Back to Where We Started From....

So......It's Monday.  January 3rd.  And I'm in Rinn Law Library.  Alone.  I have not seen a single other person who is not a member of the staff here today.  In fact, when I walked in all the staff members glared at me.  Like it was MY fault they had to be here.  No, my darlings, you chose to be LIBRARIANS.  So you have to work on January 3rd.  Unlike me.  I'm here by (mostly) choice.*

It's actually rather upsetting to think that one day in the very near future, I will not be working alone on January 3rd.  In fact, we will all be working on January 3rd.  Because we'll be in the real world.  Where you don't get to just take a month off to read fiction, watch television, bake cookies, and generally rot your brain.  We'll actually have to work.  And guys, there will be consequences to our actions!

The mere thought of not living in a perpetually hypothetical world leaves me quaking in my (stylish, yet affordable) boots.**

But on the plus side, at least I won't be the only one at work on a Monday morning.  You can all suffer with me.

__________________________
*And partly, "Oh my God, I forgot to accomplish anything over the last 2.5 weeks."
**I am not actually wearing boots right now.

I Feel Like I'm on a Jungle Safari!

Dear Readers:

I am currently in the same building as one Antonin Scalia.  Soon we will even be in the same library, separated by a mere floor of books.  I'm dressed appropriately to run into a SCOTUS justice of course, as one should be when presented with the opportunity to meet one.  He's also giving a lecture tonight at the Harold Washington library.  A lot of people aren't going, some of them because they don't agree with his opinions.

Neither do I.  Part of my research this semester is on textualism, and Scalia is a very important textualist.  I personally find this doctrine narrow, limiting, and defiant of actual legislative intent.  However, this doesn't mean I don't want to hear him speak.  First of all, it could be good for my research to hear his opinions on originalism and textualism.  Second of all (and more importantly), you don't have to agree with someone to learn from them.

Now, I don't like to get preachy when I write, (see random pictures of puppies and videos of 80s songs,) but I do believe that everyone is entitled to their opinion and you should listen to it.  You're never going to learn the weaknesses of your own argument if you don't listen to someone else's, regardless of how ridiculous you may think it is.*  Use someone else's viewpoints to sharpen your own.

And be humble when it turns out you're wrong.  It's okay to realize that maybe someone else's thoughts were better than yours.  Use that information.  Pick their brain, and let it lead you somewhere good or useful.

So while I don't agree with Scalia that all answers should be found in the "four corners" of a document, I'm excited to find out why he does believe that.  And while I don't believe all of his opinions are good ones, I'm excited to hear how he arrived at them.

After all, you don't get to be a Supreme Court Justice by being stupid.

_____________________
*See, "We don't even HAVE 7-11s on the South Side!"

Life As I Know It

Check out those awesome curtains! And my large collection of scarves on the right hand side. And that kickass wall hanging above my delightfully over-pillowed bed. The wall hanging injured my leg, giving me big stripy bruises. But it sure does look cool.

My whole apartment, which I now live in with LSBFF is cool. It even has a balcony which doesn't have furniture so we don't sit on it. The best part is, of course, that it's such a homey and comfortable place all done in various neutral shades with bright and shiny accents. (Except in the case of my room, which has bright and shiny walls with various neutral accents.) It's also TINY, compared to all the places I've lived before, but it's pretty cozy for just two people. Plus, I get my own bathroom for the very first time in my whole life. Which, let me tell you, is AMAZING. No toothpaste on the counters and I never have to wait to shower.

While it love it immensely, I haven't quite decided if it rivals The Euclid House, which while charmingly decorated, did not come with the fashionable taste of LSBFF's love for Ikea. However, it did come with loud drunks and an awesome backyard. Sometimes I miss being in undergrad. Looking back, things were simpler then. I had no shortage of big fish in a little pond moments, which is bound to happen when you live in Muncie, Indiana. In Chicago, while I've started to feel like a denizen, I'm a very, very tiny denizen in a very, very large......[insert habitat here].

Regardless, I have brought a little bit of Muncie with me. the bright red scarf on the very edge of the photograph is the mantilla that used to hang over my bed. In the bathroom is a caricature of Nicole and I that used to hang in the hallway. (Oddly, the caricature artist drew us in a car, going to a party. The caricature artist had no idea that we were Honors students who preferred to sit at home and watch bad sci-fi.) I also have the plates that were used in our Euclid House kitchen for two years and a basic knowledge of the things we used to cook. (I always forget the recipe book we created, so I end up sort of recreating things out of my head. My re-creations usually taste pretty delicious.) And while that's not too much, it is enough. Enough to remember what life at the Euclid House was like without dwelling on it.

I did the math. Only 21 months until this is all over. I wonder what I'll take from this new place to put in the next one.

It's A Quarter after [3], I'm All Alone (and I'm Thirsty and Can't Sleep)

It's getting harder and harder to make the song titles relevant.

So it's over. Sweet Jesus, so awesome, it's over. I was listening to the 1L song, though, and the lyrics that stuck in my head were, "They say it gets better, but the damage is done. I bleed reasonableness and jurisdiction." I think I make some sort of legal joke EVERY DAY. The only difference is that no one is going to get my (admittedly bad) jokes all summer long. I'm going home.

First of all, because there's a puppy there, and I hear puppies and kittens are good for relaxing. Actually, it's a 3 month-old 40 pound yellow lab puppy. So it's a big puppy. But since I discovered today that I have no idea how to relax, I think a big puppy is just what I need. I really don't know how to not do anything anymore. After the criminal law final on Friday, I immediately picked up my contracts final. I worked on it for nine hours straight for three days in a row, and after a final edit Tuesday morning, I turned it in. I came home, sat down and watched one episode of Full House and immediately started packing. I wasn't supposed to leave Chicago until Thursday, but by 5 pm, I had packed everything I own, and decided to just go home Wednesday. And then, because I STILL had time to kill I started cleaning the apartment. So you see I'm not kidding. I do not know how to relax anymore. I'm working on it.

The second reason I'm going home is that after much (okay, not really) searching*, that's where I found my job for the summer. I use the term "job" loosely, since it's actually an unpaid internship. I contacted the Volunteer Lawyers' Program of Northeast Indiana over Spring Break back in March. I finally heard back from them at the beginning of May, had a phone interview Wednesday morning at the crack of dawn, and had a job with them by noon. What will I be doing you ask? I have no idea. I think I'm supposed to spend half my time at the VLPNEI office doing things like intake interviews and whatnot, and then I spend the other half my time with two of their attorneys helping them with whatever they're doing. It's all very vague, but I have an orientation on the 21st.

I'm pretty excited. VLPNEI works with lower-income people who otherwise wouldn't have access to the judicial system. It mostly deals with things like family law and landlord/tenant law issues from what I understand, so I'm going to be doing good, down-to-earth work that has a real day-to-day effect. I'm sure it's going to be a challenge at times, and I'm going to make mistakes (hopefully just little ones), but it should be eye-opening at the very least. I'm happy that I get to put all these legal skills to use so they won't just collect dust this summer.

The best part, of course, is that for the first time in my whole life, my job is Monday-Friday, so I get weekends off. I will be spending my weekends at the lake, perpetratin' a tan.**

Anyway, goodbye ChiTown. I'll miss you, but I'll make sure to visit lots so you don't feel sad that I left you.

________________________

*Cut me some slack. By the time I realized I should be applying for things, a lot of application dates had passed.

**Yes, that was a "Gold digger" reference. Bonus points if you got it.

Yo Ho Yo Ho A Pirate's Life For Me!

We’re discussing adverse possession in Property right now. It’s apparently a really important topic. So I’m glad we’re only spending two days on it and the professor is discussing it in his usual ambiguous way of having charts on the board with A,B,C,D written all over them. Each letter refers to a party, a piece of property, and a past owner of ONE parcel of property. In other words, there are three of each letter, each referring to a different object. There’s also some simple math up on the board and he’s been circling random blank spots on the board. And the words “rebellious convention.” Oh. Wait. No, it’s “reasonable connection” And he’s apparently creating a hypo with a whole NEW chart that makes no sense. Look, more numbers and letters. AND A CHART! That has no reference points.

Is it any wonder I don’t get anything out of property? I’m never going to be a half decent lawyer.

I'm getting a new career.

Land Pirate.

You should never smile at a crocodile

The denizens of law school are characters. So is it any wonder that we students eventually fall into a sort of morbid fascination with our professors? We gchat about their habits during class ("Nearly Right") and we talk about their one-year-olds while we're at lunch. Don't get weirded out. I've already explained we don't have lives.

Myths abound about every professor and dean. Every 1L knows about the dreaded Prof. G., who I'm pretty sure is just out to make students cry. And there's another one who swings a baseball bat WAY too close to your head in order to make his point about demonstrative evidence. Our former head dean was a magician, and one of the Constitutional Law professors clerked for Ruth Bader Ginsburg and was Obama's student. And that's just the SURFACE of what we know.

That having been said, there are always two deans who seem to work in tandem. They gave us a lecture yesterday on "Life After First Year." One of them, Dean T. is a black woman with what might be the best skin I've EVER seen and a short buzz cut. Even with the buzz cut, she might be one of the more feminine women I've SEEN working in law. She has a voice that seems rather gentle, but easily reaches the back of the room. The other is Dean W. and she is intimidating as all hell. She might be 5'5", in her late 50s or early 60s and smiles. Not nice smiles, scary smiles. The smile that a crocodile makes RIGHT before it eats you alive.

They have the most amazing good cop/bad cop routine, where Dean T. tells you what you need to know and then Dean W. says "And don't come to me after you screw it up." It's like optimism and pessimism standing together. I'd love to see the two of them work a courtroom.

It was once explained to all of us that every litigator has to brand themselves. You have to find your courtroom personality. Do you grill the witness on cross-examination, making them feel like a bug under a microscope? Or do you let them feel secure, so that something slips out of them that shouldn't?

It doesn't really matter, but I know this for sure: I want to be Dean W. Smiling cynically until I bite your head off. That woman gives me faith in humanity.