law school ninja

Oh, you guys. YOU GUYS. So toward the end of last semester we had this meeting and this professor talked to us about tryouts for the national competition teams. My school sends teams to competitions all over the country in mock trial, moot court, client counseling, and negotiations. Earlier in the year I was talking to one of our tutors, and she was getting ready to go out of town for a moot court competition. She said some stuff, yada yada, and then she said “…and plus you get to travel with the team even though your work as a brief writer is done before the actual competition.”

Wait. What?

As everybody knows, I love to travel. These are facts. So I perked up and asked for clarification.

ME: “You mean you get to go out of town but once you’re there you don’t have to really DO anything??”
TUTOR: “Yep. It’s pretty nice.”

This set my brain into motion. My brain, by the way, is fuchsia. Albert Einstein also had a fuchsia brain. These are facts.

So then this professor sent around this email to everybody and he said, “Hey you losers, if you think you have the chops to audition as a brief writer for a national moot court competition, get me a persuasive writing sample by May 1st.” Actually that’s not exactly what he said. He didn’t use the word “chops.”

Anyhoo.

As it turns out, by some sort of freakish coincidence, our last major writing assignment in Legal Practice was an appellate brief. Guess what kind of writing you do on an appellate brief? Appealing. But also persuasive. Handy!

So I carried around an extra copy of my appellate brief with me for several days, trying to decide whether I wanted to submit it for consideration. It was grueling.

And then, one day, I was walking around the law school with my appellate brief in hand. I had almost succeeded in talking myself out of submitting a copy for the competition. I was SO CLOSE, you guys. Now comes Law School BFF, right toward me, and the following ensues:

LSBFF: What are you doing?
ME: [shuffling feet] Oh, ya know, just getting in a few laps around the school before class starts.
LSBFF: What’s that in your hand?
ME: My appellate brief.
LSBFF: Your appellate brief?!? That was due like four days ago!
ME: [searching frantically for an escape route] This isn’t the original. I turned that in on time.
LSBFF: Then why in the world are you carrying a copy of it around?
ME: blank stare
LSBFF: What the…
ME: Okay, okay! Fine. I’m thinking about submitting a copy for the national moot court team try-outs.
LSBFF: Really?
ME: Well, I mean, I probably won’t. I mean, I just…

And then, you guys, I’m totally not making this up either. Then, law school BFF grabbed me by the arm and dragged me to the professor’s office and MADE ME slide a copy of my appellate brief under the door. Which was locked. So I couldn’t get it back in case I developed submitter’s remorse. And I’m pretty sure he left a bruise on my delicate arm. Rude.

But, you guys, guess what? This story has a happy ending. Yesterday I was notified that I had been selected as the brief writer for the moot court team participating in the Illinois Appellate Lawyers National Moot Court Competition in Chicago in November.

No, I’m not making that part up either, Doubty McDoubterson.

Chicago: gird your loins!

Part 1 of this series is here, in case you missed it.

Welcome back, grasshoppers. Today I’m going to tell you about law school orientation. Specifically, I’m going to tell you some of the things we were told at orientation and whether or not we were given good advice. I’m assuming that our orientation wasn’t too terribly different from most orientations as far as the topics covered and the nuggets of wisdom shared. Of course, you know what happens when I assume: you make an ass of yourself.

So I’ve actually given this a fair amount of thought, and I simply cannot come up with a satisfactory explanation for what I’m about to say. When you read it, you’ll think oh please, why the hell would they do that? And I’m here to tell ya, dude, I just don’t know. The only reasons I can ever come up with are so cynical that I don’t even want to repeat them here for fear that you all will think I have a black heart and an empty place where my soul is supposed to go.

But enough about me and my disgusting lack of empathy. Here’s the deal. For whatever reason, not all of the advice you’ll be given at orientation is good advice.

:::collective gasp:::

Right?! I don’t understand why, either, but I’m here to tell you it’s the god’s honest truth. So here goes, tidbit by tidbit.

In law school, a C is a good grade. This is actually true. Well, sortof. At my school, the curve for 1Ls is a C+, which I understand is lower than the curve at a lot of other schools. I can’t get into a detailed discussion about how the curve works (mostly because I don’t have a super firm grip on it myself), but basically that means that a C+ is about average. The main thing to remember about the curve is that you are always graded relative to your section mates. For example, let’s say there’s a quiz in one of your classes. You get yours back, graded, and your numerical grade is a 92. You think, yay! I got an A! But if the range of grades in your section is 91 to 100, and you got a 92, I promise you don’t have an A. You have more like a D, at best. Anyway. All that is to say, a C is in most instances going to be below the curve. But hear this, and hear it loud and clear: after you get through your first set of exams, I can almost guarantee you that you’ll be praying on your knees for a C in at least one class in which the professor handed you questions written in Cyrillic with words you’ve never seen before in your life. It could happen, people. So, is a C a “good” grade? I mean, technically, I don’t think I could call a C a “good” grade. But have I promised the soul of my second-born child to the devil in exchange for a C in Property after taking that exam and wanting to vomit up all my guts? You betchya I did. And will a transcript full of C’s get you the exact same diploma as somebody with a transcript full of A’s? You betchya. So embrace the C. Cuddle with the C. Send the C some flowers and a box of chocolates. A C can be your friend.

Also related is the constant repetition of this message: You are used to being one of the smartest people in your undergrad classes. You may have never gotten anything below an A before in your whole entire life. You probably graduated in the top 10% of your class. Well, get ready, because 90% of you aren’t going to be in the top 10% of your class here. It’s not mathematically possible!

I’m not kidding, you guys. They said that over and over and over and over again. And guess what? That part’s true. I checked it on my calculator. Prepare yourself now to make grades that you would never in your life have accepted until now. And you’ll be so damn happy with those grades you’ll jump around your whole house for ten solid minutes screaming “I GOT A B!! I GOT A FREAKIN’ B!!! HEAR ME RAWR!!!”

Ahem. Or at least that’s what I’ve heard.

Briefing cases is essential to succeed in law school; nay, briefing cases is essential for life! Okay, again, this is only partially true. For the first few weeks or maybe months of law school, you definitely should brief your cases. This is something they’ll teach you how to do in orientation, most likely, or you can learn  how to do it in one of those 5648 law school prep books on your to-read list. There are a lot of different ways to do it, and ultimately you’ll come up with your own method that works best for you. At first, it will take you FOREVER to read and then brief one case. But the more you do it, the better you’ll get at it, and then you’ll realize that you can spot the issue, the holding, and the reasoning in the case pretty easily without having to type up a formal brief. At that point, grasshopper, you will find that your schedule opens up quite a bit because you’re not spending so much time preparing for class. Now, the orientation people will tell you that it’s essential that you brief cases. You may leave orientation thinking that if you don’t fully brief every case in every class, you’ll never ever ever be able to get that coveted C on any of your exams. YOU’RE DOOOOOMED. I’m here to tell you, this is simply not the case.

You need to learn how to brief a case, that’s true. But the reason you need to learn how to brief a case is not so you can have this giant collection of case briefs at the end of the semester. Because guess what? In most classes, the cases you read will not be tested. Yes, you read that correctly. This is a subject I’m going to address further in another post, but for now it’s enough to say that in most classes (at least this was my experience, both 1L semesters) you could actually get a good grade (and by good I don’t mean a C) on an exam without having read one single case for the whole semester. (In fact, in a future post, I’m going to argue that this obsession with briefing cases is actually detrimental, come exam time.) (I’m also going to try to cut down on my use of parentheses.) (Okay not really.) This is because law school is not a memorization game, for the most part, or at least not like you might think. It’s all about the application. Each case is in your casebook to demonstrate a way in which the law was applied and/or developed. All you really need to know is what the legal concept is that you were supposed to have gleaned from each case. Then, on an exam, your professor will literally make up a long and detailed story (called a fact pattern) and your task is to figure out which legal issues are raised in the fact pattern and then apply the law to those facts.

Okay, so again: Yes, you need to learn how to brief a case. Once you figure out how to get the proper things out of a case, formal briefing simply is not necessary in order to get a good grade. Will it hurt you to brief every case? Of course not. I have several friends who still brief every case, and there’s nothing in the world wrong with that. If it works for you, by all means, do that shit and tell everybody else to go jump in the lake. But it’s simply not as important as they wanted us to think it would be in orientation.

Your allotted study time each week should equal three to four times the amount of time spent in class. Okay, you guys. I’m not even kidding. This is what they told us. So for a four-hour class, you should schedule an additional 12 to 16 hours a week of study time. Just for that one effing class. You’ll be taking around 15 hours a semester. By that logic, you’d spend 45 to 60 ADDITIONAL hours a WEEK studying.

I’ll let you have a moment for that to sink in.

Yes. That was my reaction, too. I mean, you guys. YOU GUYS. Gimme a fucking break here. In no universe, real or imagined, is this necessary or even recommended by anyone except those orientation people. That’s not to say that there’s not enough material to support that much studying; there might be. But my god. They can’t possibly test you over that much detail. They don’t want to grade that much material. They have deadlines for turning in grades. Use your brains, people! If you studied for that many hours per week, every week, I guess you’d end up… well, in the crazy house, I guess. This is just THE most outrageous thing we were told in all of orientation. The key to success in law school is doing well on exams. The way to do well on exams is to study smart. Again, this is material for a future post, but studying smart does NOT–not in any universe, real or imagined–entail any 60 hours a week, at least not on a regular basis. At exam time, you may put in that many hours. But you certainly don’t need to worry about doing that all through the semester. For the first 2 or 3 months of your first semester, you’re not going to know what the hell is going on enough to study any 60 hours a week. You’ll just confuse yourself, waste a ton of precious time, and burn out way too early. Trust me on this, grasshoppers. Just remember the dirty little secret.

Oh, didn’t I tell you the dirty little secret yet?

Okay, here it is, in all its glory: Law school just isn’t as hard as a lot of law students and books and orientation people make it sound. It’s different. It’s challenging. And it’s harder than undergrad, unless you had a really difficult major, unlike my political science/history vacation… I mean degree. But it’s not as hard as they say. Just remember this, and you’ll be okay.

You’re welcome.

NOTE: This was originally posted at another blog of mine that I already took down, but it’s such a great post (if I do say so myself) that I had to repost it here. If you’ve already read it once, please forgive the redundancy.

Once upon a time, there was a precious little Maltese dog named Sophie Mae. Sophie’s mommy loved her very much and she knew that Sophie liked to look pretty. One day, Sophie’s mommy took her to the beauty shop.

Across town, Sophie Mae had a kitteh cousin named Moses Worley. His mommy, Cousin Laura (yes, the one with the blog and no posts, and yes, I’m going to keep this up until she does post), also loved him very much and knew that he took great pride in his magnificent, thick, furry coat.

One time, Moses’s mommy had to leave town for a few days, and Moses was really sad. He was so depressed that he stopped caring about his beautiful coat. He let it get all tangled and ratted because there was no one at home for him to cuddle with. When Moses’s mommy got back into town, she had to take him to the beauty shop.

Uh oh. Looks like Moses didn’t much care for his new haircut.

So it’s summer, and you’re starting law school in the fall. You have about two or three short months before school starts and you’re scouring the internet for information. You don’t have to pretend like you’re not. I know you are. I was in your shoes just one year ago. It’s okay, we’re all friends here. As it turns out, I have some advice for ya. And it’s free. I know, right?! It’s so hard to find free advice on the interwebz, but it’s your lucky day today because you’ve stumbled into the right place.

But first things first. I’m gonna give you this free advice, and most likely you’re not going to follow it, at least not at first. It’s okay. This is pretty normal. What would be great, though, is if at the end of your 1L year, one year from now, you could come back to this blog and comment and tell me how you thought I was totally full of shit a year ago, but it turns out I was right after all. Now that would make me really happy. Or, if after a full year of law school you still think I’m full of shit, you can come back and post that, too. But if you do that, be sure to use that special white font that shows up really well against the background so evvvvverybody can read it.

Also, a disclaimer is probably in order here: I’m not like the best, most successful law student ever. Not even close. I’m not claiming that I made the best grades in my section or in my class. Again, not even close. I didn’t have some grand strategy going in that I’m going to impart here. I only read part of one preparatory book before school started. But somehow–mostly luck, I think–I did make decent grades in my first year, and I’ll tell you the things I think I did right and the things I would do differently if I could go back. Not that I would want to go back. Good lord, no.

I’m going to do a series of these posts because I have too much to say to fit into one. So today’s post, grasshoppers, is actually more of a confidence-building exercise than anything else. You’re feeling apprehensive and nervous about starting law school in the fall, and today I’m going to try to make you feel a little less antsy. Which is a weird role for me, now that I think about it. But anyway. Don’t expect this trend to continue for very long.

So. I know how it is. For the next couple of months, you really want to read all sorts of books to prepare for law school. You may have already started reading some of them. You may have filled up your to-read list with twenty different law school prep books. You need to know the answers to burning questions like these: how do you brief a case? should I type up the briefs or book brief? what the hell is book briefing, anyway? what is the Socratic method? how does the curve work? what should I expect to see on exams? why does everybody say that law school is just like high school???

Here’s the deal. You can read all the preparatory books and blog posts that are out there–and there are a ton of them–and you still won’t be prepared for law school. Law school is such a unique experience, and reading about it just won’t cut the mustard. You have to just get in there and figure out how it works as you go. Now, will it hurt you to read all 54,786 books on how to prepare for law school? Probably not. But will you still be just as lost as everybody else is for the first six or eight or ten weeks or even longer? You’d better believe it.

The thing is, it’s okay to be lost for a while. It’s normal. In fact, it’s unavoidable. Everybody is lost for a while. I don’t care who it is or how much they appear not to be lost–they are L-O-S-T LOST. Trust me when I say this, grasshopper. There will be people about whom you think oh my god, he knows all the answers when he gets called on in class; he’s probably going to be number 1 when rankings come out. Or, there will be some person who sits somewhere in front of you, and on his computer during class he has all these really neat-looking charts and tables and graphs and colorful study aids with stick figures and thought bubbles, along with a rainbow of highlighters out on the desk for every class (I’m not making this up, you guys) and you’ll think oh my god, this guy is gonna clean house on exams and ruin the curve for all the rest of us. Or, there will be some girl who ends up dating an upperclassman and who talks constantly about getting outlines and exam-taking tips from her beau and his friends, and you’ll think oh my god, this chick has hit the relationship lottery and I’m just out of luck. Or, there will be some girl who literally sits in the lawbrary with her books open for 15 hours a day, not counting class time, and you’ll think oh my god, this girl is so devoted to studying, she must have no social life, and she’s gonna kick ass on exams. And people will whisper about who’s really smart and who’s not, and people will assume that their study techniques and materials are so horribly inferior that they’re destined for failure.

And then you’ll take exams and grades will come out. And guess what? Not one of those people even lands in the top quarter of your class. Okay, maybe the chick who lived in the lawbrary does, but not one of the others does. You know why? Of course you don’t, grasshopper, but I’m going to tell you. It’s because on an exam, the following things don’t amount to a hill of beans: whether you were a Socratic method ace or you got humiliated by the professor in class; whether you had the most up-to-date technology for studying with flashy graphics or the best highlighters in all the universe; whether you had a boyfriend, girlfriend, or friend who had that particular professor before and gave you ten outlines for that class (although that can help, but that’s for another post); or whether you spent 15,647 hours in the lawbrary. The ONLY thing that matters at exam time is whether you can properly apply the law to the facts that your professor has plopped in front of you, and whether you can do so within time constraints and in a coherent, logical way that demonstrates your literacy mastery of the English language. That’s it. The rest is completely, totally, wholly irrelevant.

The point I’m trying to make here is that you can’t possibly adequately prepare for law school before law school starts. It’s just not possible. I don’t care what anybody says, or what any book claims–everybody goes in to law school confused as hell, and a lot of people stay that way for the better part of their first year. If you’re serious about doing well in law school, just accept the fact that you’re going to be lost and confused, and instead spend at least part of your summer honing your writing skills. If you had someone look over your personal statement and you got it back with more than two corrections, I’m talking to you. Learn how to use punctuation properly. Learn the difference between your and you’re; their, there, and they’re; it’s and its. Learn how to freaking SPELL, for god’s sake. If you find yourself using text language a lot (wat r u doing, ok cya l8ter, dont b a h8ter), break that habit NOW. When your professor is trying to decide who gets the A and who gets the B on exams that are equally well reasoned, the winner will always be the better writer.

Next time, I will shed some light on things you’ll be told at orientation, some of which is good advice, most of which is bogus crap. Stay tuned!

We have this relatively new restaurant here called Rain Uptown. We’ve eaten there a whole bunch of times, and every time we’ve been the food has been really, really, really good. They serve mostly Italian food in the evenings and the pasta is fresh and delicious. The only downside is that their service tends to be a bit slow, and for that reason we haven’t been back in a while.

Anyway, the soup du jour is almost always TO DIE FOR. The best is the cream of mushroom, followed closely by the French onion soup, which is baked in a hollowed-out onion and is soooooo yummy. Unfortunately for me, it seems like almost every time we eat at Rain Uptown, the soup du jour is clam chowder. BLECH. Me no likey.

But there was this one time that we went with Cousin Laura (who has a blog and has not yet posted an entry despite my begging and pleading–so I linked to it in an effort to humiliate her into posting something because I’m mean like that) and the soup du jour was navy bean soup. I didn’t order it because I didn’t think it sounded great, but Cousin Laura ordered it and guess what? It was great great great. Great great. Wonderful, even. So I’ve been wanting to try to recreate it in my kitchen, and this is my first effort.

Navy Bean Soup (adapted from Paula Deen)

one 1-pound bag of dried navy beans
64 oz of water
one 3/4″ thick slice of ham off the bone, diced
1/4 stick of butter
onion powder
salt–lots and lots of salt

Pour dried beans onto a plate or a shallow bowl (a dark color, if you have one, makes it easier to see) and check to see if there are any stones or other inedibles in your beans.

Then rinse the beans in a colander under warm water for about 3-5 minutes to get them good and clean.

Pour the water in your soup pot and add the rinsed navy beans, and then bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer with the lid on for about 3 hours, adding water as necessary (I had to add about 32 extra ounces over an almost 4-hour period).

After about 3 hours, or when beans are tender and fully cooked, add the butter and diced ham to the soup pot.

Now this is my favorite part!! After the butter has melted, you get out the most excellent kitchen tool OF ALL TIME–the immersion blender.

This is important: you don’t want to puree the whole pot of beans, just enough that it turns the broth into more of a creamy-looking liquid. If you do this for too long, you’ll have navy bean baby food, and that’s just plain disgusting. So you just run the immersion blender in the bottom of the soup pot a few times. I think I did it about 3 or 4 times for about 10 seconds each time. When you get the consistency you want, add onion powder and salt to taste. It requires a lot of salt, just so you know. Oh, and this is also important: you don’t add salt to the beans until the very end, because if you add salt too early it makes the beans tough instead of tender. Anyway, when you’re done, the soup should look something like this.

So if you don’t have an immersion blender, it’s okay. You could probably use the back of a big spoon and kindof smush some of the beans if you wanted to, or if you have a blender you could take out some of the beans, puree them that way, and then return them to the pot. Or, I suppose you could just skip the smushing altogether if you want. But really, you guys, you NEED an immersion blender. Especially if you like soup, like me.

The verdict? My navy bean soup turned out really well. Plus it made my house smell FAB-YOO-LUSS. But it wasn’t quite as good as what we had at Rain Uptown. Back to the drawing board.

Okay, so again, until the other day, I hadn’t posted at all since around Christmas. I didn’t post one single time during 1L spring semester. I feel like I should at least reference it now. I mean, after all, it happened.

It’s like this. The 1L fall semester can be pretty terrifying and overwhelming and exciting and inspiring and lots of other things–did I mention overwhelming?–all at once. You don’t really know what to expect as far as how to study, what to study, when to study, what will be tested, and so forth. You may get involved in student organizations, you learn how to do legal research and writing, you have happy hours, and everything is just new and shiny. The whole semester kind of just whizzes by in a blur of panic and adrenaline. Then you have exams. After grades come out, you get to see whether your study techniques were on target or not. Then you open Christmas presents or celebrate the winter holiday however you do, and all is right with the world. Yay law school.

In contrast, at least for me, the spring semester was, well, just the opposite. With the spring semester came this weird sickness that will henceforth be named Apathy of Spring Semester (ASS). Whereas the fall semester was just 16 weeks long, the spring semester was more like 457 weeks long, give or take a couple. I started out enjoying my classes, and then I just lost interest somewhere around the 32nd week of the semester. For one thing, having an 8:00 class (Property) four days a week is just simply not conducive to learning. I felt like a zombie every single day in there. The professor was engaging and easy to listen to, so it wasn’t his fault at all. For me, it’s just physiologically impossible to drink enough coffee to be fully awake for Property at 8 a.m. Four. Days. A. Week. So there’s that.

But it wasn’t just me. Most of my classmates seemed to be having the same problem with ASS syndrome. In Legal Practice (the research and writing class), we had a pretrial brief as our first assignment, and I don’t think anybody even started working on the draft more than a couple of days before it was due. Definitely not my best effort. And then there was Moot Court. Lots of people participated and lots of them us didn’t prepare as well as they we could’ve because of this horrible affliction with ASS syndrome. We also had a Mock Trial competition but I didn’t even attempt to participate in it. The last major hurdle before exams was the appellate brief, but thankfully by that time I was sick and tired of being sick and tired and I did put a decent amount of effort into writing that.

As it turns out, the only known cure for ASS syndrome is removing the afflicted person from the source of the infection, which, of course, is law school itself. So a steady diet of sleeping late, watching TV (Netflix instant watch is my BFF for life), reading fiction, and eating ice cream is just what the doctor ordered, and that’s exactly what I’ve been doing. I know, I know. It’s a hard life.

All of this is to say that really you should be glad I didn’t post at all during last semester because I have a feeling those posts would’ve all been whiny emo whiner posts and nobody wants to read that kind of crap all the time. So really I was doing you guys a favor. Yes, that’s it. You’re welcome.

So. It’s been a while. A long while. In fact, it’s been so long that probably nobody even checks this blog anymore.

Sigh. My life is hard.

But!! I have some news. For the past year or more, I’ve tried to maintain at least some degree of anonymity here. I also had a personal blog that was, well, personal and not anonymous. It also has gone neglected for the past several months. And anyway, it’s just hard to decide which things I want to put on which blog without duplicating. You get the picture. And now that I’m FREE FOR THE SUMMER (woot!!!) I really want to get back into blogging again, but I want to simplify. This blog will stay basically the same, and I’m going to start a Tumblr account for my more personal stuff. I’ll link to it here once it gets up and running, and if you really feel like stalking me you can check it out.

So I’m redoing my “About Me” page and I’m giving up the mask. Check it out.

New blog posts are imminent! You’ve been warned.

Despite the fact that I had no warm feelings about Christmas at all this year, I did celebrate Christmas — three times! — with various members of my family. I don’t really think law school is wholly to blame for my bah-humbug-iness this year, but I’m sure it played a part. Anyway, it was bad. Really bad. Not only did I not put up a tree this year, I didn’t get out any Christmas decorations. At all. None. My poor, traumatized child. I fully expect that when she grows up and has kids of her own, her house at Christmastime will look something like this:

Except she’ll remaster the soundtrack to replace “Mr. Grinch” with “Momma Grinch” and she’ll have a plastic me in the yard instead of the Grinch in that video.

Anyway.

So I did cook, and it was pretty delicious, so I thought I’d share. Ninja Pops was here for a few days and I cooked a pot roast and mashed potatoes. Yep, that’s it. Meat and potatoes. What?

Newcastle Pot Roast
adapted slightly from Cooking Light

• 2 T butter
• 2 pounds sliced onion
• 4 cloves of garlic, chopped
• cooking spray
• 5 lb roast (I used two chuck roasts, 2-1/2 lbs each)
• salt & pepper
• 1-1/2 to 2 cups beef broth
• 1 T fresh thyme leaves
• 12 oz dark beer (Newcastle)
• 3 T cornstarch

First, you melt the butter in a large Dutch oven over medium-high heat.

Then, you put the chopped onions and garlic into the pot and sauté for about 12 minutes.

After that, you turn the heat down to medium-low and cook for about 40 minutes or until the onions and garlic are sortof carmelized. Remove the onions from heat and transfer to a bowl. Preheat your oven to 300°.

Next, season the roast with salt and pepper on both sides.

Then spray cooking spray on the bottom of the Dutch oven and turn the heat up to medium-high again. Brown the roast for about 5 minutes on each side.

Assemble your remaining ingredients: beer, broth, onion mixture, and thyme leaves. Add them to the pot with the roast.

Bring this to a simmer, then cover and bake at 300° for 2 hours, turning the meat over after 1 hour.

When the roast is finished baking, remove it from the pan. Over medium-high heat, add the cornstarch to the pot and stir constantly until boiling for 1 minute. Then serve over the roast.

And here’s the finished product:

Okay actually that looks kinda gross or something. Let’s try again:

Hmmm. Not much of an improvement. Maybe a shot from farther away?

That’s a little better. Anyway, regardless of how it looks on camera, it was delicious.

Trust.

Oh, and here are my best mashed potatoes of all time.

And when I say “best mashed potatoes of all time,” I do actually mean “best mashed potatoes of all time.”

Happy Holidays!!

I have lots of pet peeves. Truckloads of them. Some of them are reasonable, some of them aren’t, although I’m fairly well attached to all of them. My newest one is this oh-so-typical conversation, which I’ve had approximately 8342 times already since the semester’s been over:

EVERY PERSON IN THE WORLD: So, how’s law school?
ME: Um, I don’t know.
EVERY PERSON IN THE WORLD: Do you like it, though?
ME: Um, I don’t know.
EVERY PERSON IN THE WORLD: Well, how were finals? Do you think you did well?
ME: Um, I don’t know.
EVERY PERSON IN THE WORLD: When will you get your grades back?
ME: Um, I don’t know.
EVERY PERSON IN THE WORLD: Do you know what kind of law you want to practice?
ME: Whichever kind somebody will pay me to do, I suppose.

Okay, so maybe it’s a little unfair to label this as a pet peeve. It’s not every person in the world’s fault that I’ve grown weary of answering (or not answering, to be more accurate) these questions. The thing is, there’s really no way to properly answer them. Either you lie…

EVERY PERSON IN THE WORLD: So, how’s law school?
LIAR ME: It’s fantastic! I love it so much I get up every morning at 5:30 just bursting with pride and joy. I even sleep with my casebooks!
EVERY PERSON IN THE WORLD: Do you like it, though?
LIAR ME: See above. Also, if I could just win the lottery, I’d choose to be a law student fo-evah.
EVERY PERSON IN THE WORLD: Well, how were finals? Do you think you did well?
LIAR ME: Oh, finals were so much fun! Like seriously, I studied all throughout the semester and I took copious, relevant notes during classtime, plus I developed the most kickass outlines of all time. So, yes, I think I did really well. I’m pretty sure I’m gonna ace this thing. It was so awesome to get to put all my good knowledge to work!
EVERY PERSON IN THE WORLD: When will you get your grades back?
LIAR ME: Well, actually, my professors have already graded all my exams and emailed the results to me privately. But shhh! I’m not supposed to tell anybody because everyone else is waiting impatiently for their grades. I got all A++++++’s!
EVERY PERSON IN THE WORLD: Do you know what kind of law you want to practice?
LIAR ME: Oh, definitely. I mean, I’m not really in it for the money. I just want to help people. That’s what it’s all about. So probably I’ll just concentrate on pro bono work for the homeless midget population.

… or you sound like a whiny emo whiner.

EVERY PERSON IN THE WORLD: So, how’s law school?
WHINY EMO ME: Oh. My. Gawd. It’s so so horrible. I hate its guts. Every morning I wake up and I wish I had the swine flu so I didn’t have to go to class. I can’t even find my casebooks.
EVERY PERSON IN THE WORLD: Do you like it, though?
WHINY EMO ME: Are you kidding me? Let me try to think of something remotely similar in terms of brutal torture and sheer horror… Well, I got nothin. It takes too much energy and law school has consumed all my energy.
EVERY PERSON IN THE WORLD: Well, how were finals? Do you think you did well?
WHINY EMO ME: Well? By “well” do you mean something better than the lowest grade in the class? Because I think *maybe* there’s one person who could’ve scored lower than I did, and that’s because he just didn’t show up for exams at all. Exams were horrible. Four hours in a cold room with a computer screen and an empty brain. I bombed. I’m flunking out of law school.
EVERY PERSON IN THE WORLD: When will you get your grades back?
WHINY EMO ME: Never, I hope. I’ve heard they send grades out in descending order, so every day that goes by without grades is just another nail in my job-finding coffin. *deep sigh*
EVERY PERSON IN THE WORLD: Do you know what kind of law you want to practice?
WHINY EMO ME: I’m not even so sure I want to practice law. Assuming that I flunk out of law school this semester, I’m just gonna find some menial job in some boring cubicle somewhere and shuffle papers. Or perhaps a career in retail sales at the mall.

You see, neither of those approaches is really a winner. So I just stick with the standard, “Um, I don’t know.” Eventually they stop asking questions. Anyway, it’s kinda pointless to try to talk about law school with people who have never been to/aren’t currently in law school. It’s just impossible to understand.

So, people-of-the-world-who-aren’t-in-law-school-currently-and-have-never-been, a word of friendly advice: If you start asking your local law student friend/relative/acquaintance questions about law school and you start getting a lot of this look…

… save your local law student the trouble of having to try to figure out the appropriate answers to those questions. I have all the answers right here. And my fellow law students, feel free to refer your friendly inquiring relatives/friends/acquaintances here for the answers they seek. They mean well, so don’t be rude.

• Law school is law school. Sometimes it’s fine, sometimes it sucks. It’s just varying degrees of suckage. I don’t know that it’s ever particularly pleasant, except on those days when certain people get what’s coming to them. Those days are satisfying.
• Obviously I like law school to some degree; I haven’t dropped out yet. If I hated its guts for real, I wouldn’t waste my time. “Like” is probably not the best choice of words, but I’ll say this: It’s definitely challenging, and I like challenges. Sometimes it’s interesting and sometimes it’s not, but overall the experience has been more positive than negative.
• Exams are hard. Some are harder than others, but they’re all hard. I have no idea how I did. And really, how well I think I may have done on the exams is completely irrelevant. It’s all up to the professor and the other students in my section. So, no, I have no clue, and in fact I’d kinda like to maintain my blockade of those thoughts.
• Grades will come out sometime within the next several weeks. I don’t know when that will be. I refuse to sit at my laptop hitting the F12 button every few minutes in anticipation, although the urge to do that is sometimes very strong. Please, please don’t remind me that I haven’t checked for grades in a few hours.
• Honestly, I don’t have any idea what kind of law I want to practice. After one whole semester in law school, I can say with full confidence that I don’t want to draft contracts for a living. Although I will do just that, if it’s the best job I can find.

Now can we go ahead and eat dinner?

This was supposed to be a secret. Gah.

Ninja Parade Slips Through Town Unnoticed Once Again

hat tip: thirddesign