Archive for the ‘Soleil’ Category

It doesn’t really take a lot to keep me happy. I’m not a very high-maintenance person. Really. But that being the case, whenever some little, easily avoidable thing goes wrong, it doesn’t take much for it to send me into an absolute rage.

Take today for example.

My usual policy toward the law school building is to avoid it at all costs. Go to class, come home. Spend as little time there as humanly possible. But occasionally, my need for print outs forces me back to school. In addition to my printing needs, my apartment was too sweltering hot to stand for a day of studying so I decided to pack up some snacks, a water bottle, my computer, and my crim law book and make a day of it at the law school.

I found a table toward the back of the building and set up shop. After a few hours of outlining, I decided to go upstairs to the computer lab, print some sections of the Model Penal Code, and head home. I downloaded a giant chunk of MPC off Lexis and immediately took to deleting the pages I wouldn’t need. It was a laborious but mindless task but when I was finished, I had an MPC I could print so I wouldn’t need to constantly flip to the end of the casebook during the exam. I pressed Print and went to the releasing station but couldn’t find my name. After a few minutes of staring dumbly at the screen I noticed the torn piece of notebook paper on which someone had scrawled: Printers Don’t Work.

I sighed audibly, packed up my things and headed to the law library. Downstairs in the media center it took three tries to find a computer that worked. Once I had one, I pulled up my adulterated copy of the MPC and pressed Print again. I looked at the release station and saw a familiar sight: a handwritten, hastily-scrawled sign that read Printers Don’t Work.

A bubble of rage formed in the pit of my stomach as I tried to calmly gather my things. I could feel my face contorting as I quickened my pace to escape the law school as fast as possible.

I can deal with the stress, the monotony, the utter futility of law school. I can deal with the harsh-as-hell grading curve that means little actual difference between an A- and a B+. I can deal with the smugness, the arrogance, the general air of self-satisfaction.

But what I cannot deal with is the absence of a single working printer anywhere in the law school during FINALS.

I don’t know what exactly it is we’re paying for but I’d gladly trade in a few Yale-diplomaed, SCOTUS-clerkshipped, and otherwise sterling-credentialed law professors for a couple of WORKING PRINTERS DURING FINALS!

These are the things that drive an otherwise well-adjusted law student to the breaking point. Everything about law school is hard. But keeping us in printers and paper (and staplers for that matter!) shouldn’t be.

End of rant.

So today is my birthday and so far I have to say it’s pretty much the worst birthday I ever had. Not that things are particularly awful, but it’s the first day of exam study period. On all my previous birthdays I got to feel special, hang out with friends, have fun, be awesome…But for the big 2-6 I’ve done nothing but law school. (Well okay, fine, I did indulge in a two-hour midday nap.) And to add insult to injury, it rained most of the day.

Still, it was nice to see my various technologies (phone, Gmail inbox, Facebook wall) flooded with well wishes. And in all fairness, I did celebrate my birthday with friends on Friday night at a great little bar down in SoHo where the drinks are cheap and huge. From what I remember, it was a great time.

26 doesn’t feel all that much different from 25. I’m not old – despite what some of my law school classmates have said – but I am definitely closer to 30 than 20 now. 25 was the real turning point in my life though. I had just gotten my acceptance letter to CLS and for the first time in my life I felt really sure about myself and what I was doing. One year later I’m even more confident with my life plans and about seeing them through to fruition. 26 is going to be an excellent year, I can feel it.

Classes finished up yesterday but 1L isn’t over until exams are over. Or maybe until the writing competition is over. I have two exams next week (con law and crim law) and then two the week after (property and my elective). The day after my last exam is when the writing competition packet will be available. The deadline is a week later and then I have about a week of vacation before starting my internship.

Tomorrow night they’re doing a midnight pancake breakfast which gives me all the warm fuzzy feelings of undergrad. But, unlike undergrad, to enjoy said breakfast would involve walking 10 city blocks from my apartment back up to school in the middle of the night. It probably won’t happen unless I break my habit of self-inflicted hermitude and try something radical – like studying in the law library. I don’t see it happening though. I like to have all my creature comforts around me when I study – food, comfy clothes, my cat, and enough Coke Zero to power a small vehicle.

Oh, and congratulations to the CLS Law Revue whose video It’s the Law of Crime is an ATL finalist! I think they performed this song at the PILF Auction, but without the benefit of subtitles, much of the wit was lost on me. I think it’s great – no bias here. So go vote for it.

All right, it’s back to the grind, I suppose. I’ll probably finish up my con law outline tonight and then try to figure out exactly what to do with it. How does one even study for a con law exam?

Happy studying, everyone.

I’m writing this from the upper deck of a Megabus on by way to Boston. Not only is this shining example of mass transit equipped with an electrical outlet, but it also has wi-fi. Now, granted, I’m still in the city and the true test of the strength of the signal will come somewhere in central Connecticut, but so far I’m pretty happy. (I can’t tell if the woman next to me is reading my screen but I shrunk the document to 75% magnification and the text was small anyway since I’m on my netbook. Judging by her age and the thickness of her glasses I’m going to go ahead and assume she can’t read this. But in case you are reading this, seatmate lady, mind your own business please. And kindly keep your excess bulk confined to your own seat. Thank you.

So anyway. My oral argument went fairly smoothly. We had two alumni judges – one from 1991 and one from 1977 – and a volunteer 3L judge. I thought both my partner and I and our opponents all did pretty well. Afterward, they had a reception for everyone in the lobby of the law school. It was a nice way to wrap up.

Last night CLS faced off against NYU Law in our annual Deans’ Cup game. It’s a basketball game and the proceeds benefit our respective public interest law centers. Although we lost, it was definitely one of the most fun times I ever had at a law school event. It didn’t look like too many NYU students bothered to make the trek up to Morningside Heights, but the ones who did show definitely brought the trash talk. I saw signs ranging in temporal relevance from the current (“We may be #6 but at least we still get laid!”) to the timeless classic (“Suck it, Columbia”). Of course there were various signs about what activities they claimed to have engaged in with our collective mothers the night before. One sign impugned the manhood of the CLS men reading: “Columbia girls, for a real man call xxx-xxx-xxxx!”

Since I was sitting on the CLS side, I couldn’t really see if we had signs of similar snark, but I would hope so. The guys sitting behind me provided endless entertainment with their shouted epithets. But when the faculty game began at half-time it got really ridiculous. I think one person shouted: “NYU! Your law review articles suck!” But that was about as nasty as it got for the faculty game. Our faculty beat theirs by one point.

It was definitely a fun time but it also signaled a sort of last hurrah as the time has come to really buckle down and get to work in preparation for finals. One of my classes ended early so that helps lessen the load. Although it really doesn’t matter because I never did the reading for that class anyway. I would say that for two out of the four classes, I have to teach myself the entire semester’s worth of material to myself before exams. I tell you, the Socratic Method works. Without it, reading doesn’t happen. People like me really need The Fear in order to stay motivated.

All right, the eyestrain is giving me a headache. Farewell for now.

Thanks for the advice on the oral argument! My group just had our practice and the experience was definitely…different. I spent all day crafting an opening statement, outlining my arguments, writing out answers to questions I expected the judges to ask, making notes for things I expected to rebut, writing a closing statement, and finding excellent quotes just in case I had the opportunity to throw those in.

And then I got about 3/5 of the way through my opening and everything proceeded to fall directly out the window. I expected to at least get through my opening before being peppered with questions so that definitely threw me off. I did not hit the vast majority of points I intended to because I was too busy fielding questions. I felt like I was clumsily scrambling to try to make my points but apparently it wasn’t noticeable and I was shocked that my feedback included the words “calm” and “articulate,” because I felt anything but.

I’m really glad we got the chance to practice before the real deal. I’m feeling much more relaxed and ready.

In other news, I had a brush with the law in Starbucks today. Well, not really. Apparently, a customer was causing a disturbance. Even though he was about 20 feet away from me, I was only alerted to his disturbance when the police walked in. First there were four, then six, then seven (!) of New York’s finest in the Starbucks to deal with one unruly customer. Now, I’m as pro-police as you can get, but I have to wonder, what with the imminent budget cuts and all, why it required seven officers to arrest one man who, from my vantage point, did not resist arrest even a little bit. They seemed to be talking to him for a very long time before applying the cuffs and escorting him out and at a few points he raised his voice a bit, but if he was causing a disturbance, it certainly wasn’t noticeable at my end of the store.

I just think the NYPD should allocate its resources better. I appreciate that there are a lot of officers patrolling my neighborhood, but there was nothing going on the coffee shop that required SEVEN officers to handle. If they’re bored, they should stand outside CLS and wait around for some random thief to wander in off the street and wander out with a student’s laptop as has happened several times this year.

But I’ll save my campus security rant for another day.

On an administrative note, Arrogant Slacker doesn’t live here anymore. Apparently his contract ended. But if you love him or love to hate him, fear not. I hear he’s blogging over at that other site now. So it’s down to Chicago_1L and me. For my part, I’ll try to step up the posting in an attempt to make up for the slack. But I’m finding it harder and harder to say something new about law school each time so if anyone has an idea for a post or if any 0Ls out there have any specific questions – about law school in general or CLS in particular – that would be welcomed also.

Take care.