Property

Our Property professor used some new fangled way of teaching the course that doesn't involve a casebook this semester... I think it's a good idea, but it needs improvement. I just started getting my stuff together for a study group meeting later, and it occurred to me that nobody in my section knows anything about property. I feel confident saying this. Usually I think it's just me, but this time... I'm pretty sure we're all clueless. This is the one exam I'm thanking God for the mandatory curve.

The Post Exam Possum

I saw this post at Barely Legal, detailing "the possum." The possum is a person who pretends to be afraid of their ability to do well on exams, but has in actuality meticulously prepared.

I'd like to respond to this. I am somewhat of a post-exam possum. I tend to think I did poorly on most of my exams. Why? There are several reasons. First and foremeost, I genuinely feel as though most of my exams have gone horribly. The person who thinks they spotted every issue is fooling themselves. Nobody spots all of the issues. If you think the exam was too easy, you probably missed something important. Secondly, even if you feel like you nailed it, and even if it truly were an easy exam, it was most likely easy for everyone, which means that ridiculously insignificant errors will have a profound effect on your grade because the curve will be so tight. Finally, there is no upside to being a braggart. If you tell everyone that you think you've got it all down before, or after an exam, you're asking for karma to kick you right square in the testes. If you say you did well, you'll look like a jackass when you get your B-, but if you say you did poorly and you get a B-, it was expected.

Part of it is making everyone feel better... There seems to be an unspoken social consensus that it is inappropriate to talk about grades if you did really well. If you do well, when you tell someone you must temper it with a self-deprecating remark, or tell people that grades in general are "arbitrary" or "ultimately meaningless." Only the class asshole tells everyone how great they did, especially since the year isn't over yet, and the tables can easily turn. This carries over into exam week, some people know that they shat the bed on a final. The last thing they want to hear is for some a-hole who has no clue if he just got an A or a C on an exam to come out of the room and tell them how easy it was.

Part of it is making yourself feel better. If you tell yourself to expect to see a 2.667 when you check your grades, then you'll be ecstatic when you get a 3.1, however if you've talked to everyone in your section about how easy the exam was, and generally convinced yourself that you're going to do really well, you'll feel and look like a jackass when you get your 3.1.

The best way to approach exams is probably just to avoid talking about your preparation, your chances of doing well/poorly, what you got for the second essay, whether you talked about the commerce clause pre-1937 vs. after Lopez, or anything of that sort. However, for most of us its impossible, I can't take a 4 hour exam, and then NOT talk about it for at least an hour afterwards... It's not reassurance I'm seeking, it's a sort of decompression/stress release thing. I can't explain it, I feel better after rehashing it... and since I need to rehash it, I may as well do it in the way that makes me look the least like a douchebag.

ConLaw

There's something in my mouth... and it's sour, wait what is that? Oh right, it's the bitter taste of defeat. I had the conlaw exam today... I completely ran out of things to say on the biggest question. There were 3 essay, 25 multiple choice. The 80 minute essay question (which was almost a third of the exam) was absolutely evil. Issues that I forgot to address in my exam are appearing roughly every 15 minutes. Also, fun fun fun, I think I may have misread one of the questions. I really fudged all over that one.

One down...

Today I know more about civil procedure than I ever will again. I just took the first final of the season. It was god-awful. Whoever thought up the concept of multiple choice questions on law school exams should be stabbed, set on fire, and thrown off a building. Seriously, we're taught to read ambiguity into everything, and then we get a paragraph long question with 5 possible "answers" that are each only a sentence long. Everyone knows in law school the answer to every question is "it depends," however the professors rarely allow you that option on a multiple choice test.

The essay part of the exam sucked as well. I finished with about 5 minutes to spare... awful. There was a monstrous personal jurisdiction question right in the middle of the test. It required the type of carefully planned out answer that a panicky first year law student is NOT going to be able to come up with under excruciating time constraints. Well, now that I've done my outline dump, I'm going to go study for Con Law, which happens to be on Friday... This semester is a nightmare.

Boring, and fiercely proud.

Hmmm... I am an incredibly boring person. Everyday I come here and try to think of something to write. By the time I get to a break in my work, I find out that all the creativity existing in my soul has been incinerated by the flames of civ pro. Seriously, what did I do today? I got up, went to a diner, ate there, left a 5% tip because the service blew, then outlined for 12 hours... Haha, If anyone out there is reading this, know this: You may think this blog is boring, but this is my life... how do you think that makes me feel? Haha, seriously though, things could be much worse. In two weeks this will all be over, and my boring summer posts can begin: I woke up just after 2pm, played video games for about 6 hours, then I decided to put pants on and go to the bar. Rinse and repeat. I guess I don't really have a problem with my life being boring. At least it's predictable... I mean, really, our whole lives are spent trying to create as much predictability as possible... If predictability the standard society uses to judge the value of something, my life rules!

Made good progress on the Con Law outline today. Man... I found a website that will utterly destroy my ability to study. If you've ever wanted to go back to your childhood and replay RBI Baseball 2, or any other original NES game, you can do so HERE. It's amazing. And it's deadly to your ability to study.

I'm Freakin' Out Man!

You ARE freaking out... MAN. This sucks. The more I read, the more I realize I don't know. Bah. My whole law school experience is going to depend on a) me not getting any sleep for the next two weeks, and b) the other people in my section getting lazy and not studying effectively. The time crunch is really getting close. I need to get a day in for property somewhere.

The Commerce Clause

Today has been so worthless. I feel like I'm drinking from a fire hose. This all goes back to the law school treadmill analogy... it's just a long painful walk to nowhere. I am two-thirds done with my civ pro outline, halfway there with my conlaw outline, and I haven't started the other two. Count-down to my first exam... 6 days from today. Next Tuesday I'm going to be swimming in crap. But that's ok, as soon as I dry myself off I can wade through another hellish issue-spotting nightmare.

Worthwhile

I'm incredibly glad I went to that. Despite its early time, the prof gave us some pretty thinly veiled hints as to what the exam questions would be. Only about a third of the class bothered to show up. Here's the problem though, the third who showed up are going to tell the two thirds who didn't show up exactly what the prof said to focus on. So pretty much any competitive advantage you would've had by showing up is destroyed, which leads me to reverse my earlier statement and ask "Why in the hell did i go to that?" Seriously, I woke up like a sucker when I could've been sleeping the ENTIRE time.

Review Sessions

Wow! I hate the fact that the review sessions are always planned for the most horrific times. 9:30am? Who the hell is up at 9:30 during reading week? It shocks the conscience. Nobody can handle a review of the rule against perpetuities at this ungodly hour. Nobody. The only thing worse than early morning review sessions are the early morning exams they decide to spring on us.

Con law's crappiness and a brand new pope!

Oh man am I lazy. My previous predictions as to con law's crappiness have come true. There is a ton of theoretical crap to wade through. The thing is, it's really easy to get a general grasp of the material. But a general grasp of the material is going to wreck my gpa... I actually need to know it in some detail. I talked to a few profs this week about letters of recommnedation for transferring. They're going to do it for me, which is fantastic. Now I just have to shake a leg and get my FAFSA done. I'm so lazy about this crap.

The new pope looks like skeletor or Mr. Burns. He's probably a really good guy and all, but man, they couldn't have picked a more evil looking dude.

Second Little Bit of Steam to Blow Off: Library Hyenas

They usually sit in a group of 3-4, and they aren't bad when they're talking, they usually keep it down. Eventually one of them tells a joke, and they all laugh, really loud, pissing off everyone in the library. When they're done laughing they're quiet again... until another member of the pack tells a joke. I know they don't mean to do it, and you can't go over there and tell them to stop without being an asshole, because they only cackle 2-3 times an hour. So I'm not sure what the solution is.

More savage than the library hyena is the Library Howler Monkey. This species generally occupies the bottom of the law school food chain, and shows up during reading week, after slacking off all semester to "really bust ass this week" and learn everything there is to know about Civ Pro, Property, and Contracts in less than a week. His plan is foiled, however, when five of members of his peer group show up. They sit down near howler monkey, talk about how they're going to "work non-stop" all week, insert their wireless cards, check espn.com, yammer on about their fantasy baseball teams, study for 15 minutes, then go to the bars.

I'd like to stress that these people are different from sneezing guy. Sneezing guy can't help the fact that he has allergies, I mean, we all put up with sneezing guy, because he means well, and next week we may be the ones with the cold.

EMPLOYMENT!!!

I'm employed... for pay... in a law-related job! This is fantastic news. It doesn't pay much, but it'll be enough to pay the bills, and it'll be an awesome experience.

Just to try something new, I started my con law outline instead of doing civ pro again. It sucks, quite a bit, but not nearly as much as civ pro. I'll be going back to the library tonight to do some more of it... I plan on getting pretty heavily jacked up on caffeine first. One thing that really sucks is that it's become readily apparent that my study group and I are on totally separate pages this semester. Last semester we went through the courses case by case and meticulously built outlines. This semester one guy doesn't even seem to be making outlines, instead relying on other people's. The other guy and I both started independently and it's tough to synchronize our efforts when we're halfway through.

It's weird, now that grades have been out for a while, and everyone knows who got the CALI in what, and everyone knows who is getting a job and where, it's become very apparent who ranks where within the class. I mean obviously the people who did really well are on the CALI website and that nifty dean's list that they hang on the wall, and obviously some people just bitched about how poorly they did, but the middle is starting to flesh itself out now that employment results are trickling in. People also don't seem to care as much anymore. I think we're all over the shock of it.

My head hurts like this guy.

Hola amigos.

I pretty much just wanted to see if I was competent enough to post a photo, well that and I'm envious of Jim Anchower's carefree lifestyle right about now.

Actually, I can't really complain that much. It's not like law school is really that hard, it's just that outlining is tedious and boring, and I slacked off all semester. The LSAT absolved me for 4 years of screwing around, I'm banking on 14 days of outlining forgiving me for a semester of not paying attention. I wish I could go back in time and buy a laptop with an external (i.e. REMOVEABLE) wireless card.

All in all, I think we complain too much. When you hear a law student bitch, it's almost always because they didn't manage their time properly and now have to write a 20 page motion for summary judgment in 8 hours. This doesn't detract from the fact that I still think civil procedure sucks though.

Call Me Ishmael...

You know, I never read Moby Dick, but from the comic book version I glanced though, it seems like Civil Procedure is this Captain Ahab's whale. At this point I feel driven to pursue it, even though I'm quite positive it will ultimately destroy me inside, and possibly rip one of my legs off.

I forgot how enraging making an outline is. I'd like to think that it's just civ pro, but I know it's not true. Con law and property are waiting in the wings, ready to dropkick me in the nuts as soon as civ pro tags out.

One of the reasons I think I'm stressed out is that I did fairly well last semester. If I had grades that were around the median, I could try to get good grades by working hard, or I could just shoot for the median again. If I ended up at the median, next fall employers would see my transcript and know that I was consistent. If I did really well, I could just explain that I didn't get the hang of it the first time around, but improved second semester. The problem comes when you do well one semester, because then you have to do well again. You can go from a 3.0 to a 3.7 and it looks really good, you worked hard and improved yourself. If you go from a 3.7 to a 3.0 you look like a jackass who got cocky. So I feel like I painted myself into a corner, I don't really have anything to gain. My gpa can't really get much higher, but I can lose pretty much everything... This is why I'm in the library at 3am on a Saturday.

Yay! More Work!

Law school is kind of like running a marathon, except the prize at the end is more running, either that or it's like a treadmill... a long painful walk to nowhere (to quote Conan). I'm not sure which one it is. Two things are for sure, I'm back at the library, and civil procedure still sucks.

A guy in my study group seems to be relying on someone else's outlines instead of making his own. This does not bode well at all.

Links

Ok, I just spent about 20 minutes teaching myself how to add links to this thing. The links are all focused on law school. About the last one... I did very well gradewise last semester, and I am going to try to transfer to a brand new law school next year. Unfortunately it is quite possible that I will do poorly on my upcoming finals... in fact you could say creating this blog is probably the last thing I should've done. Now that I'm invested... I'm going to have to actually post every once in a while.

Hello World

I've decided to become one of the millions of arrogant people who think you have nothing better to do than read about the most insigificant details of my daily life. I'm a first year law student. My school is ranked somewhere between 40-70 on the US News and world report.

Finals are coming up soon, and I am going to use this to blow off steam, well that and it's something to distract me while I outline civil procedure at the library at 1am on a friday.

First little bit of steam to blow off: People who don't turn their phones off in the library should be summarily shot.