Posts Tagged ‘homework’

I confess I’m having trouble coming up with blog topics so I apologize in advance for what will no doubt be a rambling, disjointed post. I mean, how many different ways are there to say that things are fine and about what I expected? I’m busier than I’ve ever been, but I’m working more or less by rote at this point. I’m out of class by 4PM most days. Then I come home, occasionally swinging by D’Agostino on the way, and make dinner. I’ll goof off on the Internet for a little while and then by 6PM, I settle in with coffee (or what was formerly coffee before I subjected it to vast amounts of sugar and French vanilla creamer) and attack my pile of reading.

Whether or not I’ve finished, I close my books around midnight and get ready for bed. My bedtime routine consists of first pre-heating my bed (electric blanket courtesy of my dad who couldn’t deal with the fact that my heaters only work when the planets are in alignment – thanks, dad!), then washing my face, brushing my teeth, removing my contacts, and crawling into bed. (Usually I’ve been in my pajamas for hours at this point. Normal clothes are the first things to go when I get home.) I’m one of those freaks who can’t fall asleep without ambient noise so I usually pop in a DVD of Friends and fall asleep before the Rembrandts are finished playing.

Thursdays are easy days. Class is over by noon and I usually spend the afternoon reading only for my Friday morning writing class. The reading is pretty light so I goof off for the rest of the day and occasionally decide to grace Bar Review with my presence.

Friday morning I have legal writing at 11AM which is a low-key class with only about 12 people in it. When that’s over with, I head home and plan my weekend. If I have a lot going on, I start my reading Friday afternoon. I generally don’t go out and party on both Friday and Saturday night since I’m usually completely useless the entire next day.

This week and weekend will be tricky as my best friend who lives in LA is vacationing in New York and I obviously want to see her as much as possible while still getting all my work done. She sent me an excel spreadsheet with her entire itinerary mapped out (I love how organized she is!) and I’m to insert myself into her schedule wherever I can. She gets here Wednesday and I’m taking her to a free drinks/food event I was invited to in Murray Hill that night. Since legal writing is canceled this week due to individual conferences for our first memo feedback (oh by the way, I turned in my first memo last night), I’m going to meet her downtown for lunch at my favorite sushi place. Friday night, her brother is throwing a party at his west village apartment so I’ll go to that. Saturday night we’ll hit the bars and she’ll stay over my place. Sunday I expect we’ll get brunch and at some point that day she’ll return to her brother’s. By my calculations, that leaves me a few hours Friday, Saturday afternoon, and Sunday afternoon/evening in which to get my reading done. Totally doable. I hope.

So yeah, the memo. Fortunately I was crazy OCD about making sure my outline was really beefed up so the writing part wasn’t too bad at all. The day it was due all my classmates were complaining about how the 6-page limit was too short and how they had to basically halve their memos to get it within the limit. That gave me pause a bit because I had no trouble keeping my outline to 6 pages even. I wondered what crucial bits of analysis I missed, but quickly brushed it aside because I hit all the points of my outline and my instructor saw the outline and suggested a few cursory changes. I figure she’d let me know if some vital piece of analysis was missing…

I also had a minor freakout in the eleventh hour when I noticed something about the case that, in the real world, would have invalidated the entire assignment. I wondered if she put that in there to sort of trick us up or see if we would notice. But then I thought I should resist the temptation to point it out since it was outside the scope of the assignment. In the end, I decided to pretend I was a real lawyer given a real assignment and point out the issue in a footnote. Hopefully she won’t penalize me for straying a bit outside the question she asked us to consider since the footnote is the only mention of the outside issue.

In any event, my first law school writing assignment is finished. Writing class is canceled for the next two weeks so we can meet with the instructor individually so she can give us feedback. Then we’ll have rewrites due. Then we’ll have our second and final memo assigned (open universe as opposed to this one which was limited to 6 cases she gave us).

My next challenge will be sitting down and starting my course outlines. I feel as though any extra time I have should be devoted to self-maintenance (sleep, exercise, etc.) but working on these outlines will require me to find time in my schedule that doesn’t exist. Unfortunately it looks like I’ll have to cut into the weekend time that’s currently devoted to pretending I’m not in law school.

But not this weekend of course.