Archive for January, 2010

Second semester is progressing nicely…as far as classes go anyway. I still have no summer job. I still don’t have grades, which means many of my applications are incomplete. I got an offer to work for a county prosecutor’s office in New Jersey, but that would mean living with my parents and commuting with my mom all summer since I stupidly sold my car last year in preparation for law school. I have nothing against my parents, but it would be impossible to live in their house for three whole months with no car and therefore no freedom. I happen to have been born to the most over-protective parents in the universe and the fact that I’m 25 (and rapidly approaching 26) seems to have had no effect on their hovering tendencies. (I am referring to them in the plural, which unfairly casts my father in this light. He’s actually always been quite reasonable. It’s my mom who still waits up for me when I go out.)

Constitutional law is a lot of work. And I don’t just mean the reading. I have to use my brain more than I’m generally comfortable with. And the professor expects us to have a working knowledge of American history. I suppose that isn’t too unreasonable a request considering I majored in history and concentrated in American…but that was years ago. I forgot everything I learned in the college the moment I traipsed across that platform, grabbed my diploma, and shook the college president’s hand. Actually, I probably started forgetting everything when senior year started. But anyway, I kind of like the class. I definitely like the professor. She’s very bubbly and in love with her subject.

Property is all right. The cases tend to be short and to the point. I guess the problem isn’t that property isn’t interesting, it’s that I just don’t care. The professor is great though. He’s very lively.

But criminal law is the best. It’s at 8 in the damn morning Wednesday through Friday, but it’s totally worth it. My professor is a real-live sitting judge and he is hilarious.

But in general I’m kind of over the whole law school thing. Don’t get wrong, I’m still glad I’m here, I still like it and all. I wouldn’t rather be doing anything else right now. Well. Except maybe actually practicing law. But after working hard all first semester by staying on top of my reading only to be met with exams that had little to do with anything I learned, it’s hard to stay motivated to actually do my reading at all this semester. There’s still the fear of Being Called On, but it just doesn’t have the same force it did last semester.

And I’m over the whole student lifestyle too. I was never one of those losers who wished they could be back in the protective womb of college or – God forbid – even high school. I loved the Real World. I hate being a student. Aside from the obvious poverty factor, the student life is a very self-involved one. You’re not contributing to any product or service. It’s all about you, you, you all the time. Granted, I’m my most favorite thing to think about, but I can’t wait to get back to work.

Actually.

I’m probably looking at this all wrong. I have the rest of my life to work. I should consider this a vacation of sorts. I mean, the worst vacation ever, but a vacation nonetheless.

Edited to add: A shout out to my friend Jorge! (He chose his own alias. I would’ve picked a better one.) There. I did it. :-p

As I have noted in previous posts, this quarter has been extremely different from last quarter for me. But I think that is also the case for most people. And I think I know why: grades. During the first quarter, everyone seemed to be gunning, at least to a certain degree, since we’re all at least a little bit worried about job prospects and no one really knew how things would turn out (who’s good at test-taking, who’s smart at the law … though perhaps might not show it during class, etc.). Now that grades have been out for some time, I think some people (including myself) have fallen into a sort of indifferent bliss as to grades and have accepted their mediocrity at a very well respected school. For me, and I think for others as well, there are simply just crazy smart people here that I pretty much know I cannot compete with. I think I knew that coming in, however. I got a spot at Chicago Law by working really fuckin hard — not by being particularly smart. And so, since the really smart people here work very hard as well, and there are only a finite amount of hours in a day I can (or care to) spend time studying the law, there’s only so much I can do to try to compete with these clearly smarter and more gifted classmates.

I think this sentiment has now permeated a bit more throughout my class. People who seemed somewhat standoffish or arrogant in first quarter have eased off some and everyone seems more approachable and a bit friendlier this quarter. Of course, this could be because everyone knows each other better than before, but I prefer to believe in my theory. However, there is still a large amount of competition, I believe. Those who did not do as well as they had liked (myself included) may be more determined than ever to study their asses off to try to make up for last quarter (which is something like only 10% of our final 1L grades) and/or do their best to get on Law Review or something.

So for now, I have chosen the happy middle ground. Yes, I am fairly disappointed with my performance last quarter. But then again, if my law school career were to end right now (like if I had the average grades I got in first quarter) I would be fairly happy still anyway. Additionally, I, like most people here … I think, am not really terribly interested in performing ridiculously well in any case. Yes, it might open up a few more doors or make some career paths (such as academia) open up more readily. But I am in no way interested in academia and I think the most grades would matter for me would be if I maybe wanted some kind of clerkship (which I am undecided about) or in securing a prestigious firm job. And, in the end, it doesn’t seem like at least good jobs are necessarily reserved for the top 10% of our class, but I could be wrong …. it HAS happened before, however rare.

This is a general rant that has been building internally since I started law school. I’ve alluded to it often and maybe even given it a modicum of attention on the blog. I’m speaking, of course, of the hypocritical behavior possessed by nearly all law professors. With slight exception, I’ve found each of the following rules to be true:

1. You hold us to a strict attendance policy where you punish those of us who show up a moment or two late by Socrating our obviously flustered asses, but nobody screams at you and disparages your intelligence when you show up seven minutes late because you lost track of time sitting in your office fucking around on the internet.

2. You continue speaking long after the class period has ended and you know damn well what time it is. You say something like, “I’ll give you back the time next class” – but you that never happens. And because we are all now late to our next class, we will be Socraticly pillaged by our next professor. See Rule 1.

3. Heaven forbid our cell phone goes off in your class. You think it’s funny to harass the student who forgot to silence their phone, but nobody can discipline you when you rudely take a five minute phone call from your fat-ass wife. I’m sure she fucking loves Gargoyles but perhaps you two can discuss this later? At a time when I’m not paying $500 an hour?

4. You are routinely asked basic questions by us that you fail to answer or comprehend yet you lose your shit when we misinterpret your outrageously complex hypotheticals.

5. You didn’t cover the material in class but it’s still on the exam? Remember that first day in class when you told us that we needed you to decipher the oh so complicated cases? Truth is, the material is not difficult and you are extremely overpaid.

Law professors do not respect their students. They get their jollies off treating us like shit. Yet they demand us to show them a huge amount of admiration. I understand that they are the authority and the teacher, but I feel like I would learn much more if I could have a respectful dialog about the issues with my professors.

I’m not engaged in class, I’m assaulted in class. I don’t care about the law, I care about not looking stupid in class.

In undergrad we had a glorious six weeks of uninterrupted vacation between fall and spring semesters. We called it “wintersession.” What made it so magnificent was that it was enough time to completely forget about school and all the obligations inherent, yet not so much time that it required you to get your ass out the door and get a job. There was one regrettable wintersession sophomore year where I stayed on campus and endured record-breaking cold in Massachusetts (seriously, my weatherbug said -14 one morning). I had decided to take an intensive Spanish class during that six weeks and my menopausal profesora insisted on keeping the windows open during the class which met five days a week from 8:30AM to 1:30PM. But my other three wintersessions were spent languishing in front of my parents’ television and hanging out with old high school friends who happened to be in the area.

Law school break is a different beast. All told it was about two and a half weeks, much of which was spent feverishly hunting down summer job opportunities. The slew of cover letters seemed endless as did the trips to school in the frigid weather to use the printers. Still, I did use the lack of classes and deadlines as an opportunity to catch up on some long-missed sleep. Some days I festered in bed until 4PM rising only at long last because my stomach demanded it.

But despite this Guinness record-rivaling exercise in human laziness, I’ve begun spring semester more tired than I’ve ever been in all of law school (all five months of it). Last semester it surprised me how awake I felt all the time because I’ve always been one to be in bed by 10PM when I had work the next day. Despite never getting to bed before midnight (which itself is considerably earlier than many of my classmates), I always felt alert and ready during fall semester. Even during finals when I subsisted primarily on Coke Zero and Twizzlers I still felt like I could concentrate on studying without getting too distracted by tiredness and agitation.

But now? I feel so exhausted all the time. I no longer approach my reading with enthusiasm but with the dread of facing the orthodontist on braces-tightening day. I can’t tell if my new core subjects (property, constitutional law, criminal law) are just fantastically boring compared to the old ones (ha!) or if I’m just sick of it all. I’m still glad I’m here and I still like law school generally so I’m not really sure what’s going on.

We have an extra class – an elective – piled onto the core courseload which may have something to do with it. My Wednesdays are horrible with class from 8AM practically all the way through to 4:10PM. Tuesdays are made horrible by preparation for Wednesdays.

What’s especially surprising (and disconcerting) about this change in my overall body chemistry is that I’ve been doing cardio every day – and the whole point was to increase my energy levels!

I just don’t know.