time you reach the upper echelons of professional training, you expect maturity to be the order of the day. And you would be wrong in that expectation. Very wrong. As I watched the class take the sidenote topic of media restraint and run it into territory completely uncontemplated by the lesson plan, I was overwhelmingly reminded of what it's like trying to teach 5 year olds. One inane comment inevitably leads to a barrage of equally tangential arguments, everyone tries to talk at once, no one listens, and by the time you actually manage to get the class focused back on you and the lesson, 20 minutes have passed and the original message has gotten completely lost in the interim. Perhaps we should spend less time focusing on the finer points of whether or not juvenile criminals should be waived into the adult system and a little more time covering the basics of raising your hand when you want to say something, and even more time reminding people that what they may want to say probably will make everyone else dumber for having heard it, so speak with discretion.

Midpoint malaise and survival mode auto pilot

It's nearly two months into the new semester. This semester started out with quite a bit of promise; my grades fall semester were the highest yet, I even managed to write a high paper in one class...the one I was sure I failed. Go figure. It reminds me of my undergraduate paper theory, how grades are inversely proportionate to effort and crappy papers are always ahead of the curve. Of course starting a new semester means starting from square one. Painfully lame. And in the brief time I've been back, I managed to take on way more than I would ever care to handle in an entire year. I think my rationale was that if I got all my extraneous activities out of the way in the first two months of the semester, I'd have time to get caught up during the last two months. What was I thinking? Last month it was a mock trial competition, this month it's an appellate competition, writing an appellate brief, teaching a two hour seminar class on children and crime, and studying for the Multistate Professional Responsibility Exam. Next month I have to take the MPRE, write my third year paper (I know, I'm only a second year, but I'm taking the class now, so I have to write the paper), and judge rounds in the First Year Appellate Competition. I sat down with my schedule and tried to decide when I would have time to start my outlines and the next opening in my schedule is spring break in March. Two weeks after that are finals and then the year is over. I'm up on the downside, and the law school experience is once again changing shape. The first semester was an adventure: everything was new and exciting, and even though it was a little scary, I was "living the dream" which made it all worth it. The second semester I felt my attention span begin to falter. Classes dragged, my incidence of solitaire playing went up, and I found it hard to really get into any of the subject material. Third semester was drudgery. With school and work, I had zero free time and even less motivation to press on. And here we are, in semester four, and I find myself just going through the motions, nothing more, nothing less. School is no longer fun, new, exciting, or even scary. It's just today, tomorrow, the end of the week. Survival mode is no way to live, but this isn't really life. This is just one more year.

Is that your final answer?

There are times that I worry about losing my skills as a writer. At no time is this fear more pronounced than during finals. During my 4 year stint as an undergrad, I wrote just shy of a bazillion research papers. Seriously, a bazillion. And my dirty little secret is that I liked it...scratch that, I loved it. Oh sure, I was sure to complain about the long hours in the library and the late nights combing a thesaurus in hopes of never having to use the same adjective twice, but when I had a finished paper, smooth and eloquent with just the right touch of sarcastic wit, I relished putting my name on it and handing it in. In my vast experience as a law student, I have written an appellate brief and a legal memo. That's it. And let me tell you, there is no joy in writing a legal memo, especially when the bulk of it is consumed by case citations and repetition repetition repetition of the same contentions and evidence. When finals roll around, I almost get excited about the opportunity to do a little writing...almost. Law school exams are most succinctly described as mental bulimia. Word vomit at its finest. I just took exam 4 of 5 this morning and if actual bulimia trashes your esophagus, it probably safe to say that mental bulimia is doing the same to my brain. I can actually feel the synapses melting into one big short-circuiting mass. Which brings me back to my original fear of becoming a mediocre academic writer for lack of practice and mental reconditioning. This morning as I was frantically heaving the contents of my brain onto paper, racing against the clock to answer four hypotheticals in two hours, I took a moment to go back and reread my answers for coherence and concluded that a reasonably intelligent fourth grader, armed with the Model Code of Professional Responsibility could have written what I did, and probably with fewer spelling errors as well. Issue, Rule, Application, Conclusion, Issue, Rule, Application, Conclusion, Issue, Rule, Application, Conclusion and so on and so forth forever and ever amen. No style, no flair, no spark of imagination needed here. I've been told legal writing is highly technical and concise. I think that's code for boring, simple, and repetitive. I think if the powers that be want to mold "better" attorneys, whatever that is, a college degree should not be a prerequisite to law school admission. After all, they spend the first semester teaching you to forget everything you ever learned up until that point anyway. And now this is really just turning into a rant, so I suppose I'll give it a rest and start studying for my constitutional law exam. After all, I'm just dying to see how many different ways there are to say the exact same thing over and over again.