I've moved!

It has only been 8 days since I blogged last but those 8 days were filled to the brim with changes. I had an entry in mind a few days ago, telling everyone about how much I accomplished in 36 hours. But that entry is way overdue and no longer needs writing.

I have graduated from law school! I have really graduated from law school! No, Really! I graduated from law school! Sometimes it's hard for me to believe. Being in Texas isn't just for Christmas break. It is indefinite. I haven't missed law school yet, but I have missed some of the people there.

I managed to finish up my last take-home final from 3a-6a the day it was due. Having family in town, I just didn't have any other time. It was awful, but as long as it gets me a passing grade, it doesn't really matter.

My drive home to Texas was uneventful and with a cross country drive in a 13 year old car, that is all you can ask. A friend from college made the drive with me. Even though she was there, I did all the driving myself. I just wanted to. I managed a whirl-wind move (5 hrs flat) out of my apartment (thanks to ABW, Blondie, and her BF) and then drove 8 hrs to spend the night at my brother's house. I fed the cat and brought in the mail and had a free place to sleep. It definitely cut down on the cost of my drive home. Then the next day, I drove from St. Louis to Dallas (7a-6p) and spend 4 hours in Dallas having dinner with a friend from college. It was her birthday and I thought it would be really nice to stop by. I decided then that I just wanted to make it home. I drove from 10-1:30a and dropped off my friend in College Station and then did the last 1.5 hr stretch. I got home at 3am on Christmas morning.

Christmas was rather quiet. It was just me and my parents. We opened the few (very few) gifts that were under the tree, I made a trip to my storage unit to drop off my stuff, and then unpacked my car. My mom cooked a tough and dry goose and I finished 2 more of my grad school applications (just 1 left).

I really miss Taz. I think that I'm going to go ahead and book a trip up to see him in Feb. right after the bar exam. I love him and I feel like the only way we are going to stay together is if I make some efforts to make that happen. The plane ticket there is expensive for someone who has no income, but I did work a whole lot the week before school ended, and maybe that paycheck will cover it (I don't get paid till the 1st).

I haven't started job hunting, but that will come. Maybe I can do a whole bunch of it while I'm visiting Taz since I'll have access to a free printer and can send out a whole bunch of letters, resumes, and transcripts. Yay! That'll be the new plan!

this pretty much sums it up

This is a great example of what happened to my medical school applications. It seemed reflective of my whole med school application process this year. It is an IM conversation between myself and a guy I asked to write me a letter of recommendation.

recommender: eeeek
me: hola
me: how are you?
me: eeeeek?
recommender: im ok at the moment
recommender: but i suck
recommender: i got so caught up in the end of the semester and some other issues
recommender: i completely forgot about your letter
me: oh
recommender: is it too late
me: um, I think it might be for some schools, but not others
me: I'd have to check the details
recommender: i will do it tomorrow
recommender: sorry
recommender: my dads girlfriend has had some bad health problems
me: well I appreciate your efforts
me: that's no good
me: is she not doing well?
recommender: i just now got around to clearing out old emails
recommender: and went omg
recommender: what a dumb ass
me: shit happens
me: life happens too
recommender: shes doing fine now but the cancer has spread to her limp nodes
me: that doesn't sound hopeful
recommender: its not
me: cancer is very scary
recommender: at this point its just a count down
recommender: only god has the clock
me: yup
recommender: i want them to go on a cruise
me: that would be cool
recommender: just cause i want to go on one some day
recommender: sorry i let you down
recommender: will get on it in the morning
me: shit happens. I understand
me: and thanks
recommender: gnight
me: nite

What law school has taught me about grades...

Grades are not worth the paper they are printed on or the space they take up in cyber-world.

I have 2 friends who don't check their grades. One doesn't check them because she doesn't want to know. She assumes that if she loses her scholarship because of grades, that she'll get a letter in the mail and unless that happens, she's doing fine. The other friend doesn't check them on principle. She thinks they are bunk and I agree.

I think the worst thing about law school was the emphasis put on grades. My dad thought (and still thinks) that grades are the end-all be-all of law school; that good grades equals success. I whole heartedly disagree. I'm a week away from finishing law school and my dad is still trying to throw incentives at me for good grades. "If you make a 3.5 this semester, I'll give you $500." Fuck you, Dad! Give me $500 cause you love me or cause you are proud of me or, God forbid, because I need it. But don't try to bribe me with money. It didn't work when I was 5 and it's not going to work when I'm 25. Maybe you should give it another couple decades and try again when I'm 45.

I have had classes where my grades adequately reflected the work I put in and how much I learned. But more often than not, that wasn't the case. Whoever said that law school grades were arbitrary was 100% right.

I tend to rate my professors by how adequately I thought my grade correlated to what I learned. The bad professors never added up. The good professors pretty much gave me what I deserved. I never got below a C and I had my share of As. The end result was a solid B average. The undeserved A- I got in commercial transactions balanced out the undeserved C I got in jurisprudence. The undeserved A I got in property balanced the undeserved C+ I got in Contracts. And the quite deserved A I got in my religion class balanced out the quite deserved C I got in corporations.

So basically, grades don't mean shit. I guess my final grade point average is some sort of reflection of the overall kind of student I am, but the details just don't add up. Here is my advice to brand new law students: if you are sitting around, spending your Christmas and New Year's Eve biting your nails in anticipation of what professor scumbag is going to give you in civil procedure, your time is better spent with family, kissing your New Year's Eve date, taking down Christmas decorations, gorging yourself on gingerbread cookies, or even pruning the new bonsai tree you got for Christmas. And don't worry! If you got a C you didn't deserve from professor scumbag, you will probably get an A you also didn't deserve from another inept professor. Either way - life will go on! And in the end, the girl with the 2.5 may have the job of her dreams fall into her lap and the one with a 4.0 may never find the one she's looking for. As for me and my 3.0 - well, the jury is still out!

This is me sad!

I know I've blogged about my cat a lot recently, but today I lost it. The new keeper of my cat sent me a picture of "how well he's doing". Lets just say that it didn't make me feel better. Instead it made me feel sad. Here he is in all his glory. He's the angel on the left!



I'm in the library. I have studied my little brain to sheer incapacity and now I'm just waiting for the library to shut down. It is kinda fun to watch people come and go. Finals time does interesting things to people's attitudes and appearances. Lets just say that I've not been lacking amusement.

Blondie is looking for her favorite childhood toy on e-bay. ABW is done with finals (totally not fair) and I'm trying my best to keep a tight grasp on what little sanity I have left. It would not be cool to have a mental breakdown less than a week before graduation.

I'm the boy

It seems as though I'm the boy in my relationship.

Last night I sent Taz a text message that said, "When I think about you I touch myself."

His response: "Tienes mi corazon! Te quiero." In English, that translates to, "You have my heart! I want to you."

So I'm the horny one and he's the romantic. Life is strange.

He also congratulated me not long ago on not freaking out yet this finals period. He said that last semester he was tempted to put me in an institution. Law school does fuck with your head, I must admit!

Back to outlining wills and trusts.

Crispy Fried Goodness

I have had a craving for Long John Silvers hush puppies for about 48 hours. I was going to go last night but I got out of my movie too late. So tonight was it. I got outside and the weather wasn't so great. The roads had a thin coating of snow and with my tires being bald, I really wasn't having fun driving. Oh, and Long John Silvers is WAY across town. It's like 6 miles away. So anyway, I decided that it was too yucky outside to drive 6 miles to get fast food. So I went to Wendy's instead. Except they were closed. What Wendy's closes at 10pm? So on I traveled to LJS.

It took me over 20 minutes to get back from the restaurant. But when I got back, I devoured my fried fish and hush puppies like there was no tomorrow. It was totally worth the 40 minutes of treacherous driving. YUM!

Okay, back to studying wills and trusts!

Exam Time

Yesterday was my first of two major exams this semester. I'm glad it is over. Really, exams don't stir me up like they do to some people. I just take things in stride. You know what you know and there is nothing you can do about it after a certain point. I'm always most relaxed an hour before the exam and just before the exam, I am hyper as all hell. Nothing can calm be down.

Yesterday, before my exam at 1pm, I took my car into the dealership to get fixed and walked back home from the dealership (in 20 degree weather). Then, I did the reverse to pick it back up a couple hours later. I made myself a nice big breakfast with sausage, eggs, and muffins. I also managed to clean up my apartment for my boyfriend's visit after the exam. In fact, the only thing I didn't do was study for my final.

There have been some interesting stories about finals so far and it is only the 2nd day. First, I was wondering around the school yesterday, trying to find a friend. I rode up the elevator with this guy who smelled like vomit. Gross! Then this morning I heard about a girl who passed out and then vomited after an exam. Now, the exam she was taking was my first semester civil procedure exam. She and I even had the same prof. What kills me is that she didn't pass out and vomit before hand. Then at least she could have gotten more study time. The third story is about this guy who asked me whether or not it would be ethical to fuck with people's minds before the exam in order to psych them out and lower the overall curve so he could get a better grade. Apparently there are a couple chicks in his class who like him and a couple of dudes who like the chicks. He wanted to, before the exam, ask the girls if they wanted to grab lunch after the exam. This would distract the girls during the exam and then piss the guys off too, thereby distracting them. That is some funny shit. I hope it works out for him.

My next final isn't for another week. It is nice to have the long break in between exams, but it doesn't provide the pressure that I work best under.

Tonight my cat is officially not going to be mine anymore. Sure, I know where he is going to live in a big huge house and he is going to a great family who already knows and loves him, but that doesn't make it okay. It makes it better, but not okay!

A Texas Moment

I went to Hobby Lobby today. I love that place. Anyway, I was checking out the sign and got all excited. They had decorated the letters for the Holidays to look like they had snow on them. How'd they do that?


Oh wait - It's real. Doh!

To Everyone:

You don't have to be such a bitch all the time!

Life

I survived driving in my first snow storm. I went to a showing of the Nutcracker this weekend and when I came out of the theater, my car was covered in 2 inches of snow. To make matters worse, I had a 50 mile trip back home and it never stopped snowing. Fortunately I was patient enough to drive slowly and had good company to keep me entertained.

The show was really good. I was impressed. However, I realized that I am a concert snob. There were people behind me who obviously had a son in the show. I kept hearing things like, "he said he was coming in from the left", "that's him in the hat", "he spent so many hours preparing for this", "that scene made the whole thing worth it", "this is my favorite part", "wow, he's doing really well", and "I heard this scene is awesome". To add to my misery, there was a 4 year old who never stopped moving or babbling and an old man next to me kept unwrapping candy from plastic cellophane. I wanted to strangle all of them. I kept thinking to myself that this was a great show, but I wish I could have heard the orchestra.

Things and people are pissing me off.

Next Monday I am giving away my cat. I'm very sad. I know he's going to be in a great home, but I will miss him more than most of the people I've met in law school (not all, but 99%).

Somehow in the last 90 days I have become bitter. I should be overjoyed that I am graduating, but instead, I am pissed at everyone and everything.

My bioethics prof who agreed to write me letters of rec is MIA and I'm so pissed about it that I can't bear to write out the details. All I have to say is that he is a minister and he's the only one who has fucked me over thus far. The situation isn't bringing me any closer to God and I've got a long road to travel anyway.

Both of my brothers are coming for my graduation. They happen to be two of the very most important people in my life and I am so incredibly happy that they are coming. It'll be really nice to have everyone else there too, but my brothers *sigh* are special.

My house is a shambles. I am trying to throw stuff away and making lists of who is getting what from my house. I can only take back to Texas what fits in my car and I have a very small car. So basically I am taking my law books and some clothes. Everything else is expendable and I have to find a home for it.

Nerds are yummy (the candy kind)!

I should be so grateful for what I have in life. I'm strapped for cash, but I have a savings account that could last me 4 months. I am graduating from law school which means I'll be more educated than most in this country. I always feel like I'm missing so much, but then I talk to people and I realize that I honestly have an amazing amount. I am talking to a friend online. He couldn't make it through law school, he couldn't hack it as a substitute teacher, he's living with his parents who want him out, he has no friends, he is suffering from depression, and the one thing that means anything to him in the world isn't proving to have any satiable value. I'm just the opposite. I have (essentially) made it through law school, I could hack it in the real world when I was out there trying, I am moving back in with my parents and they can't wait to have me, I have a lot of very wonderful friends, I'm generally happy, and the one thing that means more to me than anything else in the world proves satiable almost every time I turn to it.

So why am I not smiling?

Season 2 of Murder She Wrote came out on DVD this week. It's on my Christmas list. Whoop!

Fish or Cut Bait

Talking to my dad is always a trip. Tonight we talked about my future. He told me that I often sell myself short, that I thought too little of myself, and that I was actually fairly intelligent. He said I should expect to make over 80K and that I shouldn't settle for anything less than 50K. I also pointed out that I might have to be the breadwinner in my family.

Speaking of family, he asked about mine and Taz's future. Um.....yeah....I don't know. He said that pretty soon one of us would have to fish or cut bait: hook, line, and sinker. I'm hoping for fish. However, if cutting bait is in my future, I'd rather it be sooner than later and I'd rather it be hook, line, and sinker rather than just the wriggly worm. You know, I don't really fish very often and I've never seen my dad fish, so why the fishing analogies?

Back to work.