divine angst

Most days, I get anywhere from 50 to 100 school-related emails, plus an additional 50 or so personal emails. Spring break, therefore, has been a very nice little rest from that. I’m getting maybe 10 or so emails a day, and most of those can go right into the trash.^[1]

I think for a long time, I lived in a world where I didn’t really use email for anything important. I worked in small offices where important things could be discussed in the break room, where urgent questions required nothing more than a walk down the hall, and where getting everyone’s opinion usually meant the boss walked into our shared office. But law is different–there are so many things I’m involved in that don’t have any centralized organization. I am sure it won’t be better in practice, either, especially not at the firm I’m going to, where matters are often staffed across offices.

So I’m trying to be better about using email efficiently, about cleaning out my inbox, about sorting things into folders and flagging important messages so they don’t get forgotten. But it’s a struggle. I can’t manage to keep fewer than 150 emails in my inbox at any given time, and right now, I have 400. (I don’t have time to sort and organize them; I’m writing a seminar paper, remember?) I’d love it if I could keep about 20 messages in the inbox, and file the others away, but if they’re not in the inbox, it’s “out of sight, out of mind.” For all that I’m a HUGE proponent of technology making my life easier and more efficient, I can’t manage to use GTD^[2] software to save my life.

1. This does not count the 20 emails I got from Westlaw today, after I requested several articles be sent to me. ↩
2. Getting Things Done ↩

I’m glad to see I’m not the only one whose seminar paper is not writing itself. I have been staring at my computer for so long I think I forgot what it’s like to look at things that don’t glow from behind. I have reorganized this paper at least four times, and I just sent a request to the Westlaw lab for 11 more articles that I am hoping will provide SOME support for my argument. Because I clearly didn’t do my research very well before I proposed the topic–basically all the nifty little legal doctrines that were supposed to provide a way for me to sneak my little theory in have been either (a) preempted by federal statute or (b) rejected by state courts. Waa!

I mean, don’t get me wrong–I’m writing away. I keep adding words and sentences and paragraphs, and eventually I am hoping SOMETHING will coalesce. It’s going to be a crappy first draft, that’s true, but I’ll have till the end of April, basically, to polish it up–and I’ll have feedback from someone who actually teaches in this subject to help me out. I have to keep reminding myself of that–this is an ungraded first draft, self, and it’s just a way for you to test out the idea, self, and then you can fiddle with it later, self. Do you hear me, self??

Off to pick up my printouts.

Oh my gag, my upstairs neighbors are playing their music SO LOUDLY. Don’t they know I’m working on a PAPER? I’m BUSY? I need to THINK?

They’re stupid.