May 7, 2008

Out with a whimper

My finals routine has been more or less the same since my first semester and today was no different.

I woke up early, made some eggs (it used to be hard-boiled, but now I'm willing to go through the trouble of doing them scrambled because I like them better that way). I usually re-read my outline on the bus or before the test starts, but considering that I finished writing it eight hours prior, I went straight to the part where I set out everything on the table.

Even though I've never once used it during a final, I always bring my textbook. Assuming everything else completely fails, I suppose I could just start at the beginning and hope to find the answers toward the beginning.

I went to get my exam and plugged away. It seemed straightforward enough and I had just enough time to notice I had slightly misread one theory question and fix it. As per usual, I don't remember most of what I wrote and I can't tell if it's a sure-thing A or a thanks-for-playing B. I reminded myself of what Cella says: "Bs get degrees."

If this were a movie, I'd stop and reflect upon handing in the Last Exam Of My Academic Career Ever Unless I Decide To Get An MBA For No Reason. But I had somewhere to be soon and I split.

But let's roll with the movie thing. The reflection would dissolve into a flashback to Oak Street Beach, August 2005. I sat on a beach towel. A couple of other pre-1Ls sit nearby discussing how bad it could possibly to swim in Lake Michigan. I was reading Law School Confidential, which is only good for thoughtfully giving to people you know would be awful in law school but can't be convinced that they shouldn't apply.

There I was, sunscreen on, sitting on a beach between a highway and a lake that looked like an ocean, reading a book telling me to block16-hour days into little pieces, including nice little slivers for relaxation and exercise.

"This is how they run prisons," it would have been poignant of me to have said just then.

I tabbed off the page explaining how to use six highlighters when reading cases. First of all, highlighters usually come in packs of 5, which means you have to hope the missing color is sold individually, which they usually aren't. Second of all, using six highlighters and taking copious notes in the margins are two reasons why a 15 minute assignment for a 3L takes an hour and a half for a 1L and they both end up with the same grade. The marginal benefit of any of these self-aware study habits is next to nothing.

Later that day, we went out, drank and perhaps ate wings. About a dozen of us with nothing to do and few other friends in town spent the two weeks before orientation tearing up the town like sailors about to spend months at sea, bonding like we would be too harried and to ever make any other friends and generally treating the situation like we were all Queen Latifah in Last Holiday, although that film had not yet been released. People expressed a little worry, but mostly excitement for the next three years. They surely knew about the highlighters, but it wasn't on anyone's mind.

I didn't know any of this and I doubt hearing a 3L tell me that there's nothing that special about law school. If you have good reading comprehension, it's just about learning what you need to read for, something no number of highlighters can help you with. Math always struck me as far less intuitive.

It makes sense that my last exam came and went almost exactly like every other and merited little sentimentality once it was done. I've come to realize that you don't succeed in law school by treating it like basic training. I tried it for a month, didn't like it and managed to do quite well, thankyouverymuch.

The trite end to this story would be to prattle on about "work-life balance" like every single BigLaw recruiter out there. Truth is, sometimes you have to fall out of balance. For three straight weeks this January and February, I spent night after night and most of the weekends working on a clinic assignment I couldn't figure out, throwing out reams of Westlaw printouts as I went down one blind alley after another. I showed up at the library before it opened to work on my casenote as a 2L. I've also driven out to Ames, Iowa on a Wednesday to watch a basketball game and drink quarter beers with townies. Before the library opened one Saturday last fall, I was drinking gin and tonic from a Nalgene on my way to watch a football game. You don't want to know what a party at my apartment is like.

When you're really, really busy, life gets utterly miserable, no matter how well you plan. Don't "reward yourself," since rewards just encourage more of the behavior that led up to them. When I was at the absolute end of my fraying rope, I like to know that I occasionally took my life back from the law school and that I could do it again if I wanted to.

Let's put it this way: if you want to do something really dumb, really juvenile or just really random, go and do it. Having a paper due the next day is an excuse; having "a lot of reading" is not. Check your email now and then, bring along a book to make yourself feel better and you'll be fine.

Posted by rj3 at 9:34 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

May 5, 2008

What is this feeling?

It's 6:16 p.m. at the beginning of the last week of finals. With only one to go, now would be a good time to throw in the towel for the day and relax, even though nobody seems up for some Cinco de Mayo fun.

But something strange has come over me. I want to take it to the limit, one more time.

I don't have to - given that I have a job (and the finals-time gift basket that comes with it) and absolutely no ambition to clerk, my law school GPA matters about as much as my SAT score. On the other hand, this is my last final ever and a little voice in the back of my head says it would be unsatisfying to half-ass my way out the door. A little pride would do me good. I'll be giving it a shot, but we'll see how far it gets.

UPDATE: Study fail. But after a couple of hours of work this morning, I'm confident enough that I'll land in the B range.

Posted by rj3 at 6:16 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

May 3, 2008

The gaps in our education system

Here I am, two weeks away from law school graduation and I still can't spell the word "bureaucrat"* without resorting to a spell checker.

* Right then, I spell checked it.

Posted by rj3 at 6:54 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

April 28, 2008

My brilliant plan

My morning routine of MSNBC and coffee imported from Iowa is getting less and less tenable. Either it's a Hillary shill promoting some crazy math theory that puts her ahead (it won't be long until her campaign tries to bring back the 3/5 clause) or some conservative harping about Rev. Wright.

Today it was Wright himself making headlines by trying to explain his relationship to Louis Farrakhan at the National Press Club. Last week, he was on Bill Moyers making non-apology apologies and generally making sure he's still in the headlines. It's almost as if he wants to prove that an African-American can't be president by tearing down the one guy who could make it happen.

Perhaps this is all part of a brilliant plan to neutralize Rev. Wright. It's probably just another case of Democrats being unable to keep anyone on message, but what if the goal were to saturate coverage on Rev. Wright early enough in the year to be old by November but late enough in the primary process so as to not imperil Obama's nomination. The convention is still months away. By then, he's picked a VP nominee, given an acceptance speech that will be analyzed to death and spent weeks "bringing the party back together" as per the standard media narrative.

After the conventions, Republicans will try to bring back Wright, but by then, it'll be old news, just like Bill Clinton's philandering was when the Lewinsky scandal broke. After what seems like endless rehashing of the story, people will simply tire of it. Yes, yes, the average TV viewer says, we know that Obama had a nutty preacher back in Chicago.

If Wright is old, what's new? Anything about McCain, who has been tooling around the country in a series of mostly-ignored media events. Later on, when it really matters, people will start to hear about McCain's Bushite tax plan, his plans for endless occupation of Iraq, excused because he assumes (based on implausible comparisons to Germany and Japan) that there won't be any casualties for most of it and a general narrative that he's not the "maverick" we've seen him as after years of favorable media coverage.

Is this a brilliant grand scheme on the part of the Obama campaign? Probably not. But if it was, it's a ballsy bet that could either pay off big or fail miserably.

Posted by rj3 at 10:50 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

April 26, 2008

Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay

Before the first line was written, the writers of H&KEFGB were in a bind. Harold and Kumar go to White Castle was such an unexpected hit, a "small" movie about a "small" adventure that redefined the stoner flick and turned the traditional Hollywood interracial buddy comedy on its head. The first H&K made it clear that it is both out-of-touch and anachronistic to reduce all racial comedy to mocking stereotypes about blacks and whites a la Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder. Places all over the country, north Jersey being one the of the best example, are full of Asians, Indians and others who don't fit nicely into the traditional mold of racial comedy. All this in a movie about getting high and going out for burgers.

So what on earth could a sequel do to add on to the understated brilliance of the original? Not too much.

That isn't to say that the new H&K isn't hilarious - I was laughing from beginning to end. Neil Patrick Harris, reprising his role as some sort of magical party shaman, is the biggest standout. Yet there was something missing, namely the finely-calibrated dynamics between the various stereotypes that gelled so well in the first movie.

Since H&KEFGB goes far beyond New Jersey, there is inevitably a wider view, but that view somehow ends up being smaller. White people are all racist buffoons who don't understand that minorities think and act a lot like they do. Every other group (including white rednecks, for some reason) looks stereotypical at first blush, but they all end up being upstanding upper middle-class-normative taxpayers with small quirks.

The first movie created a world of supporting characters who were both unusual, stereotypical and endearing. Goldstein and Rosenberg, perverts who smoked pot out of a shofar, were perfect examples of how the first movie turned appalling stereotypes into harmless quirks. They come back, reduced to a cameo that adds nothing to the plot without making room for the riffing that made them hilarious. In their stead, a cast of unmemorable supporting characters move the plot forward, but have no larger contribution to make.

That being said, go watch the movie. You will be entertained. You will spit out your soda in laughter, or you'll come close. But ten years from now, you'll be watching the first H&K, not the second.

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