Civil Procedure: I walked out of Civ Pro a little confused. The test was 2/3 multiple chioce and 1/3 essay. While the MCs went swimmingly, the essay seemed to be a bit of a mess in terms of the way it was written. I didn't talk about it with anyone else (nobody wanted to talk about it at all, understandably), but I'm under the impression that the place in time, trial-wise, from which you had to argue greatly limited the procedural options and foreclosed more than a few potential avenues of attack. If I'm wrong, I've screwed up bigtime. If not, I'm golden, since the rest of the test went well. Either way, I won't find out until January, so I'm trying to avoid thinking about it until then. Fat chance.
Anxiety Dreams: No taco fillings this time. Instead, I took the exam on an old Redbird No. 6 train. It could be worse, since I somewhat liked the Redbirds before the MTA took them out of service.
Torts: I'm not going to think about Torts for at least a few hours. I've prepared well so far, but most of my section is under the assumption that this will be the hardest final of the four, given the professor's proclivity toward law and economics theories that leave most students leaving lecture wondering what all those numbers on the board were about.
Gray's Anatomy: Was last night's episode a freakin' downer, or what? Even worse, it came after an extended edition of the unbearably treacly Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. Feh.
Music hotness: My top tracks this week are: Datarock, "Fa Fa Fa," The Walkmen, "Blizzard of '96," Ted Leo/Rx, "Parallel or Together?" and Wu-Tang Clan, "Method Man." Yeah, I kick it old-school on occasion. Speaking of which, be on the lookout for the triumphant return of DJ SOB.
My section has the hardest finals: one test of three hours, two tests of four hours and one of five hours. No other section even comes close. On the one hand, it's an endurance struggle and I'm on the verge of wearing out. On the other hand, the more material there is on the test, the less bad it is if you don't know one little part.
Jobs: I got my first rejection letter in the mail Saturday. In response, I posted it on my wall as motivation and sent out a few more resumes.
Secret Laws and 12(b)(6) motions: For you non-lawyer readers (all of you, I think), this is what civil procedure is all about: "Now, on appeal, [the Justice Department] is in the rather odd situation of having to accept for procedural purposes that such a secret law exists, even though it may not. Its argument is that, assuming such a law exists, Gilmore has no case." Get that? There may or may not be a secret law (one that you don't know you're violating because you can't be told about it), but for procedural purposes, the government has to admit its existence, which may or may not be violating the law, which we can't know, because it's secret. That is, if it exists at all, which we can't know, since if it's secret, we can't know about it. I think.
Tabbing: Everybody puts colorful tabs in their books to help them find information faster. I hate dealing with them, have trouble writing on them and generally don't find them of much use. With typing, reading and editing the real time-consuming parts of test-taking, I can't see how finding something in a book in two seconds instead of five is really going to help over the course of four hours.
Syriana: The script was sloppy, most notably with regards to the addition of clunky personal problems for the protagonists that did nothing to advance the plot. In addition, there is no Ikea in Rockville.
Weather: Not bad, given that it's been worse this month. Some well-timed flurries on Saturday covered the grey snow from Thursday with a fresh coat. It's grey again, so some more flurries will be nice.
Winter Break: I'll be in NYC until Boxing Day, after which, I'll be in D.C. Get in touch if you're in either of those places and I haven't already spoken to you about going out on the town.
Actual substance on this blog: Finals end Thursday. Be patient.
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