Breakin’ Down the Block

I’ve hit a bit of a blogger’s block recently, probably because I’ve been so busy with classes; between reading cases for class discussions, outlining notes for finals, which I know are months away but I have to start early, and writing my first memo, which sounds deceptively short, I haven’t had much time to breathe. I barely had time to work in my workout, which consisted of the 1/2 mile walk to classes and the 1/2 walk back last week because I had car trouble. Any way, I figured I would give my readers a little information about what its like to be in law school and some bits of wisdom/snark that I’ve picked up recently. After all this is week six of fourteen.

First of all, in undergrad I took McDaniel courses, had Clyde for quite a few classes, and did mock trial, which were actually really good preparation for the adventure that is law school. There is a lot of reading and studying, and I spend at least three to four hours a night with the laptop up, my casebooks out, and a set of highlighters. This is just in preparation for class discussions; I have to brief between two and four cases per class in order to keep up, and then I go back and type up my briefs and compile my notes after each class in order to be able to create my outlines, which are very important. having McDaniel has taught me to read massive amounts of material, synthesize it for class discussion, and to manage my time between readings well. Mock Trial gave me something extra to balance, and learning that art of balancing it all has really helped me get through, I will talk about that later in this entry though.

Outlines are also very important for studying for finals, which begin right after Thanksgiving Break. So I guess I should explain why I am already working on them with finals so very far away. In law school you cover a large amount of material in a relatively short amount of time, which means that if you wait too long to get started on compiling your notes from class then you will spend the last three weeks of classes in full on panic mode worrying about how you will study your wide and varied notes thoroughly enough to be able to pass your finals. So I started outlining about a week and a half ago, and I spend at least an hour and half, often more, updating them after we finish a chunk of information in class. I have a separate spiral notebook for each class, and I am currently writing out my outlines, but when it gets closer to crunch time I will be typing them up and reorganizing them so that I get a second massive dose of working through the materials. It’s not fun or exciting, but it is important.

I’ve been spend a good two hours a night every other night working on my Closed Memo for BLS. Now you might think that working on a memo would be a quick task that would take an hour max to finish. And you would be wrong. The memo is actually a 1600 words or less monstrosity that is right now looming over my head and haunting my like Jacob Marley. It’s due October 5, and I am only about 1/3 of the way through my draft. It seems that every time I try to make some progress on it I get stuck. I did, however, finish my statement of facts, and it actually looks like it might be right. The thing has four basic parts, and I haven’t even really gotten deep into the hardest part of it. But with a little more perseverance I should be able to get through it. It’s frustrating, but not impossible.

I’ve made several discoveries over the past six weeks. First of all, there is an art to being able to balance law school and the rest of life, and I’d like to think I am doing a fairly good job of it. I manage to stay pretty much caught up and ahead in classes, find time to talk to Wash and the family on a regular basis, eat decent and pretty healthy meals, have at least an hour or so of relaxation every other day or so, and make time to go down to the fitness room in the apartment building for a workout. I have only had one melt down, and that was over something that was not completely law school related. Now if I could just find time to read my new Dan Brown novel; I’m afraid I will start reading it and get nothin’ done until I finish it. They aren’t lying to you when they tell you that law school is a full time job. But it is managable. I even figured out a way to be able to occassionally go home to TN in order to visit my family and the boyfriend. My “To Do” list grows, but with a bit of hard work I can keep it pruned down. I’m managing to keep up.

I’ve discovered that there are a lot of different kinds of law students around here, and then there are just plain strange people. I sit by a variety of characters, and at some point I will have to make a list of the “species” I’ve encounted. For now I’ll just tell you about a few of the more annoying ones. First, there are the entitled people; I figure they feel entitled to two or three chairs to theirselves no matter how busy and crowded the room is, since they insist on not putting their bags on the floor and will use an extra chair just to put their bags in. Half the time those bags are ratty old things that are just not that delicate. There are also the people who sit next to you in class and smack their gum. I have nothing against eating in class or drinking in class, I do it all the time, especially if I’m running late and breakfast for me is a couple of Pop Tarts and a bottle of water. I at least try to eat quietly. But honestly, if you can’t chew your food or gum quietly and must make loud smacking sounds as you roll spit and gum/food in your mouth, just refrain from eating in class because its distracting to those of us who are trying to pay attention so that we are not caught off guard when the professor calls on us. No one is going to accept “I’m sorry I couldn’t hear the question over the cow next to me chewing its cud.”  as a reason for not having the anwer. In addition to these, we also have some of the same kinds of people you have in undergrad, like the guy in the front or back of the room who will without fail complicate the issue at hand an insert random commentary based on his life experience.

Well considering the length of this post, which is crazy long, I’d say my blogger’s block is broken.

And so, I blog…

I’ve determined that I should blog more. I mean this thing is a waste of space if I don’t do enough blogging. So I will try to update daily, or at least two or three times a week. Meanwhile in the world of Lucky, life goes on. It’s dull, draining, and not much fun, but it does go on. My flashdrive, which contained a large quantity of writing, has decided to keel over, and that pisses me off to no end. I’ll probably take it somewhere and get the data recovered, if it isn’t too expensive. I’ve immersed myself in book after book, since I am still without a car and therefore cannot get a job. I think Da has finally broken down and realized that I can’t get a title for the green p-o-s. I’m really hoping he has because I’ve got to get a set of wheels in order to get my bum to class everyday. That was really off topic. Anyway, I’ve gone through several books, and I still refuse to read Twilight because of all the screaming fans who have for the most part ruined the book for me.

I’ve finally gotten around to formatting the desktop, which is as I type downloading the 66 updates that it needs, and it’s present location is frustrating because I have to work from my bed. That is not as comfortable as it would seem considering. However I will be able to use it for some of the things that are more difficult to do with my laptop. Also on the ‘computer’ front. I’ve taken to making forum skins, and I really like it. This is my site: Starlights, and I made it without using Photoshop, a program I would die for right now. I’m still working on my first skin, improving it, but it’s already as nice a skin as I’ve ever done.

I’m registering to take the LSAT in October, and it scares the crap out of me. I’ve been informed by all my professors and those who’ve already taken the test that the logic games section is the hardest, and that if I can manage that and do well, I will have a high score. I need that high score to get into Vandy, especially since my GPA isn’t extremely high, it’s only a 3.3, and I don’t have enough extracurriculars to look incredible on an application. So I’m going to start scholarship huntingand start looking at applications to the law schools and writing essays and getting letters of recommendation. The time has come for me to get into law school.

Spoony took his application for the sheriff’s department to be notarized last monday, and he’s gotten a lot of things together since that terrible revalation. As for his choice in jobs, I’d like him to pick a safer way to make a living, like driving cars that go 180MPH haha kudos to you if you get that joke, but I support him in whatever he chooses to do. He’s getting into website travel agent type deal, and at this point every little bit helps us get to the point where everything is better. I plan on moving out when I go to law school, and if everything goes as planned Spoony and I can get everything back the way it should be. And that brings us to the end of today’s blog and the quote of the day. Yay, Shakespeare!

Quote of the day: “The course of true love never did run smooth”. A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Act I, Scene I); William Shakespeare

Please allow me to clarify

I’ve come to the realization that my last blog entry may have caused some confusion. It was not solely about how expensive beauty supplies are. In fact it wasn’t really about that at all. I realize though that it may seem like that is what I was writing about since I made that list to show how much I spent on the things I use, but the point was that the cost of being beautiful is far too high because it takes a huge toll on women. It’s not about how much we spend on the things we use, it’s about how much of ourselves we are losing and how much damage we are doing to ourselves in an obsession with being perfect.

The blog was about the fact that women are killing themselves physically and emotionally in the quest for beauty. We become so concerned with what society thinks that we forget about ourselves and whats important. We let our health suffer, starving, stressing out,  and taking pills, and we let our emotional health fall as well, by stressing ourselves and telling ourselves all that is wrong with us. I suppose I should have made that clearer in my entry, but I was having difficulty writing it to begin with.

Blogging about blogging…

So I was looking through my old blogs, like on Xanga to be exact, and I’ve noticed something. I discovered that as I’ve grown older my blogging and reasons for blogging have changed dramatically.

I remember when blogging became a big deal. It was around my sophomore and junior year in high school. When I started my first blog it was on Xanga, and I only started it because everyone in high school had one. And I blogged mostly so that everyone could see that I wasn’t so far behind after all. I didn’t have my own computer; I was using my family computer, and I was doing merely for the comments. As time went on I started posted at least twice a week, usually short nothing posts to keep the thing active. But Xanga wasn’t a great blogging site. You had to pay to do a great deal of things and since everyone I knew had a site I wasn’t really comfortable spilling a lot of things out.

So flashfoward to now. I have three blogs, this one, phusebox, and the one on my myspace. Now I blog because I have something to say and at least here I have very few inhabitions. I don’t think anyone I know has a wordpress blog, and I haven’t told many people about my blog here. Now I don’t blog to be cool, I blog because I want to and because it is an excellent way to get things off my chest. I know I have a few people who peek in and read, but I keep everything relatively anonymous. I rarely use real names and the pictures that appear are rare and usually not even of me.

Reading through my blogs I’ve noticed that as I age and move through life my blog gets more and more honest. I’m more personal now, talking about everything from class to my love life, and from current events to personal rants. I just say what’s on my mind whether it is slightly offensive or blunt. There are things I keep to myself, things that I write down in my personal journal instead of posting online. But I post a lot of things here, on the internet in this blog.

I’ve grown up and so has my blog. I’m more mature and so are my posts. As the years push on I guess my blog will keep changing. It has less frills and dressings and more realism and honesty. After a while I guess I stopped worrying about what people thought of my blog, just as I stopped worrying so much about what people thought about me. I don’t care if no one comments, though comments are nice, as long as I can keep blogging. I thank everyone for their comments about this place, for reading my stuff. I thank you for sharing in my journey. Stay tuned for more adventures with this girl we call Lucky.