Hey y’all. Sorry for not posting over the past few days. I’ve been crazy busy with studying and what not. I don’t think I’ve really figured out the most effective way to study … or maybe I have, but even the most effective way still sucks. I don’t know why I didn’t realize this forthcoming thought last quarter, since it is exactly what happened last quarter as well, but: class sessions have almost nothing to do with the exam. It’s so funny how much people get caught up in getting called on and what not when, ultimately, the knowledge people put forth in class or the effort they exert in learning the cases literally does almost no good come exam time. So for me, once the end of the quarter began to roll around, I looked at a few past exams a realized (once again), “Holy shit. I haven’t learned a damn thing this whole quarter.” Even if I had, it was so long ago that I most certainly couldn’t remember any of the principles, let alone apply them to a fact pattern I’ve never seen before.

The result: in a matter of days, I tried to relearn all the principles and such I should have learned over the past two quarters. Hornbooks, supplements, etc. helped me along the way although I’m not really sure how much good it did. I probably studied for over 12 hours a day for the last week or so straight. Then yesterday came the first of our two exams for this quarter: contracts. All I can say is, thank god I read through all that crap, otherwise I would have literally been floundering — drowning in a sea of nearly indecipherable facts that pointed really in no direction. As it was, I was still flailing for answers, which is fine I suppose considering how everyone I’ve talked to mentioned how hard they thought the exam was (from both professors). In any case, finals really really suck. And more often than not, professors do little to help. In fact, they more often than not steer you in a direction throughout the quarter that in no way leads to the end result. Classes are devoted to things that will have: 1) no bearing on your grade (and therefore, career possibilities), and 2) no bearing on working in the legal field at all. I know I’ve mentioned this before, but law school is probably the most unique experience in …. futility? …. I’ve ever witnessed. All the work goes to nowhere and if you happen to understand a concept presented, guess what? You can bet everyone else (who is at least as smart as you, if not 10x smarter) gets it at least as well as you do if not 10x better.

Anyway, maybe I’m just overworked and overstressed at the moment. But only one exam left to go and then Saturday is like the unofficial St. Paddy’s day in Chicago when they dye the river green and such. So basically, my inner-Irishmen in coming out in full force for pretty much the entire weekend (if not all of our two-week break).

Today at 5PM the final drafts of our appellate briefs were due. We’ve been working on them all semester. Now that they’re in, they’re going to be mailed to alumni judges and we have about one month to prepare for oral arguments. I think Columbia might be one of the few schools that makes moot court a 1L requirement. On the one hand, this is cool because it’s good experience. On the other hand, I can’t really put moot court on my resume when it’s a requirement for class. (Remember the days when you did things for the fun of them and not because they added padding for your resume? Yeah, me either.)

The computer labs were packed all day. Printers were in pieces scattered on the floor. Staplers were…well, they’re always broken. But by mid-afternoon I had four printed copies of the brief and dropped them off about an hour and a half before the deadline. And just like that it was out of my life forever! At least until the time comes to start prepping for oral arguments. But I have no plans to even think about that for the next two weeks.

Things are starting to get fun again. I won two free tickets to a new Broadway show that’s opening on Thursday, I’m going to a restaurant opening next Tuesday, and my mom and dad are coming to the city next week. Next week is spring break and I’m staying in the city. The weather has finally started to get spring-like so I’m planning to spend a lot of time outdoors. Many of the restaurants in my area have opened up their sidewalk cafes again and I can’t wait to get sushi in South Street Seaport while sitting outside and sipping peach saketinis. New York is awesome.

Another sign that spring is practically here is the throng of admits milling about the law school. They’re easily recognized by the folders in their hands and name tags clipped to their shirts. We had our first admitted students days last week. I’m not involved in any of the admissions activities so my interactions with admits were limited to the few of them who happened by my table during the PILF auction.

Oh, that reminds me. A brief PSA: To any 0Ls who plan to visit Columbia, this question will not be well received: “I got into Harvard and Yale…so why should I come to Columbia?” Apparently it isn’t common knowledge that that is a really obnoxious question. And any student who represents Columbia in any official capacity will probably not tell you you’re a d-bag for asking. But I don’t represent CLS. If you ask that question, you are a d-bag. And please, for the love of God, DON’T come to CLS.

It’s kind of crazy to think about the next class coming in and being finished with 1L year. I’m looking forward to 2L year but sometimes my Facebook friends who are 2Ls have some scary status messages about 2L year actually being worse than 1L. I had always just assumed 1L year was the hardest and that 2Ls who were overburdened brought it upon themselves by taking too much on. Any 2Ls care to comment??

When I was an undergrad, I thought of law school as this prestigious place filled with professional, collegial people. It’s a stupid thought obviously, as I should have known law school wasn’t going to turn me (or anyone else) into a nice, pleasant person. Law school, unfortunately, is very similar to college and high school.

I attended a speech last week given by one of the preeminent modern economic thinkers in the world. It was well advertised on campus, there were encouragements to attend given in some classes, etc. Despite these efforts, there were less than a dozen people at the speech. It was fucking embarrassing. The speaker was very obviously offended and irritated at the turn out.

A few days later, I attended an event sponsored by one of the big four law school service providers (Lexis, Kaplan, West, Barbri). It was packed; many people had to stand. The presentation was about something relatively trivial, all of the information was regurgitated directly from the company’s promotional material. Why was it so crowded? Free food.

And I have nothing against free food. I was there because an attractive classmate asked if I was going, so obviously I went with her, but I was happy to get a meal out of the deal. My problem is with my classmates and their disgustingly penchant to whore themselves every time a free slice a pizza is waved before their face – all while missing out on the great lectures given on campus.

None of us are starving. Though the economy sucks, everyone at Harvard who looks for a job is going to find one. Spending an hour listening to an uninteresting lecture for $2.50 worth of food is not good time management. Even as 1Ls or 2Ls, our time is worth more than that.

And look, I see why this happens at lesser schools. First, it’s difficult for lesser schools to attract quality speakers – the Lexis rep might be the highlight speaker of the month. And second, nobody at lesser schools is getting work. I have a 2L friend at UCLA who has great grades (or so he says). He’s spending his summer taking classes on campus so that he might be able to graduate a semester early. A free slice of pizza goes a long way for him.

But for us? We can pay for our own food.

So in preparing for exams, I’ve realized that there are generally a few type of people in the law school world — at least when it comes to exams.

The first group are those that are searching for pity. For some reason, these people think they are either the center of the universe or that their life is somehow so much worse than everybody else’s. They then think that everybody else in the world should hear about how much their life sucks. These are the people who frequently post facebook statuses similar to “Been in the library for 12 hours. Wah!” or “Man, outlining for 2 days straight sucks.” Or the people who continually talk about the things they’d rather be doing besides studying (e.g. moving to Panama, finding a young rich man/woman to run away with, opening their own hotdog stand, etc.). These people bug me. We all get it: law school takes lots of time. But please stop announcing to the world how much you hate it or the myriad of things you’d do if not “forced” to be here. Because the fact is, if you were serious, you’d leave without making such a big fuss about it. The only point to all the objection you constantly bring up is so you can get attention — either from your peers, which won’t happen because we’re all in the same boat, or from your friends, who I am sure are just as sick and tired of hearing about your whining as the rest of us.

Another group of people are those who somehow manage to stay above all the stress and competition. If you were to ask these people what they thought about exams, they would say something like: “Hey bro, que sera sera. Can you dig?” or “I’ll try my best and whatever happens happens.” These people bug me too, but for different reasons. Instead of just being annoyed with these people for who they are or what they do, I am more annoyed at myself for not being able to be them. I clearly do not belong to this group, but sometimes wish I could because they just seem so relaxed and worry-free most days. But maybe there’s something to be said for feeling the pressure and having it push you to perform, not that these more-relaxed individuals aren’t pushed to perform.

Anyway, the point is: exams are coming up again, which is different from most other schools out there who only have two rounds of exams (lucky us, right?). This time around we have exams in contracts and criminal — so I’ve been reading the Restatement (2d, of course), the UCC, the MPC, and relevant case law like crazy for the past few days — two more weeks of this slog left to go. Yippee.

On a final note, like Soleil, I have finally secured some summer employment, which is great because I was starting to get a little worried thinking I might end up waiting tables or something. Incidentally, I would have made infinity times more money waiting tables instead of what I’m actually doing: a judicial internship, which is unpaid …. and does not qualify for a public service grant from the Law School. Soooooo, basically, finding money to live on this summer is going to be …. interesting.