divine angst

I’ve been watching that tracker over in my sidebar. Right now it’s counting down the days till exams begin. It’s a little weird, actually, since, at the beginning of the semester it was showing something like 99 days, and now it only shows 40.

That’s not actually the weird part. The weird part is that for weeks I watched it, thinking that exams could NOT be 65 days away, or 60 days away, or 55 days away, or 50 days away.

But now that it’s at 40, I actually believe it.

The semester is, of course, blowing right by me. How can it possibly be the ninth week of school? I only know so much time has passed because of my class notes, organized into documents by week. Nine weeks. Wow. No way, right?

Still, exams being 40 days away doesn’t feel so wild. I can look at what I’ve learned this semester and actually comprehend that I’ve absorbed something like 2/3 of what I’m supposed to. The big picture is coming together. More and more, cases read for one class are referencing doctrines and rules we’re discussing in a different class. Things are starting to gel.

Not to say I’ve got a grip on everything. But if I visualize what I’m learning, I no longer see a great big field of white with some splotchy messes strewn randomly around. That field of white is turning into patches of white, isolated from other patches of white by a spreading web of information. It’s like watching a fast-motion video of mold growing.

(I’m not really equating law school knowledge with mold, of course, but it is an interesting analogy: mold thrives in the dank and dark, feeds off the leavings of mankind, and can turn an entire house toxic….there’s a whole lot of subtext in that…)

Forty days to exams. Not so unbelievable.

I should get my first law school grade today. Sometime. When my first memo gets returned. Sometime.

So I’m just waiting. While I wait, I’m writing my next memo. Conference tomorrow. I’m not as into the issue we’re writing about on this memo, so I’m having trouble getting motivated. I realized today, though, that unlike the “could go either way” nature of the last memo’s issue, this memo really can only go one way. So I think the take-away from it is less about making sure my position is supported and more about choosing–and using–the best sources in the most efficient way.

All this to say that I do not want to be writing this memo right now. And I’d feel a lot better about what I needed to do if I knew what I’d done wrong on the last one.

Update: Got it. Same as my advisory grade on the partial memo I turned in a few weeks ago. I am not disappointed. Whew!