Midterm Madness Aftermath

After my crim pro midterm it only seemed fair to reward myself.  Thus, I found myself at a concert on Saturday evening.  The opening act was honestly the most atrocious noise I’ve ever heard.  I had to leave the arena.  All the show was was strobe lights and 5 people playing their instruments and not caring what the other 4 were playing without lyrics for 13 minutes each “song.”  Thus, it all just clashed.  My question is why did the opening act pick them.  The main act is a well known group nationwide and they picked some no-name that got booed off the stage.

Stayed at M’s parents house Saturday night instead of driving back.  Then after watching football all day we stayed Sunday night.  This wouldn’t have been much of a problem since I thought I was only missing one class, but of course today was a make up class that I had forgotten about.

Then when I went to my afternoon class that I had done the reading for, I had forgotten my book.   Today was also the day to be called on.  At least I had had time to read while I was home so I still knew the material.

But now that midterms are over, the focus is all about the upcoming finals season.

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Answer My Questions Please

I understand the point of the Socratic method of questioning.  It gets you to think harder about the question so you take yourself to the eventual endpoint and it wasn’t just given to you.  Great, this is fantastic, but I feel like there is a point where I just want my question answered.

There is one professor in particular that is horrible about beating the Socratic horse to death.  Sometimes if he would give the class a partial answer then we would find our way to the eventual end point.  Instead, he lets us go around in circles the entire class time without really ever telling us what is correct and the point of the lecture.  It gets frustrating.  I find that the book is much more straight forward and helpful than some of the lecture I attend.

Another bothersome episode about questions is that I email the person in charge of a program and he tells me to read the website and if I have further questions to go ask another person.  There are a few key reasons why this made me less than appreciative of the email I got in response.  First, I did read the website, and it did not answer all of my questions.  That’s why I emailed the person in charge.  Second, I have a strong instinct that my questions are too specific for the lower guy to give me all the answers I need.  He will more than likely tell me to go talk to the person in charge of the program.  Third, as the person in charge of the program you have all the answers OR can call the shots on how you would like to deal with my situation.  Finally, as the person in charge of the program, you should be encouraging me to find out more about the program, not dismissing me to someone else because you don’t have time.

I did a paper based on the legal system my last semester of undergrad.  It focused on how questions are the foundation for justice.  To those people who keep giving me the run-around to get my answers: just stop and think is this the most helpful way to give information to the student?  If not, rethink how you are teaching/answering questions.

Dedication

While Cordy and I were enjoying our Sunday morning at the dog park, a middle school aged boy came by the house.  He offered to rake our leaves and donate part of the profit to the Boys and Girls Club.  M being the cute softy he is agreed to pay the boy even though he normally does the yard work himself.  The boy started about noon and kept going until after 5pm.  He was going to ride his bike to the store to buy more trash bags because he didn’t have enough.  After giving him a water and a bit of advice to speed up the process, he was still working diligently.

Around 5pm, his dad came over to tell him it was time for dinner.  The dad and M talked a bit and the dad asked if the backyard was part of the agreement and wanted to know if his son had done an adequate job or if he needed to come back over tomorrow and finish.  M, of course (and I agree), told the father that he had done quite well and was impressed with the dedication he put into raking our leaves.  His dad informed M this was the first lawn he had raked by himself and thought it was going to be much easier.  M and I both thought we should give him a little extra cash since he worked so hard and so long– and I made him cookies!

I’m very impressed with the dedication the boy put into raking the leaves.  It reminded me of the dedication I should be putting into the entire semester.  Just because I get bored/frustrated/content with coasting doesn’t mean I should let up.  I agreed to give law school all I have until I graduate and that’s what I need to do.  There are a few leaves left in the yard, but I have no doubt that he put all his energy into doing the best he could.

Finally, what great parenting.  He raised his kids to not be afraid to do manual labor to raise money.  The boy was raising money for a charity.  The boy kept working for 5 straight hours.  Yet, his dad came and got him in time for dinner and the concert later tonight.  And his father was willing to have him come back and finish tomorrow to hold up his side of the deal.  Kudos to the parenting.

Midterm Madness

The point of midterms is upon us.  If you are lucky enough, in my opinion, to be able to take midterms and not have your entire grade depend on your final while studying for multiple other finals, then you understand the slight madness.  I only have two midterms that are over a week apart so plenty of time to give each ample study time.

The legal research and writing midterm was earlier this week.  It technically is the only test we have but it hits at midterm time so it counts for this discussion.  It was basically what I expected it to be.  Know and be able to apply a few basic concepts that we have covered and be able to provide a few sentences of justification of why you chose the answer you did.  I’m not concerned about how I did because I feel confident in my answers, but the TA said that because LR&W only has 120 points total in the class that the final grades distributions can sometimes come down to a .1 of a point.  Thus, I don’t have any spare points to give up.

My criminal procedure midterm is next week; it counts for 30% of my final grade.  I’m allowed 1 page, front side only of notes.  So I’ve been trying to prepare and condense my notes down into 1 page that is still fairly easy to read and apply in a short amount of time.

 

Besides school, all I do is try to keep up with my silly puppy.  My friend showed me where the off leash dog park was so Cordy and I have been there almost everyday.  There are plenty of benefits to going: wears her out so I can work, good to be outdoors, good for her to be around new dogs/people, teaches her to listen when I call her, learning to swim in the little pond/lake/stream, oh yeah and exercise for me.

 

Enrollment is next week so I will be able to know my schedule for good soon, which is the highlight of each semester!

Legal Bias?

An outside opinion of what Civil Procedure is actually like. You don’t get to talk about the “guts” of the case. Instead, you get to learn why the case got to the appellate level, real interesting…

Legal Bias?.

Spring Enrollment

Since I got the email about spring enrollment about a week ago I’ve been on the edge of my seat trying to figure out what it might end up being and what electives I would be able to take.  Finally, on Friday I got the piece of paper of doom.  The assigned classes are too bad, they are at good times and not at 5pm on a Friday.  But it gave us 5 choices for electives.  I have already taken evidence and professional responsibility and since I didn’t take business associations 1 I can’t really enroll in BA 2.  Thus, I only have 2 choices: work compensation or administrative law.  Neither of these interests me and neither is specifically on the bar.  Thus I do not want to take either.

Upon looking at the schedule I’ve found 5 classes that fit the correct time slots and don’t appear to have any prerequisites.  So this coming week, I plan on going to talk to someone, not entirely sure who, to see if maybe our “5” choices can be expanded.  Because I know I’m not the only one who gets 2 choices instead of the 5.

No One Else Knows What They’re Doing

After struggling for hours to write my open research memorandum, dancing with Cordy for inspiration, calling my mom telling her that I’m stuck and frustrated, and spending hours looking at research because I was positive I missed some important fact that would make the paper virtually write itself.  I decided if I could get any 1/2 competent thoughts onto paper I would call it a night.  Today, I woke up early to go see my TA and ask him if I was headed in the write direction or just needed  to start over completely.  He told me that I was on the correct track and he had seen people that were struggling as much if not more than me.  That I had the correct legal writing format down I just needed to adjust a few things and obviously go back over the entire paper and make it clean and concise.

Lesson: Talking to my TA and having him tell me that I’m not the dumbest person in the class made me remember that everyone is having a hard time with this assignment and learning how to research and write in a format we’ve never seen before.

Birthday Weekend

This past weekend was an interesting one.

Went to dinner and tried to order a beer.  The waitress told me that because my ID expired on my birthday, I wasn’t able to get a beer and that the manager would be over to talk to me.  So I was instantly furious.  The manager comes over and starts to explain and I started to go lawyer on him and then he made me verify everything on my ID and then decided I could have my beer.  No apologies from either person.  I’ve worked in the restaurant industry for 7 years.  I know that even when it is not your fault you apologize and discount the bill in some way to make the person feel better.

Next, I went to my birthday concert and the entire time there was a drunk girl in front of me, standing up, and blocking the stage.  Thus I couldn’t see the main act.  Then on top of that 3-4 groups of people waited until the second the show started to start taking pictures with their flash.  Could they not have done that during intermission?  Finally the last 1.5 hours of the show, 5 drunk high schoolers were in and out of the row in front of us dancing and moving and just doing annoying high school things.  Everyone around us was sitting most of the time except the people directly in front of us.

My view of the show.

Then we went to a football game that was absolutely horrible.

But my puppy got to go to M’s parents and had a splendid time, so at least someone thoroughly enjoyed the weekend– I did too but could have done without some of the added problems.

Pet Peeves Part 1

This will be at least a 3 part series from what I consider semi-serious infractions of the pet peeve “law.”

When you are going to be around the same basic group of people for years and it is a small group be very conscience of people’s pet peeves and acts that you do that could be considered pet peeves.

For example:

I sit next to a girl that  is almost always late.  This makes her a distraction to me.

The same girl brought an apple to class.  She then proceeded to CHOMP for the next 5-10 minutes, after being late–seriously.  The boy that sits on the other side of me is always on time and he eats a banana.  While the banana still has a smell, at least it doesn’t make a ton of noise while he eats it and I understand that it is an early morning class and you don’t always have time to eat before you get to class when you are already sleep deprived.

I know I’m not the only one who is annoyed by people coming in late.  It also draws everyone else’s attention to the back of the room and messes the professor up.  At this point in your life (if you are in law school), please be courteous enough to show up on time.  You can’t walk into work 10 minutes late everyday and unprepared to start.

All You Need is A:

All you need is a mentor and a commitment to succeed.  The world seems to revolve around the idea of a mentor/role model/good example.  I couldn’t agree more.  My puppy has been teaching me a lot of lessons in the short time I’ve had her, and one key thing she has taught me is that you need someone to show you what is appropriate behavior in certain situations and how to conduct yourself in general.

For example, I had my friend bring her dog over to play with Cordy.  Because Cordy had been sick when she was a puppy she wasn’t allowed to play with other puppies and had only been around cats.  Thus when Callie (the other dog) came over to play Cordy kept trying to paw at Callie like a cat does.  Callie promptly corrected Cordy and taught her how dogs play.  Almost instantly, Cordy was wrestling and biting and acting like a dog.  The best part of this doggy date was that I didn’t have to watch Cordy’s every movement because Callie kept her entertained and in eyesight.  Which might lead us to get another dog sooner.

But back to the mentoring issue.  Law school provides many opportunities to be or find a mentor.  I have a 3L that is a mentor and she gave me advice about the specific teachers/classes I had.  She told me how studying in certain ways for certain classes worked for her.  I now have an actual lawyer mentor that I meet on Tuesday that is practicing criminal defense which is what I’m interested in.  I have added to my resume that I am a mentor for the undergrad scholar’s program.  Not only is it rewarding to be able to help someone, but if I didn’t pass on my “wisdom” then it would go unused.  If someone else can learn from my mistake then I’m potentially saving someone else from failure.