Backtrack

We were playing a team card game last night (two teams of two people) that I hadn't played in years. My partner said that he had never lost the game in all the times he's played it. This made me nervous because I'm not very good at the game (or any game).

A few minutes later, he confessed that he had actually lost. He was just being dramatic. And we all lost it.

Political Moves

We had our final orientation activities today (THANK GOD) which included a mock class that was surprisingly painless but will likely get a bit more vicious when the semester starts.

I've never had such a strong reaction to politics or the 2008 election as I did today. Driving back on the freeway from A2 I was listening to McCain's and Palin's speeches. She is obviously smart but I was so angry I felt like I was about to do a rollover. As soon as the NPR commentator said that she was a lifetime member of the NRA I actually started yelling at the radio. Ridiculousness.

Skew Lines

I successfully parallel parked today for the first time in years!

Bad Behavior

On Monday I was greeted at registration by a petite woman with a short haircut who was bemused to discover that a piece of paper claimed that my high school was my college (it wasn't nearly that hard). We shared a laugh or two over it.

Today I found out that she was the Dean of Admissions who approved my application and wrote little notes on the cover letters to me. Thankfully I didn't say anything incriminating, right?

Clumsily

Busy cracking jokes on a campus walking tour, I managed to hit my arm on part of a doorframe - and while making fun of myself, ran into a guy walking down the street. 

Foolish!

Long Reach

While waiting in line to register today, I saw someone reading the short stories of a well-known writer in an edition that I had to work on (some minor changes) on not six weeks ago. 

First thought: I can't away from my past life!

Second: But at least it's a good conversation starter...

Clown Car

I was getting off the freeway this afternoon and was waiting at the stoplight to turn on the main road. I looked to my left and there was a clown in full makeup and costume sitting at the drivers' seat, alone, in a red minivan.

Maybe he had to drop off the clown kids to soccer practice and that's why he didn't use the VW bug or whatever?

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...

Services

Who knew that you would need so many random services and forms as an "adult"? Renters insurance, auto insurance, health insurance, power, cable, etc...

Living in the modern era is tough.

I read the UM Student Handbook again today. I keep vacillating between being afraid of classes/reading/studying/exams and feeling like it's doable. We'll see.

By the buy

One of the things I'm not looking forward to is moving into my new apartment (which I haven't even seen). I'm more wondering if I'll have time to unpack my 80 million boxes. Probably not.

Will I have time to read non-school stuff? I hope so.

0L

Some people have urged me to start blogging (again) in preparation for going to law school and I'm starting to think that it might be worth it. I'm definitely a failed blogger - I did it for a bit in college but I didn't have the energy or the commitment to write regularly enough, or about interersting things, and I tried doing it a number of times without a lot of success. 

This time I'm going to do it differently - not do posts about my life or about what happened in Con Law class this morning or why I stayed up until 4 AM doing the reading (God I hope that doesn't happen). Instead I'll just pick an incident or two and note it. Maybe I'll draw conclusions, maybe I won't, but it's more fun to pick out the unusual, provocative, or fun moments rather than do this as a diary.

We'll see how this goes - and if I continue this past the first month of school. I hope so. 

--

Brief biography seems in order, right?

I grew up in Michigan, in the suburbs of Detroit, the youngest of three children. My sister is 12 years older than me and lives in Washington DC;  my brother is six years older than me, and has autism - he lives in a group home near my parents' house. My parents immigrated in the early 70s and are both doctors. I went to Columbia as an undergrad and studied English and creative writing. After I graduated, I went to go work at Random House as an editorial assistant. I loved the people and the free books, but I didn't love the dreariness of the work or the sinking feeling that there was no way to get ahead and no sense of a strong future in publishing.

So I decided to go back to school. I thought I wanted to leave New York, and I had thought strongly about going back to get my doctorate in English literature, focusing on twentieth-century American and Latin American literature. But I also wasn't sure about getting a Ph.D. with the job market being ridiculous tough and stressful, and I had thought about pursuing law after a class in college on plagiarism and copyright law in relation to post-colonial literature. I couldn't decide what I wanted to do.

So I applied to both law and graduate schools. At the same time. It was pretty dumb.

After the dust settled I ended up getting into some doctoral programs and a couple of good law schools. and I eventually decided to go to law school at the University of Michigan. It's a great program and I'm still kind of shocked that I got in, but it is definitely weird being back where I grew up (although I don't know Ann Arbor, or A2, that well). Leaving New York was harder than I thought it would be, but now that I'm back in the Midwest I'm weirdly eager to start school, to see what's going to happen, and to find out if I can handle it. I hope so. 

A piece of good luck is that a friend from college just finished her first year at UM Law, and she's been helpful so far in helping me figure out what's going on. 

--

Classes this term are Intro to Constitutional Law, Torts, Property, and Legal Practice I & Legal Practice Skills. The last two are sort of combined and are about the practice of the law (duh) - writing, etc. Con Law and Property are pretty self-explanatory; Torts has to do with civil matters that don't arise from contractual duties - assault, battery, defamation. All the good stuff, right?

I'm living alone off-campus from the Law Quad, which is on-campus and has a dorm-like environment. It's a bit of a hike to classes, but that's ok - I'll have a car and a bike, etc. 

That should be it for now. More TK.