Hey CRAZY LADY!

It seems as though life has turned into a bad Jerry Lewis movie for one unlucky man.

What do you say after something like that? I wonder what his reaction was... If that had been me, assuming I wasn't harmed by the fall, and that security hadn't already detained me, I'd have picked myself up, and bolted out of there like a bat out of hell.

Best Blog Ever!!!!!!

Oh my God.

CM once said that the two words she associated with my blog were "Girlfriend" and "burrito." I'm not going to lie. I am a relatively simple man, and I'm actually quite flattered to have those two words associated with what is, in essence, my online diary.

Now, in keeping with my blog's proud traditions, I will now link you to the single greatest site in the history of the Internet... Burrito Blog.

This is so fraggin' awesome. It combines everything good and pure in life (minus the girlfriend). It's useful, it's relevant, and it's making my hungry.

I don't really order my links. I've usually just added them as I find them. However, I'm making an exception today.

Burrito Blog, thou hast dethroned The Onion. You are now my number one non-law school link.

The Piper.

I've spent the past couple of days trying to figure out how much money this whole law school thing is costing me.

Conclusion: This is going to hurt. Bad.

I am going to be owned by the man for a very, very long time. By the time I'm done here, I'll almost owe a damn mortgage. Heather's post really freaks me out.

I figured out that taxes and loan payments are going to consume about 60% of my income when I'm done here... which really makes me wonder whether or not I'd have been better off taking the hellish well-paying job.

Fears.

This place keeps a pretty grueling schedule. We're a third of the way through the quarter, which means daddy exam and me are gonna tangle in a little over 6 weeks.

My grades are... satisfactory. Obviously not as good as they were at my former school, but... damn, the two that I have are both above the median. One almost passes for what's considered an "A" at this school. I think back to the time I spent slacking last quarter... the week I missed when I was interviewing, the weekends that evaporated in a haze of video games and sleep, and the trips to see the girlfriend... I think of the motivational issues I had, and the intense feeling of dread in the weeks leading up to exams. I *knew* that I wasn't putting enough effort into this.

I honestly thought I was going to completely wipe out on exams because of my less than stellar work ethic. Now here I sit, one quarter later, having miraculously passed through the fire unscathed (at least so far). Again I *know* I'm not doing enough work, and the creeping sense of dread is slowly rising to the top of my stomach.

Sitting here I just realized a simple truth about myself: no matter how many times I win, I am always going to assume I've failed until reality proves me wrong. I spent a year getting straight A's at my old school, and a quarter getting damn good grades here, and all I can think about is when the other shoe is going to drop.

Oddly, I think I'm ok with this built-in expectation of failure. Truth be told, this one characteristic is probably responsible for the bulk of my success so far. An intense, irrational fear of a particular stimulus can lead to a powerful avoidance response. In other words, to the extent that one fears failure, one will work to avoid it.

The most important positive aspect of this trait, however, is that it keeps me primed for reality. I will fall flat on my ass eventually. Nobody wins all the time, and when life kicks your ass, it really is better if you see it coming

The Good, the Bad, and the Socratic.

Finally! After a month and a half of waiting for my grades, I am rewarded with results. With two out of three districts reporting, the consensus is that I did pretty well. I don't expect the third to be a major outlier, but you never know.

This is such a major relief, because I really needed some kind of validation, something to let me know that I belonged here. Today, I got it.

The only downer today was a horrendous Socratic performance this afternoon. It was one of those situations where I'd read the material for the day, but the Prof called on me first, and asked questions about material from the previous class. I hadn't looked at it for a few days, and I had nothing to respond with when he asked me questions, because I had no idea what he was talking about. Turns out it was one of the note cases, which I always read, but never bother retaining. I sort of had that one coming. It's alright though. I wasn't even all that upset about looking like an idiot. I was actually feeling pretty damn good.

OUTTED!

So Opionionista has outted herself. Apparently she graduated in 2004 and has been working at Littler Mendelson.

This is kind of disappointing. I thought she said she worked at two different firms... if this is true she worked at each one for less than a year. Also, her blog made it seem as though she worked at a large law firm. The office she worked in only had 17 attorneys, and 6 associates total. I always envisioned a vast, anonymous corporate corporate machine like Skadden when I read her posts.

Unless she worked at Cravath or somewhere equally hellish before Littler, she just lost a lot of street cred.

Hmmm.... Interesting. I am Intrgued by Your Ideas and Would Like to Subcsribe to Your Newsletter; or "The Longest Blog Post Title Ever."

When I was younger I was a pretty skinny kid, which I guess is better than being a pretty fat kid. But my size and total lack of athletic ability prevented me from playing most of the normal sports, so I joined the track team in middle school. I don't know why, but I can't sprint. Well I can, but I really suck at it. One thing that I *was* pretty good at was running the mile, so I did that. That and the 800 meter. I kind of hated the 800 though. Actually I really fucking hated the 800. It's like the most painful race ever, but I digress.

So I enjoyed the mile, I was relatively decent at it even (I hesitate to say "good" because I wasn't... but still, better than average). So I figured, what the hell... let's do cross-country.

Cross-country is hard. I was never good at running more than 4-5 miles, which made training for 3 mile races really difficult. I only did it for 2 years, then I started smoking, which made it impossible. So I quit running. Now I haven't had a cigarette in almost 16 months, and I've been pretty good about running. I can run 3 miles again without gasping for breath, and I can even do it in a little under half an hour .

So my friend who wants to run as well has this idea: We should run a marathon.

In my head this sounds like a great plan. I can start running a little farther each week, maybe get myself up to 4-5 mile runs in a month or two. Kind of build off of that... I would have ten months to get ready, and I've deluded myself into thinking I can do it.

Of course when I snap back to reality I realize how utterly insane this plan is. The longest I've ever run was 10 miles, and that was when I was in peak physical condition, which, for those of you counting at home, was over a DECADE ago. In addition to this, I have no idea what I'm doing. I don't even know what a respectable time for a marathon is. I'm only half certain that it's 26.2 miles for God's sake.

However, this is something that I've always wanted to do. If I had a list of things to do before I died, this would definitely be on it. Also, I've always kind of regretted giving up running in high school... maybe I could've been good if I stuck with it. I don't know. I think it may be worth finding out though.

The not-so-frozen North

I'm back in the "frozen" north. It has been an unbearably hot winter so far. Yesterday it was in the mid 50's, and if it gets one degree hotter I'm going to personally torch a Hummer dealership, and maybe a coal-fired power plant.

This weekend is a) MLK weekend, which is awesome, because I get three days off, and b) the weekend my girlfriend celebrates her birthday. So I get to spend a long weekend with her. Tomorrow I'm so getting burritos with her.

There is nothing else to report as GradeWATCH 2K6 drags stubbornly onward.

Show me the Money

I'm still waiting on my grades.

It wouldn't be so bad, except I'm the only non-1L I know who still has NO grades. One of my finals consisted of nothing more than a 40 question multiple choice test. I took it over a month ago. Come on man, how long does it take to grade that? There were only about 50 people in the class.

I paid $12,000 for those numbers. I want them.

In other news, this quarter is shaping up to be quite hard. I don't quite understand what's going on in Administrative Law. Securities seems like it's going to be very VERY fun though.

Oh Christ.

HAS THE WHOLE WORLD GONE CRAZY? AM I THE ONLY ONE WHO FINDS THIS DISTURBING?

First Week

I don't like starting over. Towards finals I begin to feel like I have *some* mastery of the material. Then along come "new classes," which make me feel like an idiot again. So now I get to teach myself a whole new bag of tricks. Hopefully grades will start to trickle in soon. I took the extraordinary step of e-mailing a professor to see if grades would be back before the drop date... I need to know if I have to nurse my GPA back to health with some small, uncurved classes.

In happy news, I get to see the girlfriend next week, as she will be celebrating her birthday, AND I am going to see Munich tomorrow.

Procrastination

Tomorrow it begins again.

Break was... short. Very short. My school's schedule does kind of suck. Basically you can either spend New Year's with your family and friends, and be woefully unprepared for school, OR you can spend the weekend of New Year's at your law school home and be ready for class.

I chose the former. This means I need to wake up tomorrow at 7:30, go buy books (the bookstore was closed today), and read before classes start. I guess I'll hit the ground running.

Usually I wait until 2-3 weeks into the term to start putting off work until the last minute. Buying books three hours before class officially starts will be a new low for me.

P.S. I want my damn grades.