Law School / unsolicited advice

Staying organized in law school

Book and notebook

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!

Notes and Binders

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.

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2L Summer / unsolicited advice

“Do you believe any of that s-?”

Whenever I get frustrated proofing this Physical Evidence Paper, I just watch the Winnebago Salesman.

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2L Summer / 2L Summer Summaries / dogs / Uptown Apartment

Best Summer Ever Week 10: Shit.

Loft Condos Apartments

So I knew things were out of hand when Harley looked at me, hunched over, and spewed diarrhea all over my living room.

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.

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dogs / memories

The bitter brother

This is my favorite picture of the dogs. It was taken shortly after I adopted Gertrude.

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2L Summer / Alesus / picture of the day / Uptown Apartment

Unlikely Allies

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:

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2L Summer / dogs / Minneapolis-St. Paul / Uptown Apartment

A summer thing

Loft Condos Apartments

This is the high water mark of the summer.

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.

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blackberry pictures / dogs / picture of the day

The Krakens

Don’t be fooled. The Krakens are evil.

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2L Summer / blackberry pictures / Minneapolis-St. Paul / picture of the day

Picturebooth, sorta.

I took this during Pride, but forgot to post it, which is a shame because she’s fabulous.

And, for additional randomness:

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2L Summer / Thomson Reuters

Blackhawk Lake

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.

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blackberry pictures / humor / Just Sayin / Minneapolis-St. Paul / picture of the day

Fast, cheap, and full of cheese

So the worst part is that the first version of this billboard featured a heavily made-up woman.

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2L Summer / 2L Summer Summaries / Minneapolis-St. Paul / Uptown Apartment

BWE Weeks 8 & 9: The Great Move

Kitchen laptop

Moving to my new apartment consumed the past two weeks. My move can be summed up with two quotes:

“Knowing what you got, knowing what you need, that’s inventory control.” – Frank Wheeler, Revolutionary Road.

“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.

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2L Summer / blackberry pictures / pictures

Presentation fail

As with everything else in law school…

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Alesus and Gertrude

Lake Calhoun was busier than we expected.

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2L Summer / Life

Das ist ja shitkram

Suit hanging

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.

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2L Summer / blackberry pictures / dogs / Just Sayin / picture of the day / Uptown Apartment

The moving clowns

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.

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2L Summer / dogs / Uptown Apartment

Drill master

Apartment with laptop

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.

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blackberry pictures / dogs / pictures / Take Three

Not having it.

Harley doesn’t do well with heat.

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blackberry pictures / picture of the day / Whittier / Uptown Minneapolis

In my white T

Some of my neighbors have very strong themes in their wardrobes.

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blackberry pictures / dogs / Life / picture of the day / Uptown Apartment

The carpet steamer

Cleaning an Ikea carpet.

I don’t know how I lived this long without a carpet steamer.

I finally bought a steamer and cleaned my rugs before moving them down to my new apartment. And oh my god, look at that filth!

The steamer has gotten a lot of use. My new apartment is carpeted, and my dog trainer told me that I have to re-potty train them because dogs don’t generalize well…so being house-broken in one apartment does not mean they are 100% house-broken in another apartment.

This makes the moving process…delightful.

Most of my furniture is in the new apartment but I still have clothes and hundreds of books to move downstairs. I’m slightly worried about leaving the dogs out with books because Harley has a taste for literature. We’ll see if Harley has grown out of his book-eating phase tomorrow.

blackberry pictures / dogs / picture of the day

The ball buster

We are still working on this whole “playing with tennis balls and not eating them” thing.

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