Previously Unpublished

I’ve never read Moby Dick, but I think this is the correct analogy. It sounded right anyway. While I was looking online to see if summer school financial aid came in, I accidentally pressed the link to see my grades. I wasn’t expecting to see them yet and hadn’t braced myself for the impact of seeing them and yet there they were. All but one of my classes present.

However, one thing was lacking: A grade that signified not only that I had passed the course or even done better than average, but that signified that I had mastered and dominated my classmates in the subject matter. I have yet to secure such a grade in law school. The class that I am missing is the one I think I did the worst in, and which was probably the worst final (poorly written), and which had everyone failing and thus will take forever to adjust a small variance between getting no points, failing really badly, or just failing a little to the appropriate curve. So basically, I’m not counting on it of all the grades I have gotten so far in law school, to be the one that puts me over.

As per usual, it is hard for me to complain overall. So far (knock on wood, a lot of wood) this would be my best semester so far. However, it’s hard to consider it a good outcome when the overall results are still just somewhat above the average. I used to take consolation in the fact that I learned everything evenly and didn’t do overly well in one class while completely screwing up in another. I always give a balanced amount of time to every class. The thing is, some people do that and also amjur everything. Sure I did a ton of extracurricular stuff, more than in my whole school career, but still, other people do the same thing and work and ace everything.

So I don’t know, this is a frustration post I suppose. It would have helped in the interview process if I could have reported a couple really primo grades to bolster my transcripts. No one has complained about my marks recently, but it’s not like they are a point of excitement either. You can definately tell the hiring attorneys who were at the top of their class from the ones who were in the middle and then those from the ones who did not place in the top half of their class. The important thing to note, boys and girls, is that they are all hiring partners now.

-jd

P.S. I’m amjuring PR this summer.

The preliminary draft of the paper is done (Read: Really, the final draft, since I’ll probably line up the footnotes in a minute and then read the paper once more before Tuesday to make sure I don’t sound like an idiot and then turn it in.)

93 footnotes seems a little excessive. It seems like the best articles we read for the journal were a lot longer than my paper and at the same time had probably 33% fewer footnotes. It is really only maybe 20-25 sources with a whole crapload of Id.’s. One paragraph begins with a website and then proceeds to have an Id. after every proposition.

Oh well, I’ve spent three extra days on this baby since it’s my best shot at getting a stellar grade. Needless to say, I’ll be pissed/disappointed if I blow this one while simultaneously screwing myself on the two in-class exams I have left. But then, it’s law school and I knew a lot less about criminal procedure than any of the classes I have now and I did fine in that one (Vigorously knocks on wood like it’s the last piece on Coruscant.)

-jd

Alright, I just wanted to use that title. Since it is finals and all.

However, for the real reasons behind the naming of the day, I didn’t realize today is really supposed to be about labor concerns. So all the immigration stuff had some planning behind it and wasn’t just super spontaneous or anything.

I didn’t need to go watch Gattaca. It is a very good movie, but half the class wasn’t there. I had some small panic attacks over the paper that was still half baked and thought they were heart attacks during the treadmill sequences. I used to do that a lot, though I’ve learned to control my hypercondriac nature.

Okay, I will finish this thing (I think) before I go to bed.

-jd

So, I have apparently forgotten how to write a paper. I used to be a master at this, but after 5 years, I have apparently lost my way.

Maybe I need sleep. The problem is that today was the last day I budgeted to do this. I was going to spend a couple hours brushing it up in a week or so, but at this point, I probably need another day to make it great.

I basically just realized that I need actual arguments in my paper. I’ve just eclipsed the 30 page high water mark and I sort of just have background summaries of the law involved. Actually what put me over are three really broad concepts I came up with on the way back from Subway.

So yeah, I’m not really sure what I was thinking as I spend Friday, Saturday, and Sunday sort of wallowing through all these books I checked out. Oh well. It’ll happen, now it’s just a judgment call of how much longer I want to put off studying for Copyright and Wills and Trusts.

-jd

I love John Rawls. I think I can now pull off my very against-the-grain thesis. Either that, or the professor will think I’m as unfocused and hodge-podged as the posts on this blog.

In a somewhat related vein, I related the story of the Paper and Panda Express to my haircutter. He will now be on the lookout for a girl who likes take-out.

Twice during the haircut, the women next to me gave “pause” during my conversation with my haircutter. First, when I was talking about personal injury law (she probably knows someone who thinks they were completely screwed by a money-grubbing lawyer) and second when the haircutter was telling me about keeping Playboys on hand for his straight customers. I then volunteered that growing up, our family had a very nice, but off-kilter hairdresser who lived in the hills and had nude black and white photos taped to the door of her little bathroom at her studio. My first brush with porn. My fellow patron looked disdainful. Might also have been the apparent resemblance I have to Eminem.

-jd

I went. It took 30 minutes. The guy gave me spicy shrimp and veggies even after I explicitly asked it it was hot. I don’t like the Panda hot spices. Oh well, I’ll deal. I mean, I got my Panda - every finals/deadline period needs at least one night of takeout late at night in an office.

I’ll save my philosophy of life musing from on the way home for later. It involved the freeway system in my city being like a palm meant for reading. There is one area in particular where the main thoroughfare near my apartment goes over a major interstate and you always stop on a light overlooking it and I love the way the cars go back and forth, day or night. Plus it usually smells pretty good…usually because half the time I am coming from the direction that stops over the freeway, I have food with me.

-jd

Why? - What does Panda Express have to do with girlfriends? The lack of sex on at least a semi-regular basis, after ordering takeout on a Saturday night? Affection and companionship and playing the fortune cookie game and then acting it out (See: link, then under “fortune cookie etiquette”)? Someone to watch kung fu with on channel 39 after taking her out to the Panda Express restaurant for dinner (Some chains are better than others)?

Well, yes to all of the above, but that’s typical and not really a post-worthy subject for anyone. No, more importantly, I have a craving for chinese food and Panda Express in particular and yet going to get it would take at least 20 minutes out of my time to study (putting aside the fact that writing this blog entry took at least ten incluing time to find the links). Going to get takeout when one half of a couple is working on a very important paper is part of what people in a relationship do for each other. The best example is the husband/boyfriend (I’m so contemporary) going out to get whatever the wife/girlfriend (still contemporary, but would have been interesting if I had just put girlfriend) craves when they are pregnant. Now, the significant other doesn’t have to be with child, it’s just a nice thing to do-for/demand-from the other person.

If I had a girlfriend, I would go get her Panda Express or even the vastly inferior-tasting Pick-Up Stix. Better yet, I’d wait till after finals and get takeout from P.F. Chang’s but now I’m just day-dreaming, not making a point. Going to P.F. Chang’s would take too long now and really doesn’t help anyone. I’m getting tired of Funyuns really quickly.

-jd

I just got an email from a professor with a sample exam from last year. It was a marathon of a test and not exactly how I thought he would conduct a test. Actually, it is probably better for me that he formats that way he does, it is sort of like the non-multiple choice part of our evidence final and I somehow managed a respectable grade in that class despite going in with an almost below-passing average (possibly even after the curve, but it was hard to tell) on my multiple choice quizzes. Regardless, given that two weeks from yesterday at 4 PM I will have taken my two in-class exam and have written a 30 page seminar paper, I sort of had a small panic attack (small compared to say, this time last year, and crim law.)

To solve the problem and to make me feel better much in the way chocolate seems to make a lot of people feel better after a break-up (not me, it’s all about listening to The Beach Boys, and funnily enough, a Dave Matthews Band song called Warehouse), I went to buy more commercial outlines. As I’ve long held, you can always sell these back on Amazon.com for a couple bucks less, but you can never regain face after you puke in front of your former sectionmates. Well, the bookstore closed at noon because they are doing inventory. I almost went right through the glass door and I think I pulled something because I expected the damn thing to give, but it was locked.

Inventory. Who does inventory at the end of April? Moreover, who does it during finals when people need to buy study guides and candy and highlighters and water and candy? Stupid bookstore, I really wanted to take advantage of not having to turn the Wills and Trusts outline back in until Monday if I wanted a refund (if it proved useless, since I do have a nice outline by Jack already.) It’s just the principle of it all. I used to work at a bookstore as an undergrad and we always defaulted to the needs of the students, when we weren’t talking about sex, drugs, and sex in the backroom. What is wrong with these people?

Oh well, I still got the procrastinate-on-my-paper time in by walking over to the bookstore in the first place.

-jd

I am pretty damn good at making breakfast. I’m not sure why, but I can go all out with eggs, hash browns, toast, all the appropriate beverages, omelettes, pancakes, eggs benedict - just all sorts of things and they usually look pretty good. And that’s a good thing because when someone stays over, they are impressed the next morning with the follow-up. Moreover, I like going out to breakfast to meet friends or whatever. Anyway, all this makes it ironic that I rarely eat breakfast on a daily basis.

That changes during the finals study period. I’ll make breakfast and spend the half hour or so it takes to pull it all together. Granted, the day of the test, if in the morning I won’t eat anything because it is too daunting on my stomach. But you can bet when I have a paper to write, I’ll take my sweet time making the eggs look pretty and the toast well-buttered and the box scores checked.

Amazingly, I woke up this morning with a paragraph of my paper written, sources included. It was pretty cool. Too bad I need about 50 paragraphs total. Off to the office.

-jd

I just devoured a bag of Funyuns. I haven’t had Funyuns in years, but I used to love them in middle school. I think for me it’s sort of a mix between how great onion rings are, and my early fascination with the dehydrated food that astronauts get to eat. (See also: why I became a boy scout - okay I also liked the scoutmaster’s daughter.)

Anyway, I’ve set up shop in the newspaper office and things couldn’t be better, except for having to finish this paper. I’ve given myself a deadline of tomorrow at 5 pm. After that, I won’t touch it again until sometime next week before it is due. I really like my topic and there are a lot of places it could go, but at this point it is clear that I need to hone in on specifics and stop going on wild tangents. Anyway, I’ve got an unlimited snack supply in the lobby, the fan blowing, the police just checked in to make sure the office wasn’t being robbed, and all the baseball games are over so I can stop checking scores.

I wouldn’t be opposed to wanton, deprived 1L girls invading the office to seek “advice” on finals, but short of that, I’ll push through till midnight.

-jd