Law School Roundup #205

I've pulled myself out of turkey and Christmas fudge stupor just for you, Internet. Here is Law School Roundup #205:

Recap: The holiday highlights, lost luggage, pulled back, and all. (Tales of a Tree Hugging 2L)

Signs of the times: On facebook, and relationship status. (Legally Questionable Content)

Good for the Soul: Snow-frolicking. (No. 634)

Also good: Christmas toys for good little girls and boys. And grownups. (oh hay, it's kk)

FTW: Lifehacks for Law Students (Online College)

Finals: Lesson learned? (Exhibit L)

Ready, set, go: Law school is like a marathon? ((In)Sanity Souffle )

Again? The universal "How is Law School" conversation, now with multiple personalities (Law School Ninja)

Look for next week's roundup at the Legal Underground, and then back here again in 2 weeks. If you want to be added to the blog roll, but don't see yourself up there shoot me an email and we'll get you on the wall of dis-honor. Or email me anyway. I love emails.

Kisses!

NB

Law School Roundup Number I-Forget.

Law School Roundup is up over at Beyond the Underground.

Pardon me while I return home to nap and turkey my way back into sanity. To be served with bubbles, pour generously.

Le sigh.

Upon my return:
1. Remind me to tell you about Darwin/Nobody Christmas this year. It was seven different flavors of awesome.
2. I wrote 37 pages and took two finals in 48 hours. I am awesome. I may also never be that productive, ever again, and now I can't remember my own name. So there's that.
3. Who wants to eat wings and drink beer with me at the airport today?! You know its going to be a while.

Home...stretch?

Blurg.

Expect blog darkness for the next few days. I have 65 pages to write and two finals to study for before Thurs/Fri. This is because NoSchool hates Christmas, and happiness. Please note that I am currently in the "my life is harder than anything, ever" phase of finals study, and will likely be unsympathetic to pleas for money, time, etc. for the next several days.

EDIT: Damn you and your adorable cancer patient children, St. Jude's Hospital. I do not need perspective! I do not need sympathy! I am powerless in the wake of your heartfelt mailings! Nooooo!

Seriously, though- this has been, hands down, the most difficult semester of law school so far. Rewarding, blah blah blah, but signficantly more challenging than any other academic semester. Maybe it's the journal, maybe it's the biting-off-more-than-I-can-chew with work/class/life, maybe it's the fact that every technological thing I touch turns to dust, but 3L year is not turning out to be the golf-filled vacation it was cracked up to be. Ooof.

A brief status update:

1. Intracorporate Conspiracy Paper: Sounds significantly smarter than it is. What I mean by this is, the topic sounds smarter than it will be, because Internet, as of 9:26 this morning, I have neither corporate, nor conspiracy. This makes me...how can I say this? Well and truly screwed. 40 pages. I have none.

2. Water Law Paper: Hate self. 15-20 by Saturday. Chances of my prospectus reading "Water: We All Want Some"? High. Thesis forthcoming, but elusive.

3. Admin Law: How could something so interesting be so godawful? 3 hour final, obviously. In other recent news, the Crunchtime for this is awesome...probably not helpful for you, dear reader, since half of you are winging your way home after this finals debacle, but if you are stuck in a bind this finals season: buy this book. Things I learned in class: We have agencies. They do stuff. Things I learned through the Crunchtime: Everything else.

4. Law of the Interwebz: 3 hours, etc. Grand festival of suckitude. Saw normally sweet Professor Interwebz on campus yesterday while checking in about another Bad Choice Project I have taken on, she gently reminded me that I "seemed on the ball" but "should really make this class my studying priority." This was not a scolding- this was a warning. Ef.


This semester by the numbers (to be continued):

• Number of trips to the computer shop: 4
• Number of trips to the computer shop that culminated in my cursing Lenovo: 3
• Trips to the mechanics: 3
• Pages written: 85 and counting
• Pages to be written: 65
• Chances of my taking seminar classes ever again: 5% (I am a slow learner)
• Journal pages edited: 429
• Units completed: 6
  
• Units to go: 12
  
• Family members who are getting gifts from NoSchool's bookstore: All.
  

Excuse me while I go freebase some Peets. Ready? GO!

Law School Roundup #203

Welcome to Law School Roundup #203. Here ya go...

Underneath Your Clothes: If only Shakira knew this exam-time tip (Starting to Melt).

Napping: One thing you will miss about law school (Virgin in the Volcano).

WTF: Marginally helpful margin notes (Laughing: With or at You)

Helpful: Do it like this, only different (Legally Questionable Content)

Ow: Finals. Soul crushing. (The Lovin Spoonful)

Words of Wisdom: Encouragement for test takers in the finals season (My Legal Fiction)

Roller Coasters: Like finals, they may make you vomit (No. 634)

Prestige Check: Yeah, get over that A thing. (i don't wear skinny jeans)

Gettin' Down in the 'Brary: People. Hold yourselves together, please. (oh hay, it's kk)

The Right Answer: Professors weigh in (The Rising Jurist)

So this is goodbye? Awkward exits (J.D.? Maybe.)

Care and feeding: Things to do for your first semester 1L (Really? Law?)

A late add, but I love it: Thoughts before a torts exam [murderous cows and Jack Daniels featured] (i don't wear skinny jeans)

Finally, the Moms in the Legal Profession Roundup is up over at Attorney Work Product. Now get back to work! It's finals week!

Look for next week's roundup at the Legal Underground, and then back here again in 2 weeks. If you want to be added to the blog roll, but don't see yourself up there shoot me an email and we'll get you on the wall of dis-honor. Or email me anyway. I love emails.

Kisses!

NB

And also, I'm being stalked by a fortune cookie writer.

Roommate and I got Chinese food this week.

My cookie said "Your hard work will soon pay off." Which is hilarious, because what if I had no hard work? What if I just have a semester's worth of watching old episodes of How I Met Your Mother and contemplating how much wood, exactly, a woodchuck could chuck?

I ate the last cookie from our leftovers this afternoon. It read "Your energy returns and you get things done."

Which is, you know, optimistic, given that I have 40 pages to write in the next four days.* But also slightly worrisome- have I now gone to the Chinese restaurant so often that I'm getting my own personalized fortunes? I think so.

Ooof. Homestretch. Obviously, I have a final scheduled on the last possible day, at the last possible time. You should expect plenty of moaning until then, polished off with several days of Kahlua and hot chocolate induced blog silence. Be prepared.


*WHAT IS MY PROBLEM!?! I have got to stop taking seminar classes, Internet.

On the eve of your first law school exam...

Here's the top 5 survival tips I gave my 1L Study Group. Given the number of referrals this blog has been getting for "fail out of law school" and "law school makes me feel stupid" and "study law school exams," I thought it would be appropriate to repost here.

Yes, I am killing two birds with one stone. I'm a 3L- what do you expect?

Without further ado, five things to remember on the night before your exam (before you start hyperventilating).

1. You will never be more prepared than you are right now. It may not feel like it, but I assure you- you can only be so ready for a law school exam. Review the night before your exam, but keep in mind that there are only so many things you can cram into your head at this point. Get some sleep, go for a run- maintain your sanity. Sane people are statistically better students than half-crazed sleepless maniacs (having tried both methods, I recommend the one where you don't get delirious).*

2. Get organized. 90% of test taking is just answering the question put in front of you. Read the entire test. Take notes. Know the question. When you're halfway through writing, go back and check: Did I answer the question? Did I give a clear roadmap to my answer? Am I actually taking the correct exam? If the answer is no to any of these question, go back and start again.

3. Not every answer is obvious: And that is ok. You didn't come to law school for 'obvious' or 'easy,' and you have the tools to figure this out. Some questions will be straightforward, some will seem big and overwhelming....this is natural. Some questions will also make you think your professor is drinking the crazy juice again. This is a universal experience. Start with what you know, and work your way up from there. This is just a puzzle. You have the pieces, and you'll be able to put them together- the important thing is to start with the manageable bits, and go from there.

4. If you encounter an unmanageable bit: take a deep breath. Read the question one more time. Go back to something else if you need to. If, after all of these things are done, it is still unmanageable, remember that it is unmanageable for many people. Do your best, and, if you do nothing else: stay calm. Next year, you can terrify your 1L study groups with horror stories of The Worst Exam That Ever Was.

5. After the exam, let it go. There's a very real temptation to rehash with your classmates. The trouble is (a) you can't know if their answers are more right than yours, and (b) you can't change anything about the exam now. Remember that your emotions (good or bad) after the test are not actually a good indicator of how well you did--there is a curve, and nothing about this is predictable. Don't psyche yourself out. Let it go. Embrace the uncertainty. Make room in your brain for Civ Pro.

6. Finally, find the humor. Here's an inevitable fact, 1Ls: taking law school exams sucks. This will not be fun. (I know, I know, everyone says its all puppies and kittens and lollipops, etc., etc. Lies!)

However, law school generally sucks a lot less if you can find something to laugh about. There is always humor. Law school is a bizarre, sadistic, initiation rite, managed by evil nerds and populated by socially awkward, type A personalities: it's basically the darkest, most boring sitcom even invented.

On a scale of "Genocide" to "Carrot Top naked" law school exams rank somewhere between "root canal without anesthetic" and "taking a mayonnaise bath with Guy Fieri." If you do not come equipped with a healthy sense of humor, the whole situation is going to be a lot worse. Guy Fieri is going to want to cuddle. Carrot Top will go on being Carrot Top. Basically, it's going to be terrible(r). Humor is your survival kit when all else fails.

Alarming numbers of law students graduate all the time- you will get through this, and boy will you have a story to tell when its over.

Get some sleep tonight, eat your Wheaties, and good luck, 1Ls!


*If you are a 2L or a 3L, this likely doesn't apply to you. I know you. We've been sitting together in the back of the class playing Farmville. This is definitely not the most prepared you will be, and it is certainly not the most prepared I will be. Let's go buy commercial outlines and cram like maniacs, mk? I'll trade you Tax for Admin Law.

But only the Flintstones ones.

I changed into sweatpants last night, and I have no intention of getting changed out of them until at least Friday morning (we're in the "reading period" part of finals season). I also won't be leaving my apartment- even if I were so inclined (and not buried under an unholy mountain of writing), my car is in the shop and it is snowing.

We haven't been grocery shopping in a while here at the Nobody household, and there's a distinct aura of pre-finals delirium around here. Furniture has been moved into Optimal Studying Positions, and the dishwasher is full of coffee mugs.

I had coffee with a candy cane for breakfast, and I'm looking long and hard at popcorn for lunch, rinsed down with the second batch of coffee, and maybe the last of the frozen blueberries out of the fridge. For dinner, it will be ramen (again), as Roommate is out of town, and there are no Chinese restaurants that deliver to my godforsaken neighborhood.

My parents sent me an "are you still alive?" package this week. It contained (a) a note from my mother, and (b) Christmas socks. My family, since I've gone off to law school, has been expressing their affection for me in holiday footwear, to the extent that I can now make it through most of Advent without doing laundry.

The socks in question have little red nosed reindeer, an obvious choice for the holiday season. Each sock, however, also features a trio of reindeer butts, a less obvious choice. But clearly my mother knows me, because reindeer butts = hilarious. In my world. Shut up.

See?

I do not know what to make of that, except to note that one set of butts is on the inside ankle of a sock, and one is on the outside ankle of the other sock, so either I got a pair of two right-footed socks, or I'm maybe putting them on wrong. Which would just figure, wouldn't it?

Anyway. I think my mother is just trying to do her mom-caretaking thing from thousands of miles away, which makes me feel a little guilty about the current state of my diet, sleep schedule, and apartment.

Mom, I promise: I am taking my vitamins. And I will be home soon.

xooxox

NB


Please note: I do not actually have cankles. Thanks.

Law School Roundup #202

The 202nd Law School Roundup is up over at Beyond the Underground.

Check back here, same great place and time, for #203.

This is not a huge mistake.

If you are like me, your family is getting nothing for Christmas, and they're going to like it, because you have Shit To Do.

Good news!

This morning, Amazon's GoldBox deal is all three seasons of Arrested Development for $30. Which is basically an awesome deal. And if I didn't already own it, you should buy it for me- but I do. So now I have two sets, because you don't pass up that sort of opportunity.

Also, if you are not a law student, but you know/love/feed a law student, this is an excellent gift idea.

This has been your holiday shopping PSA. See? Thanks, But No Thanks: Saving you time in finals madness since 2006.

[Also, I'm not getting paid to shill for Amazon or Ron Howard (although: Ron, call me. I will so preach the Arrested Development word for you). So, you know- you can trust my enthusiastic "OMG GO GET THIS RIGHT NOW."]

Carry on.

Hilarious, Fate.

The irony of the fact that today is the anniversary of the 21st Amendment and the start of my self-imposed "No Booze, No Fun, No Social, Just Law School" epic writing weekend is not lost on me.

Conclusion: Law school kills fun. And freedom.

Sometimes, Finals Make Me Surly.

And when I get surly, I take it out on other people. And when you combine finals ennui with surly with feisty, and then send me to class, it's basically just a big mess.

Which is why things will happen like just now, when I came to my timorous new baby-Prof's class (he of the tremendous political correctness and the constant apologies).

If I am feeling the way that finals inevitably make me feel, I am bound to decide, for lack of anything better to do, that I will try to see how often I can compare hookers and blood donors in an academic conversation.

And then, I will further enlighten the class by seeing how many times I can use the word "semen" in a sentence.

And then I will close with some really charming historical reference that makes everyone uncomfortable, like "I mean, seriously. There was a Holocaust."


And that's why finals are more fun when you're in class with me. Because I'm a 3L.

Tuesday: Better than Monday, 7 days a week.

Today, my prof who assigned The Paper From Hell came into lecture and announced, apropos of nothing, that The Paper From Hell Which Is Oh Shit Due In 7 Days is actually The Paper From Purgatory, and we'd all be getting an extension to the last day of the grading period. Which is 10 days later.

(Yes, I did expect leprechauns and unicorns to come dancing out from behind the podium at this juncture. No, they did not.)

Then, I discovered that they make Dippin' Dots (knockoffs) that you can actually buy in the grocery store. Wheeeee!

Then, Roommate and I gave Sofa the Cat some catnip and ate delicious mac 'n cheese.

Next, I am going to campus to write like the wind, and eat free popcorn.* Sometimes, you have to give thanks for the little things.


EDITED TO ADD: Also? Darwin visited this weekend, and in the process of being The Best Boyfriend Ever, he left margarita mix, tequila, and chicken strips in my freezer. Because he knows me, and he loves me, and he believes that I will survive finals season and be reinstated in my rightful position, drinking margaritas on the couch and planning my Food Network coup once again. And also because he is The Best Boyfriend Ever. See above.


*Have you noticed that 80% of my Awesome Things are food-related? I have.