Happy Halloween!

Wow..
I gotta say that the party last night at RT's was great. It was such a blast seeing everyone from school there dressed up in various costumes. For some reason, the atmosphere was a lot looser, and a lot more friendly. People were a lot more willing to talk to people they normally don't, which was great. Maybe it was all the alochol. I know I had a little more to drink than I should have, seeing as how I ended up hugging the porcelain god at 3am, 4:30am, and then the kitchen sink at 6am. But what can I say? When your friends offer you a drink from their pitcher, you drink!

Other than that, I'm really glad to see that some people can loosen up when they're away from the law school, and I really liked some of the costumes I saw. There was Travis with his thigh-high platform boots complete w/ fuck-me heels, I loved Edward's smurfette costume, the construction worker outfit was pretty hot, totally loved the Abe Lincoln costume, along with the mailman costume too. All in all, I think the guys had more interesting costumes than the girls, since the girls tended to be the typical princesses, airline stewardesses, nurses, naughty school girls, catwoman, fairy, etc. Although I do remember seeing the one naughty school girl outfit, where the girl had her shirt tied up right under her boobs, and I was wondering if she was just a naughty school girl or if she was trying to be Brtiney Spears. Who knows.

Career Services Night

Ok, I found that Career Services night totally depressing. And I know it wasn't just me. I'm still undecided as to whether I want to go into the private sector vs. the public sector, but I did not appreciate how that woman was pushing public interest at us. She basically told us that we'd be rich but miserable working 80 hours/wk with no quality of life, or we could be poor happy goody-two-shoes lawyers who barely make more money than a secretary.

As our one professor put it, it's not that black and white, and maybe we should take what they say with a grain of salt considering that they haven't been in practice. There are plenty of people who are happy working the frenzied pace of a big law firm, and there are plenty of people who are very unhappy in public interest b/c they're living hand to mouth trying to support their families.

All I can say is, it's all good and well to be funny during a meeting, but don't forget to do your job. As the night went on the mood became blacker as students began muttering how depressing the meeting was. I know from personal experience that it is hard to find a good job in the legal sector, but it's not impossible, definitely not if you're proactive about it. To top it all off, that woman told us first that sign-ups for Partner for a Day were Thursday morning at 8, and then ended the meeting by saying she'd see us bright and early Monday morning. What was that? She confused half the class there, and I know that many of us thought the signups were Monday morning, myself included.

Are you an undecided voter?

There probably aren't any undecided voters out there, but just in case you are, take this wonderful test!
Who Should You Vote For?

Bush or Kerry?

I can't believe the election is only a week away... the time has finally come for a chance to be relieved of our beloved president's mishandling of almost everything.

To be honest, I don't really know of that many Bush supporters in the law school. I don't think that I personally know anyone who's going to vote Bush. Well, ok I take that back, seeing as how my own parents will vote Bush (times like this I'm ashamed to have them as my parents).

For me, it's not even that I like Kerry or Nader, but it's more like picking the lesser of two evils. I just hope that Nader doesn't wreck the election like he did last time: Gore didn't even carry his home state b/c of a small but critical percentage in favor of Nader.

Right now it's looking like it's neck and neck, and I can't wait to see how it turns out.

Here's a parting reminder of our president's stunning grace and intelligence:



"Over the weekend, while on vacation, Bush looked like Chevy Chase doing a Gerald Ford imitation as he stepped onto the platform of a Segway personal transportation scooter and went flying right off.

The first U.S. president to try a Segway supposedly forgot to turn it on, so the gyroscopic stabilizers couldn't automatically balance him." - USA Today

For those of you who don't know what a Segway is, click here

It's supposed to be very difficult to fall off one of these babies, but wouldn't you know it, George W. succeeded with flying colors!

Yet another stupid mandatory program to attend...

I don't think I've ever heard of so many mandatory programs in other law schools. When I told my older lawyer friends that we had a week-long intro orientation week, they thought it was the most stupid thing ever. I mean, come on! We're supposed to be the up and coming hotshot lawyers. I think we can figure out where to go to get our pictures taken, where to sign up for lockers, etc. If we have to figure out how to research common law in whatever state we're going to practice in, this kind of ridiculous babying is not going to help us. It just makes us more prone to being spoon-fed everything. I think I speak for all of us when I say Orientation SUCKED ASS. We would rather have been home reading the next 60-70 pages for that Intro to Law class than sit through some stupid meaningless program about how to be a happy and cheerful law student.

And now we have one more program to attend: Career Services L1 Orientation Mtg.
Oh sure, the idea of it sounds good, but we've already been warned by one of our professors in class that Career Services is not that great here. If you want a summer job, you get off your ass and send out your resumes to all the firms you're interested in. You don't sit around and expect Career Services is going to pull a miracle out of thin air and find you a job.

What gets me is that they say the meeting is mandatory, and if we don't go to this one, we're supposed to schedule a make-up session. 1) How are they going to know if we didn't go? 2) If they do end up taking attendance like control maniacs, how are they going to force us to schedule a make-up session? Are they going to put our spring registration on hold?

All I can say is, not all of us are interested in getting summer jobs. They should make the meetings w/ optional attendance, so that people can go if they want to. I think that they're forgetting that we're adults and are capable of making our own decisions.

New schedules and section assignments

Oh man...
Is it just me, or am I the only one who's sad that I am one of the ones who got a new section assignment for next semester? Just when I finally felt like I kinda found my groove, I get the registration packet in my box that shows I've been re-assigned. Dammit. I like the friends I've made in section.

Well, I guess I just have to look on the bright side of things and hope for the best, I'm sure I'll meet new people who are just as cool as the ones I've met in my section. At least Fridays end earlier next semester!

Where is the money coming from?

Here are a few of the results from the faculty auction last night, and my mind is reeling from the prices I heard some packages going for.

$150 for tennis lesson?
$250 for a murder mystery evening?

My question is, where is all the money coming from? The people I know bitch about spending more than $5 on a lunch. I simply can't believe that people would fork over $50 each just to hang out with a professor for an evening. I go out of my way to avoid them like the plague (no offense to professors), let alone feel like I want to go further in debt just for an opportunity for some quality 1-on-1 ass-kissing time.

And dinner with Kurtz? I'm sorry, but if I'm going to spend a lot of money on a dinner, I want it to be in a really nice restaurant, with a relaxing dinner companion. It's hardly relaxing to live in fear that your professor is going to bark, "State the title!" I would probably have indigestion as soon as the professor opened his mouth.

Halloween party

Aghhh....
Every year finding a good costume for Halloween is hard. The party is only a week away, and I still don't have a costume ready. I was thinking about dressing up as a nurse or a french maid, because I haven't been those yet. I've already done the fairy, princess, and hooker thing. I need ideas on where to shop for costumes.

I wonder if the teachers are going to dress up for halloween? I'd pay good money to see Love dressed up as a biker chick with a studded collar, and Bibas wearing tie-dye and overalls. Oh, and clean-shaven.

Only a little over a month away...

I think I may go into panic mode soon, I can feel the beginning flutters of it already. I will start having dreams where I'm sitting in the finals with a completely blank exam sitting in front of me with nothing but my name on it, and I can't remember an answer to any question.

I haven't outlined as far as I should have, and I'm wondering if this will completely doom my chances of success (hey, I don't aim that high, I just want to be in the upper half of the 1L class).

If I were a smoker I'd be addicted already, if I were a drinker I'd be getting likkered up everyday.

Future Interests and all that

Given the general aura of fear in property, I thought maybe I'd share a tip that really helped me. I read the Lexis Nexis workbook on reserve in the library for future interests, because the workers in the bookstore told me it helped them a lot. I think it helped immensely, and really provided a basis for general knowledge in the area. There are lots of examples in the book, and even better yet, they have answers! I think most of the time I'm frustrated with the Notes and Questions section in our property book because there are no answers.

I know there are flashcards also, but I don't know how good those are. Also, if you want to have your own copy of the workbook I think it's about $35, or as I said, it's on reserve in the library. There is also Estates in Land and Future Interests: Problems and Answers (Problems and Answers Series) by John Makdisi.

I was also thinking of posting some "state the title" hypos online every week to let people test themselves. I dunno, it depends on if it would help people.

In the Spirit of Halloween and Crim Law

I know this is dorky, but when I saw this picture I thought it was cute. Since we're covering Chapter 13: Voluntary Intoxication this week in criminal law, it's particularly pertinent.



Don't you just hate how law school has totally permeated your life and how you think? I see almost everyone as a potential tortfeasor, and I'm constantly evaluating whether someone can sue for IIED or assault, etc. When I hear about real estate scammers, I can't help but think, "that's a tortious feoffment!" and then immediately want to slap myself for even thinking that.


Hopefully when I go home for the holidays I will be able to stop thinking like a lawyer for 3 weeks.

WTF is going on in Property?!!

Is it just me, or did Property suddenly get really hard??

It's bad enough that we're struggling to read the green book and trying to understand the pile of terms being thrown at us like a brick, but on top of that our professor is going really, really fast.
What's ironic is that he told us before that he'd go as slowly as we'd like, but that's not really true. He gets really impatient with us if we don't know the answer to the hypos on the slides, and then he zips through a whole bunch of hypos that aren't even on the slides. He should realize that if even those of us w/ laptops in class can't take notes fast enough then he's going way too fast.

Of course, there are the maybe 5-10 people in the entire class who actually understand what's going on, and listening to them converse w/ our professor makes me feel like I suddenly got abandoned in the middle of a foreign country where I don't know the language and only know how to say "hello, what is your name?"

All I know is that lately whenever the professor has been talking, I hardly take in a thing because 1) he talks way too fast, 2) it's like he's speaking a whole different language.

Torts professor

I think our Torts professor is so cute. She has this demure lady-like image always wearing those neat blouses and pencil skirts, combined with a wicked sense of humor. It's hilarious how she laughs at her own jokes so heartily, and sometimes it seems as if she's laughing longer and louder than anyone else in the class.

Today was one of her days where she obviously felt more humorous. She got all into discussing the Vaughan v. Menlove case, and compared the dimwitted D to Iowans. I had to say, as a native Iowan I was marginally offended, but it's true. We're hardly the equivalent of Harvard and Yale students, but still...! I like to think that us compared to Harvard law students isn't as ludicrous a comparison as Menlove is to the "ordinary reasonable person."

If our Torts professor was auctioning off dinner at her house with our Into to Law professor, I would totally bid at the faculty auction. I would say it's completely worth it to see what her house is like.

Break is the start of a break-up

I was stealing some time away from studying yesterday and decided to turn on my tv and see if it still worked. It's been so long since I watched tv that I almost forgot how it has sound and color. I totally miss watching my shows: Survivor, CSI, Friends, Apprentice, Gilmore Girls, Simpsons, Smallville, and Real World.

So I happened to catch and episode of Real World on MTV (that show is like reading the tabloids for me), and it was one of the new episodes in Philadelphia. The really pretty black girl on the show, Shavonda, was talking on the phone with her bf, Shawn. She was telling him that she wanted to take a break, because she didn't want to have to think about his feelings at every moment. Of course, it's because she has a crush on one of the guys in the house. Understandably, her bf was pretty pissed off.

I was thinking, uh, that's part of what having a boyfriend means! Just because you're not together doesn't mean that you're free to scope out other people as potential flings while you're away from each other. If you think that you can see someone else and think that your boyfriend will wait patiently for you to come back after having done the nasty with your fling, you better think seriously about your relationship and whether you really care about that person. To me, if a person asks for a break they may as well just ask for a break-up and get it over with. I've rarely heard of couples that managed to survive these "breaks" (which are really excuses for one of the people in the relationship to go sleep with someone else they think is hot and still reserve their right to their significant other) since invariably one person goes and has sex with someone else which ends up totally ruining the relationship.

And then, after her boyfriend tried to reason with Shavonda to no avail, says "Fine, then I'm not going to talk to you anymore." He hangs up on her, and she starts swearing like crazy. I'm just staring at the tv, wondering what the hell was wrong with her. She got what she wanted, now she's free to do whatever she wants. If she seriously thought she could have her cake and eat it too she was completely delusional.

Watching that episode was a sad moment for my belief that women are nicer in relationships than men.

Football and tailgating

One day I am going to run over some stupid drunk person right after a football game. As I was driving home today, I was making a right turn when this idiot crossed the street right in front of me, causing me to slam on my brakes and swear like a trucker. Did he have some kind of death wish?! Not only that, but he was chatting away blithely on his cell, never minding the fact that he had just stepped out in front of oncoming traffic.

I don't really understand the whole tailgating thing. Even though I went to a big college for undergrad that loved football too , drinking was not such an essential element of the experience. I just don't really see the appeal of getting drunk at 7am. And I especially resent getting woken up at 6:30am on Saturday morning by these football fanatics setting up camp everywhere on the lawns.

When the game is over, it gets even better, with the hordes of drunken people staggering about, walking plain in the middle of the street, and then getting angry at you because you're trying to drive through their midst. Sometimes they'll even slap and kick my car as I'm going by. One day, I'm going to snap and floor the gas pedal.

I never really had anything against football before, but I sure as heck do now. As our crim law teacher put it, "I hate football."

Normal looking people?

One of my friends thinks that it's hard to find normal-looking people. Apparently, he thinks someone who looks normal has no flaws in their appearance. To me, that means the definition excludes pretty much everyone except really pretty people and models. I would never call a model "normal" when I don't even think they live in the land of real people.

Anyway, we got into a heated debate over what people we knew that we considered attractive. He was totally dissing one girl after another, oh that girl's face-book picture looks way better than she does in real life, or she's too short, or she's kind of fat. When I said, "So what," he comes back with "How many flaws does a guy have to excuse?"

Ohhh. I think someone needs to be slapped.

That's a bit rich for someone who's got a big ole butt. Seriously, we're talking bubble butt here. In fact, I don't think I've ever seen such a J-Lo ass on a guy before, not unless the dude was a weight-lifter or something, which he most definitely is not.

Comment to take note of

I liked one of the comments I received to an earlier post I'd made regarding some of the cliques here. According to someone,

"The Faux Populars: They think you're charmed to meet them, but you aren't."

And this person isn't the only one to think so, either. Whoever you are, thanks for the great addition.

Personally, I think some of these cliques overlap...

Beware Petland

One of my friends just got a new dog. Not only that, but it's a puppy that is only ten weeks old! She's never owned a dog before, and had no idea what she was getting herself into. The only thing she could tell me was that she'd always envied me with my Scottish Terrier, and that a fever had sort of come over her at Petland. Oh, and did I mention that she's a 1L too?

So now she has to try to keep up with her studying, learn how to deal with living with a dog (and she's already got 2 other pets), learn how to train a puppy, and housebreak it. I'm thinking, this is a pretty bad time to start all that...especially right when she was complaining how Property is getting harder what with the green book and all.

This is how she got sucked into spending >1k on her little chihuahua. (All right, I'll admit it's a cute little thing, but if I had to housetrain a puppy I would NOT do it again.) Supposedly she just went to Petland to look at some birds with one of her other friends, and she happened to make this remark, "They have really cute chihuahuas here." Apparently one of the workers there overheard her say that, and dragged them over to see their newest arrival. The clincher for Petland was when they brought out the little puppy so that she could play with it. Then everyone there took turns convincing her how it was such a great idea to get a dog, and that it isn't really that hard to take care of a dog, and potty training it wouldn't take that long.

When I heard her say that, I said, "Excuse me?!!" I had the hardest time getting my puppy to "go" in the right place. I was cleaning up its goods for about 3 months after I got it. Besides, that's not the only hard thing, you've got to shower a puppy with lots of love, attention, take it out to exercise, make sure you're instilling good habits, socializing it properly so that it doesn't end up like that dog in the Benke case, etc. It's most definitely not easy, and anyone with a dog could tell you that! I also think that it's really hard balancing a new puppy with the workload we've all got.

What's funny is that she totally freaks out about poop. I just look at her and think, uh, it ain't that pretty, but all animals gotta do it. She even offered to pay me to housebreak it. The only thing I can tell her is she's lucky she picked a really small dog, so at least the poop won't be too big.

So the moral of the story is, don't let one of those Petland workers get a hold of you! Before you know it you'll be walking out of there with more than you could possibly want.

Top 10 distractions from studying

I don't know about everyone else, but I am ridiculously easily distracted from my school work. Really, I'd rather do anything but study. Here are my top 10 distractions in ascending order:

10) Calling my parents. Even though they're not that interesting and pretty much nothing new ever happens, and they tell me every opportunity that they wished I wasn't in law school, it's still better talking to them than reading the green book.

9) Reading the news. I'm not that big on news, and never have been, nor do I hold any political views. I've never read the news before, but I find myself doing it now in retaliation for how much reading I have for school. I know, it doesn't make sense. I guess it's the attitude that I'm not going to let school completely overtake my life, by showing that I can even squeeze time in for doing things I don't normally like to do.

8) Grocery shopping. Even though my apartment is crap, it's comforting going grocery shopping and buying food and maybe other little knick-knacks that may make it seem more like home. Plus, a starving student's gotta eat! God knows what that stuff down in the canteen really is.

7) Cleaning my apartment. I'm not a Monica, but it does bother me to see my apartment filthy, especially when I have a dog. Popcorn is adorable, but she does make a huge mess. Lately she's started chewing on my notebooks, so now I have tons of little confetti bits all over the place. Anyone have a good idea on how to train her?

6) Watching movies. I used to watch movies all of the time, but now that I have no time, it's fairly impossible. My main problem with movies is that they're too much of a time commitment all at once. Who's got 2.5 hours to spare at once? Most people like to take 20-30 minutes for a break, and then go do whatever they've gotta do. In a way, it's easier watching tv since you can just watch one sitcom and then turn the tv off. Well, that's if you've got the willpower to turn the tv off.

5) Listening to music. Not that I really have the time, nor can I concentrate on studying if there's music, but every once in a while you just gotta kick back and relax for a few minutes. Especially if I've been staring at the green book for over an hour and have only read 2 pages.

4) Calling my sister. I usually talk to my sister about 2-3 times a day. She calls me when she's driving to and from somewhere, and she always wants me to talk to her on the phone so that she isn't bored. It's so nice to feel loved.

3) Checking my email about 40 times a day. I know this makes me sound really pathetic, but I'm desperate to keep up contact with all of my friends and ex co-workers. Maybe when I've put down a few more roots I'll stop being so neurotic and talk to real people here.

2) Shopping online. This one doesn't make sense very much either, considering how I'm up to my eyebrows in debt because of school. But that's ok, I'm thinking if I'm in debt for 35k a year, what's a few extra thousand? I just better get a good job after graduation or I may be one of the most over-qualified homeless people you'll ever meet.

1) Writing this blog. It's fairly stress-relieving to be able to vent here about school or anything else that has pissed me off in the course of the day. Maybe that way I won't go beat up the guys living above me who are always having parties at 2am.

So what's your favorite distraction?

Sitting near people who fart

There are any number of things a student will endure throughout their career in law school. You stay up all night trying to study, you get so stressed out that you develop any number of addictions to caffeine, smoking, or drugs, and/or all of the above.

At one point, you're bound to get called on the one time you're unprepared. Sometimes, you are prepared, but you still don't know the answers and you just look stupid anyway. But this kind of thing you expect.

What you don't expect is to get ambushed by some heinous fart while sitting in the middle of class. This is what happened in property today. There I am, trying to absorb our property teacher's lecture on fee simple, when I get attacked by this odor. I almost fell off my chair trying to scoot as far back as I could. Of course, it's not like I had anywhere to go, everyone knows how narrow the space is between rows.

It's completely unexpected, you have no where to escape, and you have to sit there and pray for the smell to hurry up and dissipate before you start gagging, because yes, it's really THAT BAD.

Cute profs?

I don't know, but I heard something disturbing today. Apparently many girls find our criminal law teacher quite attractive. I really don't know what bothers me more, the fact that it's one of our professors, or the fact that it's that particular teacher. Don't get me wrong, he's really not a bad-looking guy at all. He's got his quirky modern-day Abe Lincoln thing going on, and he's definitely a sharp dresser. But the fact that he's our professor! I just cannot imagine professors in settings outside of school. I've always thought it strange to think about them having families too. Can you imagine our crim law prof having a kid? What if the kid did something wrong, and he demands to know the mens rea behind the actus reus? Weeird.

To me, the aspects of our professors' private lives are off limits to me. I guess different people are entertained by different things.

Well, for all you girls who find our professor irresistible, just thought you might want to know that he's taken. Apparently, he's engaged.

High school all over again

Is it just me, or does the whole law school experience seem like high school all over again?

Our orientation week was a series of events force-fed to us, where people tended to talk to us like we were little children. Especially that little lecture on ethics? Come on, we're not at Harvard or some other school with cutthroat competition.

Then, once school started, you couldn't help but notice that there are a bunch of these cliques that had formed already. They latched on to each other so quickly that I couldn't help wonder if I'd somehow missed a "Make Best Friends Day." Where was I? I was just busy trying to get through that damn Intro to Law class. Honestly, I don't know how these people found each other so quickly.

But really, it's like high school all over again. People are constantly talking about each other all of the time, they hate you if you seem too smart, and don't get me started on the different cliques. Here are a few cliques I've noticed: the smarties, the two socialite cliques that I'll call BB1 and BB2 for short, and the one guy clique that never talks about anything but golf, sports, or poker.

Smarties are the people who work harder than other people, and their members contain some of the people who speak out in class more often than most. Not only that, but what they say is actually on point. You know that they probably have all their reading for the coming week done by the weekend.

BB1 and BB2 are the girls who are some of the more outgoing girls in class. Their groups frequently intermingle with each other, and one strange thing about them is that a disproportionate number of them are named Kate or Katie or at least have one of those as a middle name. Also, they're the ones who ran in the ISBA elections. You just know that these girls were the ones who ran for student government in high school, did the homecoming committee, were in the sororities and dated the football players. This reminds me of a cartoon I used to watch called the Oblongs. Anybody heard of the show? They had a group of girls in there called the "Debbies." You can guess what the similarity is. The thing was, who knew that kind of thing could actually be true?

Macho-macho men is the guy clique that talk all the time. ALL the time. Anyone who sits on the same side of the room knows what I mean. Sometimes it gets so bad that you can't hear the prof (gasp). Otherwise, they're the typical macho males who always talk about sports, playing golf with each other, or poker. Nothing else really seems to matter. For instance, a few weeks back when Hurricane Ivan was terrorizing the southeast, the only thing that they cared about was that the football games that had been scheduled in the area were all canceled. Talk about tunnel-vision.

Labels, anyone? Oh, the other thing that really gets me is that everyone is labeled. I know, I am guilty of doing it myself, as you can see from the above. But I don't go around labeling everyone. I mean really, just because I like to have a life outside of school, is it really that fair for me to be labeled a slacker?

Gruesome Crim Stories

All right, in just about every class of criminal law we hear at least one interesting story from our professor. Our professor used to be a prosecutor in New York, so you can imagine that he has plenty of fodder for class discussion.

Right now we are covering the section of attempted crimes, and the impossibility defense.
Today's story: Two military officers are off-duty, so they decide to go have some fun clubbing. They arrive and start dancing with one girl, when suddenly the girl collapses. I think many people would have been at least a little concerned that there might have been something wrong with her, but apparently such thoughts did not cross the minds of these two men. Instead, they assumed that she was just really, really drunk. They decided that they should take her home. After bundling her into the car, they realize that this is prime opportunity for them to take advantage of her, and both proceed to have sexual relations with the girl. Unbeknownst to them, when the girl had collapsed on the dance floor she'd actually suffered a massive heart attack from which she died. Yup, these two men committed necrophilia.

The prosecutor went after them for attempted rape. They both got hefty sentences for jailtime for what they did.

Now, it's exactly because of cases like this that I know for sure that I will never end up serving in criminal law. Nope, no way.

Iowa Law Night

I just went out for the first time a quite a long while. So some of my friends wanted to go to this Mr. Iowa Law night thing, which I stupidly thought would actually have some cute guys there.

Instead, my friend and I arrived to a scene that looked like someone picked up our law library and dumped all the people into this bar. Yeah.

After sitting around a while, the competition finally started. Man, was I ever disappointed. As a friend said, I am incredibly naive. I don't know, I just thought that there were bound to be some good-looking guys here, goodness knows I see plenty of hot guys constantly running by me. Not to mention the multitude of flyers that were posted everywhere featuring Abercrombie-caliber guys. So maybe I was a leetle misled about the cute guy factor.

All in all, it was not that great, especially not with Michael shouting loudly enough to cause all of us to go deaf in that ear. And maybe I did get a few laughs from the short, half-naked, spandex boxer-brief-wearing muscle-bound guy (Dan) and Edward. Edward was totally great (everyone loves Edward!), and I think a lot of us thought that he should have won, but no, the guy with the really tight lederhosen (Eric, 1L) won. Weird, right? I really don't know what the appeal of the lederhosen was, although it did almost make me want to pinch that round booty.