Chronicles of an Over Caffinated Law Student

Today I thought "I am going to be caffeine free." That lasted all of 7 hours, until my classmate poked her head over the study correl and said "I am going to the cafe, want anything?"

"Yes, coffee, black. Thanks!"

Donate Your Lexis Research Points to Haiti

From now through March, you can donate your research points that you earn on Lexis Nexis to the Red Cross and it will benefit the Haiti Earthquake relief efforts.

Go! Go now! Even if you don't have the cash to do so, you can still help out and make those hours looking up cases count for something!

New Semester Resolution

So with the new semester starting today, I started reviewing some resolutions in my mind. Even though I felt like I did good my first semester, I am definitely willing to try a change. Also, I really am down for the whole self improvement sort of deal (ok, I am like a self help addict half the time).

I divided my resolutions into different categories. Each resolution highlights what I want to improve the most.

Academic Resolutions
1. Read smarter. Last semester I got really good at reading. And by good, I mean I am able to read ridiculously fast. I always used to read fast though, so It was only a matter of time before I got good at reading the boring crap. Now I want to be able to question what I am reading as I read it, and make connections that I may have over looked by only reading.
2. Be more confident. Not a gunner (although if you ever raise your hand, ever, or even just nod your head, you risk being branded a gunner, so take the term as you will), but I want to be certain of myself when I speak and when I prep for exams.
3. Review my notes and semi outline after class. I actually did that today. It was a fun fusion of book, lecture, and my thoughts on the issue. I think it should help prepare for finals.
Enter into a writing competition. I am not sure if this is in the right section. It does sound cool though.

Professional Development
1. Have interactions with lawyers in the field I want to go in. So I was assigned a mentor. I wrote to him and I am waiting to hear back. Ummm… It doesn’t hurt to have more interactions though.
2. Get a summer internship. For the awesome experience. Paid would be preferable. (A broke law student has got to eat!)
3. Be up on my current events in the field I want to go into. Sadly, I've been sort of in the dark about those, and about most other things. Unless it happened in the library, there is a good chance that I am unaware about it. But, I did know about the bird that flew in here in November.

Personal (along the law school variety)
1. Be nice to everyone. Pretty straight forward there. This also includes the "don’t talk shit behind people's backs" clause. They always find out. Also, bad karma.
2. Bring my own lunch and make it tasty. I brought peanut butter sandwiches almost every day last semester. At the end I rebelled. In order to save my cash, I will cook extra at dinner and pack it in a tupperware to eat for lunch.
3. Don't dress like a damn slob. Harking back to my post about keeping law school classy, I plan on dressing like I want to be a damn lawyer, or at least like I am worth the five minutes talking to.

Exams- the EXTREMELY brief recap

Saturday was a big day for me. It was my last exam.

What does that mean? First and foremost, it means that I am now 2.5 years away from becoming a real lawyer (God help us all). Secondly, it means that I can sit back and begin to evaluate my habits and see what I did right and wrong (a process that I won't actually post about until I get my grades back.) Third, it means that I begin my summer job search. It is a risky strategy that I will post about momentarily. Finally, it means that I get to breath for a moment, a process that I will discuss now.

Basically, this whole breathing, relaxing thing is unreal to me. I have plenty of classmates still taking exams, so I don't want to out right dance and celebrate. Furthermore, my first three points (lawyering, evaluating, and job searching) really are lurking in the back of my mind, if not the front. I don't know what my grades will be until January, so I don't know if I successfully completed my first semester. I just know that I completed it. I don’t know that I was doing this whole law school thing right, or maybe I need time to change my ways (I think I did it right, but I need some cold hard facts to help me decide- it is the math geek in me.) And this whole applying for jobs thing, well, it is scary, hard, and I am pretty sure I just bombed a phone interview an hour ago. I really don’t want to go through that process (although my next post will have a happier, lighter tone).

So what did I learn over this exam period?
-I learned that study groups can be an amazing thing.
-That an outline should be learned backwards and forwards, that way during the exam you don’t actually need to look at it.
-That freaking out does not help.
- Conversely, cookies and coffee do help.
-Talking about the exam after the fact will only make you feel worse. You can’t change the exam, so you don’t need to be reminded of a point you may have missed.

As I turn from my first semester towards my second, I await my grades and go through the arduous task of applying for summer internships. Also, I am drinking gingerbread mochas and enjoying some sleeping in time.

Reason #631 Not to talk about an exam

Because you will only freak out about it and feel worse.
Go, try it. Go up to one of your classmates and start talking about the exam. How do you feel? Shitty? Yea, that sounds about right. Oh, he noticed that you had your palm squarely planted on your head as you were clearly angrily shaking you head halfway through? You totally want to be reminded of that wonderful moment.

Sometimes the only thing left to do is keep you mouth (and ears) shut and cross your figures. You are not going to do any better after the fact. Commiserating doesn't help.

1 down, 2 to go

So yesterday at noon was my contracts exam. Do I feel like I owned it? I don't know. Not because I totally feel like I missed all the issues on the test. I think I hit on at least one important issue per question, most of the questions I hit on two issues. I was able to evaluate the strengths of the arguments and make a clear case for my conclusion. (Now that I typed that, I feel a little less nervous about yesterday.) The bads? The test didn't feature the topic I was totally, 100% confident on. Should that ruin my exam? No, not at all, but it would have been nice to have the "freebie." Also, the test was three hours. There was supposedly less than 3 hours of material, with time to distribute as we please. I finished all the questions in 2:55. I had five minutes to spell check (a feature that I desperately need). In theory I can say "I was distributing time as I needed it." I am not sure I can say that I was making that choice deliberately (ok, I wasn't), but maybe it was a subconscious thing.



So the exam finished and I walked out rushing through the group of classmates who got together to talk about the exam! Ahh!!!! The last thing I wanted to do was talk about it. As I walked past the crowd, I was screaming in my own head to drown out the "OMG, I totally owned that!" Talking about grades in law school is as tacky as wearing an ugly Christmas sweater at work, and not realizing you are wearing one.

The Quest to Make Law School a Classier Place

Law school should be a classy sort of place (no pun intended). It is a place where we are all on our quest to become the keepers of law and order in society, which is no easy task. It is a task that I believe is due from respect and reverence.

It is not a place that deserves gross, nasty, sweatpants (or even those over-priced cute ones you convinced yourself that it is OK to wear them in public.)

This sweat pants epidemic that is taking over law school needs to be squashed, so I started the classy campaign. I am not talking about wearing suits everyday, in fact, I am wearing jeans as we speak. I am talking about the notion of putting a little thought into my wardrobe and letting everyone that seems me know that I care enough about law school to get out of bed five minutes earlier to actually button my shirt. While you shouldn't judge others based on what they are wearing, I bet others (law professors who write recommendations) will be judging you based on your clothes. Let them remember you as the person who dresses like they care.

Will you be classy with me?

The Library Speaks Volumes

Ok, sorry for the lame posting name, but I figured in blog world there is a certain number of puns one must use in order to qualify as a blogger (or maybe I can just draw penises on people and call myself Perez Hilton.) Either way, I am in the library right now and in need of a posting title to aptly express my thoughts.

I was here every day this week and noticed something about the talking here- people do it at their normal volume. Here I am trying to talked in a forced whisper and people are just carrying about in their normal voices. Why? Why should I force myself to sound like Joan Rivers while everyone else is not making an ass out of themselves? Is there rules regarding speaking in the library? If so, where the hell are they and why didn't they get handed out in the massive library packet at Orientation?

Rather than going down a long dangerous road in questioning why the library is torchering my with such silly rules, I am going to attempt to define some here and hope to God that someone reads this.

1. The floor you are on corresponds to your volume. If you are on the first floor (like I was today and yesterday) then you may speak at your normal tone of voice (but be conservative about it, if you have a naturally loud then adjust). If you are on the second floor, then whisper. If you are on the third floor (or in the stacks) then God help you if you dare utter a word. In fact fear for your life if you even dare to smile.
2. If you library has stacks, have sex in them BEFORE finals.

So, there are my new library rules. Please add on if you deem necessary.