M&Ms

You know you've become a lame law student when you get excited about reexperience and understanding Marbury v. Madison and McCulloch v. Maryland.

Parasogged

I brought two small umbrellas to A2 - one to keep at home, and one to keep in my locker at school so that I wouldn't be caught off guard without protection if I was walking home. As I looked out the window this morning to see if it was worth it to bike (it wasn't), I tried to find my home umbrella with no luck. Half an hour later I arrived at school, damp and displeased, to find two umbrellas hanging my locker. Typical.

Volver

To NYC: Wednesday, December 31, noon
To MI: Saturday, January 11, noon

Rechlorinated

Another reason law school is just like high school - I have to get up early and drag myself first thing to the pool for exercise. At least the other swimmers don't make me crazy this time.

Soft Socratic

There was a post on the NYTimes Ideas blog about the purported primary method of instruction at law school - the so-called Socratic method - in which professors choose students at random to answer questions. The post says that professors actually lecture much more than people think and that the Socratic method isn't as much of a pedagogical tool as one might think. 

I think that's pretty accurate. One of my classes isn't a lecture so that doesn't count; of the other three, only one of the teachers could at all be characterized as intensely Socratic - by which I mean the professor is very interested in engaging with a student and forcing the student to follow a logical progression. But this professor isn't at all hostile or sadistic and self-characterized this style as "soft Socratic" - whatever that means.

Of the last two, one said explicitly that class participation doesn't count for the final grade and thus no one really worries about getting called on, and the other is nice enough to lead a struggling student to the trough and/or pass the question along to volunteers.

All this is really to say that while the Socratic method was one of the things I worried most about prior to starting school, it's not really on my mind much anymore, mostly because there's either an escape route or I don't mind being embarrassed if I don't know an answer. That doesn't mean that I don't obsess of my performance when I do get called on/volunteer, especially if I have to talk for an extended period. The self-analysis never ends.

Future Interest

It's hard not to think about what's going to happen after law school is over (if it ever is), maybe because a lot of it is pre-determined far earlier than you would think. To recap: people start looking for their post-1L jobs during the middle of the academic year (from about December to March, I think), and then you look for the job you get post-2L at the very beginning of 2L year. So, the people who are 2Ls now just had interviews for jobs they won't start until May. And that job, the post-2L job, can often lead to the job you have after you graduate.

All of this, of course, is floating around in the ether as I study. Today I went to a meeting for a club focused on intellectual property, which I may or may not be interested in (apparently my interests are more "soft IP" - copyright and trademark, rather than "hard IP" which is more patent related and requires a techical - science or engineering - background).

But is that really what I'm interested in? Am I even interested in anything having to do with the law? It's a little dangerous for me to start thinking about jobs because then it leads to the question about what I'm even doing here, if anything.

Well, what I should be doing is HW, right? Right.

Reason free from passion

Legally Blonde was on TV tonite. And of course I had to watch it, right? It actually wasn't as bad as I thought as it would be - by which I mean it didn't make me any more nervous. I had remembered the classroom scenes as being pretty intimidating but it seems that if you do your reading, you're fine, right?

People who don't know me very well have been urging me to either watch The Paper Chase or read Scott Turow's 1L; Paper Chase is on my Netflix but I'm not exactly rushing to watch it, and 1L seems so old as to be not really useful. And why get scared, anyway? 

Someone at work tossed a free book my way - a new memoir called Lawyer Boy by a guy (and amateur magician) whose father went to UM Law. The guy ends up going to DePaul, I think, but he sort of falls into law school rather than choosing it outright, so it's not like I got a lot of the book. 

People at work also joked about me writing my own memoir of first year. I don't plan on it. I'm not really a fan of people under 30 writing memoirs anyway.

Last Days of Disco

Shit! I already skipped a day.

Well, today's my birthday, so I deserve double points for posting now, I guess.

I finally feel in the home stretch in terms of getting organized for the new life in A2. The last quandary is the car - in which I'm locked in a battle with my more practical parents about what to get. I'm going for sleek, sporty, and unavailable for two months, but they want a more pragmatic option. Isn't it funny how these disputes take over our lives for a few days at a time and then magically disperse?

I'm gonna head to A2 on Sunday, I think, to poke around a bit more and see what's up. I still haven't even seen my apartment, weirdly (long story). And I have to test the walk from casa to classes to see if I'm willing it to do it until Halloween...