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April 30, 2006
Too hardcore for the working world
Congrats to Michael of Artiulatory Loop upon the payment of a deposit to the (no kidding) Rollins School of Public Health at Emory Univeristy.
TB Party Tonight!
UPDATE: I'm guessing about 3 people got that little joke. This should help you piece it together. Of course, it won't be funny any more once you've done so, but that seems to be a running theme.
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April 29, 2006
Does the Securities and Exchange Act of 1934 get you hot?
Furtive sex acts in the stacks and the study rooms? Not around here - there's work to be done. Still, the tension of all work and no "play" bubbles up through the cracks, helped enormously by the vernacular used in my Business Associations class, a boundless font of double-meanings. Today, I reviewed:
- The front-end-loaded two-tiered tender offer - a.k.a. a F.E.L.T.T.T.O. deal*;
- From the same case (Unocal v. Mesa Petroleum): "$54 in the back door in junk bonds";
- The Business Judgement Rule (a.k.a. the BJ Rule);
- Piercing the corporate veil (don't think too hard about this one);
- From a previous years' outline: "Duties During and After Termination of Agency: Herein of ‘Grabbing and Leaving’";
et cetera.
Sure, this isn't exactly highbrow, but it beats studying torts and smirking whenever a ruling mentions "duty."
* Somewhat related to the more precise "Front End Loaded Leveraged Alternative Tiered Initial Offer."
UPDATE: As soon as I finished writing this, I walked into a library study room to find notation for a discussion of T & A:
Stay focused, people!
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Video Break
Stephen Colbert v. Bill Kristol.
(via Crooks and Liars.)
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April 28, 2006
Freedom of Choice
So now that I'm done with the two scheduled things* this week, I have two more I can take at my leisure. This is new, since I've always had scheduled tests. Gripe as I may about the schedule, at least it was a constant I didn't have to worry about it. Supposedly a way to make my life easier, I'm instead stuck wondering whether to take the harder test first, or the easier test on the weekend, or whether I should anticipate burnout and plan around it accordingly, or whether I should just take them on Monday and Thursday, like the last two big things from last semester. Instead of studying, I'm deciding when to study. That wasn't probably how they intended to make it work.
* Sorry, still not jinxing.
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April 26, 2006
Powered by guilt
Last semester, I didn't really do the whole study group "thing," instead joing a loose conglomeration of fellow section-members to go over a specific test now and then. This time, I'm in a real group. We've been meeting for weeks now, setting deadlines for outline production, going over our product, taking practice exams and generally being good students. It's much easier to meet a deadline to get a certain amount of work done when other people know whether or not you've failed to meet it.
So I feel bad because these last few days, my tenuous attention span has melted to nearly nothing. I zone out constantly and surf the web while people are talking. I don't always know what question we're on. When I'm asked what I think, I sometimes say, "umm, your guess is as good as mine."
I'm very ADD. I always have been, and there's nothing I can do about it other than just to try extra-hard to stay on the ball, which is getting harder and harder the more finals drag on. The junk food and lack of exercise don't help either.
I feel bad about it - by now they have to know that I'm not always all there. Which I suppose is more of a motivator than not being completely there when I'm alone at the library. People say guilt is a bad thing, but it keeps me trying.
And on another note, how great would a Golden Krust pattie be right now? Really great, probably.
I think I've proven my point.
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April 25, 2006
My stab at getting published in McSweeney's
Words in my property outline that Microsoft Word does not recognize:
Rebuttable
Seisin (from the Middle English)
Reverter
Executory (from the Latin)
Bailee
privity
remaindermen
Estoppel
Fercockte (from the Yiddish)
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Summer is ready when you are
The Breeders, "Saints"
Man, that early '90s stuff looks so... dated! Still, the song itself holds up better than some of the other music I listened to in middle school.
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April 24, 2006
The world has turned and left me here... in the law library
I celebrated finishing today's big thing* by taking the afternoon off and enjoying the nice weather that I've been told the rest of the city has been enjoying for the last two weeks or so.
Upon leaving my neighborhood for points North, I was reminded why I thought Chicago was such a hospitable place to live back when I first visited here on a similarly warm spring day about a year ago. While I've been locked up in the library, every bar and restaurant in town has set up its patio area. People are eating and drinking outside. Trees are blooming. Attractive women are wearing less clothing. Cubs fans in their finery on the El to the game. Even the cops in their goofy checkerboard-trim hats are goofing off on the corner, behaving like this sort of weather is normal for Chicago. I knew that it wasn't a year ago, but seven months of winter really drove it home.
Eleven days from now, I'll get to enjoy it.
* I'm not going to talk about that thing, since I don't want to waste all the money I spent on anti-Jinx ointments, potions and futures contracts on some loose talk on the Internets. However, that hasn't stopped K and the other K, so you can read their posts if you're completely lost.
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April 23, 2006
The great tightening
Right now, I'm working on a quick-and-dirty version of my Con Law outline for easy refernce during the final. Here's an example of how it works on Griswold v. Connecticut:
Old bullet point:
Reasoning (Douglas): The state can’t bar the teaching of certain foreign languages or stop people from being educated a certain way under the First Amendment, and a similar principle applies to birth control for married couples. There is a “Penumbra” around the first amendment right to free association, combined with the 3rd, 4th, 5th and 9th that makes those constitutional guarantees real, by creating a “zone of privacy.” This is obviously a privacy issue.
New bullet point:
Douglas: 1+3+4+5+9 = The Pill
Yeah, I'm not losing anything important.
UPDATE: 13 weeks. Dozens of cases. 230 years of American history. One Justice nicknamed "Whizzer." The entire semester has now been compressed into two pages with a 9pt font and columns. Whether this is a good thing, I'm not sure.
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Sorted out for E's
Ever wonder what became of the iconic tilted-'E' outside of Enron's former world headquarters used in miles and miles of TV news b-roll? WaPo finds out (sort of).
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T Minus 1
My first final is tomorrow morning, which marks the beginning of the end of one of the roughest semesters I've ever had. On the plus side, I have had far fewer moments when I tried to concentrate in class, only to find that I had no idea what was going on. On the other hand, all the people (like me) who probably lost some style points on their finals last semester have their ducks in a row this time, making it harder to rely on the curve for a good result.
All told, the worry hasn't abated, but the solutions are a little clearer.
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April 21, 2006
Sure, blame some old, confused geezers who spend all day walking around in their robes
Our Con Law TA does a review session and gets pinned on an obscure point of dormant commerce clause jurisprudence:
"If I'm sounding like an idiot, it's not me, it's the court."
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April 20, 2006
Top Reading Period Jams
What I'm listening to to between study group sessions to keep the substantive due process from eating my brain:
Blues Explosion, "Mars, Arizona (DFA Remix)"
New Pornographers, "The Slow Descent Into Alcoholism"
Kenny Dope & Shaggy, "Gunshot"
Wire, "Mr. Suit"
Maximo Park, "A Year of Doubt"
Public Enemy, "A Letter to the NY Post"
MSTRKRFT, "Thank Me With Your Hands (Panthers Remix)"
Elvis Costello, "Waiting for the End of the World"
Ted Leo/Rx, "Army Bound" (2/06 Demo, available here)
You have your marching orders, it's up to you to make the mixtape.
Posted by rj3 at 9:44 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 19, 2006
Recess
I woke up this morning to Chicago Public Radio's education series segment on recess, "Pay to Play." Only one of five public elementary schools in Chiago have recess, which is more of a shame than many people think. From third to sixth grade, I remember more about pick-up touch football and other improvised playground games than anything that took place in a classroom. Sure, I know my fractions, but I can barely remember learning them. Miraculous Hail Mary passes and long touchdown runs, however - that's a different story.
Even at my advanced age, I find it hard to sit still each day without any sort of movement. When classes were in session, I had a nice long block of time to go out to the gym, but these days, my study schedule doesn't let me out until the day-job folks come back to take all the good machines.
Sure, a successful law student needs old practice exams, a solid outline and a smart study group, but perhaps a little recess could help as well.
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April 18, 2006
Invasion of the law students
My little secret to getting through outlining in a reasonably sane state is a nice little coffee shop far away from campus. The tables are big, so I can spread out my printouts. The WiFi isn't free, so I can't spend my time blogging, IMing or reading email. The people who work and hang out there are mostly artsy types who probably don't even believe in the private property I'm trying to understand. Instead of seeing friendly faces I want to commiserate with, it's a bunch of people who take one look at me and see their neighborhood going down the drain.
As live-and-let-live as SoHo, it's not. I kind of like it.
I haven't gone with any law students, although I have offered on occasion. But today, I show up with my computer and a bag full of books and printed-out notes, and I see half the tables covered in Westlaw printouts.
There goes the neighborhood.
I didn't recognize anyone, but that doesn't mean that it doesn't have the potential to be bad. Law students are law students partly because they like to talk. Combine that with the fact that we have nothing in our lives but law school this time of year and you have a formula for endless, boring conversations with strangers in the one place where I can go to focus on work, not talking.
Ugh, damn gentrification!
Posted by rj3 at 9:07 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
April 17, 2006
Music for law students II: Blackacre, Here We Come
Yes, I've gone completely batty. It's a quarter to nine and I'm here in the library trying to bring some old-school Manchester steez to the common law of Property. For those of you unfamiliar with the original, here's the YouTube video.
The Marketable Title Song
(To the tune of The Smiths' "Ask")
Title is nice but
some things can stop you
from using your new land just like
You'd like to
‘cumbrances tie
and some easements stop you
from transferring your deed just like
You'd like to
So, if there's something you'd like to buy
If there's something you'd like to buy
Then get title insurance, piece of mind.
The deed suffice?
adverse possession stops you
from quieting title to
what they sold you
So, if you’re in a notice state
then finding out’s just great
But if you’re in a race state, don’t be late.
Spending warm Summer days in courts
With a musty index
Finding covenants from ‘36
Ask me, ask me, ask me
Ask me, ask me, ask me
Because if it's not vested
it's estopp’ estopp estopp’,
estopp’ estopp estopp’ estopp’ estopp’
Estoppel will give us the letter
Where’s the chain of title - can't you read?
CERCLA makes it nasty – Here’s the deed…
So, ask me, ask me, ask me,
Ask me, ask me, ask me
Because if it's not clean
Then it's the fund the fund the fund
The fund the fund the fund the fund
Superfund will make it much better
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April 16, 2006
Music for law students
Listening to my iPod in the brief gap between some Con Law reading and a Business Associations meeting, I heard The Jam's "'A' Bomb on Wardour Street" and I thought I could probably enliven by Biz Ass studying and memorize some tricky hostile takeover rules by rewriting it as "Revlon Rules on Wall Street," a reference to Revlon v. MacAndrews & Forbes Holdings on selective dealing and fiduciary duties. But I get the feeling that not many people have heard that particular song or take that particular class. Besides, I'm not completely clear on Revlon duties anyway. Maybe later...
Instead, inspired by Cella, I wrote a song about Con Law, the other main bane of my existence at the moment:
Such Great Rights
(To the tune of "Such Great Heights" by the Postal Service)
I’m
thinking it's divine
that the Griswold court did find
that we could buy the pill and when
We screw we’ll have some piece of mind
And they
Cannot regulate
The embryos we make
Unless they show lack of burden
Like Casey, waiting for a day
True, it may seem like a stretch, but
Penumberas we will fetch
In terms of sex
And reproduction using substantive process
When you
are out there on the road
pulled over, you are loaded when they
cuff you, they will read your rights or else you can go home
(Chorus)
These days we can exercise such great rights,
'culture wars,' they'll say
But everything looks better than Lochner’s day,
Poor Filburn, he must pay...
I hope the court could stay
the same as Thurgood’s day.
But these appointments freak me out we could be trying witches
That frankly cannot fly.
The fundies they will come after our porno
When they get tired of spying on the liberals.
(Chorus)
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April 15, 2006
Short Attention Span Theatre
Despite my totally metal attitude this morning, I've grown increasingly scatterbrained since the day began. There's just so much stuff to distract me, right here where I'm supposed to be at my desk with my computer, that National League of Cities v. Usery can't hope to compete with. Blogging, for example. I see people work in the library from morning until night, and I wonder what they do - I'm as far along in my outline as they are, so I must be missing someting, right?
If I've learned anything (and that's a shaky proposition), it's that law school is about self-doubt. You're surrounded by very smart people and you spend your time reading cases written by very smart judges, the logic of which is often ripped apart by very smart professors. Since there is no graded material in most classes until the final, one can spend an entire semester in ignorant bliss or terror that your understanding of a concept is somehow mistaken. These fears are almost always unfounded, but try telling that to someone who is relying on 12 hours of exam writing to land a job at a good firm.
This doubt is why a letter that came in the mail today struck me as callous. The first line,
"I am writing to inform you that we have completed selection of our summer interns for the summer of 2006 and you will not be among those chosen."
Yes, I gathered that from the thin envelope. Don't you "regret to inform me" of that at least? Aren't you "impressed by my qualifications?" Don't you want me to try again next year? No, no and no. Obviously, none of those things have to be true, but we bother with niceities in the first place because we recognize that the people who have to read 50 rejection letters have it bad enough in the self-esteem department and it serves no end to make it worse.
Am I being whiny? Too confessional? Would you rather I talk about liquefied natural gas or the last album I pirated? OK. We're wasting time now, so let's make the most of it.
Shy Nobleman has an awesome video for it's single "Baby in the Rain." I put off Business Associations by watching it this morning.
This video for Bad Brains' "Sailin' On" is the hotness, as is the song, which may be the most positive of their non-rasta output.
I spent a few minutes this morning watching this too.
While we're trolling YouTube, let's watch something more modern and random: the guy from Art Brut doing a keg stand:
OK, back to regulation of states qua states.
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Hopeless (or not) in two senses of the word
1. I am a hopeless loser as a person because I played Trivial Pursuit last night with Property Flash Cards and had a good time.
2. I am not a hopeless loser as a law student because I did really well. Self-confidence feels a little strange after all these months in school.
This morning, I don't know how to feel.
Is ROCK OUT an emotion?
Posted by rj3 at 9:17 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
April 14, 2006
Phone bleg
It's official: my cell phone can't toggle down anymore. It served me well since December of 2003, when it was the latest and greatest thing in mobile technology, but its time has sadly passed.
I'm thinking about getting a RAZR, but I hear they are very easy to break and the user interface sort of sucks. What do you think?
(Please do not respond to this post by telling me that in China/Japan/Europe I could get a phone that plays MP3s, takes 8 megapixel pictures, simultaneously translates four languages and fits snugly in my ear canal. I know that and have still not moved to any of those places as a result.)
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April 13, 2006
Disconnection from real life index
Days since the last time I ran the dishwasher: 5
Days since the last time I did the laundry: 12
Days since my utility bill arrived and sat on my desk unopened: 4
Days since I've last gone to the supermarket: 15
Posted by rj3 at 11:35 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
April 12, 2006
Necessary/Sufficient
More tired than usual this morning, I walked into Starbucks with the intention of venturing beyond the usual venti coffee in favor of something with quite a bit more caffene. My schedule is packed with study groups, review classes and outlining and I already lost Tuesday to non-scholarly pursuits, so I marched up to the counter and asked for a venti iced latte "with TWO shots of espresso."
"Well, a venti already comes with three."
"Fantastic!"
An hour and nearly $4 later, nothing. No pep. No jitters, beyond the fatigue-related tenseness. I can't start my day without coffee, but it doesn't even wake me up anymore. Like some junkie, I'm just spending my money to maintain.
I remember when I first started drinking coffee, the way it made me feel - like the stuff was literally charging through my veins, invigorating me to an extent mere soda never matched, even when it used to give me a bit of a kick. Absent a long period away from the stuff, coffee is never going to give me the boost it used to, which is actually fairly sad. Where do I go from here? Red Bull? No, that stuff tastes nasty, may have bizarre side effects and keeps me from sleeping well. Tea? Perhaps, but it's only a matter of time before that wears off too. Proper sleep, a healthy diet and enough exercise? Ugh. It always comes down to the hard solutions, doesn't it?
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April 11, 2006
This week in stupid
You might not be able to tell by the picture, but what you're looking at is several firetrucks blocking a lane of Lake Shore Drive shortly before rush hour because some dumb schmuck's powerboat died in the Lake about 25 feet from the shore and can't get it working again. I'm in the library, and I wasted the last half hour watching them furiously paddle to absolutely no effect.
How are the firetrucks going to help? They've been here for 20 minutes, and nothing has happened other than the discovery of the trucks by the boating morons. They waved their paddles. Yes, they're there for you.
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April 10, 2006
The question is moot!*
Moot court oral arguments were supposed to be the best thing I will do all week. Sure, they don’t count for anything, tthey don’t have any opportunity for advancement and they don’t have winners and losers, but I very much welcomed the opportunity to argue in front of a few alums posing as judges.
See, I’m just not one of those people who have a problem with public speaking. Frankly, I’m better at speaking to a group of strangers in some sort of formalized setting than making conversation with individual strangers. If I could flirt with 20 women at a time from behind a dais, I’d have a date for this weekend.
Am I the best debater ever? Not by a long shot. I’m just confident doing it, which is more than I can say about most of the other aspects of law school.
I went fairly late in the moot court schedule, so I had already heard reviews of the process. Some of the judges were really hard, badgering students and really holding feet to the fire. I was very excited to spar. Sadly, I never got the chance. I thought I cleaned up, but the judges weren’t very tough, leaving me to speak far longer than my co-counsel during our practice run. They didn’t split hairs, try to paint me into a logical corner or even cite any cases that went against me (of which there are many). Their questions were general, and they allowed me great leeway to come back to the points I wanted to make.
It was too easy.
Next came the comments. I wanted them to rip me to shreds, tell me to do more X and not Y, or just generally say anything that showed they listened to what I said and understood it, whether they liked it or not. Instead, they praised everyone in very general terms and had very little to say about each of us on an individual level. I feel gypped.
* The title of this post comes from a 1984 episode of SNL where Jesse Jackson plays the host of a game show of said title. Contestants would get a question, start to answer it, then get interrupted by Jackson, who would inform them that the answer didn't matter in light of some pressing social justice issue. Good stuff.
Posted by rj3 at 8:26 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Squirm-inducing Hopkins students now a good thing
Sure, there are times when I'm a little ashamed to be a JHU alum, but there are the occasional moments when I feel proud to don the black and blue worn in past years by such luminaries as Spiro Agnew, Wes Craven and that guy who invented the chlorination of public water supplies. Since JHU's school unity is derived almost entirely from a mutual lack of school spirit, those moments don't come often unless they are somehow related to lacrosse or a mention in The Wire.
Today's moment is different. Some faceless first-year at SAIS made Bush twist in the wind with the sort of superior knowledge you can only get from going to a school that has its own satellite in space but doesn't have an actual student union.
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Sugar in your gas tank
For the 289th time... Hey look, the U.S. government has adopted another energy policy that is contrary to its interests to satisfy a small voter bloc:
[Brazil] expects to become energy self-sufficient this year, meeting its growing demand for fuel by increasing production from petroleum and ethanol. Already the use of ethanol, derived in Brazil from sugar cane, is so widespread that some gas stations have two sets of pumps, marked A for alcohol and G for gas.[...]
But Brazilian officials and business executives say the ethanol industry would develop even faster if the United States did not levy a tax of 54 cents a gallon on all imports of Brazilian cane-based ethanol.
Thanks, non-competitive domestic sugar producers!
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April 8, 2006
A hotter alma mater
So why is Sephora slapping the Hopkins name all over a new line of skin care goop? The Baltimore Sun, plays it straight without the obvious tasteless humor:
Hopkins says it isn't endorsing the Cosmedicine line, which is sold in Sephora retail stores, including one at The Mall in Columbia. But Sephora's Web site and marketing materials, which can include store window displays, promote the relationship.[...]
Cosmedicine's skin collection includes a $35 foaming cleanser and toner, an $80 skin-fortifying serum that contains vitamins, a $48 moisturizer and a $45 eye cream to reduce puffiness and soften lines.
The terms of the agreement between Hopkins and Klinger Advanced Aesthetics, developer of Cosmedicine, were not disclosed. It is part of a trend in which academic medical institutions increasingly look to the private sector to help pay for their research and medical missions. For the most part, that revenue comes from companies that license the discoveries of academic scientists as a means of developing drugs or medical devices.
I get it.
Hopkins=medicine
Medicine+cosmetics=very expensive cosmetics
very expensive cosmetics=kickbacks to pay for facilities to educate all us ugly people.
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April 7, 2006
Law School Haikou
One more week of class
It's mental waterboarding
Drowning in outlines
(feel free to add your own in the comments.)
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I can taste the taco bar from here
Tom at Zunta has the be all and end all post on the hipster/anti-hipster dichotomy in DC:
All that you and I really want is a good pint at a good price with good friends — and not to have to take a cab to do so. That goal can be achieved without constantly reminding everyone how much Mr. Days sucks. Because here's the problem: nobody likes being told their preferred watering hole is lame. Push those people far enough and they'll start looking for cooler pastures.
He's right. Cool is always a battle against attrition and entropy. The Second Law of Thermodymics applies to the social currents of twentysomethings. If you move to the newest hot neighborhood with a record collection that includes all the buzziest import B-Sides, you may feel secure in your superiority, but if you don't spend a lot of time and money keeping up, you'll wake up one morning to find that nobody is talking about Clap Your Hands Say Yeah anymore and there's a Whole Foods next door. A time eventually arrives when you get tired of sandbagging against the rising tide of apathy and you'd rather spend time on important stuff like work, relationships or law school. Soon, happy hour rolls around and you're not raising a stink about going somewhere you might hear O.A.R. or Destiny's Child. And you don't feel bad about it. There are more important things in life than avoiding being called uncool for going to the wrong bar.
In the end, PBR tastes the same as Miller Lite and warmed-over Joy Division is just as unimaginative as warmed-over Michael Jackson.
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April 6, 2006
A sad day in the Bronx
Yesterday, the City Council overwhelmingly voted to approve a new Yankee Stadium in the Bronx, paid for with $930 million in municipal bonds, which will do wonders for the city's S&P muni ratings.
The new stadium will be another baseball mall along the lines of money-losers like Camden Yards, which has cost every man, woman and child in Baltimore $14.70, even accounting for economic benefits (pdf). Contrary to all logic, it will seat fewer people. Of course, new luxury boxes will increase revenue, but your average bleacher creature or high-school hooky player will lose out (not that I ever belonged to either of those groups).
We've all heard the arguments against knocking down beloved functional stadiums - it's basically a transfer from taxpayers who pay interest on the bonds to super-rich team owners - but some justifications rise to a level of stupidity that transcend the normal day-to-day idiocy through which we all must wade:
Randy Levine, the president of the Yankees, said yesterday that the Council's approval showed that people all over the city, especially in the Bronx, believed in the project. "Hopefully when we get into the new building, we can win a few more World Series," he said.
Oh, so that's what's doing it. In 2000, Yankee Stadium was capable of hosting a World Series champion. However, something happened during the off-season (rusting, leaks, animal sacrifice, who knows) making it unfit for sporting success. Since then, no team of any type that calls the House that Ruth Built home can win a championship. It must be a rule of physics I missed in high school when I skipped out to watch a game back when it was possible to get in for $8.
The slow decline of the starting pitching rotation has nothing to do with it. Bernie Williams' age wouldn't have meant a thing if they could sell paninis in the stands. Blowing money on established mid-career stars instead of developing the future in AAA Columbus is simply a justification when we know that post-season problems are a direct result of the lack of Goldman Sachs executives drinking single-malt scotch in a climate-controlled enclosure high above the field.
Tell it to the Orioles. And the Giants. And the Brewers.
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April 5, 2006
Meanwhile, back in Baltimore
Forget The Wire, save space in your Netflix queue for Stop Snitching 2: Intimidation Boogaloo. The release may be a little late, given that the star has been denied bail.
Meanwhile, it's just another sunny day out on the streets of Charm City:
A woman, 51, was driving in the 3300 block of Woodbrook Ave. about 9 p.m. Monday when a brick thrown at someone else shattered the windshield of her car. The motorist was not injured.
Attorneys refuse to say whether they will use the "my bad!" defense.
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April 4, 2006
You learn something new every day
50 has a soft spot for Damon & Co.?
The first Gorillaz CD, titled after the band and made in collaboration with the producer Dan Nakamura (known as the Automator), included the pop hit "Clint Eastwood." The song was so popular that it earned an unlikely tribute: in his autobiography, "From Pieces to Weight: Once Upon a Time in Southside Queens," 50 Cent says that seeing the "Clint Eastwood" video inspired him to name his group G Unit, after Gorillaz.
All this time I thought it came from his experiences hanging out around Georgetown Law.
Posted by rj3 at 9:19 AM | Comments (20) | TrackBack
April 3, 2006
Strange things to feel good about
Part of being in law school is the nagging feeling that there is someone out there who is working harder than you. You can see them, bleary-eyed in the library at all hours, strutting around campus with five hornbooks sprouting well-organized sticky tabs, complaining about how few old tests a prof has on reserve. As an undergrad, I paid those people no mind, since they were mostly pre-meds and I was confident of my ability to master any class in a weekend of cramming.
Now, things are different. I share a curve with those people. Last semester left me in the middle of the pack, which is new for me (and probably everyone else here in a similar situation). This time around, I tell myself, I'm going to go all-out, study like a madman, hash it all out in small groups of really smart people, email profs with questions and otherwise hurl myself at the material twice as hard as last time - which is pretty hard.
How do I know how hardcore I am? I have no shampoo, no hair stuff, no shaving cream and nothing in my refrigerator except one Lean Cuisine and some strawberry jam. For some reason, this makes me happy. It's tangible evidence that I care more about the dormant commerce clause than breakfast.
Now, all I need to do is go home before the supermarket closes.
UPDATE: So, I didn't make it last night, but that was out of sheer laziness. I did, however, find some travel size stuff from Spring Break that carried me through today.
Posted by rj3 at 9:12 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Get a hold of yourself!
To be perfectly honest, I consider myself to be a piss-poor interviewee, and I have a record to prove it. I have a tendency to speak too fast, in too much detail, about whatever resume item the poor interviewer was dumb enough to ask me about. Since nobody wants to work with a motormouth, my interview success rate hovers somewhere on the wrong side of the Mendoza Line.
Still, as bad as I may be, I still have an advantage over the woman who was interviewing for a job at Starbucks this morning. In the middle of the morning rush, she sat with the manager and another barista (both of which are very nice people) and seemed to be chatting quietly amid the noise and mediocre World Music. Then, she starts to smile. The smile widens, then widens some more, past the point at which people smile for normal events.
I turn away to make my order then look back on my way out. The interviewee is furiously wiping tears from her eyes. "It's just so stressful!" she bawls. I've had intervieiws that made me want to bang against the wall for not putting my best foot forward (really, I can be quite easygoing), but I've never done that badly.
I haven't read much on the topic beyond the career center handouts on interview technique, but this much I know: no matter how bad your life outside the interview is going, it won't get any better if you lay out all of your dirty laundry in front of someone who may have a hand in improving your situation.
Am I being judgemental? Maybe a little. Still, when the world seems like it's crashing down on you from all sides, the only way out is to start digging. Welcome to finals season.
Posted by rj3 at 8:51 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 1, 2006
Want to raise your ranking? More singing and dancing!
A hearty "Bravo!" to the law school musical revue!
During a time of year where I'm barely able to keep up with my rather modest non-school duties, the people in this show put on an amazingly professional, very funny and sharp production. A parody of Back to the Future with elements of another half-dozen 1980s films of similar caliber (Top Gun, Breakfast Club, Say Anything, etc.), the premise revolves around what our law school was like in 1985, back when our professors and deans were in law school (suspending disbelief, of course, that they all went here). The song parodies struck a perfect balance between law nerdiness and obvious punnery. They even tweaked the script at the last minute to mention our new U.S. News ranking. All told, I wouldn't change a thing. If you didn't go last night, go tonight.
Of course, a special bravo to singing and dancing bloggers Kristine and Cella, who were awesome.
Posted by rj3 at 10:34 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack