The past week in review

I'm sitting here waiting to go to a grammar workshop (to be explained later), and decided that there is not enough time to start to study something so I thought I would write a new blog.

In the past week many things (exciting to me, probably boring to others) have happened:

#1 I got my first cold call(when the professor calls on you in class and asks you a question with no warning), in contracts no less. I thought I did pretty well, if I do say so myself:) though it was incredibly nerve racking. When you realize that you are the name she just called out (after hoping as she is looking over the seating chart that she doesn't chose you) it takes a couple of seconds to realize that you need to answer, and then a couple of more seconds to find the answer in your notes, and then more to answer the questions she continues to ask you. All in all probably about 2 minutes of my life, but the adrenaline seemed to last way longer than that. Looking back it was kind of fun, even though I hope I don't continue to get called on, I don' t think I will mind if I do . . . It is good practice!

#2 Bought my first interview suit. Is it fashionable? No. Does it make me look young and modern? No. But that is the point of an interview suit, plain and black, makes you look older and mature, and most importantly no one notices it, so they are allowed to focus on you. I still have to get the jacket tailored (another conversation could be had about the tragedy of women's sizes) but I am excited to finally have one in my wardrobe.

#3 Went to federal court! It was so cool because they were talking about civ pro stuff that I have been learning. It was crazy because I showed up to volunteer and had decided to dress up that day, cause I wanted to wear some of my new clothes. Good thing I did, because my volunteer coordinator walked in and said she was going to court for one of there current cases and wanted to know if I wanted to come to observe! Of course I said yes, and It was really interesting to be able to watch! Of course I loved that it was a woman judge on the bench:) Future me? Maybe . . .

#4 Got my grammar quiz back in WRAP, and did as I expected, a bit poorly. It's funny cause the other people who did poorly are all ashamed of it, only telling you in secrecy. And then there is me, who is self proclaimed horrible at grammar and could care less if you know. Now I had a good reason to contact our school's writing expert and solicit her help. I should be meeting with her next week, and I am excited to finally bring my grammar skills up to par (if not better). This is also why I am going to the grammar workshop today, I really want my skills to improve so people see my writing for how good it is:) and not by how bad my grammar is

Well I think that is all for the main events of the week. I think it would be good to mention that I am seriously happier now than I think I have ever been. The mixture of all of the amazing things in my life puts me on top of the world:) Good feeling to have while in law school? . . . I think yes!

-Laura

Videos that make me smile!

Not really related to law school but fun none the less. These are two videos that have really made me smile this week. Forgive my really bad camera work (i've got one of those flip videos, so it's really easy to get distracted and forget that you are focusing on something!)

#1 D'artagnan as a little guy, when we first got him:)

Cutest puppy ever!!! Right??

Now this one is really long(and a good display of my bad camera skills), but the best part is the first part:)

Gotta love the evil laugh!! My nephew is the cutest

Caffeine Regret

Well I'm up later than I should be because I had way to much caffeine after 4 p.m. I had some coffee expresso mix at bread and chocolate, and then some coke at bonfire . . . safe to say I was tired and felt warranted in drinking so much. But alas, now I am awake, not only with a caffeine fix, but with indigestion from said caffeine fix:( So I figured what better time to write a new blog.

This has been such a very busy week, but the funny thing is it hasn't been busy with studying. I started volunteering at the American Civil Liberties Union this week. This volunteer position mostly consist of reading letters from people hoping to get the ACLU to pick up their case and bring it to litigation. I look at the ACLU's criteria for picking cases and decide whether or not to refer the letters to another agency or send their case up to the big wigs to decide whether or not to take on the case. It has been pretty interesting thus far and I think I am going to enjoy volunteering with them.

It seems like we are getting to the point in school where things start to intensify. Talk of various mid-terms are in the air, and our first graded WRAP assignment is due next week. Yet, despite these things, I don't feel stressed about anything. I think that all of my happiness that comes from being in school, being challenged, having fun with new friends, and finally having my husband home on a full-time basis( he spent the majority of the summer traveling back and forth to and from SD) outweighs what would be stress.

Although I'm not stressed I do sometimes have feelings a guilt. Guilty that I don't get to see my nephews very often, guilty that I no longer get to talk to my dad on a bi-weekly basis, guilty that I don't get to spend much time with Chris now that he's home, guilty that I rarely see my family, and guilty that my dog gives me those sad, "i miss you" eyes every time I come home from a late night study session. I've heard that these feelings are pretty normal, and yet, sometimes I do struggle with them. I guess I get past them when I remind myself that this is only three years. Three short years and then I get my life back with new found freedom in not only time, but career options:) Which is the goal right? So that is what keeps me pushing through. There is an end in sight, and it may seem like a far away sight, but it is there:)

So there you go for my late night caffeine induced ramblings. In ending . . . I miss you all family and friends, but Christmas break is not that far (but far enough that I'm not stressed about finals . . .yet)

Now off to try sleep again . . . so I don't repeat the sleepy Civ Pro class experience I had this morning!

Logistics

I thought I would start with the simple stuff, and bring everyone up to speed about the past couple of weeks

Time:

One question I have been getting is when do you go to class, when are you free, etc. I have about two classes a day, typically one is 2 hours and one is 1 hour. They gave us a really nice schedule where we have 2-3 hours in-between classes to study and socialize:) I know it doesn't seem like a lot, but you will soon see it is! You know how in undergrad they always told you you should study 3 hours outside of class for every one hour inside of class? We always laughed about that, cause no one really studied 9 hours a week for a 3 credit class. I can no longer laugh, because now it is true, and then some.

My typical day consists of waking up, going to class, studying, going to class again, come home and having some down time (typically I pick something to clean, I know this wouldn't be downtime to most, but if you know me, you know it is to me:)) Then I study some more until 10 - 10:30. Then I give myself an hour to watch TV or something of the sort. Then I go to bed and start back up again. I take Saturdays off, to spend with Chris and everyone else, and then on Sunday I'm back to the crazy study schedule.

Now some of you may be asking, "do you really have to study that much? Or are you just being an overachiever?" And my answer would be both. In order to be prepared for class you have to have not only read the material, but understand it. All's we read (except for our writing class) is cases. And these cases can not only be long, they typically use language more sophisticated than the average person does (you know those judges, they want to sound smart). Because of this, reading the case at least 2 times, if not more, is par for the course. Not only do we have to read them, we have to brief them (condensing them to only the important information and deciding what precedent the court set that is important to the rule we are learning). All of this takes a significant amount of time and effort. Now I could just stop after I'm done reading and briefing, but what would be the point? I need to understand what I just read so I can think critically about it. So having to read 160+ pages of cases per week amount to LOTS of time!

Academics:

I have 5 classes...

Torts: is by far my favorite class. You can think of torts as what someone would sue you about if you injured them (battery, assault, false imprisonment, negligence, etc)

Contracts: pretty self explanatory. What constitutes a legal contract. Probably my least favorite. Not because I don't enjoy the subject matter, but because I go into every class thinking I have a full grasp of what we are learning, and leave confused.

Civil Procedure (Civ Pro): Another self explanatory one, we are learning about proper ways of bringing a suit in a federal court, and what we are required to do after the suit is brought. The professor for this class is awesome, mostly because he wears pink and purple shirts and has matching pink and purple glasses, with purple cufflinks:) And he calls out people in class

Property: Yet again, self explanatory. The BEST class to go to. This professor is so cool. We watch you tube in class, and he really knows how to bring the subject matter down to our level (talking about copyright laws in music and such)

WRAP: The dreaded writing class. This class is the only one we don't have with our whole section of 80 ppl. It has been the biggest reality check for me. I have always been a good writer, but my grammar has always sucked! In undergrad no one seemed to care that my grammar sucked, they just graded me on style. Now i get papers(luckily that don't count for a grade thus far) back with writing all over them about how much my grammar sucks!! It has been a good wake up call for me, I really need to improve on it so that in the future my colleagues will take my writing seriously. (yes you can take this as an invite to correct my grammar on this blog, if you so desire to do so. I love constructive criticism!)

There are a couple of things that all of the classes have in common:

1) People get randomly called on in class. It has not happened to me yet. I was nervous about this at first, but now that it has been a couple of weeks and I seem to know the answers to questions even when they are not asked to me, I am more confident that when I do get called out, I won't sound like an idiot

2)In every class but WRAP, the only grade you get are the exams. Some classes have a couple of exams per semester, most only have one at the end. This is driving me crazy as I am used to calculating my grade all semester and going into finals knowing I have an A no matter what.

Well I think that is long enough for one blog, hopefully it brought you a little up to speed. Now I'm in Torts and it's about to start, so I better pay attention

The Beginning

hmm, where should I begin? I started this blog for two reasons.

#1 I wanted a way to keep everyone up to date on everything that is happening in my life during law school. If the past couple of weeks are any indication, I will be lacking in time to spend with the people I would like to spend time with. Because of this, I would like to have a way to fill everyone in. That way, when I do get time to spend with you, we don't have to fill it with small talk and we can get down to the fun stuff!

#2 I thought it would be nice to have an outlet. The craziness of the past four weeks has been amazingly fun, amazingly challenging, and amazingly stressful! Though there has been a balance of good and bad, I thought it might be nice to have somewhere to let everything out, if need be.

Now I must say, I make no promises that I will keep this blog up to date. I have never been good at keeping journals or blogs, However, I think this one may be different. I guess we will just have to see