The semester is over! Now I am busy working full time at the office and pummeling through the snow with the dogs.
Here’s an outline of what happened these past few months:
I hunkered down at the Spyhouse and wrote my first legal history essay. I kept ordering tea refills as snow flew by the cafe windows. I skipped home after the first essay due to the amount of exasperated road-condition-related tweets lighting up my phone.
I started the second essay after shoveling and emailed both essays in around 10pm…and that was it.
I came across a source from 1887 while writing my legal history papers. The author is Albert Shaw, a Minneapolis-based journalist and academic. The context is the American myth of limited government.
Shaw wrote his essay almost 125 years ago, but it could serve as a reaction to modern American economic theory. Shaw writes that Americans benefited from and supported a strong regulatory regime while adhering to a wholly inconsistent laissez-faire ideology of limited government.
The week began quietly enough – I became an espresso snob, creeped the boyfriend out with my mouse catching, and attended my last formal law school class.
And then the “Minneapolis Blizzard of 2010” came.
Sigh.
The snow was so bad that the Minneapolis Metrodome collapsed. My friend Krämer moaned that Minneapolis only makes national news when something collapses, but I reminded him that we are also famous for Prince and recounts.
I completely cleared and salted my building’s sidewalks on Saturday, but everything was re-buried by Sunday morning. Apparently at least one tenant thought I that I had not shoveled at all:
Halvers wasn’t amused by the note.
I had my last formal1 law school class session yesterday evening.
My presence in yesterday’s class underscored how pointless attendance is sometimes. I slogged through rush-hour traffic on slick roads for a 15-minute “wrap up” session that should have been tacked on to last week’s class.
I officially live in a winter wonderland.
This weekend’s storm dumped about 6 inches on Minneapolis, which Gertrude loved.
It is Saturday night and my car glides through traffic on 494. Whip my Hair is on the radio and I am excited about tonight’s date. Things are awesome.
The awesomeness ends approximately 15 minutes later when I open my apartment door and get smacked by the smell of rotten eggs. Harley is sick and yarked everywhere.
I manage to clean up the copious amounts of yolk-like vomit, take the dogs out, drain the building boiler, and get dressed within 25 minutes. I am not going to be late for this date, dammit!
So of course, when I open the door to leave, I hear “BLARRG!”
It’s almost 1am.
I spent the majority of Thanksgiving working on my Death Penalty paper in the Law Library. I’m probably the only non-Asian student1 here, and it’s time to go home.
It is the final stretch of the semester.
I am at the Spyhouse to write the first of the last three papers of my law school career and I’m bewildered. The paper is for my death penalty seminar. It is due on Friday, and I have never been so thoroughly disinterested in a class or topic. Strickland, Lockhart, AEDPA, 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d) deference…I can’t be bothered.
Winter smacked down during these past two weeks.
I enjoyed one last day at the lake and then Minneapolis got a foot of snow in an epic snow storm.
More randomness around Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota tuition protest posters still cake campus:
Professor H noted that we look stressed, and that stressed law students are typical for November.
She then addressed our Thanksgiving schedule:
What a long, exhausting day.
I tried to call the IRS for a clinic client three times today. The first two IRS agents refused to talk to me because I don’t have my CAF1 number yet. They wouldn’t let me fax my power of attorney and special order, claimed not to have access to fax, and it was just ridiculous.
Jill summed up the situation in class today:
Jill: “I don’t know why I came to class today. I have so much to do that just sitting here stresses me out.
Amen.
Passing my 1L sectionmates follows this script:
Me: “Hey! Haven’t seen you in forever!
Jack: “So busy 3L year is! What the hey?!”
Me: “Oh yeah, I’m super swamped too.”
Jack: “I know right? Time to jet! Late for thisandthat!”
Me: “Bye cupcake!”
Class feels like a huge time suck that gets in the way of the work that I am actually graded on, and yet I have not missed a single class all semester.
Laura Edwards came to my Legal History Workshop class today to talk about her book, “The People and Their Peace: Legal Culture and the Transformation of Inequality in the Post-Revolutionary South.”
Edwards’ presentation was fascinating, which is typical for this semester’s workshops, but the best part of the workshop was the question-and-answer session:
Jill: “I wonder about the rights of white men who didn’t have property, you know, those who didn’t own land or slaves…the itinerant farmers…”
Edwards: “Yes. We call them ‘poor white trash’…”
Jill: “I WAS TRYING TO BE POLITICALLY CORRECT!”
Buhaha. Edwards keeps it real.
