Every time I see the towers of downtown’s Westminster Presbyterian Church, I imagine a giant toddler meandering down the street and hole punching those shapes into the top of the towers.
Here are some pictures. The thumbnails are linked to larger images.
See also:
I’m trying to teach Harley to smile for the camera. It is obviously not working.
I was at work when I decided to check my email. It was 1:30pm, and the plan was to work until 6pm and then go home to prep for tomorrow’s oral argument.
I had about six hours of prep time scheduled for tomorrow, but I figured a few more hours tonight couldn’t hurt.1
Thank god I decided to check my email, because I saw an email from my moot court instructor reminding me that my oral argument is TODAY AT 4PM!
Almost shat myself. My weeks are planned to the second, and this entire week’s schedule was built around the (mistaken) assumption that the argument was Friday at 4pm. I must have entered the oral argument date incorrectly three weeks ago and (mis)planned according! Everything was ripe with fail.
I shut down my computer, raced to my car, and started practicing my opening statements on the speed drive home.
I slapped on my suit and then bolted to school with an hour to spare before my argument. I didn’t bother bring my laptop to school because it doesn’t print to the school computers anymore. I would just print from the library computers. No problem right?
Wrong!
I went to the library’s fourth floor computer lab – full.
I went to the downstairs computer lab – full, of a class of LLMs or something…
I went back upstairs, and one of my awesome2 3L friends let me print from her computer.
I then went downstairs to one of the non-printing/public computers to do additional research, but the creepy unemployed man3 sitting next to me kept quizzing me on what I was looking up and extolling the virtues of LexisNexis (I was on Westlaw.)
The hobo started to lecture me on the evils of the criminal justice system so I skipped off to the-then abandoned school cafeteria to finish prepping. The cafe closes around 2pm, so there were only a few stray 1Ls, but no hobos…
20 minutes before the argument I had a weird feeling – I felt prepared!
I had EIGHT hours set aside to prep for this stupid oral argument and I felt PREPARED after a single hour! A single hour which was mostly spent running around like a headless chicken! I felt both empowered and hopelessly stupid at the same time, which is exactly how 2Ls are supposed to feel.
The argument went well, and the mistakes my instructor pointed out in his critique were not things that I would have avoided with more prep time. I’m fairly natural during oral arguments, but I have to be careful not to channel Nancy Grace.4
I left school around 5pm. I no longer had to spend all day Friday prepping for the oral argument, so I felt like I had an inordinate amount of time on my hands.
And now it’s almost 9pm, and I don’t know what just happened to the past four hours…hm.
1 I bought a new suit jacket before work because my old one had a bullet hole in it.
2 Awesome, life saving, super heroic…
3 Before you start cracking jokes this was NOT a law student but a random “might be homeless” dude.
4Which I sort of did when I pleaded with the court not to assist the Senators of Moot in perpetrating a betrayal of the taxpayer’s trust… my moot court instruct was all, “WOAAAAAAAH there skipper!” I wished at that moment that I had a power bob to toss…
The one thing I love about my Real Estate Law professor is her ability to control the classroom while keeping a smile on her face.
Yesterday, Eager Beaver, a boy who actively participates in class, was particularly eager to answer Professor E’s questions.
Towards the end of class, Jill was visibly annoyed by Beaver’s participation.
Professor E asked another question to the class. Beaver’s hand shot up. Jill muttered dark threats under her breath and was obviously considering how to make it look like an accident…
Professor E caught Jill’s look of sheer hatred, and then turned to Beaver and said, “You’ve been really good about participating today. How about we give someone else give a chance who hasn’t had the opportunity to speak yet? (then turns to the class) Who wants to speak?”
Other Professor E posts:
I did not go to school yesterday morning. Instead, I took the dog around lake Calhoun and reexamined my reasons for being in law school.
Something wasn’t working and it was time to figure it out.
In hokey legal format, here are my findings of fact:
I felt liberated. But before I could celebrate, the dog snapped me back to reality by dragging me six feet to chase a flock of geese. Chaos ensued. The geese were not amused.
To say that I am noncommittal to law school is unfair. I felt noncommittal because I carried this vague2 notion that in law school there is a top prize – one that I did not want to pursue because I knew it would be disastrous3 for me.
To say that law school is a backup plan is also unfair. This isn’t a situation of “if the creative stuff doesn’t work out I can become a lawyer.” The purpose of law school for me to satisfy my intellectual curiosity4 and make me eligible for a career that will support my creative work.5
Law school is meeting those expectations and this vague sense of dread about not doing what I don’t want to do anyway is counter-productive. I decided yesterday to dismount the hamster wheel and spent the first half of the day on creative work and went to the Walter library to study around 3pm.
The reading was much easier once I reminded myself why I was doing it.
After a few hours at the library I went onto facebook. I saw the name of a high school friend in the “upcoming birthdays” list. She was a year younger than me, had a crazy laugh, and was one of the few people from my high school that went to college.
I hadn’t spoken to Karen in a while, so I clicked on her profile. I was horrified when I saw that the posts her wall were all variations of “I miss you, rest in peace.” She died earlier this year. If there was anything to solidify my “life goals reaffirmation” kick, that was it.
1 So we have a self-sabotaging situation going on because (subconsciously) I feel like if I do too well in law school, that I would neglect my goals for three years just to end up in a 90-hour a week situation where I wouldn’t have time to do any creative work. Like Tim Ferris, I’m not interested in being the bitter fat man with Benz, or like the attorney who told us that she spent years in a miserable job just because “it was one of the many carrots that are dangled before you in law school.”
2…and completely ridiculous.
3 The mindset that there’s Skadden and then hippie-law. Nothing else.
4 Sort of like a finishing school. If I went out into the world with just by UMiami degree I would have felt grossly undereducated. If one learns nothing else in law school, it’s how to work hard.
5 …instead of extinguishing it. And it doesn’t matter if this means practicing at a small/med firm, legal research company, or managing a Starbucks.
It feels like fall, it feels like finals.
The leaves lasted for (what feels like) two weeks. Some trees dropped their leaves immediately, whereas others went out in style:
That’s over now. Almost all of the trees are bare. The neighborhood feels both naked and urban because the buildings are no longer hidden by the trees.
The darkness is as glaring as the bare trees. It is pitch black by 5:30pm, so the evening commute feels like 30 days of night with potholes.
But I was warned. When I first came to law school the 2Ls warned me:
Scary 2L: “Finals are bleak. It will be dark when you go to school and dark when you come home.”
Insert a Dr. Evil cackle, and you have your typical doomsday-prophesizing 2L…coming to a cover of an Enquirer near you!
The darkness is why I spend as little time in the law school as possible. The classrooms are in the basement, so students who don’t make an effort to leave for lunch end up as pale as vampires.1
Besides avoiding vampires, my aim this coming week is to take better care of myself. The past few weeks were disastrous for my health – it’s as if I said, “Hey! Finals are coming up! How about I get as little sleep as possible, eat shitty food, stop working out, and then pump up the caffeine – surely they make caffeine IVs – and then I can have a nice Michael Moore chin to keep me warm and cushy for finals.”
Sexy.
The turkey is the only thing that needs to be festively plump this month.2 The marathon training begins in earnest tomorrow. Now excuse me while I get some of that much-needed sleep.
1 These are the same students who can be found hissing at whisperers in the library… I think they are trying to keep with the theme.
2 And the only thing that needs a turkey neck, mmkay?
Cliché but required. It’s not fall without pictures of the leaves:
I returned to the bedroom to find that I had been replaced, but decided not to interrupt the lovefest:
Harley is a little sick – he has an upset stomach – so I knew that I had a problem when I returned from my job to an apartment that smelled like dog-McFlurry.
I let Harley out of his kennel and he was caked in it. Gross.
He shakes himself off and scampers to the kitchen, leaving a trial of shit prints all over the floor! I shout for him to stop so of course he RUNS TO MY BEDROOM AND JUMPS ON MY BED!
Violence ensued. But now I have a fierce pair of bullmastiff gloves and a scarf for winter!
I’m kidding. I only considered killing him.
I tackled this 100lb dog, tied him up in the bathtub, mopped and disinfected the floors, and threw my sheets in the wash.
Then Mr. Shit-prints got a bath:
The good shots always end up with drool on the camera lense…
I’m cranky, but the nice thing about law school is that one is never alone…
I walk into Real Estate Law:
Me: “Good Afternoon, Jill.”
Jill: “Hey, how are you?”
Me: “Eh. I think I’m over law school.”
Jill: “Me too. I really enjoyed 1L year but this year I just want to kill someone.”
Yikes.
The longer I am in law school, the less I see myself practicing, and the more I suspect that I am wasting my time.
…so I started researching English doctorate programs.
I opted to go to law school instead of the English PhD route because senior year I was so disgusted by some of my professors who read random theories into texts that couldn’t support them. It was a type of academic “scholarship” that was essentially creative writing masked as literary criticism.1 Shakespeare, Elvis, and McDonald’s in the African diaspora…
I rather create than criticize, but the MFA-professors at my undergrad always seemed to have a badge of inferiority because of their lack of doctorate degrees.2 The question was always, “How well was your book received? Did it sell? When is your next book coming out?”
I am going to try and get into a literary theory class next semester and pick my professor’s brain about career options, and to see if a PhD is worth it.
If all else fails, I’ll be spend the first few years after law school as an underpaid attorney or an overeducated barista. Venti or Grande? Would you like a pastry or my legal opinion with that?
1 …by people too uncreative to write an original work. This was also rampant in Art History classes, where there is a razor thin line between “advanced research” and “bullshit.”
2 It seemed absolutely ridiculous that the people who were creating work were somehow less prestigious than those who did nothing but criticize it. But that was just my perception…
I am a little clumsy, so I spend a significant amount of time pancaked on the law school’s stairs, frantically picking up my books.
Usually no one catches the shit show, but Jill entered the stairwell right after I fell, coffee cup in hand…
Jill: “OH MY GOD ARE YOU OKAY?”
Me (getting up): “Oh, I am on a mission to douse every stairwell in the law school with coffee…”
Jill: “What?”
Me: “Nothing. Just clumsy I guess! I should buy a pair of knee pads…”
Jill (scoffing): “Looks like you’d be better off investing in a helmet.”
See also: The Best of Jill.
I posted this picture earlier this year on facebook:
Respect for lease. Surely a sign of a bad economy.
But things have gotten much, much worse:
I called Joel tonight, around 9, to whine talk about my night of youtube apartment cleaning.
It took me around 4 hours to get the apartment in a recognizable state.
Four hours of cleaning and youtube! It’s a hard-knock life! Time for some sympathy fishing…
(Ring)
Joel (Yawning): “Hello!”
Me: “Hey…uh, where are you?”
Joel: “Oh, still at work…doing reports.”
Me: “Oh, hi. My name is JC Petty. Lemme go find Dennis…”
My attempts to avoid my own “bitch not” advice foiled! Drats…
Oh look, it’s Kerli. There are several abandoned buildings in Jack’s part of Minneapolis. I spotted this street art on one of them:
Other photography posts:
The neighborhood children haven’t discovered that no one really cares if you smash the jackolanterns after Halloween.
So they sit and rot:
There is a scene in the latest SAW movie where a lawyer finds out that the key to save her is in the stomach of another person.
The lawyer takes a circular saw and immediately tries to slice the guy’s stomach open to get the key. Screaming and chaos ensues.
During that scene I turned to Joel and whispered, “THAT is law school.”
And it’s true. The size of the saw depends on the intensity of the curve. Vrrrm! Bitches!
The last two weeks have been the most irritating academic weeks of my life. I am tired, mortified, and annoyed. Sing it with me now!
I am always amused when I write these “Best Week Ever” week-in-review posts for difficult weeks.The chipper title is based on the premise that there is no such thing as a bad day. Yes, my name is Pollyanna and I am here to rock.
There is always something amusing happening and positive way to spin the worst disasters short of zombies taking over the earth.
The “Best Week Ever” title is basically a reminder, before I begin writing about an awful week, that things are not so awful, and that I should keep the bitching to a minimum and focus on the amusing things.
And amusing things did happen….really…week 9 started with a Tax law midterm. All the studying I did for the midterm was an utter waste of time and my answers were as eloquent as Miss Teen South Carolina:
“Um, capital gains, and the Iraq and all the little expenditure children…and stuff. That’s hot. And so totally deductible!”
After the epic fail Tax exam I turned around and finished my moot court brief.
The problem with the timing of the brief was that it was due on Wednesday and I have four classes Tuesdays and Wednesdays which means I have at least 3-4 hours worth of reading to do on top of life.
And the fact that Modern Real Estate went from a fluffy review of property to a brutally complicated tour of mortgage rights…didn’t help.
I worked on the brief at Dunn Brothers and there was a dramatic scene with a racist homeless guy who did not notice the four black people in the cafe. Screaming, N-bombs, and hilarity. The awkwardness was amazing.
I also officially started dating Joel. One night Joel turned to me and said,
Joel: “Um, we’ve been dating for five weeks now, and I was just wondering where this is going?”
Me: “Five weeks? What? Law school has me in a time warp…where am I? What year is it?”
Joel: “So I was wondering what my facebook status should be…”
Me: “Whatever you’d like! Well, don’t you DARE put married until you put a ring on it…”
Joel: “Uh, okay…”
Me: “SILENCE! I am channeling Sasha Fierce! Watch the wind sway my hair and be dazzled by my funky fresh moves…Hootyhoo! Time to get back to the Tax regs…”
So we became official during the beginning of week 8, and last night I met his parents and brother. Apparently I am the first boyfriend he has ever brought home to a formal dinner. Eek!
No plates were thrown or shots fired, so I guess everything went well? Maybe?
Anyway, I survived the parental inspection, the tax midterm, and the moot court brief. Coming up next is: Finals!
And the 2L fun continues…
Late as heck…
Harley constantly sends mulch and poo flying throughout the neighborhood, but I am pretty sure that most dogs do the sniff-sniff kick.
Here is the ritual:
And of course, Dooce is the originator of the doggy modesty patch.
Photos of Minneapolis, the city of the $42 traffic ticket.
These are photos that I am not sure that I posted. I apologize if they appear in earlier posts.
