divine angst

As law students, we become very used to being very busy and, to a certain extent, we take that in stride. We sleep less, perhaps, or we multi-task; we do less of our reading in favor of going to class–or skip class in favor of doing more reading, depending on the prof. And sometimes, we have to make genuine sacrifices–completely abandoning a class for a week or two while we finish a Note or Comment, or putting journal duties aside while we madly cram for exams. We do mental cost-benefit analyses–how much can I give away here without really hurting my GPA?

This semester, I had to make one of those sacrifices. I admit it–I had too much on my plate. I was doing research and I was TAing, I was doing source and cite and I was trying to go to every class meeting. This semester I also had two papers to write, and, in the end, I skimped on one of them. I felt intense guilt the entire time. I loved the topic, I love the discussion in class, I loved the grayness of the area of law. But the paper–the paper I had problems with. I never felt a connection with my topic, I never really understood what I was arguing, I never really Got It. Instead of spending more time on it, though, instead of arranging to meet with the professor and talk it out, instead of making the effort to do something I felt good about, I punted. I wrote something superficial and wimpy, and what I turned in is something I am not very proud of.

Luckily, as I discovered today, the cost-benefit analysis I did paid off. I got a grade I probably didn’t deserve, and then it got bumped even higher because of my class participation. I am happy that class won’t be the dark spot on my semester–very, very happy. But I am disappointed in myself for not giving the paper the chance it really deserved. So I’ll enjoy the sweet–the grade I never hoped to get in that class–but it will be cut by a bit of bitter guilt.

And just like that, I’m done.

I think I deserve a medal of some kind, though, since I not only took an exam today but also finished the revision of my seminar paper. That’s TWO THINGS I did in ONE DAY. During EXAMS.

Anyway, the point is that 2L is over. Long live 2L! (No, not really. 2L has been a long, sometimes miserable, always busy, usually overwhelming drag of a year–but it’s also a year in which I made some new friends, became closer to some old ones, and really grew into my own academic identity. OK, this post just got a little too mushy.)

Off to have a beer. Or four.

I would be much happier about being done with this year tomorrow if I felt like I knew anything at all about Constitutional Criminal Procedure. Or, as it seems, the economic loss doctrine.

Whimper.

I need to be revising my seminar paper–which I’ve already started, but which needs some work and is due in less than two days, ack–but instead, I’m watching Heroes. Because, duh, it’s the best show on TV.

But I promise I’ll work on my paper when the show is over. Promise.

1) Will someone explain the grand jury to me? I still don’t understand it.
2) The article I did research for last summer has been picked up by a law review. This is very exciting for me. My name! In a footnote!
3) My resume is officially on two pages. I’m not sure what to do about that.
4) Why is a general negligence duty less preferable to a narrower, affirmative duty to comply with some specific standard?
5) We got Himself a new tag (he’s been without one for a while) and now he tinkle-tinkle-tinkles around the apartment. The tinkling woke me up at 6 am today. Boo.

“You’ll be able to zip through a lot of work in a short amount of time today.”

God, let’s hope so. It’s already after 5, and I’ve still got a lot to do.

I was up at a decent hour this morning, though not really of my own volition. Our tub was clogged up and none of my tinkering had any effect at all.^[1] Our landlord was great though–promised to be out between 9 and 11 this morning when I called last night. Of course, that meant I had to be up and dressed before 9.

Now I’m on my second pot of coffee (don’t worry, I shared the first with Mr. Angst), and three or four weeks into my Con Crim Pro outline. I know, that’s not all that good. But it’s going quickly. I have to say, I spent more time on my reading this semester than I have since my very first semester in law school, and it’s paying off. I have retained more so I’m relying less on my notes to construct the substance of my outline. My notes are giving me structure–what were those seven questions he posed with respect to Katz? Did we do probable cause before we discussed seizures?–but I’m largely filling in the “law” from my own head. I had the same experience with my Admin outline, actually, and walked out of the exam feeling OK about it.

1. Here’s what I usually do, and it usually works: wait till the water has drained out, scoop about 3 tablespoons of baking soda into the drain, making sure it gets all the way down into the drain, and then pour about a quart of vinegar into the drain. If the soda is well down into the drain, the vinegar will (a) carry it further down the drain while (b) fizzing like holy hell. The fizzing is what works the magic. The soda and vinegar mixture will dissolve whatever is binding the solids in the drain together and hopefully carry those solids away. After you can’t hear the fizzing in the drain anymore (about fifteen minutes) flush the drain with hot water. Repeat as necessary. Plunge if needed. ↩

Admin down. Boo-yah. Per normal, I realized approximately three hours after the exam just how royally I had screwed up one particular issue. ROCK. Really, though, I feel pretty OK about it. But I’m finally at this place where the exam process no longer scares the shit out of me. It’s a test. I have to regurgitate all the things I learned over the semester in rough IRAC format in response to a fact pattern in about three hours. It sucks, but it’s just a thing, right? I went in, I took it, and I left.

So, one more exam to go, plus a paper revision (which is not going to write itself, Self, so you better get cracking on that!) and a bunch of editing. And some shopping for work clothes before I start in approximately ELEVEN days. Gasp! (And a hair appointment, because you know it’s starting to look bad when even random people tell you you have a lot of gray. AWESOME.)

But right now, I’m chilling with the dog, debating about whether it warmed up enough for me to change clothes before I take him on his afternoon walk. He’s awfully cute, too–not necessarily chasing squirrels in his sleep, but certainly smelling them.

I will take my first exam tomorrow. I think I am as prepared as I can be. I know I have not done as much prep work as I have in the past, but I also know that I have been so busy the last several days that I’ve been working pretty efficiently. Maybe not efficiently enough–I am still sort of behind on some stuff. But almost certainly I’ve been working more efficiently than in past semesters. I feel better about my classes with fewer hours of study time logged. Let’s hope that’s not just self-delusion.

Today has just been a day.

I’m dealing with some unpleasant duties, some dealing with Word (which, um, I. Hate.) and some dealing with people (who, sometimes, I. Really. Don’t. Like.). I’m trying to figure out a good schedule for studying for Admin and Con Crim Pro. I’m trying not to get too excited that today is Lease Signing Day. And I’m trying to decide if I should push my start date at work back a week so I can attack the edits I have due with total concentration. (I’m thinking that wouldn’t work; I’m not much of a total concentration kind of person. I can hyperfocus on something for about an hour or two, and then I need to switch gears. Plus, I want that extra week of cash.)

So basically I’m just not in a very happy mood today. I’m not in a BAD mood, per se, I’m just not very happy nor am I, probably, at all pleasant to be around. I’m going to try and get over that here in a bit so I can enjoy Lease Signing Day (or Hour) this evening, and also not be completely worthless for continuing to get my work done.

See? I can’t even write good anymore.

It’s bad when outlining is the most fun task of the tasks on your to-do list. Some of the things on my to-do list are so boring I’d rather watch paint dry (and I could, since they’re painting something around the law school; I can smell it).

But I’m doing these things, because I have to and because, perversely, I enjoy them. Yeah, they’re boring, but I enjoy them.

In other news, my Admin outline is done, I have some killer flowcharts, and I’m going to plow through some practice exams tomorrow. Maybe I’ll do a post about how I prep for exams later this week, but for now, here’s the nutshell on what works for me–outline from your notes, pulling from other outlines as they are helpful in clarifying things you don’t understand; make flowcharts where appropriate (good for code classes and classes with lots of multi-step or multi-factor tests, like Contracts and Civil Procedure and Admin); then take as many practice exams as you can and DISCUSS them with your friends. (No need to write out a full three hour exam; I usually take half the time allotted and do a detailed outline, of the sort I’d then fill in during the exam itself.) The discussion thing is really important for me, otherwise I miss the nuance.

OK. Back to (not) watching paint dry.

I am almost completely done with my Admin outline. Whew! I have four more classes (or one unit, depending on how you like to look at things) to summarize and I’m ready to start refining, flowcharting, and taking practice exams. It’s been a productive weekend for me and, best of all, I feel good about my work. I’m a little stressed, just because I see the limited time stretching ahead of me, and I have a lot going on in the next few weeks, but I’m feeling good anyway. It’s all going to get done.

If anything could cement my desire to move (again, for the fourth time in three two years^[1]) it would be the fact that we’ve had to flee our home today to get any work done because our upstairs neighbors are playing their music too loud. I’m sure they have no idea how loud their music is to us–this isn’t bad faith on their part–but that doesn’t make the noise tolerable. At all. Even worse, their stereo is DIRECTLY above our table, where I do the bulk of my work, so I bear the brunt of it.

Lest I seem completely negative about the whole thing, I’ll note how delightful it is to be out of the apartment today, even if just for the duration of a walk to the coffeehouse. It’s about 80 degrees, sunny, breezy, and absolutely DELIGHTFUL outside. I can see the sunshine from our table, as well as all the people in their shorts and flip flops, walking their (very happy) dogs. Things could be worse.

Studying update: I’m halfway through my Admin outline, and I’m pretty pleased with it. I’ve also decided not to worry about the jinxing effect of saying such things–confidence is the name of the game, really, when it comes to law school, so I’m letting myself feel good about the work I’ve done for this class so far.

1. Mr. Angst has corrected me, and this makes it even worse. FOUR MOVES in TWO YEARS. Seriously barf. ↩

I turned in the seminar brief last night and, five minutes later, realized I forgot to do one thing on it. Sigh. I just keep repeating to myself, Only two credits, only two credits.

Now I get to begin serious exam prep. I’ve already started outlining for my two exam classes, though I am much further along with Admin than Con Crim Pro. I need to ramp that up and get through the outlining process by mid-week. I also have to revise my other seminar paper. And I have to keep working on some journal things that I have been avoiding because, eck.

But tonight, tonight I go out. To a nerd party, true, but out is out. I just need to figure out what to wear.

I’ve reached the point in my brief where I’d ordinarily put it away for a few hours to percolate. Unfortunately, I don’t have a few hours to let it percolate. So I am diving back in.

I don’t have more pages now, but I have some slightly better content. However, if someone would tell me whether or not the unconstitutional conditions doctrine is just dead in the water, oh, say, RIGHT NOW, that would be helpful, before I incorporate a bunch of outdated law into my brief.

Otherwise, I guess I have to go read Rust so I know what I’m talking about.

Now that things with the apartment are looking more and more firm, I am letting myself get excited about it. I don’t want to get TOO excited right now, though–I still have exams to get through, not to mention this brief. Right now, I’m procrastinating by reading my email and posting, when I should be muddling through how the unconstitutional conditions doctrine figures into my argument regarding 10 U.S.C. § 654(b)(2). And whether I should also talk about § 654(b)(1). That’s a lot to figure out in the 14 hours I have left to finish this sucker, but I have faith in myself. FAITH!

OK. I have written a check for the deposit. The landlord has confirmed our preferred move-in date. We have to be approved by the building management (a formality, apparently), reserve our move-in date with the building, and pay some weird fee for the freight elevator. We also have to sign the lease, get keys and the garage clicker, and, oh yes, give notice to our current landlord. But it’s basically a done deal, and I am SO excited.

But I have questions:

First, do I wait till we’ve signed the lease to give notice to our current landlord? The building approval is a formality, yes, but it’s still a hoop, right? I want to give our landlord enough time that if he wants to rent it out half a month early, say, he has time to do that. (We’re doubling a month, sigh.)

Second, is it OK for me to get a little freaked out right now? I LOVE the apartment we’re moving into and would sign a two year lease HAPPILY if it weren’t for the pesky issue of possible clerkships not in Our Current City (and job opportunities for Mr. Angst that could take us to Places East). But it’s a little spendier than I had hoped we’d end up paying (even though totally worth it, I think), and, well, we’re having to move again. And pay for movers and probably some new furniture and all that transition stuff.

I am guessing the second question arises from a little bit of buyer’s remorse–fairly typical of me, I think. But it’s still not pleasant to be so twitchy and nervousy.

Oh, and also? I only have about half of my brief written, and it’s due tomorrow. Eek!

Today I attended my last classes as a 2L. Somewhat anticlimactic, to be honest. Since then, I’ve made several more appointments to see apartments (tomorrow), done some administrative stuff relating to journal duties, and done some work on my seminar brief, due in three days. The seminar brief concerns me the most right now, since I haven’t written a brief since legal writing as a 1L and I’m not sure I know how anymore; also, I’ll probably spend most of tomorrow away from my computer, unable to work on the seminar brief, so I’ll likely end up pulling an all-nighter at some point this week. Oh yeah, that’s because I’m supposed to study with some friends on Wednesday. At this point, I imagine I’ll show up and just absorb and listen and converse rather than actually proffer any pearls of wisdom or gleaned understandings.

But if I can get past Thursday, and the turning in of the brief, I think I will make it. That all assumes we find a place to live while we’re out looking tomorrow. I’ve really packed our day, hoping something will bear fruit, because I can’t keep taking days off to look at apartments. Really.

1. Continue outlining for Admin. Going well so far. Many weeks of notes to go, though.
2. Begin outlining for Con Crim Pro. Haven’t started. A little nervous about that.
3. Write seminar brief. Arguments have changed DRASTICALLY since last week. V. nervous about that.
4. Dive into new journal duties by attacking a pending edit. Wondering when I’ll find the time for that.
5. Look at apartments this weekend. Again with the time thing.
6. Revise other seminar paper, due at end of exam period. Plenty of time for that, right?

The seminar brief is due next Thursday, so it should, theoretically, be first on my list. But I have study sessions to set up during next week, and I should have SOMETHING outlined before I go to those, so I have to do some outlining in the next week. I have a full month to attack the journal duties, but don’t want to put those off at all since I am not sure how long each edit will take me. I have to decide when to take my exams, so that’s another issue that will determine which outlines get done first. And the apartment thing…sigh. We have to find something, and we’re only about 6 weeks out from our earliest moving day, so that has to get done, also.

Y’all, this is going to be a crazy two weeks. However, per normal for me, the busier I am, the calmer I get. I simply do not have time to be completely wigged out right now.

Every now and then, I look around where I’m at and realize that the idealized vision I had of this great intellectually stimulating educational environment is actually happening all around me.

There are moments of disillusionment also, to be sure, but lately I’m having more of the “Yeah, this is exactly the experience I always hoped it would be” moments. I guess it’s good I’m having these moments now, when I have another year to enjoy; I wish I’d started having them before the last week of classes of my second year, though.

So I’ve been doing some research for a professor this semester, and it’s been really interesting, but I haven’t been able to spend as much time with it as I would have liked over the last few weeks. Yesterday I decided that this would be my priority this weekend, to finish going through the notes he gave me and get through the whole piece. I have just completed that task. I still need to go back, maybe tomorrow, and refine some stuff, read some things more closely, check some books in the library–but I feel good that I got through the piece. It’s one less thing hanging over my head.

Why is it that the mere act of getting OUT OF THE HOUSE immediately makes me more productive? It’s not like the coffeehouse I’m at is a particularly work-inspiring place. But I now have 5 pages of my seminar brief^[1] (due in 2 weeks–that’s pretty good, all things considered!) where before I had a rough 2 page outline. OK, at least one page of that 5 pages is a VERY LONG QUOTE from an article by Cass Sunstein. But it’s a BRIEF, remember, and briefs can be full of quotes from other people because that’s the best way to be persuasive.

That’s sort of an interesting line of thought, actually. In an academic paper, at least in law school, the idea is to come up with an interesting and novel idea and show that your interesting and novel idea is not foreclosed by other work. Hopefully you can also show that your interesting and novel idea fits into the framework presented by other work. But the key is that your interesting idea has to be NOVEL–like, no one else has made this argument before.

With a brief, though, the idea is to show that your argument is NOT new, that everyone else has basically been making the same argument with respect to other facts for, like, ever. So the more evidence you can show that other people think the way you do, the better. It’s a totally different skill set, really. And yet, at the beginning of the semester, I decided to write a brief instead of a paper (we had a choice) because I thought it might be easier. Fact is, I am probably better at the paper thing than the brief thing because I don’t think in brief terms, I think in paper terms. Of course, from an academic perspective, the brief is therefore a better assignment for me because I’m getting to work on something I’m not already good at. Yay! But from a time management perspective, it’s not so great–I have too many other things to be working on right now to be learning how to write a brief! Ack!^[2]

For consolation, I will remember that someone (a prof? a friend? I can’t remember) told me that brief-writing is something that very few people are good at. So if this isn’t the best thing I’ve ever written, I will not think I am a failure. I will just think I am not meant to be a brief writer. I’m not sure if that’s much consolation, though.

1. Pretty cool, huh? I think law students don’t get enough opportunities to write briefs and since that’s what we’ll be doing–at least if we are litigation associates–it’s very cool to get to do one for a seminar. ↩
2. And, actually, I have to go back home now because tonight’s class is a vegan potluck, so I have to go figure out how to make eggplant parmesan without cheese. I figure that’s going to take me a while because I need to do a little experimenting with flavors to make sure it doesn’t end up tasting boring. ↩

Mr. Angst and I hosted some friends for a FABULOUS Easter dinner, complete with roasted leg of lamb, parmesan mashed potatoes, arugula salad with raspberry balsamic vinaigrette, bread pudding, white chocolate raspberry cheesecake, and some fine port. (I didn’t make the desserts, nor did I provide the port. Good guests!) It was a terrific evening, with lots of good conversation (and a general avoidance of law school talk, thank heavens).

But every good thing has its downside. In this case, while it’s fun to have a great dinner party, all the cooking and eating and talking make it difficult to get any schoolwork done. I finished up some journal duties after our guests left, but did not manage to get to tomorrow morning’s reading. I’m going to skim through the hornbook treatment of tomorrow’s topic, but who knows how much I’ll absorb. Other things, like the Law School Roundup, also fall by the wayside; I’m hoping to get to that tomorrow morning.

Anyway, happy Easter, everyone!

I am now officially back in that place where I have so much to do that I am completely unable to do any of it. I am immobilized.

Meh.