divine angst

Bar/Bri continues apace. Today’s lecture was WAY too long and the lecturer spends too much time repeating the stuff in the notes instead of highlighting the nuance. He is, at least, entertaining. I have given up on the Paced Program for the time being and am instead just trying to keep up with the reading.

Work is heating up—I have four cases on my desk including two court appearances scheduled for Monday, and everyone keeps giving me more responsibility. It’s actually very cool—people seem to trust that I can handle the matters they’re giving me and that gives me confidence that I, well, actually CAN handle the matters they’re giving me.

Also, my last set of grades came in today, which means I can no longer procrastinate on my clerkship applications. This weekend, therefore, is set aside not for doing practice questions but instead for writing cover letters, polishing up my writing samples, and building my online applications. Right now, it doesn’t feel quite real—I’ve been telling myself for months that I’ll send my applications once grades come in; well, grades are in, so I guess have to back that up.^[1]

Oh, and yes, grades are in, which means I am officially done. Even though my degree audit doesn’t actually indicate that I’ve completed my last two requirements, I know I have and I know I’m done. I am officially a Juris Doctor. Hallelujah!

1. I realize this makes it sound like I don’t actually want to apply for clerkships. I actually DO want to apply for clerkships; it’s just the reality of actually having to write the cover letters and get my writing samples ready that I balk at. I think cover letters are just another opportunity to screw up, and as far as writing samples goes, I hate that I have lots of really good stuff that’s either cowritten, and so inappropriate to send, or too long, or not doctrinal enough, or is just too short. I have been looking for that perfect 10-12 page writing opportunity forever, and I have never quite achieved it. Everything I have that length is cowritten or or casual memo. Gah. ↩

Bar/Bri sucks the life out of me. It’s bad enough that I have ANOTHER sinus infection; do I have to sit through videotaped lectures for four hours a day, too? But they tell me that this is the way to pass the bar, so I do it.

Because of the aforementioned sinus infection, though, I have not felt up to jumping into the Paced Program. (Oops, Paced Program™.) I haven’t summarized any of my notes; I haven’t done any of the recommended testing drills, and I am not currently working on the essays I’m supposed to work on today. Maybe tomorrow. Or maybe not. If I could get a solid night’s sleep, I’d definitely feel more up to doing actual work, but I haven’t accomplished such a thing in days. I slept better last night than since Saturday night, but I was propped up on pillows so I could breathe, and I don’t sleep well when I can’t roll around and flop onto my stomach, so I still don’t feel really rested.

Tomorrow, my afternoon class gets lucky and gets a live lecture (whoo-hoo!) but that means it’ll be packed, since the morning kids have to come to our class, too. And we have class on SATURDAY, which is vile—another live lecture, and that one with the morning kids AND the evening kids. I am dreading trying to find a seat—and save enough seats for my Bar/Bri pals.

Because, after all, while law school is like high school, Bar/Bri is like middle school. People save seats for each other, pass notes in class, and generally act like they’re in the early throes of puberty. (For instance, today, some skeezy guy sitting next to a married friend of mine decided her wedding ring was a challenge to be overcome. I mean, ew. Not appropriate.)

So, basically, Bar/Bri sucks, especially when you’re sick, and I can’t believe I have another eleventy-million of these lectures to attend—not to mention actually doing some self study and then TAKING THE BAR EXAM. And somewhere in the next few weeks of figuring out this whole Bar/Bri Paced Program self study stuff, I need to put together my clerkship applications and send them—and that includes doing some additional work on The Task since I’m going to send it out as a writing sample for at least some of my applications, and I doubt any judges will be impressed by the handful of citations I have that read “String cite to all those articles on Google.” Granted, that’s work I’m going to have to do that anyway, if I’m sending it out for publication in August, but I’ll have to do it EARLIER rather than later for clerkship applications.

Anyway. My summer is shaping up to be just fantastic—and I haven’t even started my summer job yet! (To be fair my summer job should be the best part of my summer; it’s just that it will eat away another four hours of my day that I’m already not spending studying. Gah!) More updates to come.

I was planning to write a sort of lengthy post about the end of law school and all of the myriad emotions I’ve been feeling since taking my last exam, and about wandering around the city feeling unemployed, and how sort of strange I felt today, particularly.

But I’m not going to write about that because, today, after I got home, my graduation gift from Mr. Angst was waiting for me and I’ve spent most of this evening playing with it. Mr. Angst has even joined me.

That’s right.

We’ve formed a band.

So you’ll have to excuse me if I’m a little preoccupied for the next few weeks before Bar/Bri starts (and before my summer job starts)—what free time I’ll have away from revising The Task and from finishing up journal stuff may well be spend honing my guitar skills. (Yes, it’s ironic—I’m the guitarist and Mr. Angst is the singer. I am not really sure why or how that happened except that it’s my graduation present and, at least if I play by myself, it’s more fun to play the guitar than to sing. I actually think I’ll spend some time tomorrow starting a solo career.)

Excuse me—I have to run. Mr. Angst is singing Don’t Fear the Reaper, solo. I want to watch this.

I’m really in the home stretch now, and I’m starting to feel it.

That’s mostly because I just got comments back on my second draft of The Task. I’m really proud of what I’ve written, astonished that I cranked out 21,000 words and that most of them don’t suck, and, most of all, gratified that my advisor thinks it’s a great paper.

Despite the fact that I still have an exam to take, I’m really feeling the oncoming end to this thing called Law School. This paper has been a very consistent theme for me this year—it’s influenced what news I’ve read, what I think about some really interesting current events, and even how I think about an entire area of law and regulation. This, from a paper that started as a very small germ, in the vein of “I think I want to write about this particular entity,” that didn’t even really have a conclusion until two months ago.

So seeing it wrap up has me a little emotional. It represents a whole year that has been one of the hardest of my life, both personally and academically, and its success represents that all of it has been worth it. It’s exciting and sad and overwhelming all at the same time.

Of course, I say all of this knowing full well that I intend to send it out for publication in August, and will be working on it all summer, too—sending it out for comments from some of the authors I cite, revising the language, tightening it, expanding it, contracting it. I guess the distinction, though, is that it won’t be Law School this summer—it’ll just be me, writing about something that I find really, really interesting.

But for now, The Task represents an emotional end. It’s not bittersweet—I am, actually, completely ready to graduate—but it’s emotional.

I seem to like the lists lately. Here’s another one.

• I did a quick search on Westlaw today, looking for additional authority for a section of The Task that I’m reworking. It was very gratifying to note that of the top 10 results, I already have—and have read—seven of them. Two of the other three were PLI documents (so, not really what I was looking for, since those tend to just report developments in an area of law rather than craft/expound upon a new theory or interpretation). Honestly? One of the better research moments in my life. I do wish, however, that I’d been able to construct this awesome search three months ago; the benefit of hindsight, I suppose, and months of reading on the topic.
  
  
• My brother may be moving overseas. Like, in a month. This is a little weird, but really cool for him. I was just thinking that, if he does have to move overseas on short notice, it’s good that it will be right after my graduation, since that’ll be a nice family gathering where we can all say goodbye; he probably won’t be back in the States till the fall, and even that seems like a bit of a longshot.
  
  
• I get to leave tomorrow for a three-day, four-night vacation with my best friend (and some other people) and I am probably more excited about that than the fact that I had my last real law school class, EVER, today. (I have a clinic meeting tomorrow, but that’s not really class.)

I think that’s enough of a list for today.

I’m pretty sure it’s not good.

Oh, I mean, it’s got good parts, and it’s probably a good start, but I’m pretty sure it’s not actually good. I can’t even add “yet” to the end of that sentence; I’m not really sure it’s going to be good. I have hope, but my hope is definitely tempered with a little bit of realistic dismay.

It’s not as long as I thought it would be; I’m sure it will grow, though. It’s not as fluid as I wanted it to be, but I think that’s expected of a first draft. The biggest problem, though, is that I’m not sure I’ve said anything new at all. Maybe that’s OK—maybe this really is just one of those papers that brings a lot of different thoughts together to bear on a particular problem. Maybe it’s OK to not break new ground in recommending a complete change in thinking if I’m breaking new ground in suggesting that a problem exists that people haven’t recognized, and that other (smarter, maybe) people than I have already outlined the solution—it’s just a matter of applying the solution.

Whatever. All I know is that I have to put the damn thing away for a few hours or days before I come back and reread it, and then send it in. And wait for the (first draft) verdict.

As much as I am enjoying the writing (and I really am, when I am actually making progress and know what I’m doing), it hit me this morning just how tired I am.

I’m tired of dealing with . . . everything. I’m tired of dealing with authors, I’m tired of being the go-to person for a variety of tasks which I thought I delegated away, I’m tired of not having time to sit and watch TV or clean my house or take Himself on a decently long walk. I’m tired of the neverending work; I can’t go home and get away from it because it is always there, needing to be worked on. I’m tired of feeling like I don’t have time to go to the gym because it takes two and a half hours to get there and back and get a decent workout done, and I don’t have two and a half hours in the day to spare. I’m just tired.

Graduation is looming, looming, looming and, while I often wish I had another year of law school so I could take all those classes I didn’t get to take and learn all that stuff I never got to learn, I know what a bad thing that would be for me. I’d just end up back in this same spot, fending off ever more work and getting more and more tired. I cannot even begin to describe how eager I am to just have a job and not feel like my minutes on the train or bus need to spent reading and thinking about The Task or exams or journal work, to be able to leave work at work (even if I leave it at work late in the day). Long hours I can deal with; neverending hours I cannot. At least not these kind of neverending hours.

I am at just under 14,000 words, and I think I probably need at least 5000 to finish this sucker. But it’s coming along, slowly but surely. I am happy with what I’ve got so far, too, and that, to me, is more important than hitting any predetermined length. There’s something about hitting that stride, where you know what you want to write, you know you either have the source you need (or that you don’t have it and need to find it, but that it exists), and you just do it. Of course, there’s also something about being in that mode and struggling mightily for words. Which is how I spent a lot of today. Boo.

I was out of town for four days and it was terrific—I got little sleep, came down with a three day sinus infection (or maybe I was just allergic to my best friend’s hometown), and did absolutely no work.

However, I’m back now, and racing towards a deadline. I’m about halfway through the first draft of The Task. I’m currently at 26 single-spaced pages and 12,740 words. I could theoretically stop when I hit about 18,000, but I think I’m going to need at least 24,000 to say what I want to say. Which is good—it means I’ve picked a good topic. I’m on a roll, having a good time, and mostly not frustrated right now, except with myself for not doing enough of the right kind of reading. I mean, I’ve read a bunch of stuff over the last several months, and most of it is not useful at all. Ironically, a bunch of articles I found early on but put aside because I thought they were taking me in a direction I didn’t need to go are all the articles I’m having to go back to—and I never read them closely then. Boo.

Back to work.

Now that the MPRE is over (damn the MPRE!) I am heading into my last week of school before Spring Break with only two things on my plate—one more edit^[1] and The Task.

I’m starting to get a little nervous about The Task. I have several pages, some of which are actually good but most of which are mediocre at best—and quite a few of which are really, really bad. I finally have a solid, concrete vision in my head of what the whole thing is going to end up looking like, but that vision has not hit the paper yet. I’ve got to get it on paper, and soon—all 60-something pages of it. With citations to authority.

So I’ve got about two weeks, maybe a little less, to get the First Draft of The Task done. I keep telling myself I work better under pressure and that once all these edits are off my plate I can just write and write and write. I hope that’s true.

1. And this means EVER—I’m almost done with the big part of my journal duties, though I’ll be doing follow-up edits for the rest of the semester. I am pretty much totally and complete excited. ↩

I have never been good at organizing my time in any realistic fashion. I generally just sit down and do the work I have to do, in no particular order and without deliberately chunking tasks.

For the remainder of this semester—the remainder of my law school career—that is not going to fly. I have The Task to finish^[1] as well as some lingering journal duties, and the MPRE to prepare for, and clinic work, and class work for that last law school class.

The other day, Coleslaw posted a link to Study Hacks, about scheduling one’s writing. I needed that post So Much, it’s not even funny. The whole concept of not sitting down and trying to write for interminable amounts of time—of writing without an end in sight—was revelatory for me. I don’t know that that’s what Study Hacks was necessarily going for, but that’s what I took from it.

So I’ve started scheduling my day around my tasks in manageable chunks. Instead of looking at my day and saying, “I’m going to work on X till I’m done with it and then Y if I have time,” I’m saying, “I’m going to sit and write for three hours, from 9 to noon, and then I’m going to work on this other thing until 4, and then I’m going to the gym, no matter where I am in the progress of working on these things.”

Granted, sometimes that won’t work. Sometimes I’ll have to take the tail end of a project and just go finish it, no matter how long it takes. But there are very few projects on my plate right now for which I can’t accurately predict how long that finishing process will take. (Ew, that grammar is icky.) I’m feeling less stressed about working because I am less uncertain about how things will get done. They’ll get done in three- and four-hour chunks. That’s how.

With that, I’m off to walk the dog and have lunch before I jump into the afternoon.

1. I know, I haven’t been writing much about The Task. Maybe I’ll start doing that as a way of organizing my thoughts. Maybe I won’t, since I’m still pretty sure I have no idea what I’m talking about. ↩

The last week has been good. I’m getting settled back into school, adjusting to my new schedule (which I love), eating healthier, taking more breaks from the computer . . . in general, I think I’ve started the year well.

Best of all, I’ve lost 3 pounds by having a homemade fruit-and-yogurt smoothie for breakfast every day, and going to the gym with Mr. Angst three days a week. As for the latter, I always thought I preferred to go to the gym alone—get my stuff done by myself, not see anyone I know in case I did something stupid (like slip off the exercise ball like I did last night)—but going with Mr. Angst has been delightful, and I’m glad it’s working out for us. The former was just an attempt to get more dairy and fruit in my diet, but it appears to be working and I’m not going to knock it.

Meanwhile, I’ve managed to write a couple of interesting pages for The Task (ack, I am just starting to write) as well as started finishing my part of last semester’s journal issue. (This semester’s issue hits my plate in a week, though.) And I’m taking scheduled breaks from my computer (important since I’m at home most days) to sit on my couch and do my reading or just watch a little TV and play with the dog.

If I can keep this up all semester, I’ll be in good shape!

I’ve been working a little on The Task this morning, just running a few Westlaw searches, paging through some articles with some appropriate keywords, and I am a little surprised.

There’s not really much of anything written on what I want to write on.

I didn’t really go into Westlaw this morning intending to do a preemption check—The Task is flexible enough to change if I’m preempted. But now I’m dragging myself through the process of a preemption check because I’m frankly a little astonished. No one has thought to write something similar? No one has tried to draw the connection I’m hoping to draw?

Don’t get me wrong—this is great! It means that, if I can get this thing pounded out, it’ll be fresh, current, and unchallenged. But it also means there’s not a lot out there for me to model my work on, no one whose footsteps I can follow. That’s daunting, folks. The Task just got a little more interesting, though.

Just as I finish up (mostly) one task, I take on another. The new task is perhaps nerdier than the one I just completed, and calling it a task is really misleading, since it’s not the sort of thing that just gets done. I’ll be working on it for the next year or so. For now, though, the task (or, The Task, as I think I’ll start referring to it) basically consists of reading a bunch of stuff I don’t know much about in preparation for writing something that will hopefully end up being really cool. I have some leisure time now, so I think tomorrow I’ll be a REAL nerd and take some of this reading material with me when I go get a pedicure. See, you can be a nerd and girly at the same time!