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.

Outlining

Whoo hoo, congrats to me and all of the other 1Ls out there on finishing our first month (give or take) of law school!

This post is going to be about outlining.

There’s a reason people suggest outlining early.  I outlined for Civ Pro and Contracts over the past week and it was HELL ON EARTH.  One million times worse than reading.  I really wish I had taken more sensible notes.  And I really wish all of my notes fit together, in some meaningful and understandable way.  But I found that my professors love to squib about things that don’t tie into anything, yet somehow still feel important.  So where the hell do these random items go?  Should I create a section called “things the professors tangentially talked about for 20 minutes so it must be important, but doesn’t really have anything to do with the actual topic at hand”?  Or should I risk leaving it out?  Bottom line:  Outlining sucks and I don’t know how anyone could possibly wait until the end of the semester to do it because, it’s really time consuming.  4 weeks of 2-3 classes a day week equals only 8-12 classes, and each outline took me an entire day.  Not to freak anyone who hasn’t started outlining out, but do yourself a favor and get on it, pronto.

Torts this weekend.  Mmmm fun times.

Roundup

What can I recap from my first 2.5 weeks of class?

• Law school involves a lot of reading, but it isn’t as bad as I thought it would be – although, I do somewhat feel like the 20 minutes I spend briefing each of my cases may be equated to time wasted. (Question for 2Ls and 3Ls, am I wasting my time?  I don’t feel like I gain any additional benefit from briefing that careful reading/rereading doesn’t already confer.)
• Only one of my professors employs the socratic method.  The other two just allow the class to fall horrendously off-track because everyone and their mom feels the need to raise their hand and add their two cents.  Did I just end up in a section with a disproportionate amount of gunners?
• I really like Lawyering.  But it involves a very disproportionate amount of work for the fact that it is pass-fail.  To learn how to be a good lawyer or to learn civil procedure, get an A, and subsequently land a decent job?  Tough call…
• My classmates are very nerdy.  But it’s okay, because I am, too.
• NYU has a lot of clubs and activities.  I want to do them all.  But during orientation, I was told by various deans that 1Ls should join a maximum of one organization.  Who should I listen to, my gut or the various deans of NYU?
• I still don’t know how the heck professors plan on testing us.  But I’m afraid to look at an example final.  I feel like it’ll be like opening Pandora’s Box or something.

Also, I’m really sorry for being the world’s worst poster.  I’ve just been inexplicably absent from the internet in general.  I promise I won’t let the blog die.

Babies!!!!

Is it weird that I can’t stop Googling pictures of Angelina Jolie’s kids?  Not in a creepy way.  It’s just, well, they’re really damn cute.  And for some reason, I’ve been on a cute kid kick lately.  I’m worried that this is my biological clock talking…