New Kid on the Hallway

A small-minded early morning rant

Dear authors who want to get an offer from us so you can force another journal to read your piece publish in our law review,

Please do not ask me to withdraw your submission after we've already rejected it.*

Please do not ask me to expedite review of your submission after we've already rejected it.*

Please do not send me messages telling me what various eminent worthies thought of your submission (unless we actually know the eminent worthies in question/the eminent worthies sent you specifically to our journal).

Please do not send me messages telling me that your piece has reached final review at a top-15 journal; if you don't have an offer in hand, you don't jump to the front of our queue, and if you do get an offer with that top-15 journal, we both know you're not publishing in ours.

Please do not send me messages directing me to insert various footnotes and paragraphs into your already-submitted piece. I am not (yet) your editor. If you need to make that many changes, withdraw the thing and resubmit it (some authors have done this).

And for the love of all that is holy, if you accept an offer elsewhere, withdraw your damn article so that we don't waste our time reading it and getting excited about it when it's really not on the market.

Most sincerely,

Your tired law review editor
(who really does enjoy being on law review, she promises)

*I do realize that these two result from the mass-e-mail function in Expresso rather than any particular thoughtlessness. They're still slightly annoying, though.

This is my new desktop wallpaper

Which is to say, we went to see How to Train Your Dragon today, and I adored it.

Now, I'm not going to claim it's the best movie ever made. The story is classic "misunderstood misfit saves the world and everyone discovers he was great all along" straight out of Disney, down to the absent mother. But another way to look at it is as about the bond between humans and animals, and being a sucker for the cute beasties, that's where it tugged successfully on my heartstrings. (Okay, maybe it's not a realistic portrayal of the human-animal bond, since dragons are, you know, fictional. But still. If you like boy-loves-dog stories, you'll really like this.)

Toothless, the dragon pictured above, is one of the most adorable creatures I've seen on film in a long time. The moviemakers did a lovely job creating an animal that's a reptile yet combines the most appealing characteristics of cats, dogs, and horses, and feels entirely real. (More real, even, than the humans, who are supposed to be exaggerated and caricatured.) The scenes where Hiccup first encounters Toothless, and the flying scenes, are visually gorgeous. And although the action sequence at the end is, again, not that original, well, it's DRAGONS! Do I really care about originality? No!

The thing is, though, that Toothless, in his cat-like elements, really really REALLY reminded me of my old black cat that we had to put to sleep last summer. REALLY. A LOT. So, um, I kind of cried almost every time he was on the screen. And totally sobbed at parts. Poor NLLDH is very kind to put up with my sentimentality. (It was kind of like seeing Finding Nemo and Ratatouille after my dad died - in both those movies, the main character is forcibly separated from his dad, and watching both, I sobbed and sobbed. Yeah. You all really want to go to the movies with me now, don't you?)

The joys of the information age

So (as many of you who know me on Twitter or FB know), Monday morning my gmail account was hacked. I woke up, tried to log in, and couldn't. I thought, of course, that this meant gmail had screwed up. But as I futzed around trying to figure out what I could do to fix this (as an aside, if you don't have an alternate e-mail address set up where Google can send you reset codes and whatnot, you have to wait TWENTY FOUR HOURS before you can get Google to address your problem), it became clear that someone had ACCESSED MY ACCOUNT AND CHANGED MY PASSWORD!

Sorry to shout, but wow, it's funny how enraged I was by this. I took a class on internet law stuff last semester, and always sort of held that people don't really have a reasonable expectation of privacy in e-mails (to be clear, I think people SHOULD have that expectation; but given that by using Google, or your employer's e-mail network, you expose the material you send to all sorts of network connections between you and the recipient, people should realize how open their content is to network providers and so on). But it's one thing to feel that if the police knock on Google's door and subpoena your e-mails, there are legal reasons for Google to hand the e-mails over. It's another thing ENTIRELY for someone to BREAK IN and STEAL your e-mails!

Anyway, not only did this person lock me out of my gmail account (for a brief time - 30-45 minutes, maybe? good thing I check e-mail obsessively), they sent a message, ostensibly from me, to EVERYONE I've EVER e-mailed, claiming that I had been robbed at gunpoint in London and was stuck with no way to get home, and needed money. I mean, this went to EVERYONE: the judge I currently work for, a judge I applied for an internship with last semester, students who graduated last year, any professor I've ever e-mailed, authors whose articles we're publishing in our law review... oh, it's just cringe-inducing. The IT guy at my school ended up sending a message to the WHOLE SCHOOL telling them not to pay any attention to the message. I had college friends I haven't talked to in person in years calling me up to find out if I was okay. Rate Your Students even posted about it (I once sent them a cranky e-mail in response to a post they made about special snowflake junior faculty). 

(The funny thing? Almost everyone said they knew it couldn't actually be from me because the grammar was too bad!)

What's really galling is that the hacker also set up my account so that all my incoming mail forwarded to their e-mail address, and then went straight into the trash. Thankfully, gmail defaults to having stuff sit in the trash for 30 days, so I could pull all the messages out again. Of course, as soon as I found out my gmail had been compromised, I changed all my passwords to all my other online stuff (because I wasn't sure at first what the hacker did/didn't get access too). So all those messages went to the hacker, because I changed the passwords before realizing what they'd done.

Thankfully, most websites send messages confirming the change in password without giving the recipient any information about what the new password is or giving the recipient access to the password without further security information. But Facebook, of course, sends you a link that got forwarded to the hacker, which they followed to take over my FB account and send the message to my FB friends. So I have now been banned from Facebook. It surprises me how much this bugs me, but it does; most of my law school friends are on Facebook, and that's where I keep up with them (as I'm there under my real name, not this blog identity). I've appealed Facebook's banning, but who knows when if ever I'll hear anything from them?

It's also surprised me how much I feel like my online presence has been...defiled. I feel embarrassed about the whole thing, like it's actually my fault, when really, I think I have pretty decent security practices. I may have fallen victim to a less-than-secure wifi network through our hotel (we were in Florida when this happened, visiting my mom), but interestingly, the only problems I encountered can all be traced back to someone accessing the gmail account, (thankfully) not accessing anything else. People online have blamed weaknesses in gmail for this, and while people whose accounts have been hacked aren't always at their most calm and rational, it kind of makes sense to me.

So I'm a little bit torn now, about what to do with my gmail account. Part of me feels very suspicious of it. But most of me is swayed by my love for all things Google, and ESPECIALLY gmail. I loves me my gmail - the threaded conversations, the ease of labeling messages, the way I can just tag and archive everything to keep my inbox (relatively) clear without fear of throwing out something I needed, the access from any computer with an internet connection, and the adorable tea party theme that shows me fox ancestor ghosts playing a board game if for some reason I have to be up at 3 in the morning. I read my school e-mail through gmail because the online interface for my school e-mail is AWFUL. And I've used my gmail address for so long now that getting rid of it would be a HUGE hassle.

Okay, so, yeah, I'm probably sticking with gmail. Unless any of you have any suggestions for better, more amazing, and more secure e-mail services/programs? 

Law review has consumed my soul

I kind of hate to go on about being on law review, because it probably really annoys other law students - either you wanted to be on law review but didn't get on, or you didn't want to be on law review in the first place because you have ABSOLUTELY ZERO INTEREST in law review and what it requires, or you're on law review and you don't need to hear me talking about it. And if you're not a law student, you probably have no idea what I'm even talking about in the first place.

But the thing is, it really has taken over my life at the moment (which makes things very boring for everyone around me who is not on law review with me and therefore able and willing to spend hours discussing the minute details of how exactly we should make it the best law review it can be). My e-mail inbox is continually besieged by messages asking me to confirm submission, expedite review, or withdraw an article (many of the latter two appearing after our journal has already rejected the piece, mind you). I have become far, far too familiar with the ridiculous limitations of bepress (Berkeley Electronic Press. It's the system authors use to submit to law journals. It is WAY BETTER than going through paper submissions, yet there are...well...let's say quirks). And I have spent more time than I would have imagined calling up strangers and offering to publish their work.

Mostly, I continue to be amazed at how DIFFERENT it is to publish in law reviews as opposed to in humanities journals:

• There is a "submission window." Everyone submits their work in late February-March. (There is potentially a second "submission window" in August, too, but I haven't lived through that one yet.) So yes, legal scholars arrange their research plans for the year to get articles done for this particular time.
• You can submit to multiple law reviews at once. How many you submit to is up to you (it's $2 a pop, so it depends how much you want to spend).
• In keeping with the use of rankings to parse the value of different law schools, law reviews are ranked, based on numbers of citations received in the past seven years (there's a strong correlation between USNW ranking and law review ranking, although it's not exact). You know how humanities scholars get into debates about which journal is better to publish in? In law, you know EXACTLY how much "better" one journal is than another. (At least according to Washington & Lee. I still can't figure out HOW they calculate their rankings.)
• Of course, there are a couple hundred general law reviews. I think I could scarcely come up with double-digit's worth of journals to which to submit a medieval history article. So maybe rankings are sort of useful in this case.
• The basic procedure is that everyone submits everywhere, and then when you get an offer of publication from somewhere, you turn round to the journals ranked higher than the one that made you an offer, and ask them to "expedite" their review of your piece so they can decide before the deadline on your first offer is up. This bumps you up to the top of the journal's queue, so that they look at your piece sooner and might still have room to publish it. (Plus, if the offer is from a good journal, that makes you look all the better to the other journals.) If you're really good (and good at working the system), you can leapfrog your way up the ranked journals doing this.
• Our journal has a general policy of not taking longer than a month to review submissions. That's right - a month. You can (and should) have an offer of publication in your hands within a MONTH.
• And, yes, everyone who runs these things are students. I have a year and a half of law school under my belt, and I am picking and choosing legal scholarship. It is perhaps one of the oddest systems I could ever have imagined. 
• The craziest part of the student thing isn't even having us evaluate articles (it's true that there are lots of fields I know nothing about, but a well-written piece stands out, whatever its subject). It's that no one's in their job for more than a year. So just when you've figured out what's working and what's not, you hand everything over the the next year's board. Continuity is VERY limited. (I should add that the board we've taken over from has been incredibly helpful in explaining what it is we do and how, but really, it seems like such a waste of energy to reinvent the wheel every year!)

So, yeah, that's what I'm spending all my time thinking about these days. Interestingly, I now spend so much time on my computer for WORK related purposes (counting law review as work), that when I don't have to, I don't even want to look at the thing. So instead of aimlessly surfing in my spare moments, I've started reading books again. Heck, I even welcome reading for class because it's not. on. the. computer.

(Well, okay, I still aimlessly surf. Just not quite as much.)

Random observations on a Sunday morning

Springing forward is possibly humankind's worst invention EVER. Of course, it doesn't help that I was so tired that I slept 10.5 hours Friday night and then took a 2+ hour nap later in the day, rendering me entirely uninterested in sleep until 2 in the morning. Which magically became 3 in the morning. And I woke up at 9 - which is technically sort of late for me to get up, even though it was really 8 - because I couldn't sleep any longer. That is not enough sleep.

Middle Cat is walking around YELLING at me. I think this is in protest against the new flavor of canned food we thought we'd try. It has not gone over well. Thing is, she's not starving - as always, she has crunchy food available to her. But, you know, I get upset if what I'd been planning to eat turns out yucky, so I guess I can't really blame her.

I had all sorts of grand aspirations to get up and leave the house and work at the cool coffeeshop I used to go to all the time back when I was still teaching, and during 1L year before I started internships. I did this last Sunday, and I was SO productive. But the problem is that this place gets incredibly crowded on the weekends, and when I woke up at 9 I figured I had a snowball's chance in hell of getting a table I liked. And I need to do laundry and make a Target run, neither of which can be done from the coffeeshop. So I'll just have to be productive at home for a change. (I actually like that this place gets crowded, because I really don't like being the only person sitting working in a coffeeshop - I feel too conspicuous, and self-conscious about parking myself there for hours on end. But it's a fine line between enough people and too many.)

I was a little sad last night, though, when I realized that my days of working at coffeeshops are numbered. I can still pull that off while I'm in school, but once I'm out, any job I get (assuming I can find one) will expect me to be there, at the job, from 9-5 (at least). And since the whole point of being in a 9-5 job is NOT taking work home with you (though yes, I may well end up staying at the office longer than that), there will be little opportunity or incentive to work in coffeeshops. Which reminded me of my revelation, last summer, about why on TV shows/movies/etc., getting the corner office is such a big deal: when you're in that space at least 8 hours straight, M-F, being able to work there happily is a BIG deal. A lot of academics I know seem resigned to not getting "real" (e.g. writing/research) work done in their campus offices - which just doesn't fly when you have to be in that office all the time!

Okay. Off to accomplish things. I hope!

Ch-ch-changes

Today, my copy of the collection of essays in which my last medieval history publication appears arrived in the mail. I hugged it and petted it and called it George... okay, well, I didn't, but I have been kind of picking it up and admiring it on and off since I opened the package. (Although the image on the cover is pretty fugly, I gotta say.) There's just something so satisfying about seeing your words in print, looking all official and snazzy and so on.

It's funny, though - I had to reread what I'd written (I mean, I originally wrote this like three years ago, I don't really remember much of it), and of course found three errors - isn't that always the case? - but what really struck me is how ACADEMIC it sounds. At the time, I was very pleased with myself for how clear and accessible the writing was. I look back on it now and think: Yeah, not so much.

Don't get me wrong - I'm damned proud of this piece (it was my first non-dissertation project, I came up with the idea my very own self, worked through everything, and really like it, a lot). But clearly at the time, I was a fish swimming in very different water from what I'm immersed in now, and dipping my toe back in for a moment was a bit of a shock.

Random Saturday morning

I find myself blogging because otherwise I really need to crack open the law books. Am not sure this is a good sign for either blogging or studying...

Okay, hair update: I got about 2 inches whacked off the bottom, and a long sideswept bang (longer than I'd have preferred, actually, but eh). Plus more layers so it lies smoothly. I like it, though it's not a radical change or anything earth-shattering. But it is nice.

We'll have to see how it grows out, though. I go to an Aveda salon and it's really nice, but I have concluded over the years that Aveda people tend to give subtle haircuts. It's all fairly natural looking, pretty low on the artificiality/theatricality scale. That's probably good now I'm ensconced in the world of law, but I do find they tend to grow out and get a bit shapeless quickly. The upside is that you walk out of the salon with a haircut you like (no growing-in period!), but I feel the cuts don't last as long.

Mind you, having hair that grows quickly and the habit of waiting at least 8 weeks between cuts may have something to do with this.

Of course, the biggest problem is that I keep thinking if I find the right haircut, I will walk out of the salon transformed into a goddess. And yet, strangely enough, I keep walking out of the salon as me. Go figure. 

Anyway. Have made it to the weekend, which would be more of a relief if that didn't mean I have 2 days to fill with work. My to-do list includes:

• reading for classes for next week (this SHOULD include making up the reading I missed while I was away, but I kind of suspect I'm going to put the make-up reading off until it's too late even to pretend it will get done!)
• researching like a mad thing for the seminar paper I have to write this semester (I really really want to do a good job with this... but the first topic I was exploring [grad student unions!] really wasn't going anywhere; couldn't think of anything new to add to the debate. Am now thinking I will look at accommodations for students with mental illnesses. Wish me luck!)
• completing the next draft of my casenote (currently, I think my casenote is INCREDIBLY boring; the question is whether I want actually to make it good, which will take a fair amount of work, or whether I want just to fulfill what's required, which might allow me to get away with only fixing grammar and egregious mistakes. If I make it good, I might be able to publish it; the real question is whether I want to put in the effort required to make it good enough that I won't feel like a prat trying to publish it.)
• reading a bunch of articles to decide if our law review should make offers on them (can I tell you how STRANGE the student-run law review system feels to me, after being in the world of peer review? why the hell should anyone let ME decide whether or not a legal article is worth publishing? I guess I can console myself that I'm not any WORSE a judge than anyone involved in any of the OTHER law reviews out there, right?)

Beyond this, I should actually get some exercise (especially since it's nice and sunny here today), as well as try to plan some meals for the upcoming week (which, who am I kidding? is not going to happen).

AND I'm currently mildly stressed because last week I gave my first project to the judge I'm interning for, and she will probably give me her feedback on Monday. I went through three drafts with the clerk who assigned me the project, but something the judge said before I left made it sound like she thinks it need EXTENSIVE revision. Crap. I really want this woman to think well of me so I can get a good reference! I mean, if she thinks it sucks there's nothing I can do but learn from the experience and figure out what she wants me to do to fix it, but still, it would be sooooo much nicer to impress her from the start. Sigh. State court was sooooo much more laid back than federal!

Okay. That's enough whining. I should go accomplish something other than reading blogs, writing this, and spending money online! (Here. I love this stuff. I'm never so happy as when I'm running out of soap and therefore have an excuse to buy more! Word to the wise, though - don't replace the ".net" at the end of the address with ".com", or you get a very different kind of website!)

Looking for advice

Okay, people, I have an appointment for a haircut tomorrow, and I'm looking for inspiration.

My hair is kind of thick (and prone to bulking up around my neck/shoulders, which it's kind of doing now). It's got a kind of s-wave too it, but basically it's too close to wavy to be completely straight and not nearly wavy enough to be properly wavy/curly. It's about shoulder length right now. I don't currently have bangs, although the bits of hair that were once bangs are a little shorter than the rest and tend to fall in my face a lot (kind of annoys me, can you tell?). I can't decide if I want bangs again or not; I'm not opposed in principle, though I'd go with some relatively long/light ones if I did.

Basically I'm kind of sick of my hair just falling without much of a shape or style to it, and am inclined to cut off a bunch of it, perhaps with layers. However, it probably needs to be above the chin or below (at the chin looks awful on me).

What I'm really wondering is: what are the cool/cute haircuts these days? I'm out of the loop on this. Conversely, what are the really awful things to avoid? Anyone have any suggestions?

/brushing away cobwebs

Hi, all; sorry to have left this space so vacant. Much going on with school, and then I spent last week in England, attending the funeral of my aunt - my mom's sister - who passed away a couple of weeks ago. My mom isn't up to flying for 8 hours across the Atlantic anymore - 50 years of smoking makes being at altitude not fun - and my sister has no money or time, so NLLDH and I went, to represent the Yankee side of the family. It was lovely to see my British family again, though a little frightening to realize how grown up their children were and how old we're all getting.

And now I'm back, and behind on my reading (law school & blogs), and rather jetlagged and consequently tired, cranky, and down on everything. I've decided that being down is more a function of the jetlag and not a sign of true malaise, and that I should just go to sleep and see how everything looks in the morning. So I will. Catch you all soon!