Just to give you an idea of what law exams are like, and how painful and stressful they are:

Our Torts exam consisted of three questions (in other words, each question was worth 30% of our final class grade). One of them, we were given in advance. Now, people always hear things like getting a question in advance or taking open book tests and assume that makes them easier. To all those people, I want to take a newspaper, roll it up, smack you in the face, and shout "NO!" It only means that your answers are supposed to be that much better, and if you actually need to use any books you bring in, you're kinda screwed. Not enough time for it. Anyway...our question that we got in advance essentially boiled down to this: come up with proposed legislation to fix the way toxic torts are handled through the U.S. torts system. In other words, attempt to fix the U.S. torts system. A problem that, if there were an answer to, probably would have been fixed already. And we 1Ls with not even a full semester of law school under our belts yet are supposed to come up with creative answers to that. WTF, yo?

Despite what some of you may believe, I'm actually still alive and kicking.

...okay, I'm still alive at least. Been forever since I've been on here, mostly because I don't have any such thing as time anymore. Remember back towards the beginning of the semester (i.e., around when the last time I posted was) when I mentioned how difficult this whole law school thing is? Man, I wish it was still back in the beginning of the semester when all we had to do was read and brief cases. Since then, I've written two office memos, two client advice letters, essentially gone through a lawsuit from figuring out who to go after to drafting the complaint to discovery and interrogatories and depositions and hearings to settlement via negotiation, and, now, the worst thing ever, law exams. For someone who hasn't really taken exams since high school, it's quite a change of pace...especially since high school exams were a joke. The scariest part is that these exams count as 90% of our grade...the rest of our grade is from class participation. Which means, essentially, that the exams might as well count as 100% of our grade. Took the first of the three yesterday (which was for Torts, which despite the name have nothing to do with baked goods), and it went a lot better than I thought it would, but I swear, I'm losing it. If you're really interested, ask me, and if I can remember, I'll tell you some stories. Next exam is Civ Pro, on Tuesday, followed by Contracts next Friday. It's going to be a LONG weekend of studying.

I've still got some really good law school buddies, although I don't really see anyone outside of a law school setting very much. Mostly because, especially at this point, we're on campus studying for an average of ten hours a day. Then I go home and study more. Sometimes, when I remember to, I eat dinner. KB turned out to be a total douchebag. The one good thing, I suppose, is that he was outgoing enough and friendly enough at first that it was through him that I met a lot of really cool people who I AM friends with. I do, of course, miss all of my non-law buddies, especially since I haven't really spoken to any of them since, oh, I dunno, sometime in September or so. Damn I need a break.

Anyone want to come visit while I'm on break? Alternatively, anyone want me to come visit them and willing to give me a place to stay? I think getting out of town could do me some good.

Oh! And everyone congratulate my brother, alsowik! He got a job at ESPN, where he's been working as a production assistant. Because he's badass like that.

I should get back to studying.

So said the airplane circling Virgin Festival.

VFest was AWESOME. And that's an understatement. It was incredible!

( VFest! )

( Important )

Last weekend was AWESOME. It was great to be in NY again, as always...and I apologize to everyone who I didn't get to see, but when you're only there for a couple of nights, it's difficult. Especially when one of those nights you go to see one of your friends on Broadway.

( Broadway )

( On the way back to Grand Central... )

Apart from the above long stories, I also got to see brassidiot, skaryma (who baked cookies! Of death!), Gretchen, and aohitomi.

This weekend, of course, amleto is coming down here, because it's VFest time! Hooray! You all are jealous. Or at least you should be. Because we're going to VFest. And you're not. Unless you are. In which case you should tell me.

Yesterday was alsowik's birthday. He might not update his LJ anymore, but he still is on here occasionally, I think, so everyone should go over to his journal and pester him. Why? Because he's my brother. And his friends kept calling me on his phone on Tuesday night until I went to the bar they were all at, despite how much bloody work I had to do.

Still do have a lot of work to do. Oy. It never ends.

...I need a haircut.

( ...here's a meme! )

...yeah, I'm loopy from medicine head. Go me! Mmmm, DayQuil...

Why am I so bloody inept?

Holy shit. I can't believe I've already been doing this law school thing for three weeks.

...I can't believe I've only been doing this law school thing for three weeks. It feels like it's been forever. Or at the very least several months. I won't lie...as much as I knew it was going to be hard work, it's even more than I expected. But the odd part is that for the most part, I feel like I'm not only keeping up with the reading, but also keeping up understanding most of it, too. My professors thus far are all pretty good, and I'm trying not to let any horror stories from upper level students skew my own experiences. My contracts professor has alternately been described by a couple friends of mine as Nathan Lane or Jiminy Glick teaching at law school. Both are fairly accurate descriptions. I've been taking down quotes from him in class, and while they're far from being Joe Lauinger worthy, some of them are pretty good.

Contracts cases from the 19th century, however, are not so good. If any of you ever have insomnia, let me know, and I'll either read them to you or send them to you to read yourself. Whichever you think will help you more. Seriously, there was this one case where the opinion in our casebook was only two pages long, but it might as well have been in a foreign language. Chock full o' fun things like run-on sentences and passive voice. I understood the words "promissory note" and that was about it. Fortunately, our professor said that he's been teaching the same cases every year, and he still has trouble with that one, himself.

I've made some pretty cool friends already, which is definitely a huge plus. One of them, KB, even lives in the neighborhood, so I've been spending a fair amount of time at his place...be it study buddying during the week, or pre-gaming before hitting the bars on the weekend. sneakyninjaevil and I went to a Nats game a week ago with my parents, which was pretty cool...we had front row seats along the first base line, and the Nats swept Arizona. On Monday, we're going to go to the 'Skins home opener. But yeah, I'm already getting a nice circle of friends here, which is quite welcome after having gone from all the friends I have and had in NY and elsewhere across the country (and seriously, all y'all need to keep in touch better) to almost none of them down here for the past couple years. Not that the friends I already had down here aren't good people, it's just that there weren't many of 'em. Which was a pretty big change from up at SLC. Yus.

There are, of course, also the few people in my section who are simply intolerable. But I won't torture you all by describing them here. At least not yet. Bwahahaha. But suffice it to say that one of them actually was stupid enough to ask "Durrrrrrrrrrrr, what does jurisdiction have to do with due process?" for which our professor ripped her a new one. Sheer brilliance.

Did a stupid thing while I was drunk last week. And nothing ever came of that date. But all in all, despite how exhausted this whole law thing is making me, I'm still feeling pretty damn good.

And, for all of you up there...I'll be in NY next weekend. I get in to LaGuardia at about 9pm on the 15th, fly back at 7pm on the 17th. I expect to see as many of you as possible. Which, unfortunately, might not be a whole lot, unless you can meet up with me somewhere or you're still at SLC. I'll be staying on campus (thanks, amleto and scrogers!), and on Saturday trying to see both Sweeney Todd and Mamma Mia (because the former is closing and a friend of mine is in the latter). But yes...Friday night, there must be either the Meat Place or Friday's or something, just like old times. Excpet that it'll be Friday and not Thursday. Alas.

I refer you all to the_herald's journal for a very important intellectual debate: http://the-herald.livejournal.com/54628.html

(More later.)

So I really don't have time to write an update now, but this needed to be shared.

I got back to the apartment tonight around 8:30, after being in classes all day. Ordered Chinese food, because I was bloody hungry and didn't have time to make anything. When I opened the fortune cookie (and I am not making this up), my fortune said: "You would make a good lawyer."

...I'm scared. Somebody hold me.

I don't think I'll ever have a decent night's sleep again. At least not for the next few years. I'm already falling back into that whole tired-all-the-time thing.

6:30 am is an ungodly hour, and fit for neither man nor beast. Thankfully, this semester at least, I have no classes prior to 10 am. This also means I have at least one class every day, but that's more acceptable, I think.

Orientation was...interesting...to use the term loosely, especially since much of it was boring as hell. There was far too much of people talking at us for my taste. Especially since so much of it was basically along these lines: "...of course, this is already in your packets, which you should read," "...you'll find out about this later," "...this is on the website," and other such declarations that really, all we were doing was wasting our time. Hell, after the sign-in and welcome and before lunch on day one of orientation (Thursday), we had three required sessions to go to, for an hour each. One was a financial aid thing, which was pointless for me. I opened my laptop only to find that the wireless was blinking in and out too rapidly to even connect to it at all, so I played chess on it instead. The next was basically a free hour, where you could register for parking, get your ID photo taken, and do other such things that I'd already taken care of. So I went on a pointless tour of the building that really didn't show anything that wasn't self-explanatory, then went and picked up my books (so...many...books...) and, realizing what a bitch it would be to take all of them home, shoved them in my locker. The third required session was some technology thing that was also useless, because all the woman did was tell us "...and this is on the website." After this was another free hour and a half. Grabbed a quick lunch, then headed to the library to make them fix the wireless. Apparently, despite all their promises of "If you set up your computer for our network in advance and email us your MAC address, you'll be all set within 24 hours of when you do it!" they hadn't actually registered my MAC address yet. Once they did, wireless finally worked. Only a shame I'd already had to sit through three hours of pointlessness without it.

The afternoon was a bit better. We broke into our sections, and some of my section's professors held a "mock class" with us. They had us read a case, then they demonstrated the Socratic Method by calling on random people and asking questions about it. Also found out during this about a number of assignments we have for our first class meetings. Afterwards, the profs left, and some upper level students who'd had them came in, and talked candidly about 'em. It's kind of funny...the one prof who nobody had anything negative at all to say about (and who, indeed, seemed quite awesome) was our Contracts professor. Contracts. To paraphrase from what one of the 3Ls said about him "Never before have I even heard of people laughing during a Contracts class. This guy will make it fun." In theory, there was some reception thingy after that, but it was optional, and I think just about everyone else just left, too. I was tired as hell by that point. Came back to the apartment and collapsed on the couch for a while, then dragged myself to bed and napped for about half an hour before getting up for SNAKES ON A PLANE! (See previous post).

Yesterday, much like Thursday, involved far too much pointlessness. It was really only the last hour or so that was at all useful: we were given another case, and then broke into small groups of about four or five and briefed it. Brief, in this case, being like a summary kind of thing where you cut away all of the irrelevant stuff to get to what you're supposed to glean from it. However, also found out about more assignments. So...many...assignments...

After orientation yesterday, there was a BBQ on AU's main campus, so I stopped by that for free food, and to get info about the various student organizations in the law school. Wound up hanging out with some of the people I'd met, one of whom actually only lives a few blocks away. We went back to his apartment, where there is a 70-inch flatscreen (not flat panel) TV, and played Soul Calibur III for a while.

Got back here, and the_herald and I went to a baseball game (Orioles vs. Blue Jays) with my dad and a friend of his. O's actually won, in style, and it was a nice night, all in all. But now...I've probably wasted enough of the day, and should get to work.

Eep.