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To explain, I've seen both arguments for and against law review on various sundry blogs and I was going to try hard to make it on, but the spirit didn't seem to be as willing as I would have liked. This has given me a real crisis of faith (so to speak). To put it bluntly, my law school experience so far has sucked. I've been unable to prove myself in any of my classes, and even with remedial help I'm only just squeaking by. In a perfect world I could have sat down, written my heart out and against all odds made it on review (but not the journals since it seems they have a higher standard for GPA...figure that out). Interviewers would be impressed...my friends would be impressed, I would be impressed. And when I got the packet that's exactly what I thought I'd do. And then I read the packet...tried my hand at the subedit, and snapped back into reality. Not only can I not edit to save my butt, I haven't a clue how to write a properly footnoted legal article. I certainly could not in good faith sign the document saying I hadn't looked at anything else in preparation for it, since the topic was one that has been on every blog, news website and paper since it was decided by the Supreme Court. So I decided not to complete it and hand it in. Can't be disappointed if you never know, right? And I thought I'd be okay with that. So why am I crying while I write this?
Well, just so it seems that I'm not a total misanthrope I would like to say that I had a lovely customer service experience at Taco Bell just now. I was however talked into trying a Chicken Caesar Stuffed Burrito. Them things is tasty! This feeling of goodwill and a full stomach has been tempered by my reaction upon looking up the nutrition breakdown of said burrito. Best to be explained as "HOLY CRAP! It's just salad, what gives?" Take a look and tell me I'm not kidding.
See, I don't think this kid is a kleptomaniac as much as a wanna be race car driver. Get him in a go-kart already will you? Channel that skill for good...not evil.
Awww...looks like I won't be able to bet on death and destruction after all. I wonder which sports book would cover this? Caesar's? Bellagio supposedly comps more drinks.
Self checkout...a boon or a curse?
Since my posts tend to be mundane, I bring you the first of hopefully many hard-hitting opinion pieces on the way the world is turning these days. Who am I kidding...I'm procrastinating, but here goes.
I have read a number of letters to the editor in various papers and seen on some blogs that people think that using self-checkout lanes at supermarkets/Home Depots/Walmarts are perpetuating a rising unemployment rate. Since I don't feel like responding to each of these letters individually I will in this post attempt to explain why not only do I use these lanes, I revel in using these lanes.
While it is true that by using such lanes I am preventing a real live human being from waiting on me and providing valuable customer service, I am saving my sanity. There have been very few instances where I have received any valuable customer service in a local Home Depot/Kmart/supermarket checkout line in the last year or so. My experience in these stores usually borders on the "want-to-bang-my-head-against-the-wall-repeatedly" variety. I have worked retail, so I speak from experience in what is expected of a cashier, and being surly, talking to your fellow employees, being lazy, incompetent, and/or slow does not qualify as appropriate customer service. I do not fear technology, verily, would I be writing this here if I was a luddite? Nay! If I can avoid such interactions that leave me prone to self-induced head trauma while at the same time providing myself with a quick way to exit the store with my goods in hand without committing petty larceny I say more power to it! Let me scan with impunity! Do not question my liberal unionizing tendencies! It makes my world a nicer happier place. It's a matter of keeping the world happy for Type A personalities everywhere. Thanks for reading.
It amazes me how when I just start to get whining about something the circumstances change. For instance, I whine about my schedule Friday, and what comes in the mail Saturday? My schedule. Well, if you can call it a schedule...it's more like a shell of a schedule. Seems all the rising 1Ls talked to the same upper class people and made their course decisions based on these suggestions. As a result nearly every one of those classes became over-subscribed. And for those of us like me who thought "outside the box", it seems that we conflicted with all the 3Ls' choices. This mad dash for the classes has left me with only 9 credits. I'm surprised I snuck into those classes. I suppose the school has a policy that they can't send a schedule to your home saying, "Dear student...you are a lemming. As a result of your herd like mentality you have been shut out of all of your choices, as well as your substitute choices. Rethink your life and plans and try again." So, I've had to do just that. I've added three choices and am thinking about a fourth hoping that I won't fall into a similar situation this time around. The accompanying documentation from the school is particularly vague on this point. All it says is that "a revised schedule will be in your mailbox the first day of classes." Of course, you'll have to go to the classes based on what you hoped you may have been signed up for. I feel the need to snap back to the undergrad way of thinking. Sign up for anything and everything, look at the syllabus and professor's teaching style and do your drops accordingly. Who thought I would be getting wistful about the first year where I didn't have such additional worries on my plate.
It dawned on me, after reading effinchamp's list of classes that our school has not deigned to give us our schedules yet. Now, back when I met with the Dean, the registrar was there and had said they would be going out soon. That meeting was July 1. Now I realize that being at a law school tends to warp one's sense of time and space, and as a result what seems like only a minute or two in law school can be years in the outside world. I am one step ahead in that I know I won't be in Negotiations, because the registrar informed me it was over subscribed and only 3Ls were in the class, but I would just like to know how my life is going to be for the next 4 or so months. I don't think it's too much to ask really, since I've already had to sign over my soul to the bank for the semester's tuition. Law school...think not what your law school can do for you, ask what you can do for us.
Feel like drinking and driving without going to jail? Head to Russia.
You probably have heard this story before, but in case you haven't, check out Patrick Combs's saga about a $95,000 junk check and using commercial banking laws to your advantage.
Wow, according to the link from Law, Life, and Libido, Kansas is actually flatter than a pancake!
There's a new legal portal site called the Legal Beetle. I have a link there. Wee! And so ends the self-promotion portion of our program.
Okay, I found something! Great story in the New York Times about how the size of portions and price per item make the most difference on how much people eat, and in turn why the country is puffing up like a balloon. What's really funny is the fact that the doctor in the story quoted at length is Dr. Rolls.
I've got nothing for you. I've failed utterly in my purpose to provide you, my reader, with entertaining and/or edifying material with which to while your hours away. And for this I am sorry.
Seems it's now the chi-chi thing to do to have a blowout 30th birthday party. This means I have just under a year to plan my spouse's party and he has a 18 month headstart on mine. I thought I was done with gigantic shindigs when we got married! I don't need this kind of stress!
Today's been good, finally got to see what they make here at work, and the tour was interesting and informational. Remember the pictures in your history textbooks in school where the little kid is standing next to a big loom? It's the ubiquitous child labor picture. In one blinding flash of logic during the tour today I realized why kids worked in fabric factories with the looms. One, they had little hands to work with little threads. Two, they could climb inside the looms and load the machines. Now I'm not promoting child labor nor is the plant using child labor, it's just one of those history moments for me. I was a history major, go fig!
It's done. They left this morning. Enough said.
I'm sitting in the law school library today. Why? Because I fled my house this morning from my in-laws. I've holed up in my bedroom for the last two evenings working on the write-on and escaping from them, but I had to leave today. I'm not there to entertain them, I'm tired of them taking up space, eating my food, using my washer and dryer, complaining about everyone and everything, and being generally obnoxious. If I say anything to them about their attitude or habits I will rip their heads off, so it's better I leave. One thing that does bother me about having to leave is that I did this two years ago when they "came to visit." On my return home I was rearended and my car was totaled. I'm hoping history is not going to repeat itself.
If you go to a restaurant, do not order water with lemon and then put a packet of Sweet n' Low into it. You are not a hummingbird. Buy the damn lemonade instead. To watch you do this makes my teeth itch. That is all.
Today Jeremy's Weblog raised a list of terrible 10-second interview answers to the question, "So, how do you like law school?" What I need to know is, if you're not particularly enjoying the experience, how should you answer this question? I know my face is answering, "I don't. At all." I can work on that, but I need some sort of pat answer that doesn't seem too contrived. I don't want to be smarmy or conceited, and I don't want to have to play the "oh, it's been the most fulfilling experience of my life..." role, because that just isn't me.
Wow, via Googlism I found that I am the following:
beanie is like waking up and realizing it's your birthday
beanie is well made with painted eyes
beanie is in excellent condition
beanie is all kinds of different colors
beanie is sure to sell out fast
beanie is made of 100% acrylic
beanie is a pembroke welsh corgi
beanie is overpriced
beanie is the perfect alternative to the ordinary beanie
beanie is it
beanie is responsible for representing the people of lima at various occasions
beanie is influenced by anything round and shiny
beanie is so much fun and a great learning tool
beanie is 100% cotton and is emboidered with a new rendition of the classic asia logo
beanie is determined to be authentic
beanie is a girl iguana
beanie is truly the very first beanie
beanie is more orangy in color
beanie is unique
Thanks to Unlearned Hand for the link.
Ah, the halcyon days of Boies, Schiller & Flexner, when they hit the motherlode with the Sotheby's suit...lo, where have all the flowers gone? David Boies lost yesterday in Manhattan Supreme Court on his charge that the ban on cameras in New York State courtrooms violates the First Amendment of the U.S. and New York state constitutions. The suit was brought by Court TV. Details of the case can be found here. If you think I'm disparaging Dave I'm not, he's a brilliant man, especially before a judge. I've personally seen him in action and judges on the whole are enthralled by his compelling performances. Of course, you have to appreciate anyone who can wear black Reebok sneakers to court and get away with it. But before you get out your hankerchiefs to mourn his defeat, the very same day his firm was appointed lead counsel in the fashion model class action suit. Let's all say it together...."Poor Dave."
Poor Canada, first the SARS, then the Mad Cow scare and now this...seems that in a push to promote Canadian tourism, Canada spent $430,000 US on a magazine published by Fodors, only to find that the magazine left out part of northwestern Ontario, the Yukon Territory, and Prince Edward Island. Considering the draw of that small Atlantic province that would be like leaving out Cape Cod or the New Jersey Beaches on a guide to summer on the Eastern Seaboard. Thank you to Yahoo news for the link.
Supposedly the American League won the All Star Game last night. Not surprisingly I neither watched it nor actually care about the outcome.
Greetings, and Happy Bastille Day! I know I went AWOL over the weekend, but not for any fun and entertaining reason, rather due to a binge of house cleaning and painting. As I mentioned before, my in-laws are coming into town this week. Also, to make it a doubly fun experience, our write-on competition also starts this week (the packets went out in the mail today). Here's a bit of advice to those unmarried people reading this blog. When choosing a prospective mate, make sure you can tolerate his or her parents. While you may be enthralled with your significant other, keep in mind the family from which they sprung. If it seems as if they hate you or treat you with disdain, this will probably never change and will make any sort of family functions/visits/phone calls trying to say the least. I'm sure there are people for whom this is not the case, but it is one further thing to keep in mind while planning the rest of your life. Thanks, and happy dating.
I'd like to wish the very best to Fragrant Lotus. She has decided to take a hiatus from blogging for a while. I hope everything is well with her.
Do you like going school supply shopping? I do. I think I always have. It means the beginning of a new year, new experiences, and new fresh folders, notebooks, pens and highlighters. I want to buy things I have no reason to buy...like a Trapper Keeper. I have an overwhelming need to buy a multitude of highlighters. I can't decide what highlighters to buy. Do I go high-end and snooty and buy a drylighter from Levenger? Switching out the color leads could be tiresome (I highlight in multi-color). There are three pages of highlighters at Staples! Who wants to go shopping?!?
I had planned on regaling you all with a blow by blow of what happened at work yesterday, but after a night's sleep and a deep sense of sadness that once again my summer job experience seems to be bombing spectacularly, I've decided I whine far too much on this blog. This is particularly true given that I'm not in school at the moment. If I were actually in school I would truly have reason and material with which to whine about.
My bit of humor for the day...I got an email from my school seeking teaching assistants for the legal writing course. For the princely sum of $10.00 an hour you get to attend all the mind numbing legal writing classes you had to sit through as a 1L, plus the bonus of pulling the incoming 1Ls kicking and screaming through the library for tours and indoctrinating them with the joys of the bluebook. Seeing as how I was told that "legal writing seems difficult for me" and I did resoundingly mediocre in the class, I think the proper response to this job opportunity is: "And monkeys could fly out of my butt."
Bored out of one's skull doesn't begin to describe my experience this summer. I particularly enjoy people wandering in and out of my office without so much as a knock. I'm only spoken to when someone wants me to do something, usually in the secretarial or file clerk vein. Needless to say I'm disappointed in the extreme since it makes for very long days and puts me in a nasty mood for the rest of the evening, much to the chagrin of my family. *sigh* When's lunch?
Hope your holiday went well. Mine was subdued, spent mostly in the air conditioned confines of our humble abode, slowly cleaning and rearranging our far too numerous personal items. In other words, we have too much damn stuff. The one highlight of the weekend was a delightful lunch of dim sum on Sunday. My mother has become a huge fan of dim sum, and as a result requested that we go with her for lunch. I'm not complaining, because if she wants to bankroll my dim sum addiction, I'll let her do that. We even branched out a bit on the menu, this time having the chicken with bean vermicelli (which was btw, impossible to pick up with either chopsticks or a fork) and the four happiness dumplings. I'm not sure why there were 4 happinesses involved or what they were, but they were tasty.
On a different note, I, like Jeremy, read the baby name article in the New York Times on Sunday. I found that my name is common and has been for decades, and no, I will never name my child Nancy or Integrity or Tonawanda.
Does anyone need some soda? Cause I've got a damn lot of soda. See, last week there was a sale on Coke products, 5 12-packs for $10. So we bought 5 12-packs. Mind you, there are only two of us living in our house. Today we went to the same market to get some 4th of July goodies and sure enough the Pepsi is on sale. 5 12-packs for $10. So now we have 10 12-packs of soda. I'm thirsty. I think I'll have some soda.
End of the work week! Of course this would be more meaningful had I done a bunch of work, but it's a day off all the same. I think I was more productive when I was unemployed for a month last summer. The house was spotless, all the clothes clean and a great home cooked meal each night. Now...I sit on my butt all day doing nothing, get nothing done at home, the house is a wreck, I need to do laundry and have absolutely no ambition to cook. And you wonder what's wrong with corporate america.
I had my meeting yesterday. I believe it was successful in that the Dean thinks I'm doing everything I can to be successful, and since I didn't fail out that's a good thing. We came to the conclusion that I really can't write all that well, which really does not come as a bolt out of the blue to me. Writing has always been my nemesis. At this point you might well be asking yourself, "If you knew you can't write, why did you go to law school?" I can attempt to answer this. One, I enjoy a challenge. Two, I have better than average research skills, and hoped that I could supplement my poor writing with outstanding research. Three, can't really see myself doing anything else.
So, now we know that I can't write, we need to improve the situtation. Like everything else I do, I throw myself into reading books in hopes of improving the situation. This, while seemingly worthwhile, seems to defeat the idea of writing to improve one's writing. So, I left the office with practice problems to write and a slight admonition that I should be doing better than I am. I don't feel that the admonition is out of place, however, I still find it hard to believe that the LSAT is that great a predictor of law school performance. Perhaps I just take standardized exams well. Yeah, that's it.
A stat that just made me blink. According to a New York Times article about vehicle safety v. fuel consumption, the average weight of a car in 1975 was 4,071 pounds. Today's autos average a weight of 3,408 pounds. It makes you wonder, where's a Buick Estate Wagon when you need one?
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