First Year Law is OVER!!

So...that happened. First year law was brutal and nasty and drawn out. Sort of like a Terantino film. But more interesting.
I handed in my last paper yesterday at 2 PM. After studying for two months every day (and every weekend) for five exams, I had three days to write a 19 page transnational law paper. Lovely. Way to screw the knife, UBC Law.
It still hasn't sunk in that I don't have to study. After handing in my paper, my husband and I took the bus to the bookstore on Granville. I got on the bus reading an advisory report for second year classes and when I looked up ten minutes later, I was passing all these quaint shops and flowering trees (Vancouver is huge for flowering trees--every colour--during springtime. And when the petals fall, it's like snow). I see all of this going past and I realize it's been five weeks since I left campus and here was all this beauty around me. Shops and flowers and mountains in the distance and people walking around in summer dresses and light jackets. I had missed so much.
We get to the bookstore and it's sensory overload. After eight months of having only casebooks to read, I was overwhelmed with choices. It was kind of like when I would return from living abroad in a developing nation. I would go to the store and invariably, I would stop and stare at the rows of brighty lit shelves going on and on. All the choice and variety. It seemed more like an amusement park than a store and I couldn't immediately adjust. Well, same for the bookstore. I ended up buying just a magazine (Real Simple--I love that mag) as I couldn't decide on a book.
Here are pictures of that same night, when we met two of my sisters for dinner, along with B's boyfriend. We ate gorgeous Thai food then moved to a dessert only restaurant for, well, dessert.
As soon as I finish blogging this, we are headed out to see my sister G. in Gastown (part of downtown Vancouver) and enjoy this day. Yey for end of first year!

No Babies

A girlfriend from first year had her baby the other day. A gorgeous, nearly-ten pound boy. He came smack dab in the middle of final exams. So, instead of writing 2 more 3 hour exams, she was in labour for thirty hours. Lucky girl!
It got me thinking about babies. In my late twenties, when I was so busy playing catch up with school and not even started down the path of my career, I decided not to have my own. I do love children and always want children in my life but there are a lot of other things I want to. Like a fulfilling career in a field I'm excited about, a marriage where I have lots of time to enjoy my husband, a chance to travel and have adventures. But every once in awhile, when I see happy family pictures of my old friends and their kids, I think, did I make the right choice?
I have to take stock of what's really best for me. Can I be happy without having children? I am happy.

One More Exam and a Paper

And then Freedom! I don't know why when I think of the end of exams, I think of jellybeans. I just do. Perhaps it's because jellybeans remind me of Easter and springtime and colour. Perhaps because jellybeans are youthful and energetic and that's how I want to feel. Perhaps because picturing jellybeans repeatedly in abstract situations is an early sign of insanity.

I am starting to develop the hypothesis that whoever you are, whatever is at the core of your personality, comes out the strongest during exam season, to the point where you are nothing else: if you are a selfish person, that comes out, if you are a softy, then that comes out. I have been hanging out in the interaction area of our gray bunker (aka, the law school) typing notes and reading books and memorizing passages and taking 3 hour exams and eating vending machine meals. I am not sure what the core of my personality is, maybe a complainer? Yeah, I bet my husband would agree with that. Right, Honey?

The Way We Were

My sister is having a baby! The first in our family (after the six of us girls, of course.) The baby is due at the end of September and in honor of the little life, here's a picture from our childhood. Damn! It will be wonderful to have family gatherings that focus around a real bona fide child, instead of six bratty adults.

Exams Start Tomorrow

Exams. It is so unnatural and un-real world to make someone sit down, write out answers to hypothetical questions and then grade that person's whole year on the answer they give you. Aargh. I hate exams: I hate the stress and the pressure and the nagging voice, "But...what if you FAIL?!" What if I fail? I have no answer to that. I guess, the rest of my life would be a misery? I'm not sure what the answer is.
For the next two and a half weeks, I will be writing exams. Which doesn't mean I won't be blogging, 'cause let's be realistic. Every once in awhile you have to step away from the books and theory. Am I right, people?

To those of you also taking exams this month, my deepest wishes for success. You are battling your own little head voices. Damn voices.

Sweet Treat from Classmates

I can't really say enough about the people I have come to know through my first year small group (a group of twenty other first year students with whom you take all your classes). At the beginning of the year, we all decided to hang out and like each other. We were the only small group in our law school (10 small groups total) to make a big deal out of each other's birthdays...trying over and over to create a surprise for the birthday person. At exam time, we share our notes and outlines freely. This is not the kind of relationship I intended to find among my law school commorades and I am so happy and lucky to have found these people.

In October, at someone's birthday, we went around the table discussing which sort of cake was each of our favorites. Mine was cupcakes. Someone wrote it down and sure enough, each birthday brought the recipient's favorite cake on campus. These people are so rad. They made law school personal for me.

Volume, Volume, Volume

Last Day of First Year

From the article, "Surviving First Year"

CC: Are the rumors true about how difficult the first year of law school is? If so, what makes it so difficult?

AL: The first year of law school is difficult. The rumors do have some basis. However, the extent to which the difficulty of law school becomes overbearing is often a personal choice. In my experience, the first year of law school becomes especially burdensome when people place unrealistic expectations on themselves and their learning curve. The types of students that enter law school, and the personalities they have, often make for a lot of self-inflicted pressure to perform well, to appear astute before classmates, or to impress others. Much of this is, frankly, unnecessary because all the other first years are having the same experience - the transition to law school, the school itself, to the teaching style and to the way classes are conducted.

Birthday Limmick--Courtesy of Owen (Fellow First Year)

There once was a young lass named DiA,
Whose birthday fell at the end of the school-yea-A.
But she wasn't scared,
Cause she was super prepared,
So she relaxed and drank a cold bee-A

heheh. Happy Birthday Dia!

"Don't Just Get Through It"

Our last Contracts class before exams. After explaining a bit about the format of the exam and what he's looking for, our professor pauses. "Now, for the advice portion," he somewhat sheepishly begins. "This stuff can be fun. You have exams and there can be a tendency to just want to get through exams. Then, you get through first year, then law school. You get through articling and become an associate. You get through to be a partner. And then you die." Instead, he advised us that these concepts can move beyond the endless outlines and notes and exam prep. Law priciples are intellectual exercies and they can be fun and fulfilling, if we let them.

So, my ode to Law School from a bruised nearly-second-year student: while there have been many, many dark moments, I chose you. I decided to take three years of my life and devote it to you. And I am determined.

I Still Think About You

Goodnight Elizabeth

i was wasted in the afternoon
waiting on a train
i woke up in pieces and elisabeth had disappeared again
well i wish you were inside of me
i hope that you're ok
i hope your resting quietly
i just wanted to say

good, goodnight elisabeth,
goodnight elisabeth
goodnight elisabeth
goodnight

we couldn't all be cowboys
some of us are clowns
and some of us are dancers on the midway
we roam from town to town
i hope that everybody can find a little flame
me, i say my prayers
then i just light myself on fire
and i walk out on the wire once again
and i say

good, goodnight elisabeth,
goodnight elisabeth
goodnight elisabeth
goodnight

i will wait for you in Baton Rouge
i'll miss you down in New Orleans
i'll wait for you while she slips in something comfortable
and i'll miss you when i'm slipping in between
if you wrap yourself in daffodills
i will wrap myself in pain
and if you're the queen of California
baby i am the king of the rain
and i say

good, goodnight elisabeth,
goodnight elisabeth
goodnight elisabeth
goodnight
the moon's a satellite yeah
now wont you fall down
on me now
wont you fall down on me
come fall down
on me now
wont you fall down on me
'till im all alone
you aint coming home
you just settle down down down into bones
i said im all alone
you aint coming home
you just settle down down down into bones
--Happy belated Birthday, J.

Rickrolling as Activism: Brilliant!

From what I gather from this video, hate mongers in the name of God went gay bashing on some street corner. Not sure exactly why. Dude with a mohawk shows up with a stero and blasts an old Rick Astley song (I used to love Rick Astley when I was thirteen). I love this kind of activism: doing something completly "you" to stand up for the rights of vulnerable minorities. I wish I could have been driving by wherever this guy was and could jump out of my car and dance with him.

Cannot Express

All you do for me. Everything. How supportive you are. I get frustrated because I can't find my equilibrium. You are always there for me. Everyday. I cannot express enough gratitute to you. Thank you for holding me up. I need you so much.

Where are Our Heroes?

Bobby Kennedy announcing the murder of MLK, Jr. Fourty* years ago today. I was struck by how the room turned from screams of horror to applause as Kennedy spoke of unity and respect for diversity. Where are our heroes like that? I want to believe Obama is one. I cannot imagine him or any other leader getting assasinated. Assasination seems like something that happened long ago never to occur again.

"He who learns must suffer
And even in our sleep pain that cannot forget
Falls drop by drop upon the heart,
And in our own despair, against our will,
Comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God. "

-- Agamemnon


"We must all learn to live together
as brothers or we will all perish together as fools.
We are tied together in the single garment of destiny,
caught in an inescapable network of mutuality. And
whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. "

-- Martin Luther King, Jr.
Speech in Memphis, April 3, 1968,
the day before his departure from his death.



This was quoted by Robert F Kennedy in his speech announcing the
assassination of Martin Luther King on 4 April 1968; and the epitaph
his family inscribed on his grave marker in Arlington National Cemetery















*like the Canadian spelling?

Sad but Triumphant Good Bye...

...to one of my favorite classes, Constitutional Law. I was lucky enough to have more than one favorite class but this one was a hallmark for me. I've always been drawn to Constitutional issues but Canada's knocked me way off course at first. I slowly found my way and found respect (mostly) for the Canadian Supreme Court's reasonings and commitment to democracy. But more than that, I gained respect for my lively, intelligent professor.
Professor Edinger, thank you for your guidance over the course of the past years, your respect for the law, your humour, your thoughtful reasoning. You have taught me the reward of reading long swaths of reasoning and finding my own way through it. You have taught me that I am more than a student, I am a future lawyer. Your respect for that profession, as well as your advice against the pitfalls, motivate me to see myself as a professional with a responsibility to learn as much as I can.
After our final class, we filled the room with applause as she made her way out. Her inspirational teaching enriched us all.

Oh Wait! It's FOUR abortions for a Clinton win? Damn.

RUSH LIMBAUGH on his radio show April 1st: "And if they -- you know, if Hillary doesn't get it -- you have to understand the mindset of a lot of these feminists and women. They think they're owed this -- just like Obama supporters think they're owed this. These women have paid their dues. They've been married two or three times; they've had two or three abortions; they've done everything that feminism asked them to do. They have cut men out of their lives; they have devoted themselves to causes and careers. And this -- the candidacy of Hillary Clinton -- is the culmination of all of these women's efforts. And if it gets stolen from them, in their minds -- not actually stolen, but if the country or if the Democrat [sic] Party rejects this wonderfully great, lying woman in exchange for a rookie, radical black guy who can't tell the time of day, they are going to be so miffed. They are going to be so upset."

There is no way I can address all of the misogyny of this comment in one post so I'll be brief.
I think this outlook of feminists is so sad its funny. The idea that feminists are against babies, families is first of all not true. Statistics show most women who label themselves as feminists are in relationships or married. Many have children. But to picture a feminist as a regular member of society is too scary for anti-equality women-haters. They need to see feminists as "other."
So, they devise a world where feminism becomes a check list-albeit a very f-ed up checklist: _dump man? Check. _devote self to career? Check. _multiple abortions (which...confuses me. Who is getting us preggers if we're dumping our guys in favor of other women and work? But I digress). Check and check.
And now looky loo if I didn't "do everything feminism" asks of me. Where is my Clinton win? Where is my woman in the White House? Oh dear. Something must be wrong with feminism.

Rush should only open his mouth for Oxycotin.

Flashback

From this blog, first week of school:
"So, I made it through my first week of law school. And it was...fun! It really was. And exciting and a bit terrifying, which made it only more exciting. First hour, after sign in, we were introduced to our 'small groups' that is, twenty of us first years who will have all our classes together. And we mingle a lot. But I genuinely like a lot of these people and we are already talking about study groups. So, hooray."

Hooray, indeed. I had no idea what I was in for.

Another Year Older

Blood will flow when fresh and steel are one
Drying in the colour of the evening sun
Tomorrow's rain will wash the stains away
But something in our minds will always stay

Perhaps this final act was meant
To clinch a lifetime's argument
That nothing comes from violence and nothing ever could
For all those born beneath an angry star
Lest we forget how fragile we are

On and on the rain will fall
Like tears from a star like tears from a star
On and on the rain will say
How fragile we are how fragile we are

On and on the rain will fall
Like tears from a star like tears from a star
On and on the rain will say
How fragile we are how fragile we are
How fragile we are how fragile we are