Things I am thankful for

1. My family, for always pushing me to go that extra mile and for never letting me settle.
2. My boyfriend for (1) cooking, (2) cleaning, (3) doing all of the laundry, (4) doing all of the grocery shopping even though he has never cooked, cleaned, done laundry, or gone grocery shopping in his life until now, just so that I can focus on school and not have to worry about the little things. Oh and did I mention that he works full time, too?
3. The fact that there is actually a fall in NYC, and that it has been comfortably 55 degrees for the past two months.
4. My friends who call me once a week to remind me that there is a world outside of 40 Washington Square South (thanks for the correction!).
5. Amazing food within 1 block of my apartment.
6. Crew-neck sweatshirts making a comeback.
7. Being halfway done with 1L year (almost).

I’m sure there are more things to be thankful for, but that’s it for now.

Twilight

is the new Da Vinci Code.

If you are into this, I will think you are an idiot. Unless you are still a teenager, in which case I can probably let it slide as immaturity or a pubescent infatuation with sexuality.

Tidbits

Here is my all too infrequent law school round-up:

The 1L Job Hunt

Law school itself hasn’t stressed me out nearly as much as the prospect of having to find a job. I mean, I haven’t applied for a job since fall of 2006, and back then it was a breeze. There was plenty of hand-holding, and the entire situation required almost no creativity (ah, the good old days of undergrad). Now, well, the only hand-holding we have is a giant purple binder (world’s scariest binder, might I add) and the name of the game is creativity.

And while I applaud the ABA rule of forcing 1Ls to wait to apply for jobs until first semester is almost over (presumably to allow us to focus on schoolwork), I really wonder why they don’t make that date December 15 or sometime reasonably after finals, rather than the most stress-inducing date of all time: December 1. I mean, great, I don’t have to worry about applying for jobs all semester…until SIX DAYS BEFORE FINALS. Because really, that’s the ideal time to start stressing about finding a job.

The Right to Choose

One of the great things about NYU is it’s elective option for spring semester. Unlike most schools, NYU allows Property and Constitutional Law to be taken 2L year so that students can pick from a list of electives that include those two courses, International Law, Corporations, and Income Tax.

This is really awesome. Or at least it sounds awesome. Until we realize that it’s an all out war to see who gets to take the 2-3 desirable classes out of the bunch. Because with publicized course and professor evaluations and the fact that most sane people prefer not to take Income Tax 1L year/ever, everyone ultimately ends up electing to take the same classes.

NYU’s new bidding system engenders competitiveness and confusion (kind of like law school itself), forcing us to strategically pick classes which will ultimately result in approximately half of us being happy and the other half being a mix of mildly disappointed to frustrated at life.

Not to mention the instructions for the system are about as confusing if not moreso than Pennoyer and the entire theory of state-federal choice of law combined.

But alas, rumor has it that it gets better next year, when instead of rush-bidding for a single elective, we actually get to choose our entire schedule. Let’s hope. Because I did not pay $45,000 for a year’s tuition to take classes that neither interest me nor have anything to do with my future goals.

Yes, I did got to Fall Ball

And I have no comments therein.

Jurisdiction

Does anyone accidentally type “jurisdiction” as “jursidiction”?  I seriously find myself doing this every time I try and type it.

Suggestions for NYU Law

1.  The whole checking IDs when entering Vanderbilt Hall is pretty worthless.  Especially when the “security guards” checking never actually pay attention the door.  I could hold up my Blockbuster card and still get in.

2.  For $43K a year, the printers in the library should probably function at least 80% of the time.  Instead of the measly 12-15% that I’ve experienced.

3.  Forcing 1Ls to take all substantive classes in the same room constitutes cruel and unusual punishment.  Even prisoners get to leave their cells occasionally.

4.  After walking through Washington Square Park to and from class every day and having had the opportunity to observe NYU undergrads on a regular basis, renaming the law school to reflect that NYU Law students are not in any way affiliated with NYU undergrads is a brilliant idea.  Seriously, I would get so many fewer dirty looks for having my ID out or wearing a school sweatshirt.  Plus, think of the financial benefit of selling school-naming rights.  Wachtell Law School, anyone?

Social life, or lack thereof

One of my good friends growing up just graduated from Harvard Law.  I visited her last fall, during her 3L year.  The trip was fun, and after seeing her with her classmates, I began to look forward to making friends in law school.  As I mentioned in an earlier post, I didn’t want to put pressure on the whole friendship-making process.  At orientation, I felt as though people were quick to latch onto “best friends” or form “group” right away.  At least those younger students who appeared to view law school as an extension of undergrad.  Anyway, I kind of avoided the whole thing and hoped that I would find my niche over time.

Well, 1.5 months in, I still haven’t found that niche.  Although I chalk that up to not having time to do anything but read, write, and outline except on weekends – which is time that I feel like I should devote to (1) maintaining some semblance of a relationship with horribly neglected boyfriend, (2) rotating seeing various friends that happen to either live in or are visiting NYC, (3) keeping in touch with friends and family far, far away.  But I’m starting to realize that I might be missing out on a potentially valuable law school social life.

So what exactly is the solution to this problem?  I honestly don’t know.  I mean, one solution would be to stop reading, writing, and outlining so much.  But given the fact that I have yet to do anything “above and beyond” (e.g. crack open a hornbook or take a practice test), I’m not sure what I can actually afford to cut out.  Another solution would be to just forget about hanging out with outside friends and put forth more effort to get to know law school friends.  But that would mean choosing to hang out with people I see approximately 6-10 hours a day even more at the expense of people I see approximately 0-4 hours a week, on a good week.

Oh the balancing act of law school.  Hey, what if I just wait until 2L year to make friends?

Bug

I’m sick.  :-(  Let’s hope it’s not swine fluuuu.

Meltdown

I feel like I’ve been managing the craziness of 1L year pretty well…until today.

Today marks my very first complete and total law school-related meltdown.

It all started when I woke up this morning and discovered that my keys (with my NYU student ID attached, no less) were nowhere to be found.  I went to dinner last night, followed by a succession of bars, where I haphazardly left my purse pretty much wherever there was room.  Needless to say, my first instinct was that someone had broken into my purse and stolen my keys.  Of course, in my belligerent state, I failed to reason that if someone broke into my purse, they would have swiped my WALLET or my CELL PHONE, which were conspicuously not stolen.  Regardless, I tore through my poor apartment until nothing was where it belonged.  No dice.  Angry at the world and thinking about all the crap I would have to take care today (calling the locksmith and getting a new ID) instead of what I really should be doing (studying), I decided to plant my face in my pillow and have a nice little meltdown.  5 minutes later, D came home and pulled my keys out of the side pocket of my purse.  Aaaand I’m an idiot.

If that wasn’t enough, I also made the brilliant decision to save all of my outlines in different folders under the same name (“Outline”).  Naturally this resulted in me saving my Torts outline over my Contracts outline that I probably spent 8 hours working on last week.  Realizing this right when it was too late, I attempted somewhat self-destructively, to bring my Contracts outline back from oblivion.  Pretty much in tears, ready to drop out of law school, I realized that I backed up all of my files in SugarSync, which (thank goodness) syncs via batch job rather than real-time.  So logging onto my personal SugarSync page, I retrieved my Contracts outline 100% intact and breathed a heavy sigh of relief.  Crisis averted.

Realizing that I experienced my first “law school meltdown,” I decided to take the rest of the day off and take advantage of the real reason I came to New York – tax-free shopping!  Oh law school, you have rendered me simultaneously psychotic and very broke…

Random comments on studying

I will probably get Bs in all of my classes, so 0L readers, please take my comments with a heavy dose of salt.

Comments on Outlining Early

I started outlining recently, as I mentioned in an earlier post.  I found it pretty helpful in that it forced me to synthesize concepts that previously floated around my head in no particular pattern.  That, in turn, helped me better understand new concepts and place them in context.  It also helped me identify areas where I truly needed further explanation, and gave me a good reason to go to office hours (besides to shoot the shit with my professors like many of my more academically-inclined classmates).

Comments on Supplements

I also recently began incorporating supplements into my studying.  Initially, after browsing various law student forums and blogs, I got the impression that everyone uses supplements.  False.  Most of my classmates seem to be limiting their strategy to doing the assigned casebook reading.  Unless they all “wake up” soon (or they’ve been lying about their studying), my guess is that the forums and blogs tend to be infested with overachievers, and I actually have less to worry about than I originally thought.  I really do think they somewhat exaggerate the usefulness of supplements.  Glannon for CivPro and Chirelstein for Contracts (supposedly the end-all-be-all of their respective classes) are only marginally useful.  I haven’t gained any tremendous insights that I wouldn’t have gained from reading my casebooks and paying attention in class.  Maybe the books better serve students whose professors didn’t write their casebooks?

Comments on Torts and Why I Need a Commercial Outline

I am, however, kind of struggling with my Torts outline.  Mostly because in CivPro and Contracts, there appear to be more hard-line rules to follow, rather than wishy washy state-made case law.  I attempted to outline this weekend, and ended up with basically a condensed list of case brief categorized by my professor’s syllabus.  So I went ahead and ordered a commercial outline (the Crunchtime series).  Hopefully it will provide some direction (I will let you know).

Comments on Lawyering

Doesn’t NYU know that creating an extremely vigorous lawyering program while simultaneously making it pass-fail is very counter-intuitive?  I know most of my lawyering section feels very torn between our instinctive desire to do well in all classes, and our logical desire to do well in only the classes that are graded and thus determinant of our summer jobs next year.

I think NYU should implement something similar to Columbia (Soleil, feel free to comment) and separate it from substantive classes by having it at the beginning of law school.  I know it’s difficult to work on legal research and legal writing before taking any substantive courses, but at the same time, it’s also difficult to give those very important topics sufficient weight when there is pressure to study for classes that are actually graded.  Maybe NYU should do a combo-deal, where they devote 2-3 weeks to just lawyering at the beginning of the semester and then reduce it to a once-a-week exercise rather than a trice-a-week exercise during the year.  I should really be promoted to dean or something.

Alright, that’s it for now.  Sorry I’ve been so crappy at maintaining this blog.

So gross

Spotted:  Band of homeless teenagers (see:  hipsters taking it to another level) walking around the East Village with pet rodents on their shoulders.

I was going to make a nice long post about things I love about NYC (there are a lot), but this really tops my list of hates.  YOU ARE NOT COOL OR ORIGINAL.  NOW START CONTRIBUTING TO SOCIETY.