Password

I met the other intern today where I work. He's in a band, and his band has a Myspace page of course. One day all the content of their page - photos, music, 900+ friends - disappeared. They eventually determined that a band member's exgirlfriend had the password and took her revenge. (Hell hath no fury and all that.) Me and the intern puzzled over a legal theory to cover this kind of thing. Trespass of chattels? Is an internet site a chattel? Is that considered hacking, since she had the password? Do they even own the chattel, since the site is free?

Moral of the story: Never give your S.O. your passwords.

Working on the wharf

So I started my summer intership today. I gave myself a week of vacation because I thought I'd get bored. I did get bored, but unfortunately that didn't make going to work any easier.

It was a good day anyway. The woman I work with is nice and helpful, and she closed the window when I put my jacket on; she noticed I got cold. Most of the day was spent trying to figure out why the network was down, or the printer, or the new operating system, or the upgraded version of FileMaker. Technical troubles everywhere I turned, and I'm good with technology. Plight of the nonprofits, I suppose.

Most of our clients (all artists) were women, and most of the attorneys we referred them to were men. I was in a good position though. I got to comfort our clients without having to do any of the legal legwork that they needed. (We only refer them to attorneys, we don't give legal advice.)

I didn't eat the entire day. There wasn't a lunch break, and I didn't bring any food. Strangely, I don't think I've ever had a job where I ate the first day. I'm always stuffed full of stress.

I noticed a sign on my building that read: "This building contains substances known by the state of California to cause cancer." And another below it: "This building is not a fall-out shelter and should be vacated during an earthquake." Very comforting.

Neutral

It's weird, but after finishing finals I don't feel that elated. It's not so much feeling happy, but rather feeling not stressed out. Feeling neutral again.

After I got back from my exam, I sat on the couch and read awhile. Finally I whined to my boy, "I'm bored!" He raised his eyebrows and said, "Four hours into summer vacation and you're bored already?"

First Year Over

Finished my first year of law school! Property was my last exam, 9 AM on a Saturday. Not that the day of the week matters during exam period...it's all about how many days till the next one, as Flossy said. The exam felt pretty easy, but that's usually bad. If the exam felt easy there are three scenarios: 1) you did well, 2) you completely missed the boat, or 3) the curve is gonna be a bitch. I got a cold from my friend a few days ago. I always pitied those poor souls who got sick during finals; now my empathy is for real. I was pretty drugged up for the exam, sudafed and afrin and tylenol. They all seemed to meld into a general feeling of disconnect, but during the exam I never even thought about it. I just sank into the groove without a sniffle. The worst part, actually, is that I can't savor my new freedom as intimately. (I can't taste anything.)

All my exams felt easier this semester. It's all about those practice exams and model answers. It's funny when you get out of an exam, and you start probing people about what they got for this question or that one, but you're hesitant, on tip toes, frightened that they'll tell you about something you missed. There are two camps after an exam: people who wanna discuss everything, and people who don't even want to hear you discussing it, and who may become violent if you do. Which camp you're in depends on how you face that fear of missing something. If you felt good about the exam, you don't think you missed anything major, so you overcome the fear.

Down with Multiple Choice

Why my Contracts professor gives essay-only exams:

"How many judges ask multiple-choice questions in court?"

No More Fun With Finals

I'm in the middle of my second law school round of finals. It feels totally different from first semester; I know this sounds weird, but it's not as fun. Last semester it all seemed so insurmountable, and that gave me this kind of giddiness about it. Like when I was in college and on the diving team, we would go on training trips. And the pool was outdoors, and we'd have to get up at some ungodly hour and then dive into this icy pool over and over again...there was this comedy-of-the-absurd feeling. You'd be laughing about how torturous and ridiculous the whole thing was. That was what first semester felt like.

This semester it's all in the natural course of things. It's all business. Memorizing all these factors is within the realm of possibility - it's just a task you have to plod through.

It's not as fun.

Summer

If you haven't gotten a summer job yet, let me apologize in advance. Because there's nothing more annoying when you're unemployed than to hear somebody say: I got a job! In typical 1L fashion, I'm not paid, but I figure I can moonlight as a bartender/waitress with the struggling actors of the employment world.

Here's how I got it:
1. I researched attorneys on Martindale, searching by my law school.
2. I sent a cold cover letter to an attorney I really liked, who also happened to be an alum of my undergraduate school. I never heard back from him, but more on that in a minute.
3. Looking at that attorney's website, I noticed he was part of a non-profit outfit for artists.
4. I talked to my career advisor, who said I should call them and see if they were hiring. (I know this sounds unbelievable: law school career office advisor actually helped me get a job? Yeah, believe it.)
5. The organization told me to send my resume to one of their departments. I got an interview the next day.
6. I talked to one of my professors, casually, and he happened to have done some work for the organization. He called them up for me.

I got the affirmative call-back the next day.

As for the attorney who never called me: I made a follow-up call to him about 10 days later (as instructed by my career office), but I only left him a voice mail. I was planning on calling him again when I got this internship, so who knows what would have happened. Probably nothing.

Something else I did, which although it didn't get me a job, was informative: I called friends who knew people in SF. They referred me to their friends, who referred me to attorneys they knew.

Lots of good advice, but the main purpose of that networking was to make me feel like I was searching for a job, without ever having to hunt for one. (It's a more refined form of procrastination, like cleaning your room instead of doing your homework.) I just didn't feel like sending my resume out to a ton of places. Job searching is so evil! A terrible task. That tickle that gets your heart racing when you're lying in bed at night. That voice in your brain every day that says, 'I'm going to job-search tomorrow.' That stab of envy when you see somebody dressed up for an interview at school. Bleh, why do I dwell on it?

When my boy heard the news, he was really pleased. He said with a sly grin, "But you know I'm happier for my own sake than for your's..." Meaning, he was relieved to escape the job-search-bitchiness that emanated from me like bad breath after a hot meal.

The best part of this was my thank-you emails. It was so gratifying to share good news with people who helped create it.

Tomorrow is the last day of my first year of law school.

Low-hanging Fruit

(From my Contracts Professor, advice on exam taking:)

The exam is an orchard. Don't struggle to climb one tree and try to pick all the fruit on it, top to bottom. Run around the whole orchard and pick all the low-hanging fruit.

(And on law school exams in general:)

The law school world wants you to think that you everything you've learned in your life is useless, that you have to learn how to think in a completely different way. It's not true. Your knowledge is applicable. And they want you to think that law school is a universe that must consume you. It's not. Your exams are just a blip in your life, and law school is only the beginning for you. It's only the end for law professors. All you have to do is get one job after law school, which you all will, and then no one will ever ask how you did on your Contracts exam.

(It's true. They do tell you that you have to learn how to think like a lawyer, that you have to rearrange your brain. They do try and indoctrinate you into the microcosm of law school.)

(I feel grounded again.)

420 in San Francisco

What a wild city this is. To what else could I attribute the subject line of this email, received from my school's financial aid office?

"Help celebrate 420 with the Financial Aid Office by reading this!"

It was a generic email about submitting FAFSA forms.

However dubious, it was awesome. Only in San Francisco.

Black and White

The sunshine finally returned to SF so it feels like spring fever just dropped on us.
During class break I had this funny conversation about Blackacre, the infamous piece of property in the world of law school. It went something like this:

Ben: It's always Blackacre and Whiteacre, and the owner of Blackacre is always evil. What's up with that?
Me: Kinda racist.
Ben: Yeah, what about Brownacre?
Lauren: Greenacre? Oh, isn't that one taken already?
Me: What about Land-of-color-acre?
Joe: This is San Francisco, what abour Rainbowacre?

And I don't doubt for a second that countless other law students have had similar conversations...

But did it really need to be named anything? Couldn't they have phrased the hypo, "O owns land and A obtains an easement for her driveway..."?

Then again, no pointlessly amusing conversations are inspired by that.

Pressure Drop

"The CDC's latest survey reported 71 percent of men are overweight and 31 percent are obese. For women, it's 62 percent overweight and 33 percent obese." This quote from this article posted by Dicta made me wonder about social pressure. I mean, less women are overweight as compared to men; isn't it possible that that happens because women feel more social pressure (at least in the US) to be thin?

And we women are always complaining about the pressure to be thin! It's good for our health! I guess you'd have to do an eating disorder analysis to be fair, but still.

San Francisco sunset

 

Nature of the Bargain

Starting to think like a lawyer - strike that - starting to think like a law student:

The other night my boy was discussing his fantasy baseball league with me. He was trying to decide whether to make a trade. I found myself thinking, "But what is the heart of the bargain? They're bargaining about whose knowledge and predictions of the players are better. This is like the Peerless case, where they were bargaining over who could better predict the price of cotton over time."

I usually restrain myself from brining my Contracts class into conversations with my boy, but I did share this one. It's a sort of implicit bargain, that he won't bore me with baseball talk, and I won't bore him with law school talk. But as we were both in breach...

Class Action Myspacers

I did this on Myspace, but maybe it really belongs here.

Types of myspace users, in accordance with the requirements for a Class Action lawsuit:

1. Numerosity: These myspacers don't care who their friends are, they just want to get as many as possible, and more than you. They'll befriend anyone who asks. They hunt down random bands to inflate their numbers. These are the people with more than 400 friends.

2. Commonality: These myspacers have friends who all have one thing in common, and it's attractiveness. These are the myspacers whose top 8 is comprised entirely of hot girls in provacative poses.

3. Typicality: These myspacers only collect friends who are their friends in Real Life. Accordingly, they have under 100 myspace friends. They consistently decline to approve random guys who hit on them with friend requests. Their myspace friends are the same type as their RL friends.

4. Representation: These are the myspacers who got talked into getting a myspace account, but who make no effort to collect friends or update their profile. You recognize these because their profile only inform you that they're a Sagitarius, and they have no photo. They might have only one friend, Tom. They are only minimally represented as a ghostlike silhouette.

Point system

In San Francisco there's always somebody striking or threatening to strike. Activism, empowerment, all the time.

************************************************

Today was a big day for me - I got 25 points in Crim Pro. You get points for answering hard questions. They don't mean anything of course - as Shatz always informs the visiting prospectives. Someobody else got the other 25 (he split it) but I knew the answer before she added her bit. (The answer was "TLO," the name of a case we covered.) I'd feel even more psyched, but it was a pretty easy question, not a 50 point question. Maybe a 10 pointer. But he was working hard to motivate us because we have this Moot Court brief due, and nobody was prepared for class. And I think he likes to impress the guests with it; it's good showmanship, because he gets to make the announcement that points are meaningless. It was sorta funny the first time he said it.

My dad used to give points out when I was little. Like when we were traveling, "Whoever sees the ocean first gets 100 points!" But our points weren't meaningless. If you got a billion, you got a Ferrari.

Update on Holmes

Update on the Holmes quote:
Some legal pundits have suggested that intent should be removed from Contract law, making it into a sports-like "foul or no foul" standard. However, as Holmes suggested, intent plays a big role in the context of a contract, and "even a dog knows the difference..."

Being kicked

Why is it that people are impressed when you say you're a law student...but when somebody says they're a lawyer, they get the evil eye?

*************************************************

I dig this quote from my Contracts casebook:

“As Holmes once observed, even a dog knows the difference between being kicked and being stumbled over.”

I wish I could elucidate the context, but my brain was too tired to wrap around it. It was in the defenses section, regarding rescission of a contract for legal impossibility versus legal impractibility.

Use it or lose it

People are always turning on the lights around me when I read. Inevitably, they say, "You're gonna ruin your eyes, readin in the dark like that!"

Is there any scientific basis for this theory? The rest of your body is systematically slapped with the use-it-or-lose-it theory. Muscles, that makes sense, because we see them get bigger or smaller in proportion to our gym visits. Your heart needs to get worked out too - but then it is a muscle. Other organs kinda fit too though - if you don't eat a lot, your stomach shrinks. There's all this evidence out lately that one way to prevent/lessen the effects of Alzheimer's is to stay mentally active (they always mention crossword puzzles). Use it or lose it. Your brain is a bunch of neurons. Your eyeball, now that has a lot of neurons too. Who's to say that reading in faint light isn't actually good for your eyes? [Wait, do I have that wrong or is that just a weird saying: "who's to say." What the hell does that mean? Who would say? Who can say?]

Anyway, until somebody can point me to at least a quasi-scientific study proving it, I'm not gonna be bothered by reading in low light.

Me at Monterey Bay Aquarium

 

Not shopping

For some reason all my profs have this idea that we go on the internet during class to do one thing, and one thing only: search eBay. I don't know where they got this idea, because most of us are quick enough on the upshot to close the window when they start wandering up the aisles. And as I sit in class, by far the most popular entertainment I see on laptops remain Solitaire and IM. Usually they come as a pair. Then email, a smattering of CNN. Lately I've seen a lot of people doing Lexis trivia. Every time I see somebody doing it, I try and keep an eye on them to cheat on the day's answer, but I always miss it. They probably randomize those anyway.

So I don't know why they think we're on eBay. Most of my profs seem to be level 3 on the internet savviness scale - meaning they can check email but can't figure out how to make the electronic projector screen retract. But I mean, where would we get the money to shop that often?

Type A

Last night at Zietgeist, discussing whether law students have Type A personalities:

Me: "Just because I'm anal, doesn't mean I'm Type A."
Flossy: (read this out loud for the full effect) "Dude, that's definately a sign of Type A-ness."

Summering

These giant law firm summer job offers are so strange. Examples:

1. They are all rated, by someone or other, as one of the Top Ten Best _____ Firm, or, alternately, are Recognized as One of America's Preeminent ______ Firms. Luckily there are enough Top Ten lists out there to accomidate all of them.

2. They all provide mentors. Also known as "attorney-buddies," and I'm not kidding.

3. They all offer trips to Napa Valley. I think they're sending the message that they will get us sloshed, but in that sophisticated, attorney way. (But then again, bums aren't called winos for nothing...).

4. They sponsor interoffice softball games. I wonder if softball players find it insulting. Softball is always the sport used to promote comraderie in groups of unathletic, frighteningly pale professionals.

5. They're looking for interns with "academic excellence" and a sense of humor. Do all attorneys undeservedly think they're hilarious or what? If so I'm on the right path.

6. Why are they trying to sell themselves to us? I mean, aren't we supposed to sell our soul for a job from them? Are they really competing for summer interns? This isn't the 90s....

7. Is offering a salary of $10,400 each month a typo or what? Are they saying I can work one summer for them and make half my salary from all of last year? Do I really want to be a lawyer? Can't I just be a summer intern for the rest of my life?

8. Then they hire 95% of their summers after law school. For that, they can have my soul for free.

9. They think they're unique because they have a "one-firm culture." They all offer a "one-firm culture." This is the concept that they are one big firm. Of course that's the culture. They are one big firm.

10. They're all way Too Good To Be True. And way too good to hire a 1L from a ___-tier law school.

(PS. If anyone's hiring, I enjoy cheap white wine, I sprint very quickly to the bus every day, I'm convinced I have an excellent sense of humor, and I integrate easily into preeminent microcosms.)

E-bitching

We just did our first Real Deal assignment, where you know nothing about the issue and you gotta find the cases and statutes. So-called Open Universe. Persuasive writing and discussion is fun. I think it was the first time I heard laughter in our legal writing class. Actual laughter! Imagine.

I must've spent several days worth of time searching Westlaw and Lexis. You get caught up digressing down the paths of links, keycites, references. Long wormholes, tunnels of stare decisis. Suddenly four hours have gone by and you're scanning some effing patent law case in the District Court of Puerto Rico from 1973.

During class we were forced to read a faux email, which was supposed to be professional but began with "what's up Stan" and ended with a Walt Whitman quote on the existence of God. Our assigmnent was to correct it so that it was more professional. Fall-out from the mass-forwarding of hyper-personal emails of Harvard summer interns bitching to their friends. Message being: don't e-bitch from your work computer. I scribbled on the assignment to FeeFie, "This is an insult to our intelligence." She laughed. Then I looked at her, and she looked at me, and we looked down at what I had written - and I quickly erased it. Irony not being lost on us...

Writing on the Wall

Our grades are finally in. There's something slightly disingenuous about making us pay for our second semester - and start it - before we know our grades on the first semester. But I did okay. Smattering of B's, and one C+ like a hairy mole on an otherwise satisfactory face.

Deadlines for summer internships are already passing, a reality punch in the 1L stomach, a slightly hardened yet still innocently relaxed stomach. I finally stopped running from it and printed out my sad, sad resume. Winced as I removed some stuff from high school.

BTW, when do I get to call it a C.V.? When it gets over a page? When I apply for A Real Job? Now that I'm out of college? I'll have to ask the Office of Career Planning. Hah.

Pearly Gate

 

Voted best looking study crew...ha!

 

Do I live here or...?

Back from the East Coast. I'm experiencing some serious meteorological discombobulation, if you can dig it. It was kinda cold here in SF when I left...it was winter in NY...now it's positively balmy here in SF. Effin' beautiful really. Green and sunny with a delicious breeze. But disorienting. Do I live here or is this an equitorial third world country with excellent drivers that I'm visiting on vacation?

Selective memory blackouts of NYC, now refreshed:
- how loud it is. Please, blow your horn again! I'm sure it will help the gridlock!
- how goddamn dirty it is. Seriously - garbage bags on the sidewalk? Whose idea was that anyway?
- how crowded it is. I spent more time waiting on line and wading through crowds than it took me to get wherever I was going.
- how gray it is. Concrete growing like weeds.

Never forgot:
- how gorgeously convenient the disgusting subway system really is. I visited the upper west side, the financial district, soho, and brooklyn all in an evening.
- the 24 hour corner deli. Providing toothbrush, single razor, and rubbers.
- awesome cup of coffee for $1.
- bacon egg n cheese on a bagel.
- single slice of pizza. Awesome pizza. Mmm, pizza.

Done!

It's over, done, finished! I have to repeat that because I'm trying to convince myself. Last night the law school junkies went out and got trashed (to some people's embarrassment...). When I went to sleep last night I conked out pretty quick but I kept waking up during the night. I'd find myself composing Contracts formulas (breach by service provider especially kept haunting me). It was outta control. I was mentally slapping myself out of it but c'mon, in my sleep? Can't let go! Can't get out of this matrix! But I am. We're done. Is it too early to get nostalgic? We'll never be these innocent babes in the woods again...!

It's a weird feeling, being where so many have been before you, saying the same shit as they said. I'm hyperaware of how beaten this path is, but I can't help myself from marking the trail right on top of the marks that are already there. Nothin new under the sun and all that.

First Final

Finals began. (oxymoronic). We did Torts yesterday; after 3.5 hours we went to FeeFie's and drank Miller latte while trying to learn black-letter Crim for Fri. After the exam, I felt like my brain had vomitted into the school's S drive, so the muscles in my head were all tired and worn out, like your abs after a hangover hurl.

But it was nice to get it all out of my mind because now I have room for other classes. I think I should be more nervous, but it's more like being in the outer reaches of delirium, where you function normally on your surface, but inside you're giggling and weeping and nauseus.

Block that

My study crew got together today for an intense sesh. I'm talking 10 hours, man. With one burrito break. But I feel good tonight, I feel a little tickle of opptimism in my brain. A rare, rare sensation this days. We get so deep into this shit -- you get caught up in the web of it, and everything you say comes out covered with sticky remnants. (Like saying I was comparatively negligent in not having my lighter 'cause I never asked for it back.) Brain doesn't feel fried today, it feels expanded. Yesterday I was burnt out. The fires are quenched.

::BLOCK THAT METAPHOR::

Self-Consumption

Current bad habits during reading week:
- chewing the inside of my lips to pieces
- rubbing my eyebrows. till there are gaps in them.
- smoking
- twirling hair between my fingers
- getting caught in internet fluff (myspace, blogging, email, etc)

Bunny ears

I love KQED. The PBS station. Me and the boy don't have cable - we just have a TV. (We got the TV free on CL. Actually, it came free with a $10 table. The kid said he'd gotten it free and didn't feel right selling it. When I bounce outta here, I'm gonna give it away too.) I still haven't figured out how TV works when you don't have cable. I mean, are there TV waves beaming through the air constantly then? So when you get a TV it just plucks them out of the air? We have TV waves flowing through our brains all the time then, right? Wack. Anyway then we got an $11 antenna. It's pretty hot; it has the two bunny ear antennas and a circular base. I don't know why, I just love its retractable metallic simplicity. And the fact that we got three more channels. If you hate trying to find something on TV, try getting rid of your cable. It's some kind of psychological fact that if you have less options, you're easier to please.

Anyway. KQED. Last night I was watching those lovely commercial-free Animal Shows. This chimpanizee 'trainer' (somehow that's not PC - it ain't a circus...) missed a few days of work when she miscarried her baby. And the chimp knew sign language, and was pissed off at her when she went back to work, because she hadn't been around. So the 'trainer' signed to the chimp "My baby died." And the chimp, who had lost a baby once herself, looked back at her and signed, "Crying." I nearly bawled my eyes out!

Redwood Shroom

 
 

Study groupin'

Three is good. Two is too intimate. Four is crowd. No doubt. Again, the high school drama - you don't talk about meeting up with The Group around other people, especially one's who asked to be in your group, or who might have expected to be in it.

We keep getting hooked on talking about Dirty Jeff. Who isn't worth our mock conversations, nor even a mention here.

Rules:
You have to have at least one Cop, who will keep you in line. (Me.)
You have to have one Comic, who'll keep you laughing. (FeeFie352).
You have to have one with intellectual integrity, who will have another right way of seeing it. (Flossy).
At least one person must have made outlines.
At least one other person must have made flashcards.
At least one person has to be cute (or all three).
There must be one ipod or other portable music device.
Finally, you have to be able to drink together.

High School

It's weird, but I think the most useful study skills I've applied to law school came from high school. For example, in Torts you have tons of factors (Tarasoff, Rowland, Strict Liability). How do I memorize them? I make acronyms of the leading key words. Same shit I did in high school. I rewrite sections of my outlines with the elements over and over - same thing I did in high school.

Now that Thanksgiving is over I have 3 more days of class. When did the end ever come so abruptly after Thanksgiving? I'm studying my outlines, but I think they're too bare-bones. It's almost nauseating, the amount of stuff you have to memorize. I keep reminding myself, insisting there's no limits to my brain. My little universe. But God, is it really limitless?? Like the universe, time and space in my brain are inherently intertwined. Do I have time to add to the space? At some point, will I be incapable of adding more elements to the factors? I want it all, I want to know every element; I want to do Better Than Them. I have an advantage: I've been creating and studying my outlines since Week 3. But I'm not convinced it's enough. It's hard to focus on one class when you have to make space for all of them.

And I'm distracted again by thoughts of New York. I want to give SF a chance, but my heart hurts when I think of being in NY. I wonder if I'm the kind of person who can do the East coast-West coast transplant. My friends at school are all west coasters. But me, I have this drive inside of me that screams East coast. I wish I could feel the West coast without the pre-conceived notions of it that you get. Thanksgiving was a break, but also an unwanted opportunity to think about bigger issues. I don't want that distraction right now. I have to focus, and I don't want the outer world intruding. I need a self-imposed small-mindedness. And yet...part of why I want to do so well is that I want the opportunity to leave SF.

clouds in my coffee

 
 

You might be a law student if...

A little humor, inspired by blogger Law Student Barbie.

You know you’re a 1L in San Francisco when:
1) You refuse to laugh at your professors’ microphone jokes. Or, you can’t help but laugh.
2) You seriously wonder about the existence of the Reasonable Born-Again Christian Scientist.
3) You still think it’s funny to bring legal concepts into your daily life, such as accusing people of ‘trespassing your chattels.’
4) You really have no idea what a chattel is.
5) Somebody got the third highest grade on the LRW midterm – and it’s barely a B.
6) You really have no idea what ‘grade’ you got on your LRW midterm.
7) All the student groups are funded with bake sale cookies.
8) You wait in line for 25 minutes just to get a midterm assignment on a Friday afternoon.
9) Your tutor publishes an open request in the school paper to get in your 1L pants – and some people take him up on it.
10) You still cannot remember where you sit in room 100.
11) You’ve made your Crim law professor literally hop up and down waiting for you to answer a question.
12) You carry your own supply of toilet seat covers.
13) You can’t get through Torts without marveling at your prof’s boobs at least once.
14) You realize those kids you don’t recognize aren’t 2Ls – they’re from the other section.
15) You’ve had at least one sloppy, passionate make-out session on bar night – and you pretend you don’t remember it.

Bumper sticker of the day

My favorite anti-Bush bumper sticker of the day:

"2008: The End of an Error"

Epiphany 

Advice

Advice is exhausting. I can only really appreciate advice until I've had all the experienes that lead me to that advice. You can't skip the steps. You need all those neuron connections to truly and intimately understand the final epiphany.

Transplantee

Does anyone else think there's a plaintiff bias at law school? I'm getting that vibe in class. But you know, I think it's related to the supposed "liberal bias" at higher education institutions. I think liberalism is a product of higher education. The more educated you are, the more you realize the liberals have it right. So it makes sense. Defense lawyers always feel tied to Big Business in my mind. And Big Business is conservative, and wealthy.

I miss NYC terribly. Is there any consolation for a NYC-to-SF transplantee? Will I ever stop missing it? I have made some progress; I've moved beyond the stage where you try and relate every SF neighborhood to a NY neighborhood. I still have dreams where I'm in the NYC subway, but I've learned to love my car a little more and hate Muni a little less. I frequently extol the cheapness of drinks...but that's still a product of constantly comparing this city to that one. But really, honestly, where is a girl to go if she wants to leave NYC? SF is it.

I read in my crim book today (in a footnote; my text is authored my illustrous Professor Shatz) that the defense of entrapment began in the bible. You know: when Eve tells Adam that the snake tricked her into eating the apple by promising her greatness. Isn't that hilarious? Shatz, you're a nut.

 

It begins

This blog, that is; my law school "career" began at the end of August, 2005. I am a 1L. It's funny, after reading other student blawgs wailing over the "1L drama," I'm trying to see my world through that lense. I'm forced to admit it exists. It's fun at first, y'know, talking in legalese. But even now, only several months into this, and already my mates are scolding, "No law school talk!" (This kid in my section got hit by a car on his motorcycle. You can imagine the tort talk...). But it creeps in more insidiously than you think. ("How is online poker legal??" "They better fix that pothole...") It's part of the cult mentality that all community groups have, I guess. Something that shows you're "in" and that other people are out. And I think that effect is worsened by the high degree of intellectual rigor required to get here. High Academia Snobbery.

I go to __________________. We have a lot of hot girls here. (Word on the street is, ______ has all the hot guys. Can't confirm that though.) But it's incredible how many girls are Taken. I mean, I'm fresh out Just Trying to Get Laid (aka, college) and now everyone's married or engaged or has the live-in boyfriend (me). I think this fact has concentrated the singles drama considerably, since a big chunk of us are unavailable. But all of the Taken are enjoying the rumors and drama. This is probably stating the obvious, but can you believe how juvenile people get in a student microcosm? I don't know if it's that people are older. In college, there was no trickery and device - there was less emphasis on the Relationship element. But here, it's like high school again, the way people get involved with other law students.

It's good here. It's...light hearted, if I may use that in the law school context. The competition is gentle, existant but not persistant. I motivate (ok, ok, police) my friends into doing their reading. I mean, is that what it's like at first tiers? Don't people support and hope for their friends, even when the competition is brutal? Admittedly, I haven't even had one set of law school finals yet. I've only gotten one grade (not even, it was a number, a number without a high or low score) so perhaps I haven't tasted that bitter drink yet.