Final Post

7.57 pm EST
It's been a fun three years. I started this blog as a place where I could post about law school in a way that wasn't, shall we say, appreciated on Nuts and Boalts. It's been fun writing about law school, but this was never intended to carry past that. I thought about continuing the blog as a lawyer instead of a law student, but I suspect I'll do enough legal writing at work to have my fill.

Instead I'm migrating platforms - and topics. You can find me at Manhattan for Beginners, this California girl's attempt to understand that strange island we call New York.

4.34pm, EST
It is decidedly autumn. Last week was Indian Summer, green trees and T-shirt weather. This morning I woke up to the wind blowing through the trees and the first scattering of leaves on the ground.

I am, for the indefinite future, in Boston at my parent's house. We flew out to NY the second week in September to find an apartment. We found a place that we loved the first day we looked. It was in the East Village, within spitting distance of the river, in a really cute building with a super who clearly took great care of the place. Plus, it was a true two bed and it had a patio. That was Wednesday, September 8th.

We spent the next three days gathering the 350+ pages of documentation they wanted: bank statements, credit reports, cell phone bills, electricity bills, tax returns, W-2's, pay stubs... The agent at the building told us on Thursday, when we brought in a deposit to take the apartment off the market, that we would know by Friday when we had our interview. At the interview, she told us there was actually another two levels of approval we had to go through (her supervisor and the city) because there was an income cap on the apartment. On Monday, after she'd told our broker that there was no way we wouldn't be approved, as we were driving to the airport to head back to SF, she called and told us were weren't approved because we made too much. Considering that I haven't been employed all year, and A only worked until May, we thought that was ludicrous.

The worst part was that they had all the numbers they needed the very first day, on the application forms. My theory is that they jerked us around for five days in hopes that we would get so frustrated we'd walk away and leave the deposit. The company, by the way, is gonofee.com. In case you're wondering who to stay away from.

I stayed in NJ with his parents another week, and we ended up signing a lease for the first apartment we'd looked at on Friday the 17th, a week after our interview with the place in the East Village.

A called the moving company to get our stuff sent out Monday. It took until Wednesday (9/22) to get insurance requirements straightened out with them. It is now Wednesday again, a week later, and they still haven't put our stuff on the truck. I am, to put it mildly, ticked.

My parents have been reminding me that at least I don't have two small children with me, like my mom did when they moved from Dallas to Boston. This is true. But, having just gotten off the phone with the woman at the moving company who has, by her own admission, no idea when a truck will be there to ship our stuff out and no idea how long it will take to get to New York, it's hard to feel like this could be much worse.

2.50 pm
I start work in 46 days. It sounds like a long time. It's going to fly. I spent a good part of today going through the rental homes on Long Island we're going to check out. We need some sort of schedule, because people want to know when we'll be there, but it can't be too rigid because I have no idea how long it takes to look at a house when someone's there to show it to you. When my mom and I looked at venues, they were almost all rented out, so all we could do was look from the street. It made the whole business go by very fast.

September must be some sort of cut off, since there were a fair number of people who said they didn't have tenants and would love to meet with us to show the house. There are a few I really like, but for the most part I'm trying not to make up my mind about anything until we 1) see the property and 2) verify that the owner realizes this is for a wedding and 3) make sure it's really in our budget. The "W" word has a strange effect on home owners - either the house is suddenly no longer for rent, or the price goes up exponentially. Understandable, but it makes the search frustrating.

2.57 pm
A and I are going to a cousin's wedding next weekend. Having failed to find seersucker in the Bay Area (we were informed it was acceptable garb for the rehearsal dinner), A did the next best thing and bought linen pants. White linen pants. With an orange shirt. He looks very dashing, but it gives the impression that he ought to be on a beach in Cuba with a mojito in his hand rather than standing on the steps to our apartment modeling.

I'll be wearing my $10 Asby-stolen-goods-market dress, which ended up costing $40 once it had been drycleaned and hemmed. Still not a bad price, considering that it's absolutely gorgeous and fits superbly.

This will be the first wedding A and I have gone to together. Strange, really, since we've been together quite a bit at this point. On the other hand, as someone pointed out to me this morning, who'd have thought five years ago that two kids living in the ghetto in St. Pete would be in Manhattan and getting married five years later.

4.29 pm
Shortbread crust in the fridge, inexplicably chilling before being baked. Something to do with the consistency of the butter, I'm sure. We're doing dinner for a few people tomorrow night, and it seemed to make sense to get that out of the way before A takes over the kitchen to cook. I'm trying to sell him on the idea of a larger, backyard barbeque type gathering the weekend before I leave. A chance to say goodbye and all that. Also, we'd be remiss if we didn't take full advantage of the gorgeous house we're living in.

4.32 pm
Now that the bar is over, I've transitioned into full-swing wedding planning. The theory is that once I start work, I'll be at the office 12 hours a day with no interest in determining guest lists or seating charts or table linens when I get home.

A and I are slowly starting to figure out what we want and what we can actually afford. We're out in Manhattan and Long Island a little later in the month to take a look at apartments (you'd be surprised what you can't get for $3000 in the city) and wedding venues. A wants to do it in a house, which means renting from someone on the beach, which has turned into probably renting from someone out at the very end of Long Island. The plan is to spend two days and a night out there, and with any luck by the time we fly home we'll know where the wedding will be. If not, it's back to the rental by owner sites, and another mass batch of emails and spreadsheeting.

9.03 am, PST
On the plane, Albany bound. there's WiFi, but I'm blogging into Evernote with plans to upload later. Less distraction that way.

This is the first flight where I can remember not bringing books or embroidery or something to keep myself occupied on the plane. The goal is to work through my MBE flash cards this flight, then do practice questions on the next. 5 hours to Charlotte, an hour layover, then 2 to Albany. And me a captive audience.

10.20 am
3 down, three to go. An hour and a half of flight left. In the queue: real property, torts, and crim. (Query: why does the spell checker recognize torts, but not the name of the program I'm using?)

The people on either side of me are both reading Stieg Larsson novels. I have 'Girl with the Dragon Tattoo on my iPod. I feel like such a groupie. I bought it after seeing the novel in the bookstore - in several bookstores actually, when the hype was still in promo mode. The conflict between wanting to read the next two novels and hating to read what everybody else is reading...

11:37 am PST/2:37 EST
At least I am guessing we've crossed into the Eastern time zone, since we're only about 30 minutes out and we're starting to descend. Only real property left, and definitely not a case of saving the best for last.

I go from feeling confident that I know enough to bullshit the rest to feelings of certain and impending doom. Like when it takes me an hour to get through evidence which was, when I started studying in May, the subject I knew best. The terrifying suspicion that there's no way I can contain all the legal niceties in my head - that they will jumble and leak until I am left with nothing but a fleeting memory of res ipsas and in personams.

Gulping Air

4.18 pm
Ran my first 9 minute mile yesterday. It was also the first mile I ran non-stop. Today, we did about a mile and a quarter non-stop, and then a two-block sprint uphill. Pandora kicked up one of my favorite songs, and it felt incredible to stretch out my legs and fly. Until, of course, I got midway up the hill and began gulping air.

I thought about doing track in high school. The coach for the track team asked me to be on the team in 8th grade. I didn't, because I couldn't stand the thought of all that running. Junior year, a friend informed me that I would be playing lacrosse with her. Probably the best part of high school. The joke was on me though, because we did more running for lacrosse than the track kids ever dreamed of.

4.18 pm
I'm at the point where I just want to take the darn test tomorrow and I want the whole month of August to keep studying.

I am off the paced program. I have been reliably informed that I am crazy for even contemplating sticking to it. I have a pile of index cards, color coded and arranged by subject, and an even bigger pile for all the subjects I haven't made flash cards for yet. Sometimes I am breathing. Mostly I am gulping air.

8.12 pm
Exactly two weeks until the Bar Exam. Which means that exactly two weeks from now, I will be asleep in a hotel room in Albany after having completed the first day of the test. I should feel excited that I'm going into the home stretch. Instead I feel a numb sort of terror mingled with utter despair.

I stumbled upon this last night, and watched it with the sound on this time. It may become my mantra for the next two weeks.



8.22 pm
I am looking forward to August. Here is my list of things I plan to do after the bar:

• Tan the back of my legs (I have the inverse farmer's tan - the fronts are tan and the backs are white as a dead fish)
  
• Read "The Help"
  
• Learn enough French to pronounce menu items without embarrassing myself
  
• The novel
  

Yes, They're &!*%ing Sweet Potatoes

9.12
The restaurant I used to work in did not attract the high-caliber, discerning diner. Mostly, we got people who only went out to eat a few times a year, for special occasions, and therefore didn't know what they were talking about when they complained. Like the woman who got mad at me for bringing her a glass of sparkling wine (which, by the way, was what she ordered) because "sparkling wines aren't white wines." Lady, have you looked at a glass of champagne lately? My favorite is the one who wanted to complain to the chef because her sweet potatoes weren't orange. The chef came out, listened to her rant, tried to explain that only yams were orange, and even brought sweet potatoes out of the kitchen to show her the difference. No dice.

All this is to say, BarBri is making me feel a bit like the chef at the moment, standing at the table with sweet potatoes in my hand and hearing MPQ1 tell me "Nuh-huh, those aren't sweet potatoes, and I knows them when I sees them." I mean, really. Isn't there a line between "the bar examiners are going to try to trick you" and "absolutely ridiculous"?

If the bar examiners need to resort to calling a yam a sweet potato, then I think it's fair to question the utility of the whole exercise.

6.44 pm
A and I drove up to Napa today in search of sunlight and wine. We found both, in ample quantities.

About 15 minutes outside of Napa, we turned off into a Sunday Flea Market. In between the faded DVDs and the table of rusty power tools and the frilly polyester first communion dresses were tables heaped with tamarind and dried chilies. We might have been the only white folk there.

Then up to Sattui, where we discovered that the wine we'd come up for had been discontinued and that the last bottles had been sold about 2 days ago. We consoled ourselves by tasting a few of their whites - none of which came close to the bottle we'd wanted - and buying a Syrah.

We also went by Grgich, which is run by the man who produced the bottle that beat the French reds in the Paris Tasting of 1976. The wines were pricy, and quite frankly, I wasn't that impressed. But the Chardonnay... it was delightful. We bought a bottle and will drink it on a suitably special occasion.

Then back towards the Bay, taking in a car show and the Napa Outlets along the way.

6.58 pm
We are in the fog. I can see wisps blowing through the tops of the trees. It hasn't quite descended yet to brush against my window, but it will.

It was good to take a day off, just the two of us. I suspect that my free time is going to become more and more tight as we get closer to the bar. Next week is the last week of lectures (only 3!) and then it's about 2 weeks of self study. Two weeks which will be a frenzy of memorization and outlines and perhaps even flashcards.

And then it will be over, and it will be August, and if the fog deigns to clear I will finally have my summer.

3.51pm
After two days, the sun has finally broken through the fog. I can almost see the beams of sunshine fighting to come through the window. I know some people find it easier to study when its gloomy outside, I suppose on the theory that they'd spend the day indoors anyway. I try to do most of my studying out in the garden, though, and that only works when there's sun. (For those of you unfamiliar with Bay Area weather, July is not summer. Note even close. Trust me on this one.)

4.17pm
And it's gone.

I discovered Bar Bri 1.5 today. I guess there is something to be gained from trolling ATL after all. Someone mentioned it to me yesterday, while we were at the break between sections of the simulated MBE.

On which topic, all I have to say is that my brain still feels scrambled. I went through and self-graded, which was something of an exercise in frustration. I haven't read through any of the analysis yet - I'll save that for this weekend, while I'm watching all the lectures. I haven't gone through to see if the questions I thought I knew were the ones I got right or the ones I bombed yet, either. Again, saving it for the weekend. I figure that will be less depressing, since I'll have had a whole week to recuperate.

4.30pm
Small dog is gone for the next bit, back to his family. It was somewhat strange to wake up this morning and not hear his nails clicking on the floor. He was given a bath yesterday so he'd be clean for them, and then got some quality time with the blow dryer because it was so miserable outside that left me covered in dog fur and him still not completely dry. For a small dog, he's got a lot of fur. A swept the house this morning and there was enough dog hair in the pile to stuff a small pillow. Which is amazing, considering that he swept the whole house about 3 days ago, and I did the bedroom day before yesterday. I wouldn't be surprised if dog fur continued to accumulate in his absence.

10.09 am
I took a day off yesterday. It felt wonderful. Breakfast in bed, afternoon at the beach, evening of doing nothing at all. Today, of course, it's back to the salt mines, and tomorrow is 6 hours of Scantron-bubble-nightmare.

In some ways, I'm in shock that June is over. I feel like the whole month flew by without bothering to wave on its way out. Something tells me July will be much the same. I haven't looked ahead yet to see if there are any more scheduled days off. Somehow I doubt that there are.

10.09 am
I found a meditation chimer online. Several of them actually, but I only downloaded the 15 and 20 minute ones. I've been trying to get down to the meditation group at school Tuesdays, but have only made about 2 in the last month or so. Which leads to the problem of my trying to meditate and having trouble actually meditating. Too many surface thoughts skittering across the surface of my mind that refuse to be swept away. It's amazing how much clutter develops in the head, and even more amazing how persistent it is.

11.29 am
A shower and a phone call with a broker later, and it is more than time to get the day started.

6.30 pm

Found a great typo in my property notes today:

ANALYSIS OF RAP PROBLEMS
1. Determine which future interest has been created by the conveyance
2. Identify conditions precedent to the vesting of the future interest
3. Find a measuring life
4. As if we will know, with certainty, within 21 years of the death of the measuring life

Which really seemed to sum up real property in a nutshell: as if we could ever know anything about the subject with certainty.

I've found it best to budget a whole day on the weekend for the "cumulative review". Trying to memorize this much material makes my head hurt. Going through the subjects that are related to each other one after another seems to help, as does taking my time. The goal: to get each set of notes down to 5 or 6 pages, which I then print out and attempt to completely memorize. Right now I've got Agency/Partnership, Torts, and Con Law down to size. I'm feeling hopeful that Crim, Corporations, and maybe Contracts will cooperate for next week. It's all a matter of not deleting things from my notes until I'm absolutely sure I can remember them either spontaneously or with only a brief prompter.

7.00 pm
The church bells are ringing 7. Not exactly sure how that happened. Still have 2 and a half subjects to go through. One of which is still in "full" form, meaning that this is the first weekend since the lecture and it hasn't been at all summarized yet. Not that I copy the handouts verbatim, but...

If I can get everything done by the time it gets dark, we're going up to Chabot to look through the telescopes tonight.

8:35 pm
Crash and burn. I think I finally hit a BarBri wall. Which is a little bit funny, since the "intro" to this morning's lecture was a ten minute discourse on how instead of pushing ourselves too hard to get all the practice essays and MPTs done (because there will be plenty of time to do those in the two weeks we don't have lectures), we should be sleeping with the essay and MPT books on our nightstands so we can read them before bedtime.

WTF?! Mixed messages, much?

At any rate, I put in 12 hours yesterday and 12 hours the day before and was at 10 today when my brain stopped functioning. I stared at Essay # R-32 and couldn't for the life of me figure out what the questions were asking.

So I shut the book and decided I was done for the day, ignoring the voice in the back of my head that said I should go ahead and keep working, just so I would know what it was like to freeze up on the bar exam.

It is June 22. Over a month to go. Plenty of time to practice freezing up and freaking out. For today, I'm done.

4.31 pm
Week 5 of BarBri, and I started out behind. Only an hour or so, but it wasn't the way I wanted to go into the week. The problem was that I didn't do as much as I should have Saturday, because I had reached the point where repeatedly banging my head into a brick wall was sounding preferable (and more productive) than studying any more. That left Sunday to catch up, which would have worked had we not gone out to dinner with A's mom and then left my purse at his sister's house and had to go back for it. C'est la vie. I finished up at 10.00 last night with everything but one MPT outline done.

4.43 pm
I am blogging as I type up my notes, which I really shouldn't be doing, but this outline is driving me crazy and I need something as a form of distraction. Most of the lecturers have been alright so far - some have even been really good. Today's just didn't work for me. I'm sure she organized her lecture handout, but it's not a form of organization that makes any sense to me.

Small dog is curled up on the floor asleep. He didn't get his walk this morning, so he's spent most of the day bounding around, running back and forth and up and down the stairs. He's several feet away, which is nice. Usually when he lays down on the floor near me, he's either under my desk at my feet or right behind my chair. It's sweet, but it makes it difficult to move without running over him.

6.02 pm
Small dog has moved closer to my feet. Done with outlining my notes for today. My reward? A short walk with small dog, and then another 4.5 hours or so of work. A is making roasted bell pepper stuffed with lentils, curried cauliflower and sausage, ginger, and lemon-grass for dinner. Small pleasures.

In the Peloton

12.43
Could it be that studying for the bar exam is actually making me less neurotic? As strange as that sounds, I'm thinking it might be the case.

Let me explain. I'm definitely what you would call a "Type-A" personality. A card-holding member of the "if you want it done right, you have to do it yourself" school of thought. And while I don't consider myself an overachiever per se (I stuck with 2 extracurriculars in law school per year, thank you!), I firmly believe that if something is worth doing, it's worth doing perfectly the first time around.

This is the kind of mentality that sets you up for disaster when studying for the bar. Because let's face it, unless you've got a photographic memory or are willing to go without sleep for three months straight, there's no way you can learn everything that's going to be tested. After all, if they made it easy, there wouldn't be any bell curve.

This is where the less-neurotic part comes in.

For the first three weeks of class, I was banging my head against the wall, frustrated that I was missing issues or rules or tiny little points that hadn't even been in the CMR or the lecture. Going over the answer for the first essay we turned in for grading was definitely a low point. Although I was pretty sure I'd get a third of a point or two for IRAC'ing, that was about all I thought I'd get.

This week - I've been letting things go a little bit more. Instead of trying to grade my essay outlines, I've been focusing on reading the fact pattern, sitting back and looking for the big picture, and then concentrating on making sure I hit the issues in the answer.

But most importantly, I've adopted a peloton mentality. You can't ride in front the entire race, not even if you're Lance Armstrong. The middle of the pack is a pretty good place to be.

3.04 pm
Somehow I have reached 3 in the afternoon with only an hour left of work. It's a nice feeling, especially since I got a late start today. The dog wanted walking, and ignoring his whining for two and a half hours while I listened to my lecture seemed rather cruel. So we went up and down the hills, and then up again, enough to tire him out enough that he's spent the rest of the morning alternating between napping and weaving around my feet like a kitty cat. We might take him to the farmer's market this afternoon, too. I'm pretty sure they don't allow dogs near the food, but I think they're ok on the periphery.

3.10 pm
I've adopted a new approach to BarBri.

I've started listening to the lectures in the morning. Before, I was doing them in the afternoon or at night, and generally was too exhausted and brain dead when I finished to tackle the "after class" assignments. This was great the first day of the week, but then I would end up feeling like I was behind a day all week - until the weekend, where I would spend all weekend working to catch up. Leaving myself a) exhausted and b) frustrated and continuously feeling "behind". Since the lectures are up by 8 am Pacific, I've been doing them first thing in the morning (after breakfast and a quick read of the newspaper). It's only Tuesday, but it seems to be working.

I've also started going over my outlines - just a quick refresher - before doing practice essays or MPQs. I know, I know, you can't use the outline on the test. But - if reading it before I do the essay gets me that much closer to getting the rules in my head, I figure I'm in a better place. It doesn't do me any good to look at the book thinking, "I know that rule" (or even worse, "I don't even know what they're asking"). Because reading the rule in the model answer is helpful, but typing it myself is even better.

4.50 pm
Sunday afternoon on a gorgeous summer weekend, and I've spent almost all of it inside studying. Which, at this point anyway, is beginning to seem like a futile endeavor. I wouldn't mind my entire summer being consumed by Conviser and NYT and really bad puns if I felt like I was making any progress. But the fact is, three weeks into Bar Bri, I feel stupider than ever. I've gone from being able to spot the issues on essay questions with reasonable proficiency to not even having a clue what's being tested. I've been told to use common sense when answering the MBE questions if I come across an unfamiliar point of law - but my common sense seems to have no relation to the bar examiner's common sense.

The frustrating part, is I've never had this much trouble studying before. Once I figured out that the key to law school exams was to do a bunch of practice problems, I did fine. Sure, I made outlines, but I rarely used them during exams - the process of doing practice essays was what made me memorize the law. Here? I feel like I'm running a marathon. Through the woods. Off trail. blindfolded. No matter how much I study, no matter how many obscure points of law I think I'm memorizing - there's another five that I don't know.

On the upside, at least I'm not trying to take care of last minute wedding details, too!

8.45 am
We lost a fish in the earthquake Saturday night. When I got up Sunday and fed them, Picasso wasn't looking too good. All huddled in on himself, not moving, not eating. He looked all beat up - fins ragged, great big spots on his scales like someone had been beating him up. It looked like every blood vessel in his tail had exploded. By the time A came home he was in bad shape, so he took the fish out of the water and sent him off to the great fishtank in the sky. It was kind of sad.

We think the rocks shifted around during the quake, and Picasso was just in the wrong place. Could be he got beat up by the other fish - but he was hurt so badly that I don't think the other guys did it. For all that they're mean, nasty fish, they play pretty nice with each other.

8.53 am
In happier news, I'm trying once again to get an herb garden growing this summer. Last year we had the herbs inside, and it was so darn hot they just up and wilted. Year before that we were house sitting in Berkeley and put the planter outside, where a friendly squirrel came and dug up all the seeds.

This year I've got oregano (I think - I either planted oregano or watercress, but I'm pretty sure it was the oregano), basil, rosemary, sage, coriander, and tomatoes. The last one isn't exactly an herb, but home grown tomatoes are definitely a goodness.

Here's the seeds when they first started popping their heads up.  This was about five or six days after I planted them.












It helps to put them in plastic, especially since it's still a little chilly.

This morning, I realized that as soon as the seed casings fell off, I wouldn't have a clue what was what until they'd grown a bit more.  Which is alright for the most part, aside from the fact that planting tomatoes in a small pot with the basil would be a bad idea and that sort of thing.

9.26 am
We had a little earthquake last night. Only about a 4.0, but it was two or three miles up the road. I was in bed, half asleep, when there was a jolt. Well, I sleep next to a 30-gallon fish tank, and the first shake was hard enough that I wasn't going to wait around for more. I was out of bed, over the couch, and almost at the doorway in about half a second. At which point it was clear that this was not, in fact, the big one, leaving me slightly embarrassed and more than a little impressed at managing to get out of bed that quickly without having caught an ankle in the sheets.

9.33 am
BarBri started last week. It's a little surreal. We go into a room in a convention center in Oakland to watch a four hour DVD, all of us pretty much writing down verbatim the entire lecture. I got up at one point to throw something away, and as I walked back to my seat, I only saw one internet window open.

The lectures are all available online, so we've been losing people. The first day I think 30 or 35 showed up. The next day it was about 25. 20 or so the next. And there was a kerfluffel with the DVD (BarBri said they mailed it, the building said they didn't have it) last class, so I suspect Tuesday will be even slimmer pickings.

I'm still trying to decide whether it's worth going out to the class or if I can do it at home. I was really hoping to get a small group together, but it seems like people would rather do it on their own schedules. Understandable - but I think in about two weeks it would really help to have some moral support.

9.38 am
We move to Berkeley in a week. The living room is almost entirely boxes. The closets are almost empty. There are four pots that we are taking to Berkeley, a few spatulas, a whisk, and the dishes we'll be getting rid of in the kitchen. The bookshelves are almost bare. It's amazing how much accumulates when you live in one place awhile. Even more amazing is how you can use something twice in five years, pack it, and then discover, once it's boxed in and taped shut, that you now need it.

3.32 pm
The boy and I ran our first ten minute mile on Monday. More like 9 minutes and 58 seconds, but who's counting? By Tuesday we were back to eleven minutes miles. I don't even want to talk about this morning's run.

Monday morning I also had a piece of carrot cake before we went out running. Just a small piece - enough to keep me reasonably not hungry until we had gone running and showered and washed the mountain of dishes in the sink and made real breakfast.

I suspect there may be a connection, but I'll have to make more carrot cake in order to test the validity of my theory.

4.11 pm
I am almost done with law school. My last final is finished (and with any luck, won't be graded until after Commencement), and my final paper is about done with the research stage and ready to be outlined and sent off to the professor for comments over the weekend. I will start writing Sunday or Monday, and with any luck be finished by the time the family shows up next week. If not, I will send them all off to Alcatraz for the day while I frantically finish the darn thing.

I am using almost my entire allotment of graduation tickets. This amazes me. I don't want to sit in the sun for three hours listening to people I don't know tell my graduating class how awesome we are and how much we're going to need that awesomeness in the shrinking-by-the-minute legal market. (I skipped my undergrad graduation for this reason and maybe missed hearing Eckerd's only famous graduate speak - but that's neither here nor there.) It amazes me that friends and family actually want to come to this thing. Of course, I did promise them all beer at Triple Rock afterward...

11.10 am
It is the last week of classes. I have one final, one paper, and one course evaluation to turn in before I am done with law school. This is very surreal. Three years of my life cannot have gone by that quickly... can they? When I finished undergrad, it was with a huge sigh of relief that I was done with that place. Graduating law school is different. I chose this school, I fought tooth and nail to get in, and I fought even harder to keep up and do well. Nothing about law school has been easy.

11.39 am
Law school has, however, been safe. We get our loans every semester, we go to classes, and we are generally, if not completely, sheltered from the rampant unemployment. I'm moving across the country again, this time to New York. And as ready as I am to be finished with school and back to doing something that matters (or seems to, at any rate), there's something appealing about the student lifestyle that makes me a little reluctant to let go.

"Thou shalt remember the Eleventh Commandment and keep it Wholly."

3.18 pm

I had an interesting conversation with an acquaintance yesterday. Disturbing enough that I seriously considered whether it would be best to let it go rather than blogging about it. My sheer amazement at what was said, coupled with my own (someone naive) disbelief that these kinds of sentiments were alive and well in Berkeley caused me to sit down and examine some of my own base assumptions about the people I interact with on a daily basis.

We were talking about taking full advantage of the school's health insurance before we graduate and join the ranks of the uninsured. I mentioned that I needed to make sure that my birth control prescription would cover the time from graduation until my job starts in the fall.

My acquaintance turned to me with a strange look. "You take birth control?"

"Yes," I said. I was a little puzzled at this question, but after all the torts case we read the first year about birth control and other feminine medications (think DPS) I could see why someone wouldn't want to go near the stuff.

"You're having sex?" my acquaintance asked.

"Yes."

"But... That's just wrong!"

I'm pretty sure that my face reflected the complete and utter shock that I felt.

"Oh my gosh, I've offended you," my acquaintance said, backpedalling to assure me it had been just a joke.

I wasn't offended. I certainly wasn't upset. I knew that this person had spoken without realizing that what they said might be something which I wouldn't agree with. In some ways, I think my acquaintance was more startled than I was by what had been said and by my reaction to it.

What made me react the way I did I was my incredulity in having someone tell me that an action I had taken - something which had no bearing on that person and did not affect their life in any way - was morally wrong. I'm pretty sure that was the implication. The shock came because I thought I had left that mentality behind when I left Florida.

On reflection, it's pretty clear to me that the "my morality is right and your morality is wrong" frame of mind is alive and well here on the West Coast. It comes in a different flavor, however, which was why I didn't recognize the similarities at first. It only takes one orange-jumpsuited John Yoo protest to make you realize that there's a significant chunk of the town convinced that they have the full backing of a higher authority. They just call it by a different name.

4.14 pm

Here's what I would have said to you if I hadn't been so caught up in my own assumptions about how people should behave.

I don't consider myself religious. I don't have any disagreement with religion, and for the most part I think religions give people a much needed way to shape their lives and beliefs. Some people have ten commandments. I have one: "Sin lies only in hurting other people unnecessarily."

4.36 pm - A sort of postscript

I was fairly certain this came from Stranger in a Strange Land, but after much fruitless thumbing through my own copy I am forced to conclude that it is, in fact, from the notebooks of Lazarus Long. Even so, I highly recommend Stranger to anyone with questions about morality, religion and the strange customs of Earth. Even now, almost ten years after reading the book for the first time, it gives me a strange sort of happiness to hear someone say grok.

Thou art God.

Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No-Good, Very Bad Day

9.05 am


I did not wake up with gum in my hair. I did, however, wake up an hour before my alarm went off with the realization that I hadn’t heard my partner’s alarm go off. Which meant that he had about ten minutes to get up and ready for work or he was going to be late. Miraculously, we got him out of the door on time. When I say “we” I really mean “he got himself” because my contribution consisted of sitting at my desk blinking at him and wondering if it was at all possible for me to go back to bed.


I then spent the next forty minutes hitting back or refresh on my web browser trying to get tickets to hear Bill Clinton speak at Berkeley. I had this vague thought that if he did any sort of book signing or meet and greet (remote, but not entirely impossible) I might have been able to say I met both Clintons. Which would be almost as cool as getting to meet Obama.


It was not to be, however, and all I got were a series of messages informing me that the website was at full capacity. I was actually rather impressed by the number of different messages I got – some from Google, some from Drupal, some from Cal itself. (My favorite was “Bad Gateway!” Very bad Gateway! Never do that again!) It was like a #neilfail on an even grander scale.


My obsession with hitting the back button every five minutes to try to get these tickets, combined with the incredibly not-smart idea that this morning was a good time to change out the music on my ipod, resulted in my leaving the house about 2 minutes after I meant to. Which led to me seeing the train sitting at the platform from the traffic light at the BART entrance and realizing there was no way I was going to make the train and therefore running full out toward the station entrance.


Naturally, the train slid away before I was even close, leaving me out of breath and feeling rather foolish.


9.12 am
I also failed to win fountain pen this morning. I failed to even get a mention as having a nice journal or impressive work. The journal I can understand – I’ve definitely gone for function over form. They’re my journals, after all. Who’s going to read them but me. And I can see why a middle-aged man would be unimpressed by the decorating skills of my teenage self.


For a moment I was kind of bummed out over not having been at all recognized. Trying to balance being a law student and still having a creative side is difficult. The technical requirements of legal writing have a tendency to suck out creativity or to ensure that it is expressed in strangely melodramatic ways (Cardoza, I’m looking in your direction). A nod from an established Creative Person would be an affirmation, a hint from the universe that I’ve not been lawyerized yet.


For a moment I allowed myself to feel terribly disappointed. Then I read his picks and discovered that I was not at all impressed with any of them. It wasn’t that it was bad writing; it was that it wasn’t my kind of writing. There are, after all, thousands of ways to tell the exact same story (didn’t someone say once that there are only 100 or so stories in the world?).


9.28 am
I will continue to tell my story. I will tell it in my words, and I will tell it the way I want. I will remember that I write not because I want other people to read my work (although it is always nice to know that what I’m writing resonates with someone) or to make money or even a living (again, it would be nice, but I’m aware of how unrealistic that is) but because I can’t imagine not writing.

In which one attempts to prove herself an author

6.57 pm
Kyle Cassidy is doing a fountain pen give-away to would be writers. In order to show that one is a) a would be writer and b) the type of person who would actually make use of fountain pens, he's asked that people post pictures of their handwritten journals as well as a writing sample. It's rather like the college admissions process, but one actually has the chance of getting something useful at the end of it.

And since I have been ruminating on how it might not be a bad thing and let slip to any fellow lawyers and would-be lawyers who know me that I write for fun...

And since I have been ruminating on how slowly killing all those parts of yourself that are human in the cause of professionalism might be a rather strange way to go about living...

And since I have been ruminating on exactly what sort of lawyer I wish to be when I grow up...

I am posting here my "entry" to the fountain pen contest.

First, we have the journals.  I've been keeping a journal since August 22, 1997.  I had just come home from overnight camp, and there were so many things that I wanted to hold on to in my memory forever, and I knew that if I didn't write them down they would slowly start to fade away.  

The open pages are bits of poetry, some of it still unfinished.

A page from one of the journals.  I took another photo after I realized this one had blurred, but I rather liked the blurred edges better.  Since you can't read it, I'll tell you that it's a timeline for a short story/novella that I wrote as my senior thesis in college.  It is, by the way, a great story.  One that I really should take out of the drawer, dust off, and finish one of these days.

Here's that writing sample part.  The left page is me trying to work out the poem.  The right page is the pretty much completed poem. I wrote it in the Berkshires, while I was on a vacation with my family, about a boy I knew in Florida.  There were things that I wanted to get into the poem but didn't quite fit in.  Like how he called me "beautiful," as in "Hi, beautiful," causing me to wonder if he was being complimentary or covering up the fact that he never knew my name.

6.57 pm
I tend not to write stories long hand, although there are a few pieces in the backs of my journals, some from airplane rides when I didn't yet have my laptop, some because the story needed to be written instead of typed to continue telling itself to me, and some simply because I had a pen in my hand and the notebook was there.  Mostly, though, I write out poetry.

Stories flow through and from my fingertips, the words appearing without much directed thought on my part.  Occasionally I will delete an adjective, insert a verb, wipe out an entire paragraph that refuses to cooperate.  More often, I will simply keep typing, knowing that I write best when I don't think about it.

Poetry is different.  It demands that each word be weighed, be rolled around the mouth and tongue before committing it to the page.  I find that the simple act of writing the words helps me better understand their relationship to one another, the meter of the whole piece.

A fountain pen would make lovely poetry.

Pretty the World

10.06 pm
The pre-Symposium dinner at the Prof.'s house was tonight, and driving home I felt like I'd been pulled back into a strange sort of time warp. It started with the road through the Berkeley hills, sinuous and twisting back on itself so close I couldn't help but wonder why it doesn't bite its own tail. (A lifetime ago, it seems, I rode through those hills on the back of a motorcycle, the bay spread out below us like Elliot's evening.) Then onto the highway - 580, moving strangely slowly tonight, only 60 instead of its usual 85 - and music playing instead of the usual lineup of news/cultural/historical podcasts. (Once, I drove up the highway after work - 880, probably going too fast, sometimes headed to the dive in Jack London, sometimes to a bar on San Pablo instead, usually with a boy in a Lexis who didn't love me following close behind - with the music loud enough to drown out the night.)

10.14 pm  
Sometimes I miss waiting tables. Lazy mornings writing in a rose garden, the sun soaking my shoulders and putting honey colored highlights in my hair. Getting to work early enough to polish my silverware and my stemware. Nights when the kitchen didn't go down in flames, when the kitchen plated my food and slid it into the window the instant before I walked into the back. Taking the elastics from my braids at the end of the night and letting them unravel. (Do you know what I love about your hair?" he asked. "I love the way its perfume leaves trails through the restaurant.") Staying at the bar until last call and then a little later, watching the boys play pool on battered and tilted tables.

10.23 pm  
Sometimes I think the poetry has left me.


A few years ago, I was bitten by a spider that got stuck under my shirt and left bites all along the path it had taken to get out. I wrote: "The bites along my ribcage are like a constellation. I look in the mirror, from this angle and that, trying to read a pattern from the random scattering." Someone told me that it was such a beautiful way to describe it - like poetry. I wasn't trying. The words just came, sliding out from beneath my fingertips the way all my best work does. Law school, though, with its emphasis on reason, with its careful writing techniques designed to strip the humanity, to strip the poetry from the words...


10.30 pm  
Sometimes I think I am the one who has done the leaving.

Celebrity Crush

9.58 am
Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer are getting married. They announced it to the world last night. With snoggage.

This makes me inexplicably sad, and even a bit jealous. You see... well it's sort of been like... not that it really means anything... but I've had a celebrity crush on Neil Gaiman for a while. Really, how can a lit chick not have a thing for a certain tousle-haired, dog-loving, always-wears-black-and-blogs-about-not-being-able-to-fit-into-his-skinny-jeans-author? The simple truth of the matter is that Gaiman is like kryptonite for the literary minded girl.

9.58 am
I'm a little embarrassed to admit this, but I even had a celebrity fantasy to go along with my celebrity crush. It went something like this:

I would be at a signing. I would slide my book across the table. He would take it, open it to one of the blank pages near the front, and look up to ask me my name. At that point, our eyes would meet. Violins might even start playing in the background. I'm pretty sure there would, coincidentally and spontaneously, be fireworks in the background.

Anyone who has ever been to a Gaiman signing knows this is complete and utter nonsense. Most of the time, he doesn't even do signings. Instead he'll sign a whole pile of books beforehand, which you can purchase at the venue. This, I have been informed by bored event-workers, is because if he were to sign for all the people who show up to see him in the Berkeley area, he would be here for several weeks.

When he does an actual signing, there are line-minders who go up and down the line with index cards or sticky-notes who take your name, spell it properly upon the index card or sticky-note, and insert it in the page that he has indicated beforehand he will be signing. When you actually get to the table, you put down the book, he opens it to the marked page, signs his name and maybe even scribbles you a little doodle, says thanks for coming, and then you're done.

Notice the lack of any chance for him to look up and meet the eyes of an infatuated fan at any point during this process. Pat Robertson will praise gay marriage before my celebrity fantasy ever occurs.

10.16 am
Congratulations to Mr. Neil and AFP. May your years together be filled with laughter. And snoggage.

6.17 pm

The post-workout-high abruptly departed somewhere around 150th Street. I decided to start going to the gym not so much as a New Year's Resolution but more of as a "You know, I really feel better when I spend some time moving around instead of sitting in front of a law book or the computer all day." I got my RSF membership last semester, but then only ended up going about twice because i always had too many things to do. With any luck, that will not happen this semester.

This afternoon was a bit intense. I did my 30 minutes on the elliptical and was almost done with my 30 minutes on the bike when one of my journal buddies walked by. Which was odd, because I'd just been thinking that I wanted to ask him about a good workout using weights, which I know nothing about.

"Come get me when you're done," he said.

I looked down at the timer and told him I was just finishing. Which wasn't really a lie, since I only had about 30 seconds left. He told me he didn't actually use weights, but instead did exercises that uses the body's own weight. Which is all the better, since that's the reason I like Yoga. It's more difficult (but still possible) to hurt yourself that way.

So he has me do pull ups, and dips, and something I don't have a name for that involved being underneath a metal bar, with my feet on the ground, my butt in the air, and my hands on the bar, and puling myself up. Then there were handstands and pushups.

I finish all this. My legs are already hurting. My arms now have that lovely burning sensation. My heart is pounding. Breathing is not painful, but I have the feeling that it might be soon.

My gym buddy looks up at me and grins. "Now you do this four or five more times," he says.