Sustaining a Relationship During 1L

There is an immense irony to life. My next post was going to be about how people in law school can sustain long-term relationships through law school with enough work. In the beginning of the semester, there was a lot of talk from people about how difficult it is to be in a coupledom while attending law school. According to 'every' book and 'every' lawyer, law students should ditch their significant others if there is any ambiguity in the parties' commitment. Other people heard that law school was the greatest test of the strength of your relationship; if you survived the first year, there was a good chance that you guys could make it long-term.

As proof of this, I had been planning to use my section as a case study for healthy relationships. I am clearly not up on all of the relationships in my section. There are almost a hundred of us, after all. Therefore, I'm going to be working off my limited knowledge of the love lives of my peers. As a disclaimer, this analysis is colored by my own bitterness and bias right now. It's not the word of God. Don't take it as such. Also, this post is exceedingly disorganized. Apologies.

Several of my peers got married last summer to preemptively solidify their commitment to each other in the face of the law school beast. From what I understand, those people are still in newlywed bliss. While many non-marital relationships stayed consistently strong, a lot of people broke up with their significant others in the first semester, present company included.

Perhaps it's because we were unprepared to face the stress of the first semester. Everyone goes a bit crazy in the first couple months. Unless you have legal experience, you are probably completely unprepared to understand and appreciate the complexity of the law. Personally, I found the content and the environment to be mentally and emotionally overwhelming, purely because I had no idea what to expect. Moreover, attending school five days a week with seven days of studying sets up crazy hours which can make it difficult for you to prioritize social necessities. Nonetheless, hell is unbearably lonely and most of us ended up back in our original relationships by mid-year.

Of course, most of the people who lived together had an edge on those of us who lived further from our significant others. While a lot of people who lived together had their issues here and there, most of them are still together. I hypothesize it's because returning to the sanctity of your home and the comfort of your lover removes you from the hectic environment and full-time job of law school. Living together provides a measure of stability and security. The majority of these people are doing pretty well.

Those of us who didn't live with our significant others had a slight handicap. I'm not just talking about the long-distance people. The ones who didn't live in the same apartment or the same city often had a more difficult time sustaining their relationships. This is logical and obvious. Good luck contributing to your relationship when:

1. It's difficult to find time for yourself, let alone your s.o., in a crazy hectic schedule.

2. You must expend a lot of effort to see them. People would disappear for entire weekends in order to visit their person. This means that you need to complete a lot of extra work during the week. So, study fifteen hours a day instead of twelve. Have fun with that.

3. Law school is inherently stressful and most people do not understand or have the capacity to understand the content without full immersion. Therefore, good luck explaining to your s.o. what exactly you're doing in Civil Procedure or Torts. I had to explain to mine a number of times the difference between briefing a case and my moot court brief.

I started talking about relationships with some of my peers a few weeks ago because my fiance and I were planning on moving in together this summer and it's just one of those social scripts that naturally follows such news. Surprisingly, a lot of people in our section quietly dropped out of their relationships by the end of this semester. Some stopped dating anyone altogether. Others either continued or began indulging in one-night stands because they didn't want to emotionally invest themselves in something other than law school.

I was shocked. I thought things were going pretty hunkey-dorey in the love department of Section 1. In fairness, I hadn't seen a lot of people for the month of finals when everyone was hiding in study rooms. I wasn't up on the gossip. But still, how wrong I was!

This post was originally slotted to be an uplifting and motivational treatise on how you can keep everything together through a really stressful and unpredictable period in your life. But, as some of my faithful readers may know, my fiance left me a week after my last final. As one of the reasons for the split, he cited the fact that we had both changed so much over the past year that we couldn't possibly meet in the middle again.

It's true. Law school has changed me. I have no doubt about that. I make law-related jokes that my family and friends don't get anymore. I savor my time on stupid websites which dish lawyer gossip and post funny law student anecdotes. I think in IRAC and CRAC and form topic sentences for discourse in my dreams. My tolerance for stupidity has decreased immensely. I have run out of patience for people who speak or move slowly because my time is valuable. Moreover, I have lived like a twenty-something, more or less by myself, for a year in one of the most amazing cities in the world. I cannot deny that I have changed and I am completely happy with the person I have become. I would have liked for the two of us to evolve along the same course, but it didn't happen.

So, I am bummed right now for myself and others in similar straits. I take my hat off to the long-distance folks who made it work. Despite my situation, I optimistically believe that law students can sustain a relationship with enough effort and contact. Looking at my section, it seems as though living together is the winning move. Just a consideration for future law students.

Reasons to Study for Finals: Future Malpractice

First, This NY lawyer was suspended by the bar for submitting 'shockingly poor' briefs. He used the excuses 'My paralegal did it!' and 'But I suddenly had a lot of work!' to no avail. Get your shit done now, people. This way, in ten years, you won't get called out for your 'shockingly poor' practical skills.

Second, Some dip decided to undermine the sanctity of the courtroom with his idiotic conduct. I'm too lazy to summarize so here's the relevant info: 'At the deposition, Sahid “repeatedly interrupted the questioning and made improper objections and lengthy speeches that had no merit,” the appeals court said . . . He insulted plaintiff's counsel, [the judge overseeing the case] and her clerk, and even the court reporter, who was eventually compelled to leave the deposition due to the abuse of defendants' counsel.”' ABA Journal The best part of this is that he is also a New York lawyer. We are really earning our reputation right now.

Lastly, speaking of shockingly poor practice, we must acknowledge the behavior of a CA lawyer who settled a personal injury suit pre-verdict for $350,000. Upon learning that the jury was going to award $9.4 million, he quickly claimed mistrial due to his own professional negligence. The judge allowed it but permitted the defense to bring a counterclaim for damages. Apparently, when the lawyer found out he had made an incredibly stupid blunder, he lost his marbles in the court house. After dropping more than $9 million, one way to earn respect from your peers is to flip the frak out.

Happy finals my loves! Do the work now so you don't get sanctioned later! :P

Happy Birthday Billy Shakes!

When I decided to go to law school, my fiance's dad laughed and said: "There are too many of them. The first thing we do is kill all the lawyers!" Let's hope there aren't too many of us out there when we graduate. I would hate if we had to start offing each other Hunger Games-style. 

In a tribute to William Shakespeare on the supposed day of his birth, I have tracked down the infamous passage from Henry VI, Part II:

CADE
Be brave, then; for your captain is brave, and vows
reformation. There shall be in England seven
halfpenny loaves sold for a penny: the three-hooped
pot; shall have ten hoops and I will make it felony
to drink small beer: all the realm shall be in
common; and in Cheapside shall my palfrey go to
grass: and when I am king, as king I will be,--

ALL
God save your majesty!

CADE
I thank you, good people: there shall be no money;
all shall eat and drink on my score; and I will
apparel them all in one livery, that they may agree
like brothers and worship me their lord.

DICK
The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers.

CADE
Nay, that I mean to do. Is not this a lamentable
thing, that of the skin of an innocent lamb should
be made parchment? that parchment, being scribbled
o'er, should undo a man? Some say the bee stings:
but I say, 'tis the bee's wax; for I did but seal
once to a thing, and I was never mine own man
since. How now! who's there?
Enter some, bringing forward the Clerk of Chatham

SMITH
The clerk of Chatham: he can write and read and
cast accompt.

CADE
O monstrous!

SMITH
We took him setting of boys' copies.

CADE
Here's a villain!

SMITH
Has a book in his pocket with red letters in't.

CADE
Nay, then, he is a conjurer.

DICK
Nay, he can make obligations, and write court-hand.

CADE
I am sorry for't: the man is a proper man, of mine
honour; unless I find him guilty, he shall not die.
Come hither, sirrah, I must examine thee: what is thy name?

CLERK
Emmanuel.

DICK
They use to write it on the top of letters: 'twill
go hard with you.

CADE
Let me alone. Dost thou use to write thy name? or
hast thou a mark to thyself, like an honest
plain-dealing man?

CLERK
Sir, I thank God, I have been so well brought up
that I can write my name.

ALL
He hath confessed: away with him! he's a villain
and a traitor.

CADE
Away with him, I say! hang him with his pen and
ink-horn about his neck.

Exit one with the Clerks


What a sad life we would have lived in Elizabethan England.

Fun Tidbits for Your Viewing Pleasure

Study Break!

A new meme has hit the internet in the last few weeks. This guy was running a marathon and managed to be picture perfect. We should all feel shame for our sweatpants and athletic gear Finals wardrobe, lack of adequate personal hygiene, and poor diet regimes. This guy is gorgeous in one of the most physically and mentally demanding experiences humans engage in. We should all aspire to be him. Seriously.

Also, this song is awesome and I'm kind of in love with it. I first heard it when Gotye performed it on SNL last week. The music video is ridiculous and SNL went and parodied it that same night. 

Enjoy my loves. <3

Finals Vs. the Real World: Prioritzing

I have a gala to go to tonight. It's for a great organization in San Francisco called Public Advocates and I expect to meet some of the movers and shakers for public interest law. At the time that I received the ticket for the event, I was overjoyed at the opportunity to go out in the real world and meet interesting people who do really good work for the city. I've now reached a point of apathy.

I slept in today purely because I refused to leave the comfort of my bed. As finals draw closer, I find myself less inclined to leave my bed as it protects me from some sort of impending doom. I woke up to each of my five alarms and silenced each one in some sort of sleep haze. There's a point in my sleep cycle where all customs go out the window. I stop caring whether I'm pillow throwing or sheet ripping or just downright disgusting. My apathy for sleep custom is like a switch that gets turned off once I hit the nine hour mark. It's quite fascinating actually, because I can usually hold myself together until then. Today, I hit that mark and then extended it by a few hours.

Due to my laziness, I missed the four hours I had allocated for study time. I showed up to our section's award ceremony about half an hour late because I had to become somewhat presentable in a short period of time. Therefore there was no morning beautification ritual (i.e., leg shaving, etc.), which means that I now need to allocate even more time to getting ready for this gala in addition to the traditional hour-long beautification ritual that goes into looking extra pretty for special events.

Moreover, the gala is about three (four?) hours long, which means that valuable study time is being cut away from. And there's an open bar, which means that--regardless of how much I drink--I will likely be somewhat incapacitated tonight. Note to Self: Do not order from the open bar. It's not worth it during finals. Resist.

In any case, it should be a good networking opportunity. I should look at this as a strategic trade-off to make valuable business connections for the future. That's far more important than studying for a final because, in today's market, who you know is far more important than what you know. You can always learn how to perform well; you can't usually get in the door to demonstrate your abilities without a connection.

Nonetheless my Finals' Self is screaming at me right now for making such a stupid allocation of a commodity so close to our Torts exam. Oh well. At least there's free food. I can always come home at 9 p.m. and hit up the library for a couple of hours in my cocktail dress. As K-Money says, "Dress for Success."

Breaking Down Finals Time

I've been having a hard time sleeping lately. Usually my bedtime is at 11pm but I've found it creeping later by about half an hour every night for the last week. I'm not sure exactly where this behavior is coming from but I think it might have to do with finals.

Our first final is in ten days. Ten. 

That's less than a week and a half.
--It takes a bit over a week to complete the hike up and down Mount Everest with a consistent pace and adequate rest.
That's one full trek of Mt. Everest.

That's 240 hours.
--The average marathon runner (male/female across age ranges) completes a marathon in about five hours.
That's 48 marathons.

14,400 minutes.
--Let's say the 'average' 5K time for a reasonably fit adult (male/female across age ranges) is about 24 minutes.
That's 600 5Ks.

864,000 seconds.
--Michael Phelps swims an average 50s 100m fly. (Set World Record at 49.82s).
That's 17,280 butterfly sprints.

Now for the unfortunate part: Subtraction. 

In the next ten days:

Our section has 6 hours of class. A 2 hour review session. A 2 hour 'awards' party. (10 hours)

The average healthy adult will sleep 7 hours a night. (70 hours)

The average adult will consume 2hrs/day with household activities (cooking, cleaning, laundry, etc.). (20 hours)

Let's set aside 2hrs/day for eating. (20 hours)
--Less if you get takeout, but you still have to spend time making your choice, ordering, engaging the delivery person, and unpacking food. You can merge this time with studying though, which is the choice of most law students.

Let's set aside 3hrs/day for hygiene (showers, teeth-brushing, picking out clothes, dressing, make-up, bathroom use, etc.). (30 hours)

Now, I've probably forgotten some stuff but let's look at the numbers now.

10+70+20+20+30 = 150

240-150 = 90 hours.

Ninety hours of studying.

Subtract your Facebook use, your tweeting, your chatting, your socializing, your stress-busting workouts, your yoga classes, your massage at the Student Health Center, your play time with an adorable rescue dog in the library, your blogging about how little time you have.

Halve your ninety hours of studying because you're being needy.

Those 45 hours are why I've been having a hard time sleeping.

In a positive light though, 45 hours is:
3,240 Phelps 100m fly sprints
112.5 5Ks
9 marathons.
For kicks, the fastest completion of the trek up Mt. Everest was 16 hours. The guy got up and down Mt. Everest well within 45 hours with the right preparation.

Being properly prepared all semester--i.e. taking good notes, reviewing the topics, and keeping up with the work--makes the 45 hours we have left more than enough to kick our final's ass.

Ten days until Torts. Yeah, we got this. Guess I can get to sleep now.

Pride and Performance

Before law school, many of us had hobbies we liked to indulge. I love writing personal essays and this is one I wrote for a creative writing class in college. It has to do with law school...sort of. Enjoy reading :)

I started singing in the church choir when I was five or six. Always ambitious, I thought that if I paid homage to God twice a week—once at church and once at choir practice on Saturday—I would have a better place in heaven, up with the angels. Of course, this is also when I thought I was going to become a nun because I was so good at being pious. (I changed my mind once I discovered boys.)

Every weekend, I sang my little heart out and Kathleen, our director, would sing my praises to my father over the din of Sunday Catholics trudging out of their pews. For my first communion, Kathleen asked me to lead the church in song, mainly because I was well-behaved and had an adorable bowl cut. Ecstatic that someone important had recognized my god-granted singing ability, I pulled on my little white dress and veil that morning, congratulating myself on my superior achievement. Heck, to celebrate, I even dove into my sister’s supply of mascara, smearing it all over my cheeks until she came to rescue me from almost certain hookerdom.

As I mounted the stage for the first song, taking care to hold my dress like a princess and to primly place each white, patent leather mary jane on my way to the altar, a gaggle of my nemeses—the other, more girly choir girls—swarmed around me, assuming their positions directly in front of my microphone and edging me out. By the third song, when one of the Megans threw her hands up once again in my face, I’d had enough. I stomped off the stage and firmly plunked my behind in the pew next to my mother, turning bright red with the wheezing tantrum that was about to explode from my asthmatic lungs. I felt betrayed. Kathleen had sold me out.

Worse even, the gaggle of nemeses paraded around in their little white dresses to coos of admiration and their communions were not even that day! Those imposters! Sensing weakness, they crowded around my seat and informed me that Kathleen thought I would like some help—you know, just in case my little eight-year old self got a case of stage fright. Stage fright! I didn’t even know the meaning before she underestimated my superior soprano voice.

Sure enough, the big man in the sky punished me for my vanity that day, because I could never breach a stage again without going bright red and numb from the eyes down. Papers shake and curl in my sweaty hands. Perspiration forms on my upper lip. People swim in and out of my vision as I wobble in place. Heady self-consciousness requires something firm to hold onto. Most ironically, my undergraduate department chose me to be the graduation speaker. I’m pretty sure it was payback for never opening my mouth in class. They were dying to hear what I had to say after four years of classroom silence. Indeed, I’m sure many of them second-guessed themselves when I showed up to graduation red-faced, wet, and dehydrating by the second under the polyester gown in the heat of a New York summer. But I digress. (For the record, I knocked it out of the park. Check out the link up above if you want to see what I said.)

Seeing as how I abandoned my religion once I discovered boys (Hyperbole.), beautiful people make the agony of public speaking even worse. The piercing, crystalline eyes and sexy-casual demeanor of a hot spectator stand in stark contrast to the sopping mess I become when I take the stage. In an upper-level college seminar, two ex-boyfriends and an ex-girlfriend watched me stutter my way through a presentation on landmine removal in former war zones. I might as well have stepped on one during the second slide for all of the interest it would have stimulated in my discussion. Once I heard the embarrassed coughs and saw the cell phones come out, I knew I had lost them. I gave up trying to ad lib and just started reading the slides off directly so I could finish with some measure of dignity knowing that at least the information was out there.

Afterwards, my professor—another beautiful man—shook his head and asked me privately what I intended to do about law school, with the performance anxiety and whatnot. Stuttering, I retorted—to the best of my ability—that I planned to push paperwork for the rest of my life. I would be like Demi Moore in A Few Good Men: beautiful, silent, and deadly with a pen.