Vacation

It feels strange to have so much free time on my hands. The hours stretch out before me distant like the horizon. Lucky I have my Constitutional Law hornbook to keep me company so I don't feel like I'm getting lazy, even though my friend Marc warned me to have fun and stay away from hornbooks. And it's actually not as boring as I thought it would be, although it's chock-FULL of typos--somewhat disconcerting considering it's supposedly written by an expert. I allowed myself one history book to read for fun, then I told myself I would read at least one hornbook to get a head start on next semester. I love you half.com, only there can you get a forty dollar book brand new for five dollars.

It's funny how you daydream in the library while you're slaving away over casebooks about how much you're going to drink and have fun during the break, which seems like decades away, and then it gets here and you don't really do those things. Although I have been drinking a lot of wine at my parents' place up in West Palm. And if the damned sun would come out I'd take my hornbook down to the beach. Con law is so interesting that I actually thought about trying to tackle the contracts hornbook too, but I couldn't score a deal on half.

Oh and I did see Avatar, and the effects were pretty amazing. I wish they would film all movies in 3D from now on.

One semester in the books...

Who can believe that the first semester of law school went by so quickly? Don't know about all you other 1Ls out there, but for me it flew by. Seems like only yesterday we were talking about Pennoyer v. Neff and the next you know exams are all over. We learned a lot this semester down here in the tropics. We learned the Erie Doctrine, what happens when your Fox escapes, when you can adversely possess something. We also learned a lot about each other. There is plenty of competition, but everyone mostly got along. We learned that gunners do exist. We learned that some members of our section are truly insane and need medication. We learned that there are some very smart people teaching us all. We learned that law school sucks, but most of the time it isn't that bad.

Now we can look forward to holidays under palm trees and curling up with our favorite hornbooks on the beach, and try not to think about another upcoming semester of LRW, contracts, and con law. Enjoy the break everybody...

Calm before the storm

The library is suprisingly quiet tonight as I sit in a secluded carrel on the top floor, wondering anxiously what I'm forgetting in civ pro. It's probably a bad thing that Miami gives such a generous reading period; it's almost too much time to sit and overthink yourself to death. Most of my compatriots have called it a night. I'm sure most of us just want this agony to be over with the day after tomorrow. Hard to believe how quickly the first semester has come to its penultimate chapter.

Good luck to all out there as the final battles begin...

As exams creep slowly and slowly closer from the horizon, the stress is increasing incrementally for everyone here. The anxiety is palpable, especially in the law library. Who can focus with the sound of so many teeth grinding? The answer is to go where far less people study. The undergraduate library? No. The music library as some have begun to do? No, no. Florida International University! My friend's wife works there and we stole her parking pass and checked out their law library. Incredibly nice, gigantic, and best of all deserted. But better still, they have an amazing litigation skills courtroom, TEN TIMES better than ours. We snuck in and did some studying at the bench. There's Justin in the photo working away. We got our outlines pretty tightened up as we presided over the empty courtroom. Good times.

The only bad thing was that Melissa couldn't make it as she was studying with G.C.

Burning the midnigth oil with the scrubs

Well, not exactly midnight oil, but maybe nine o'clock oil. I finished my rough draft of my second open memo and thought I would take some time to work on my woeful civ pro outline. A friend in my section named Rory was nice enough to lend me his Emmanuel's outline and I'm using it to supplement my notes. And of course, my usual complaint with the law library is in effect tonight: the abundance of med students taking up our space. Exactly two of the people pictured here are law students, the rest...well, you can guess. I sneakily captured this image with my iPhone and no one was the wiser...

Random evesdropping

I was in the elevator of the law library riding up to floor 3 (cuz I'm lazy like that) and a girl and guy got in with me, wherein they started talking about rolly backpacks. The guy was telling the girl that they give people an excuse to be lazy fat asses because they allow you to ride the elevator even if you're only going one floor. I guess that logic is pretty sound, although I'm not sure it makes you any less lazy if you're going two floors. Where do you draw the line of lazyness? It's okay to ride the elevator if you're only going two floors, but God forbid you use it to go only one. But I'm a lazy ass so I'll go with it, even though I wouldn't deign to use a rolly backpack as I'm a man...

Attrition

One of my good friends is now a lawyer, and before the semester started we discussed the unusually large first year class size here at Miami. He told me not to worry, that drop outs rates are always substantial. I was baffled. Who would go forward with all the committment, both money and time, that it takes to go to law school if you weren't going to stick it out, I asked. He told me to wait and see. Sure enough he was correct.

So far this semester, of the 532 1Ls at Miami, 73 have dropped out, including three from my section, two of which I was pretty good friends with. They just decided this wasn't for them and that it didn't make them happy. I can respect that. Law isn't for everybody and who would go through this misery if they didn't really want to do it. It's a bad economy out there and I'm sure plenty of people are hiding out here from the real world, but then suddenly realize the hell out there is better than the hell in here.

Who's going to be next...?