One thing I’ve noticed since starting law school is that when there is something even remotely funny in a case or in what a law professor says, I laugh out loud, snicker, or, at the very least, giggle on the inside.
This phenomenon had me giggling whenever I came across the words “duty” and “penal”. And you can imagine the party in my head when I read about a faulty bunghole in Torts.
What can I say. You take your laughs where you can find them when you’re a coffee-guzzling, grade-obsessing, sometimes sleep-deprived law school first year.
Second semester hasn’t changed this at all.
Based on the facts contained in a memo that we drafted last semester about the misappropriation of a trade secret, me and my fellow 1Ls now must draft a settlement letter offering the other side a reasonable settlement deal.
First thing that popped into my head?
And when we were discussing proximate cause relating to a second injury caused by a weakened condition from a prior injury in Torts, I couldn’t help but remember this scene, also from Austin Powers.
Image: Wikipedia
After three weeks of relaxing, I returned to the not-so-relaxing life of a 1L student on Monday. Call me crazy, but it felt good to be back. Prior to my return, grades had been posted, and I had outlined a plan of attack for the second semester of my 1L year.
So, unlike the first day of classes last semester, I know now what to expect and what needs to be done in order to succeed.
In addition to Property, Civil Procedure, Torts, Legal Research and Writing, and Contracts, we will also be taking Criminal Law this semester. CivPro and LRW have been reduced to 2-unit classes, but I have a feeling that doesn’t help much in terms of my workload. Whatevs. I got through my first 1L semester, I can make it through my second one! Bring it on!
New semester, new year 
Photo: I Can Has Cheezburger
You may (or may not) have noticed my absence from this blawg in the past couple weeks since I took my last final. That’s because the minute I uploaded my final test of the semester I checked out of neurotic law student in finals mode and checked into Blawgirl on vacay mode.
And while other 1Ls from other law schools constantly checked their grades over the course of the winter break, the folks over at Chapman Law have decided to wait until after the spring semester starts to release our grades.
So, for the week remaining on my vacation, I will be blissfully unaware of my inadequacies as a law student and simply assume that I got by because people, including the teller at my local gas station, family members, and some online tarot card reading thing, have reassured me that I probably did OK.
Their guesses are as good as mine.
Early on during the winter break I questioned my school’s decision to wait to release our grades, but over the course of the break, especially during Christmas week, I was glad to not have the weight of failure hanging around my neck. As such, I was able to – wait for it – actually have fun.
Here’s what I’ve been up to:
Winter Break Week One
- Bought a fake Christmas tree at Target and decorated it with The Boyfriend the Friday of my Property final. We also ate a celebratory dinner at one of our favorite local restaurants, a Lebanese place called Papa Hassan’s.
- Hiked the Hermit Falls and Sturtevant Falls trails with The Boyfriend.
- Bought Christmas presents, wrapped them and decorated them with flowers from Dollar Tree. Scroll to the end of the post to see the finished presents and my tree!
- Celebrated Christmas Eve with my family. This Christmas, I thought it would be fun to do a hot cocoa bar. For the bar, I brought a Crock-Pot full of hot cocoa and a bunch of things that people could stir into their cups. They could choose from either a candycane or cinnamon stick as a stirrer, then add red and green marshmallows, butterscotch chips, mini chocolate chips, red sugar, green sugar, caramel syrup and whipped cream on top. Sadly, no actual alcohol in the cocoa bar in consideration of my younger cousins and nephews and nieces. Played Christmas songs on the piano. With the decorative present wrapping and the cocoa bar, I was feeling very Martha Stewart-y.
- Celebrated Christmas day with The Boyfriend’s family. Day two of the hot cocoa bar! Loved watching The Boyfriend’s nephews and nieces open their presents. Taught The Boyfriend how to sword fight for the stage using a pair of squishy swords his nephew received (Little known Blawgirl fact: I played Abraham in a high school production of Romeo and Juliet; dude dropped out three weeks before the start of the play, and I volunteered because I wanted to play with swords). Watched for 15 minutes as The Boyfriend and his cousin re-enacted scenes from 300.
- Had a dinner date and a movie with several of my cousins. We watched Avatar in 3-D and ate dinner at Felix Continental Cafe, a lovely Cuban place by my house.
- Finished The Gargoyle, a novel by Andrew Davidson. Interesting story, with a bunch of lovely love stories woven in.
Winter Break Week Two
- Visited the Huntington Library with The Boyfriend. Leave it to us to go on the only frakkin’ day it decides to rain in Southern California. Day before the trip: bright and shiny. Day after the trip: even brighter and shinier. Day of the trip: rain, rain and more rain. Eff you, rain gods. Still, had a lovely time walking around the main house.
- Finished and loved The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. I was a bit skeptical about the book when it was recommended to me by a friend. First off, the book was in the young adults section next to Twilight. Second, I was looking for something light and fluffy, and not a book about a dystopian North America where the government has gone so evil that it forces people to watch a reality show that’s a mix between Survivor, American Idol and America’s Next Top Model, where only one person out of 24 could walk out alive. Oh yeah, and the people fighting to death? Children who are anywhere from 12 to 18 years old. It turns out, however, that this was the book I was looking for. I’ve moved on to the next book in the series, Catching Fire.
- Celebrated New Year’s Eve with The Boyfriend’s family.
Week Three of Winter Break
- Updated my blog.
- Getting over a stupid cold. Tried to flying crescent kick the cold in the balls by nomming on some Tom Yum Kai, a spicy Thai soup, but no luck yet.
- Possible 5-mile trail run that I haven’t done in ages.
- Paintballing on Thursday!
- Actually looking forward to the start of the new semester.
Don’t let me down, 2010!
1. Christmas 2009 Presents 4, 2. Christmas 2009 Presents 9, 3. Christmas 2009 Presents 3, 4. Christmas 2009 Presents 1
So here we are, kids. I am a little less than 24 hours away from taking my first law school final. It’s been a heck of a ride, and I know that it will only get harder from here. I also know, however, that it will get a bit more tolerable once I know what is expected of me during these exams. Still, that is little comfort when tomorrow’s Torts exam determines 95 percent of my grade for the semester. And the professors are required to curve the grades, which means you are graded against your fellow class members. Gulp.
But seeing where I’ve been also makes me feel a smidgen of accomplishment. If you’re a fellow 1L, you should be proud of yourself too!
Number of pages read in Torts:
300-ish
Number of pages read in Civil Procedure:
400-ish
Number of pages read in Property:
400-ish
Number of pages read in Contracts:
400-ish
Number of LRW memos written:
2
Number of pages written for memo No. 1:
10
Number of pages written for memo No. 2:
14
Number of cases read for memo No. 1:
3
Number of cases read for memo No. 2:
20-ish
Number of supplements consulted:
6-ish
Number of pages in outlines:
Super secret
Number of times I’ve used FML in a status update:
0 (hurrah!)
For serious, kids. There are starving babies in Africa. And something called medical school, which is super hard if you believe Grey’s Anatomy. It’s called perspective.
For some more perspective on finals at my law school, check out this column!
For some strange reason, I feel more compelled to post to this blog during this week before finals than I did during the course of the semester. Maybe it’s the guilt of not writing that’s catching up to me, or just general avoidance of my casebooks, class notes/outlines and commercial outlines, but here I am.
It could also be the fact that my Undergrad Neighbor, a student at a local university, decided to invite his noisy friends over to his place, which I share a wall with. Dudes, I haven’t met any of you, but you all sound like complete turds.
Yup, I heard one of you trying to sound smart and worldly by talking about Pablo Picasso’s “Guernica” while puffing on your cigarette. But, seriously, fool, anyone who’s taken a community college art history course can regurgitate art speak that sounds vaguely brainy and deep. Next thing you know, you’ll be talking about chiaroscuro, melting clocks and how Gauguin made you confront your own mortality. Turd.
Yeah. Finals make me feisty and grumpy. Folks who wear sunglasses indoors, you’re next on my list.
I know I could study at the library, especially now that it has extended hours for finals. But I study best when I’m at home where I have a hot pot of free coffee nearby.
Thankfully, I can drown out the noise with music from imeem and white noise from simplynoise.com. Just in case the partying undergrads get unbearable, however, I looked up my city’s noise ordinance:
“It shall be unlawful to conduct or allow to be conducted any party where there is loud and unreasonable noise between the hours of 10:00 P.M. and 6:00 A.M., if such noise is sufficiently loud and unreasonable in volume level, duration and character to maliciously and willfully disturb the comfort, health, peace, safety or repose of reasonable persons of ordinary sensibilities. Continuation of an activity prohibited by this section after notification by a peace officer that the activity is disturbing the peace, shall be prima facie evidence of malicious and willful intent.”
I’m not sure if the group next door is large enough to be considered a party, but looking up the ordinance made me feel better. It also led me to this little gem about hypnosis buried in the municipal code:
“No person shall carry on, or practice, exhibit or teach the business or the art or practice of hypnosis, nor teach self-hypnosis to any person undergoing a course of treatment or program of self-improvement except … Nothing in this section shall prohibit a peace officer, as defined in Chapter 4.5 (commencing with Section 830) of Title 3 of Part 2 of the California Penal Code, from utilizing hypnosis in the fulfillment of his or her duties as a peace officer.”
Maybe the police can come over and hypnotize Undergrad Neighbor’s friends into not being turds anymore. Oooh, and maybe they can use this video:
If you have noisy neighbors, here’s what someone suggests you do.
Photo: launceston_lad / Flickr
Hi, all! Trying out a new website I stumbled across called ToonDoo, which lets you create your own comic strips and customize your own characters! Yeah, I should be studying. Back to it then.
It is now less than a month before my first set of law school finals, and a mild panic has set in. If you’ve ever been at the top of a roller coaster drop or have waited on the side of a stage for your cue, you probably know the feeling: that in between-ness, a rubber-band ball that fills your gut and your ribcage, that tugs and pulls you between calm and thoughts of impending doom.
This is also a close approximation of what it may feel like:
Now take that feeling, and stretch it out over one month, and you’ll get a better idea of what the weeks before finals are like for first-year law students. Well, this one at least.
Photo: I Can Has Cheezburger
It’s hard to believe it, but I am at the halfway point of my first law school semester. Theoretically, I should be half as stressed as I would be during the final in December, but that is, sadly, not the case.
Why? One word: Midterms.
I really shouldn’t be. Of my five classes, the LRW memo “midterm” is 25 percent of the final grade and the Torts multiple choice midterm amounts to just 5 percent of the final grade. However, the fact that finals is just under two months away is not helping me sleep any better.
Despite the stress, we 1Ls still find things to laugh about, like this morning before the Torts midterm.
After going over the written instructions, the test proctor asked if anyone else had any other questions.
Student No. 1: Um. I’m not sure if this is a problem, but I’m not ‘Frank’ and Frank’s name is listed under the name on the Scantron.
Proctor: Oh. Yeah. That might be a problem.
Student No. 2 (a female): My name is also not Frank, and it’s on the Scantron.
Proctor: Anyone else named Frank?
(One more student raised his hand.)
The whole incident was really not a big deal, but it gave the class a teensy chuckle. Also, in retrospect, and after seeing the content of the entire episode written down, it’s really not that funny and probably would not be funny to an outside audience.
Just another testament to how law school is slowly chipping away at my sense of humor, I guess.
New post at The Shark about balancing law school and life with my handy, dandy hot pink planner!
I didn’t want it to happen, but it did.
At the start of this first week of law school, I was too terrified to speak up in class. Over the course of the week, however, I evolved from thinking about raising my hand to actually raising it above my head to reluctantly volunteer information.
That’s not necessarily a good thing.
Before I started school, I vowed that I would quash my Steve Urkel or Hermione Granger-like tendencies to raise my hand whenever the professor raised a question.
I vowed this not as a strategic move, but rather as a way to stop myself from buying into the mindset that I had to show my legal prowess in class in order to establish my place in the 1L pack.
I didn’t want to be one of those people who strutted around making their legal pecs dance in order to “sound smart”, because, honestly, even as a 1L I know that what matters the most is how one performs on that final exam and not how much of a wunderkind your classmates or even your professors think you are.
Those thoughts went out the door when I saw how eager some of my fellow classmates were to unzip their legal zippers and lay out their legal junk on the table to measure whose just happened to be bigger.
“Oh yeah? Take a look at this!”
I can’t attest to what my fellow classmates were thinking, but I think I know why I bought into the temptation to show just how big my law balls are.
Many of us 1Ls are accomplished enough that, when we go into law school, we know what it’s like to be the big, um, fish in each of respective disciplines. It’s only in law school that we learn just how small we are.
We feel compelled to perform and posture because of feelings of inadequacy, that maybe we’re not as smart as we thought we were, that maybe we’re not cut out for law school.
Let’s call it the 1L Napoleon Complex.
I have to keep reminding myself of that old adage that size doesn’t matter. It’s what you do with it that counts.
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