Posts Tagged ‘CLS’

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.

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.

That’s really all there is to say anymore.

I.

Am.

OVER IT.

I am so sick of the tedium of being a law student. It never ends. It’s like being in undergrad again except about a hundred times less fun. In college I was content to be a student because I didn’t know any better. I didn’t really take it seriously either. I pretty much just hung out with my friends all the time and relished being out on my own away from my eagle-eyed and over-protective parents. Yeah, the pressure was high and the word was hard, but it just made the Real World seem that much easier in comparison.

The student life is just not for me. I know, I’m a broken record at this point but guess what? There is just nothing new to say about law school anymore. I’m over it. I have ZERO motivation these days. Exams don’t scare me anymore because I feel like professors just throw darts to decide grades so why get all worked up over them?

My oral argument is in a week and a half. We have our practice argument this week. I have no idea what to expect. I guess I’ll just wing it.

I did have fun at a dinner I went to last week. A bunch of us bid on a dinner with a professor at the PILF auction last month and after a lot of scrambling to find a time convenient for all involved, the dinner finally happened. We went to this hole in the wall barbecue joint in the lower east side called Georgia’s Eastside BBQ and had such a fun time. (And by hole in the wall, I mean hole in the wall: the place was so small it didn’t even have a bathroom. You had to use the facilities of the bar next door if you had to go.) There were five of us plus the professor and her husband and they served us enough food to feed a small nation. Afterward, we got cupcakes at Sugar Sweet Sunshine Bakery. Once we were full of food, the authority figures left and the rest of us spent the rest of the evening at a bar hanging out and sharing our various high school personas. If our group is representative of the CLS class of 2012, then about 60% of the class is made up of slackers, 20% is made up people who work hard, and the remaining 20% is made up of people who do well by accident. (I suspect the self-proclaimed slackers exaggerated their slacker-ness somewhat, though.)

Anyway. April is an exciting month. The day after my dreaded oral argument, we have Dean’s Cup. For the uninitiated, that’s our annual basketball game against NYU Law. Proceeds benefit our schools’ public interest law foundations. I’m excited – I think that will be a fun time. I’m also planning to go to Boston for a weekend this month. I haven’t been there in about two years and I miss it. My birthday is also this month. I’m not sure if I’m going to do anything special for it though. It’s kind of at an inconvenient time and 26 isn’t really a landmark year.

But first thing is first: anyone with experience have any advice for oral argument?