umn

“He would need to do serious gymwork once he started his job, days away now. It was no good spending eight hours at the office, ten hours, then going straight home. He would need to burn things off, test his body, direct himself inward, working on his strength, stamina, agility, sanity. He would need an offsetting discipline, a form of controlled behavior, voluntary, that kept him from shambling into the house and hating everybody.” – Don DeLillo (from Falling Man)
My schedule has been (fairly) lawless this summer. The goal for July is to reign in my sleep schedule and step up my workouts.

Freshman year I was 160lbs and worked out religiously. I graduated at just over 200lbs and yeah, that’s not a good look. I can’t make up for three years of neglect in one month, but I can start in the right direction.

The plan is to move from treadmilling to outdoor running. I want to improve my endurance without the guilt-inducing dreadmill dictating the pace for me.

I hope the newly earned endurance will correlate with better grades. Some professors say that marathoners are among their best students. I’ve also seen students (like Jessie, from Boy in Suit) express regret that they didn’t work out more. I’m toying with the idea of a marathon…but I’ll be happy with just maintaining the running schedule during the Minnesota Winter. Yikes.

Other things:

• I received my lease for Gamma eta Gamma. Excitement ensued.
• UMN received my last deposit and transcript. Joy y hallelujah señor. All is right with the world into the financial aid letter comes at the end of July.
• The diploma arrived and I was underwhelmed. The sum of a $170,000 education: a bootleg laserjet job. It looked like the MS Word diplomas that were doled out at elementary school graduation. I told my mother that she could keep the diploma. I didn’t want it. I tried my best not to sound bitter (not about my diploma, it’s not that serious, but about the whole undergrad experience) but think mom was sort of disappointed that I wasn’t excited. Womp.
• To underscore my alumni-ness, my canecard (student card) stopped working, so I had to get an alumni card. The alumni cards are sort of drained of all color…grey and peach. Eh.
• I finally figured out the RSS thing. I now have a RSS feed of law-student blogs on my Windows Vista Sidebar. Nerdage. I know.  Oh, and just because I don’t comment doesn’t mean I don’t read… especially on blogs that use blogger (like Thanks but No Thanks) and require a google account to comment. WordPress all the way!
• The drama on LSD is just ridiculous. They have an affirmative action board that vacillates between ignorant and annoying.
• Another thing I noticed on LSD is that a lot of posters link to their Law School Numbers accounts. Law School Numbers is a site where people post their admissions stats (GPA, LSAT, Extra Currics, etc.) the schools they applied to, and whether or not they got in. I simply don’t understand how it is not incredibly tacky (if you have good scores) or outright embarrassing (if you have bad scores) to share that information through that site and then link it on LSD. This one girl had a 152 and got rejected from, well, some less-than-prestigious schools. Why on earth would she want to advertise that? What am I missing here?
• And finally, my gopher gear arrived and I’ve been obnoxious about wearing it everywhere.