Next Up

One application for the FASPE Fellowship at Auschwitz for the study of professional ethics. Now THAT would be something. I am going to apply, realizing that my chances are very slim.  That is the opportunity of a lifetime. Beyond that? I have finalized my schedule for the spring semester. It is a mixed bag. I have class five days a week instead of four, and I have one crazy day on Wednesday. On the other hand, I am out by noon two days a week. So, what’s on the list? Commercial Law (aka UCC), Law and Medicine, Administrative Law, Medical Malpractice, and the final semester of my clinic. I need to get that health law thing rolling along. I would really like a summer job in the health law field but I need to get my butt in gear if that is going to happen. Other news? Not much. My life has gone crazy, high school has re-entered my life, aka I got into a dispute with a fellow student, and that’s about it. I hope my readers had a great day. Let’s begin the countdown until exams are over, shall we?

Exams and taxes

I’m only 15 days late. I thought I might owe. I was right. That’s not really why I waited, but it sure didn’t provide any increased motivation to file early. So Civil Procedure took a back seat to taxes tonight. Something about the first of May got me scared. Now for the question of the hour: How the heck does my taxable income increase during my first year of full time school????? And the answer is: with a 20 hour per week cap on hours, I worked really hard between January and August to try to cushion myself. Result? Not worth it. Just in case anyone is thinking of trying it now to cushion for next year, I don’t recommend it. So….moving on.

Civil Procedure final tomorrow morning. I am ready. My outline is in fine shape and I spent several hours studying and reviewing. I will be bringing the text, the rules, and the outline with me. The text is a sign that I am not really comfortable. If I need it, it is there. Let’s pray I don’t. I hope my readers have a lovely day. I’ll be back tomorrow.

Property Exam Prep

Lesson of the day: Remember IRAC. If there is one class this semester where IRAC is going to make or break me, property is it. I took a sample exam and managed to hit most of the issues, but my answer organization was not satisfactory.  The real trick to this is to form the best answer, because everyone knows the material as well or better than I do. It is a closed book exam, and taking my time to construct the answer before I start writing could make a big difference. I’m off to do some memorizing on the property material and then moving on to Civ Pro. But over the next few days, my efforts on property need to involve writing answers so the form comes natural to me. I – R – A – C plus a few case names and I should be in good shape. Good luck studying.

progress and incoming students

I got my entire property outline written!! Yippeee. Yay for me. It’s amazing what I can accomplish when I put my mind to it.  Handwritten, baby. The way I like to do things. Last semester I caved and did 90% typewritten outlines. They weren’t as useful to me as I would have liked.  I will devote the remainder of today to property. Tomorrow brings contracts. I am not trying to get it all done, just spend three hours on the outline. I can manage 3 hours, which happens to be the chunk of time that works best for me when it comes to any particular law school subject. Any less is too short to really get into it and any more is too much. So… that leaves part two of my post – incoming students.

I worked an accepted students event at the law school today. I had the opportuntity to talk with three students  who plan on attending “my law school”, even one who spent her weekend getting an apartment in town for the fall. One of those students happens to have a sister with Reactive Attachment Disorder and has been profoundly affected by the situation. When things like this happen, I often wonder if it is coincidence or fate.  Anyway……it is interesting to meet those who are just starting this process. I am in a far different place than I was a year ago, and I am always intrigued by the way simple events actually change a person. When law school is good, it is very, very good and when it is bad it is horrid… Have a great night. I’ll be back tomorrow.

Responsibilities

For some reason, I felt compelled to watch the inauguration today. Simply because any respectable law student should be able to say they saw it, I guess. I’m not even sure where I got this idea of what a respectable law student should be doing. But I knew that I would never want to admit that I didn’t see it or hear the incoming president’s speech. So I watched, and then I moved on.

I met with the contracts prof today. I will be re-writing the exam and he will re-score it,  for the experience, not for the grade. He tells me that many students experience higher success on the final than on the midterm, and a jump to an A from a C+ is not unreasonable. So I am encouraged. If I couldn’t succeed in the fall, try, try again. I don’t give up that easily. I also spent a significant amount of time on my legal writing and research class today, with a draft of a paper due next week. 

Today was short and sweet overall, but the commute home was bad. I was very late getting home, and as a result my budget for the week has been adjusted to accomodate fast food for dinner. I haven’t been very good about using the crock pot this semester. I need to get better at it because it saves me both time and money, which are in chronically short supply.  Tomorrows dinner is already set and is a help-yourself affair because Wednesday is my very late night and I don’t pay the babysitter enough to ask her to cook.  

I hope my readers either a:  pay the babysitter enough to ask her to cook or b: master the art of the crock pot. Seriously, have a lovely day. Spend time with your kids. Read a book you enjoy, listen to music you love, or simply take a nap. These are the things that bring pleasure to my world.

Plans for the break

I need a break so bad.  On any day of the week, I would choose to attend class and do the reading and the memos rather than have three entire weeks to prepare for and stress about exams. I will be done in the morning. I am done preparing. Done studying.  It will be what it is when it is over. Tomorrow afternoon I return to a life of freedom. I have done absolutely nothing in preparation for Christmas, so I have a list a mile long of things that are waiting for me.  Tomorrow afternoon I will clean the house. Then sometime around 7 I will f igure out that I don’t have any studying to do! Oh how happy I will be. Perhaps some television? Maybe  a movie with the kids. Then Friday I will go get the tree and we will decorate it after school on Friday. Friday night I will Christmas shop. Saturday I will work all day and spend the evening with my honey. I have high hopes he will take me out to dinner to celebrate the end of exams. Sunday will be a Christmas shopping extravaganza. I want to have everything bought and wrapped before my boys come home Sunday night. I’m not sure how often I will check in over the break,  as this really is a law school blog. But at some point I need to get on the applications for summer work, so perhaps I will be on more often than I might like.  I hope all my readers have a lovely day.

Exams continue

Today was contracts. It was awesome and I did fine. Or? I missed something major. But I really don’t think so. I finished 20 minutes early, and that included time to review. I feel good about it. Only time will tell. Now it is on to Criminal Law. This is my hardest class, not because it is theoretically difficult but because my prof was somewhat intense.  He believes it is his job to find those students who do not belong in law school. He flunks people annually.  And he doesn’t actually want you to think. What he wants, as one of my classmates aptly put it, is word vomit. Word vomit is not my strong suit. This is a pure memory effort, as there are no outlines or books allowed. That’s ok. I know the concepts. It is the word vomit that might derail me. I like my own words. Neverthe less, I want an A in this class as bad as I want it in the others, so I need to step it up.  Motivation for tonight is lacking. But tomorrow morning will find me right on track and my entire weekend will also be devoted to the subject.

OH YEAH. I almost forgot. I saw my first 1L freakout this morning! The kid lost it as we were waiting for the exam to begin. It was pretty funny. In some ways, law school really is a drama parade.

Civil Procedure Midterm

Well, I had said I wouldn’t write again until after the exam was over, but I lied.  The exam is tomorrow afternoon. I am officially done studying now. I guess I feel prepared. A better answer is that I feel armed. Armed with an approach, a strategy, a plan. I suspect I am better prepared than most of my classmates in some ways. We shall see if it pays off. I have my outline. I wrote it myself based on a combination of the text, my notes, the Federal Rules Supplement, Bar Charts Quick Study Guide, the Nutshell book, and Glannon Examples and Explanations.  The outline contains full rules for Rule 8, 11, 12, and 20.  The main focus is on subject matter jurisdiction and personal jurisdiction, with additional sections on supplemental jurisdiction, venue, and forum selection clauses. Just the fact that I can spew those words out means I’ve learned something since August. In addition to my outline, I have an actual outline with blanks on which I plan to organize the facts presented on my exam. Identify of P, D, states of incorporation, principal place of business, etc.  Long-arm statute, timeline of motions, amount in controversy, and federal question. Just to give myself some structure. At the bottom of that page I have a quick organizational chart to assign priorities to the discussions based on the case presented. Studying those past exams came in quite handy as I know in general what the question is going to look like. In addition to my outline and blank outline, I have a small flip-book of index cards. On the index cards, step by step, I have outlined the format I need to follow to succeed at this. Some of this came from LEEWS, some from the prof, and some from just knowing myself and how I function. Card 1. Relax. Card 2. Read the question first. Then skim the facts and organize them. DO NOT attempt to analyze the whole. Card 3. Take 1/4 of alloted time and use it to outline an answer.  Use shorthand. Flesh it out. REMEMBER – if something doesn’t apply, show that on paper! Gain points. You get the idea. This is pretty desperate stuff. But I am really hoping that it works for me. Here’s the interesting thing….This is an open book test. I can bring anything I want. And I am choosing to bring only my outline and my flip-book. No books, no notebook, no rule book.  Only the tools I made myself. If I have missed something important, then I guess I have missed it. I am not going to go digging for it in the middle of an exam. I just don’t see how that could help me. I am going out tomorrow morning to buy myself a new pen. I want a new pen. One that writes really nice. I wish I had thought of it sooner, but I didn’t. So, I am done. There is nothing left to prepare, no law left to learn, no outline left to modify. All I can do is wait and try hard to rest and relax. Tomorrow I will do my best. It will be a long wait to find out my results, but when I get them, I will post, even if the grades are less than I am hoping for. I promise.

Knowledge insufficient

A new revelation? No. Just a reminder to myself. I know the material. That has been sufficient for almost every educational test I’ve ever taken. But that is not the case now. I predict that a majority of law students in my class know the material. The question is one of strategy. How am I going to apply this knowledge to a novel exam question four times over the next two weeks and consistently perform better than my peers? I believe the answer is to stop learning the law now and focus on outlining and writing. Not on preparing outlines. Those are done. I’m talking about finding novel questions and outlining answer format. I have purposefully saved sample exam questions from those classes where they were made available. For torts, I am on my own.  Writing an excellent essay response is the key. It is the only thing that matters. Four times, two weeks, starting in three days. I am done learning law until January. Practice makes perfect, or so they say. We will see if that is true.

On strategy, it occurs to me that I am in a competitive environment.  I have never cheated in my life, and I don’t plan on starting now. However, smart people will take advantage of this open book concept. And it is in my interest to determine how to best use that to my advantage. I can bring anything I want, so long as I wrote it.  That should mean that I can prepare an outline for my answer almost totally in advance and use the parts of it that are necessary to answer the question, inserting facts and applying only those sections that are required. There are only so many questions that can be asked. The volume of information we have covered is not that large, believe it or not. From the broader perspective, the quantity is manageable. Under different circumstances, I would go in with nothing other than my knowledge and the outline I prepared.  It seems more fair. More reasonable. But in reality, if I have prepared this outline on my own, it is fair game for the exam and I would be a fool to pass it up.

Other exam strategies? Peace. Relaxation. Breathing. A hearty breakfast.  Spare pens. (yes, I am hand-writing my exams) That’s it. Prayer.  And confidence that I am as capable of succeeding here as anybody else. I have applied myself, attended class, done the reading, prepared the outlines, and devoted the past few months of my life to mastering this material. There is nothing else I can do. That’s why relaxation is key. It will be the hardest thing for me to do. I hope my readers have a lovely day. I hope someone who is freaking out about their exams finds something helpful here. Have a great day. I will write again on Monday, following my first exam: Civil Procedure.

Making time

I must come out at the top of this class. Which means I must study and have the best possible outlines. Must take every possible sample exam. Must make time to go over those exams with the Prof’s who are willing. Must do everything in my power to learn this material forwards and backwards and be prepared to apply it to novel situations on those exams. I need to make flashcards and memorize the restatement of contracts and the UCC sections that we have covered. Must master my Crim law Prof’s unique perspective on the way of the world. Must practice with my LEEWS cassettes. Must, in plain English, succeed. Towards this end, I have decided that law school must be the one and only thing on my plate from now until Thanksgiving. I have one parent teacher conference next week and one doctor’s appointment for my other son. I have one appointment at my mothers house tomorrow. And one appointment with my new babysitter tomorrow night. I have hired a new babysitter because I do not have time to take care of my children. And I have decided that for only a few weeks, that is both acceptable and necessary. I will be at law school twelve hours per day, four days per week plus another 6 on  Friday. That makes 54 hours per week. That should be adequate, but in case its not, I have made arrangements for another 12 hours per weekend. If 66 hours is not enough, I am clearly doing something wrong.  I suspect that 54 hours, used to its maximum benefit, should be enough. The key for me is a to-do list. I will be working on that later tonight. This won’t start until next Monday, but between now and then, I will continue to work on law school well into the night after my boys have gone to bed. I can do this. I haven’t come this far to put in a simply average performance. I hope all my readers have a sparkling day. I hope you have this level of passion for something that is important to you.