goals. see below

What are your goals for this year?

I think it's a constructive thing to ask yourself every so often, especially at the start of something new. As a compulsive list maker, I have already written down my goals. They are:

* To improve my public speaking, namely to become more eloquent. Getting over the nerves is no longer enough.
* Enjoy law school. Stay positive. Appreciate the entire experience.
* Mindful, careful eating (and cookin!)Also, getting to the market once a week to eat fresh, seasonal, and local.
* Enjoy breaks. Find complete reprieve from work and stress.
* Focus on becoming a good advocate for people.
* Learn french! Ok, this one's auxiliary, but definitely in the next 2 years.. Perhaps I will study some in Pariiis.. One thing to work towards.

Enough about me. What are your goals? To become a better brother/sister/friend/lover/mother/spouse? To plant a garden? To, for once, not kill a houseplant? To learn to play the mandolin? I'm interested in others' goals, and how they succeed in accomplishing them.

This is going to be a tough year. I know I started out all "whatevs, I can totally get through without freaking out", and treating it as if it were some potentially coool project. But now the material has turned out to be more interesting than I had imagined, and I want to become a thoughtful, strong, bad-ass lawyer. I mean, seriously, lawyers are the people who make the laws of society, just as much as legislators. They write the contracts, argue over important social issues, and are the voice of people that might otherwise go unheard. I really want to get the most out of my classes and do well, and not just to "beat out" my classmates. Speaking of whom, there have been some uneventful social events for 1Ls, which have resulted in the typical getting drunk and unveiling of true characters from beneath the orientation facade. Booze-fueled ice breakers if you will. Designated are the class skank, sleeze, capitalistic networkers, brains, drunks, etc etc. Yes, it can bring you back to high school if you so desire.

So, anyway, back to the original idea : What are your goals?

not-so-bad

Day one. (cue scary music) dun-dun-dun-dun ... honestly folks, it ain't that bad. Well, there was an unexpected day minus-1 as well, some orientation events which included (dun-dun-dun-dun) Intro to the Socratic method... one of the aspects of law school I had been fearing during the past 2 years. So, naturally, I volunteered instead of waiting to be called on. I said, "shooot, i ain't sitting 'round here shakin in my boots," (in my head), and the professor laughed and said I had been on his hit list anyhow. phew. That, my friends, is called pre-emptive attack.

So the actual day one started with a surprisingly comforting class in lawyering, with a kind, soft-er spoken professor who emphasized creating a safe learning environment, and doesn't want any of us coming in feeling nervous about being cold-called on. We just sat back and listened. I think it will be a really challenging class, but one that I will really enjoy - the name sounds so dry, lawyering, but I am excited about the writing, research, and honing my public speaking skeeelz. It was nothing like I had imagined my first class of my first day of law school.

I had a couple more classes and met more nervous and excited 1L's. We really do have a diverse class, with people from all over the world, each with a unique background. Everything from teachers, to consultants, to publicists, to paralegals, journalists, waitresses, mountain climbers, and travelers of the world in general, like myself.

Just to make my first day even more memorable, the water pump thing-a-ma-jig at our apartment broke the night before and I couldn't even take a shower before class. Yup. Brushed my teeth with a jug of water. To celebrate my roommate and I went out to a nice dinner, and I ordered an Indian ratatatoulle that was less than delicious, but we had a good laugh recounting the days events. And I had a well-deserved glass of red wine.

Well, here goes day 2 with Constitutional Law (yea! excited about this one) and Civil Procedure (dun-dun-dun-dun). Talk soon playas.



SONG FOR INSPIRATION:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQdC7h609k8

courage

My new flatmate, A, said something that really resonated with me tonight. It came from a cheesy card her mother had given her. Courage is working through the fear. It's so true. Sometimes you feel like you're the only one that experiences doubts. And you get consumed by your own fears, and let them paralyze you. But you have to just buck up, *glib* as that sounds, and work on through it. To have this talk with A, a grad student in another field, and a prospective law student, S, who keeps putting off the LSATs because of his own anxieties, was comforting. As was black sticky rice and coconut icecream after dinner (thai basil green beans with bell peppers and chicken in a chili sauce).

Emmmm.... and Google Image is one of my pastimes. Once again proving to be a sheer geyser of wisdom.

Search results for "courage":




And just when you thought you couldn't be moved any higher...



Word.

cold feet

Just moved into the new apartment, and it's just as light and airy and happy as I could have wished for. But campus is quiet and emails are arriving from professors with reading materials and I wanted to crawl back into the car and go home with my mom for the weekend. Orientation isn't until next week anyway. Just one more weekend at home. My eyes got all teary and I felt bad for making my mother feel sad to leave me here alone. The new roommate's not here yet. In the end, I figured it really wouldn't make much of a difference, whether I stay or go, and maybe better that I get acclimated to a new home... get oriented to the area. I'm going to try to walk to the law school now and hopefully some fresh air, and stop for a coffee with my summer reading... the fun stuff (Mireille Guiliano's French Women for All Seasons), and pick up some ideas for autumnal recipes. Things with apples and squash and potatoes and so on... Enjoy the free time while it lasts.

legal jargon

My blog can now be found here, among many other legal blogs (blawgs! who said lawyers aren't punny!?) :

http://www.blawg.com/

There is a special section devoted to law students too.

proposition 1

Hello. You may be scratching your head about the blog title. You're probably thinking, "how in the heck is she going to try to make law school seem fashionable???" Well, that's not quite the plan. Allow me to explain. After a couple years of post-graduation flip-flopping about whether or not to go to law school, I have finally decided to take the plunge, bite the bullet, give it a go. (Yes, I have managed to squeeze 3 simultaneous mom-isms into one sentence.) My doubts about law school are certainly not atypical. They were derived from all-too-common places. First, the nay-sayers, including the current (or past) lawyers who warn against barreling into law school without considering what I would actually "do" with a law degree. I myself had originally planned to get a J.D. without necessarily planning to take the bar, be a lawyer, or practice law. I had always considered it a great opportunity to further a strong liberal arts education, and was taken aback when posed with the question of what kind of lawyer I wanted to be. I am unsure of who originally planted this idea of law school being a great opportunity even if you don't want to be a lawyer into my brain... perhaps my mom. In any case, I'm glad it was challenged by so many people, and forced me to consider whether or not this is really my goal, to study law, and what I could really envision myself doing with a law degree. The other source of my law school anxieties came from visions of frumpy-lady-lawyer in the dreaded pantsuit. As a young feminist, it embarrasses me to admit to this being a reason, but it would be a lie if I said the image didn't cause a feeling of slight revulsion. I am not a pantsuit gal, and more importantly, I have always seen myself as an art-lover, writer, traveler, and at times very introspective person, and I had trouble reconciling this self-image with that of lawyer. But letting this get in the way of the possible opportunities that await me in law school, and the things I could accomplish to help others, would be a shame. Plus, Yves Saint Laurent's Le Smoking pantsuit clearly shows that the pantsuit can be both sexy and empowering.



These may seem like bourgie anxieties, but please don't misinterpret me: I am from a single-parent, middle class family, and I will be taking out more loans than I can comprehend to finance this thing... so I have taken all aspects into consideration.

SO WHAT'S THE POINT??

It is especially relevant in the current post-Bush era of Obama-ism that I posit as my first goal of this blog to argue:

1) public service is IN. The past election has demonstrated that young Americans are becoming more and more involved in the public service sector. This is a surge of enthusiasm that hasn't been seen since the days of JFK. But honestly, how many times did you think to yourself during the campaign, "But I didn't even know that he/she cared about politics!" upon learning that another acquaintance had up and dropped their life to join the campaign. Well if being a follower, per say, means becoming an active member of the democratic system, I say join the masses. Thus, goal one: hip is not exclusive aspiring artists in WILLIAMSBURG and AUSTIN. The new hipster makes serving the public good an ongoing theme in his or her life. Further, a girl does NOT have to sacrifice femininity for her career aspirations.

2) Goal number 2 is to share my experience with those recent graduates or soon-to-be-graduates, or even those contemplating midlife career changes that are considering law school and are unsure of whether this is the path they want to go down. Perhaps those of us who haven't known since birth that we were meant to become lawyers... I promise to share the absolute truth about my first year at an Ivy League law school, infamous for its use of the (shutter) Socratic method.

3) And the last goal of this blog is to keep myself sane. Despite the cautionary tales I am still clueless as to what to expect. Lots of reading, obv. But what is my life going to look like, and will I be able to handle it? I got my undergrad degree from another Ivy League school, but law school is said to be a whole new playing field. I can only hope to have some time once a week to reflect... and share the goss about my class.


I am writing under a pseudonym to respect the privacy of my professors, classmates (read: enemies), and the institution I am attending. Please ask any questions and share your musings.

This session is now adjourned.