A little water-cooler gossip…
Jill: “So Jack is dating Britney now?”
Me: “Yep.”
Jill: “Which one is Britney again?”
A little water-cooler gossip…
Jill: “So Jack is dating Britney now?”
Me: “Yep.”
Jill: “Which one is Britney again?”
Grasshoppers!
My dear, sweet, bacon-scented, dahling 0Ls: calm down.
So this is what happens: Your type-A student gets accepted, picks a law school, and then proceeds to freak out and annoy everyone.
I did it too, but it’s obnoxious. So stop.
If you are going to UMN law school in the fall, just email me if you have questions. Plenty of your future classmates are already in contact. I’ll either answer your questions or put you into contact with someone who can.
So I realize that the current comic-booky layout is not working for anyone, and that my writing is sparse lately.
I know, I’m sorry, now please stop sending me hate tweets. Direct your fury to Huma. Thanks.
I biked to work on Sunday. I work 16 miles in the suburbs, and the distance doesn’t bother me, but I hate going up the hill near the office.
The hill is on a street named “Yankee Doodle” which makes the whole situation seem even more ridiculous. But do not be fooled! Yankee Doodle has a massive, half-mile long hill that hurts. The hill is so large that I expect a Buddhist monk or a mountain goat at the top.
So I decide to get cute, take a short cut, and promptly get lost in this Ozarky town named Mendota:
This week was embarrassingly busy. I didn’t even know what day it was during the beginning of the week.
The beginning of the week is a thick, sticky haze, but I think it had something to do with locking myself in my apartment to write my Physical Evidence paper.
The topic was Field Sobriety Tests. The thesis of the paper was that the tests aren’t scientific enough to form the basis of a DUI conviction. Luckily, the driver usually is usually caught with an open bottle in the car, falling over, or admits to being drunk. And the cops are usually organized enough to perform a somewhat more reliable chemical test (urine, blood, breath).
Of course, the evening after I finished my paper I got a bunch of cases on field sobriety tests. I wanted to scream. Actually, I might have. But it was 11:30pm and I was the only one in the building, so that’s okay.
I am in line at one of the many Starbucks in the Mall of America.
In front of me are two African women. In front of them is a middle aged woman. She’s soaked with sweat.
Of course she turns around and addresses the African women:
Update 12/30/2016 – A lot has changed since this post was originally published in 2010 – The ABA has since required law schools to publish standardized disclosures, rendering a lot of the information below outdated. Check out newer law student blogs for more up-to-date information.
Since my last advice post I received a lot of messages from 0Ls trying to choose between schools. Here are three common themes:
Unless you are considering a top 5 or top 10 school, focus on what city or region you want to practice law in.
For example, if you want to live in Seattle, then going to Less Prestigious School of Law in downtown Seattle is probably a better idea than going to a “top 40” school in Georgia.
The top 10-40 schools will tout the few alumni who made it in swank, distant cities to oversell their national reputation. Go to the “okay” school in the city you want to practice in, volunteer, build a network of local attorneys and land a job.
I received a Facebook question from a 0L (who did not take my advice to run) about staying organized in law school. My response is below. Current law students should add tips/disagree in the comments!
Your organizational needs will differ depending on whether you take notes on a laptop or hand-write. I hand-write for some classes but I invariably lose my notes to coffee or car trunk gnomes if I do not transcribe my notes quickly.
UMN law forces us to buy school laptops, but possibly the one good thing about my spastic school laptop is that it came with Microsoft OneNote, which is amazing (and now free!)
OneNote is sort of like Word, but it looks like a binder. It has tabs, and auto-saves whatever you type. You can“print” PDFs and powerpoints into OneNote, so your folder for a class will contain everything you need come finals time. OneNote even lets you highlight the PDFs, and share your folders online if you’re feeling generous.
Whenever I get frustrated proofing this Physical Evidence Paper, I just watch the Winnebago Salesman.
This was the week of shit. The dogs kept breaking into my 3-tiered plastic food shelf, gorging themselves, and then crapping everywhere.
I would come home to find a chocolate rendition of the Bavarian Alps in my living room, and the dogs passed out in the kitchen. The dogs also figured out how to open the toilet lid and drink the blue-water, so they had the runs most of the time.
The steamer and cleaning spray barely kept up. I spent most of my week flustered and disgusted. Ick.
And although I finished moving to the new apartment last week, I had yet to clean out my old apartment because I thought that I had until August 1st to move out.
So I was horrified when my landlord left me a voicemail: “I showed your apartment today. It’s trashed. I’m also showing it tomorrow. Can you clean it, you filthy slob of a man?”
As a rule, any unexpected entrances into my apartment happen on the ONE day that it is trashed, so I should have expected that call.
One of the first things I noticed about my new apartment was the fruit flies. The apartment was clean, and there was no exposed food in the kitchen, but the fruit flies were everywhere.
There were even fruit flies in my bedroom closet! I don’t even want to think about why…
So I turned to my blackberry, googled fruit-fly trap concoctions, and set my trap.
The fruit-fly trap was a glass of pear juice with a plastic cover (with holes) stretched over it.
A few days later Alesus was over, and I told him about my trap. He noted that there were no fruit-flies in the kitchen, but there were also no flies in the trap. Hm.
I didn’t figure out what was going on until today:
In May, I finished finals and managed to survive the relentless hanging out with my law school people before they went off to their summer clerkships, study abroad countries, and odd family vacations.
June was all about reconnecting with the non-law school friends I neglected in May. And birthdays. It felt like every-other-day was someone’s birthday. I ran out of cards. Oh, and there was some dating too…. a pride parade, and some business about music production.
July started with loud-ass fireworks, my birthday, and heat. Lots of heat. And thunderstorms. And tornadoes. And hairspray (this is all very dramatic.)
There was also the epic move to the downstairs apartment and a dozen trips to Ikea, Target, and Home Depot. You can call me Tim Allen. Where’s Pamela?
In addition to drilling and the crap-load of cleaning associated with moving, I also became the building caretaker. That means I have to field the craziest phone calls from people who want apartment showings.
I took this during Pride, but forgot to post it, which is a shame because she’s fabulous.
And, for additional randomness:
We had our annual company picnic at Blackhawk Lake. Lawyers playing trivia is always amusing.
The lake itself was kinda bland, but hanging out with the coworkers was hilarious.
Moving to my new apartment consumed the past two weeks. My move can be summed up with two quotes:
“The more things I threw away, the more I found.” – Jack Gladney, White Noise.
After drilling fixtures into my new apartment, I confronted all of the crap that I accumulated over countless trips to Wal-Mart and Ikea. I have a lot of random packs of garbage bags, travel-sized tissues, and cords for things I chucked a long time ago.
I made major progress on my apartment. Most of my rooms are finished. I figured out how to make the internet work and double-secured the window bars, und und und.
This blog needs a redesign. I have more unfinished laundry than a women’s penitentiary. My bike, rollerblades, and gym shoes feel neglected.
I am one check-in from becoming mayor of McDonald’s. (My love handles don’t lie.) My progress on my album is underwhelming. And, and and.
Moving is like1 losing your keys or your cat dying: an all-consuming time suck that is completely uninteresting to everyone else. All of my free time this week was spent hauling things downstairs, dusting, carpet cleaning, standing in line at Home depot, and constructing things.
I took off work yesterday and spent about 9 hours drilling. I probably have lead poisoning from all that paint. I think I’ll develop a cough that will earn my some street-cred at my local VFW.
The drilling was necessary because my apartment was almost completely devoid of fixtures like kitchen hooks, shelving, toilet paper holders, etc.
Just when I thought I hid the dog bones from them…
