New Kid on the Hallway

Tightly wound

I now have confirmation that I am, in fact, literally tightly wound: I had a massage today.

I am actually a huge fan of massage, because about ten years ago I had problems with my lower back going out, which resulted in a number of sessions of lying flat on the floor being bored out of my mind. To rectify this, I went to a sports massage person at the student health care center, and he was BRILLIANT. He completely cured my back, and it's never gone out since. But I stopped going once my back was better, because I was a grad student and didn't have the money to keep getting massages. (In fact, I had to ask my parents for money to pay for the sessions I did have. My mom, who trained as a nurse in the science-is-king 1950s, worried that massage was rather, well, holistic, in fact, a little close to [gasp] chiropractry, and shouldn't I really go see an orthopedist and get an prescription for muscle relaxants? I said, why would I want to take drugs if I can do something to cure this withOUT drugs? And was very happy to be correct.)

So, that was ten years ago. I had one massage the year I moved out here (which was at a spectacularly nice salon, but was of the soothing rather than vigorous variety). Fast forward to two weeks or so ago, when I had my first massage since then. 

Yes, my workplace brings in a masseuse once a week to give 20-minute chair massages. Yes, it's a difficult life I lead.

Anyway, the nice massage lady asked me if I had any areas of concern, and I said it had been so long since I'd had a massage, and I'm so kinked up from sitting in front of the computer every day, that whatever she wanted to do was fine.

I sat in the chair, she got started, and instantly these slender little fingers of iron honed in on two HUGE knots in my shoulders. She found exactly the right place and just sort of held her fingers there. And it hurt like a mofo. I swear, it was like she'd found the parts of my shoulders that were sick, and she was letting all the bad stuff out.

So after that, I decided that for my birthday, I was going to get myself a full-length, real massage. (Yup, it's my birthday today.) And at first I worried that it wasn't going to be that great. My massage therapist was a large and cheerful young woman, but initially seemed to be more of a blunt instrument than the laser beam of the woman who came to my firm. (Of course, it later dawned on me that if you give your massages in 20 minute increments, you have to get good at honing in on problems quickly.) 

But then she found my teres muscle and poked it for a while. And I thought my shoulders were going to explode. And when I finally stood up at the end of it all, I felt like someone had yanked my shoulders back, like there had been some kind of yoke before pulling my shoulders forward, and someone had finally released it. 

(I think that yoke would be called "the keyboard" and "the mouse.")

I also came out of there feeling completely stoned. "Says the woman who's never BEEN stoned," NLLDH says to me. Well, this is what I imagine it's like (and if it's not, why does anyone bother?) - light, serene, blissful. It really did feel like my muscles had been full of toxins and the massage had released them all. 

Anyway, my nice massage lady said the same thing that the sports massage guy said to me so many years ago: I'm wound tight as a drum. She said that if she were living in my body, she'd find it really painful.

Apparently I need extensive, extensive massage sessions.

Such a tragedy.

A question I can't really answer yet

Joy had an interesting question on my last post:

If the applications you refer to are for clerkships, I would LOVE a post on your thoughts about non-traditional students pursuing clerkships.

And Butterflyfish had one answer:

Nontrads are looked at pretty favorably for clerkships in my state anyway.

Myself, though I find Joy's question really interesting, I don't have any great answers yet. Because yes, the applications I was talking about are for clerkships, but being the midst of the process, I can't really say anything yet about how the non-trad thing will play out.

My sense is the same as Butterflyfish's, though, that non-trad-ness is not especially a problem for clerkships, not in the way I sense it is for big firms (my sense being that big firms like Bright Young Things who are shiny, new, and trainable, as well as energetic enough to pull the long hours required without burning out too fast, and usually lacking in complicated family lives. Needless to say, the firm I'm working for this summer, though not a small firm in my legal market, is not a big firm). 

My school has a clerkship committee, and I've had my resume reviewed and been told that I have a great resume, especially since the stuff I did before law school is the kind of stuff that would be attractive to judges (seeing as it's all about research and writing). I was told (and completely agree) that my biggest weakness is my grades - which are good, don't get me wrong, but may not be federal clerkship good. At least, not from my school; if I had my grades from a top-14 school, I'd probably be fine, but since I go to a regional school, I should probably be in the, say, top 5 students or something (which is unlikely to happen unless a number of people in my class feel like dropping out before we graduate!). 

(Mind you, I'm applying to federal clerkships anyway. Not in the ridiculously competitive places, but in the less prestigious and therefore less competitive markets [to the extent there are any less competitive markets any more]. Because, you know, what the hell. But I'm also applying to state clerkships. Which I'm not knocking at all - I'd be THRILLED to do a state clerkship.)

Anyway, the main point is that I was also told that non-trads can be really appealing to judges, since, unlike a firm, judges only have you for one or two years, and therefore don't have a lot of time to get clerks up to speed on the whole working full-time and being a professional thing. Plus, judges spend quite a lot of time with their clerks (though it varies, of course). So my impression is that judges quite like having real grown-ups as clerks.^[1] (Of course, many traditional students are perfectly grown-up. And I'm sure there are judges, too, who prefer the Bright Young Things and like molding young minds. But you get the idea.)

 I think perhaps the biggest issue for clerking and non-trads is more the logistics than any hostility to non-trads. Clerking is a little bit like academia in that you have to go where the judges are, and while many judges are in major cities, quite a few are not (Aberdeen, SD and Aberdeen, MS come to mind). And given the competition, you're encouraged to apply as widely as possible - so again, like academia, your chances of landing something you want are better if you're not placebound. Certainly, not all non-trads are placebound, but I'd wager on the average, non-trads have more complicated family lives than traditional students do. So moving to wherever for a year may be harder for non-trads, if you have a spouse and/or kids, who don't necessarily want to move to Aberdeen, SD for a year.^[2]

And there's a perception among some people, I think, that clerking just puts off starting your "real" career, and delays moving onwards and upwards. I kind of think that more traditional students think this than non-trads do, actually, but the later you are in starting a new career, the more you might want to get settled in to a permanent job. 

Then, of course, there's the money. Myself, I'd be perfectly happy to make a clerk's salary (especially over no salary!), but if you're worried about money, clerking is not especially lucrative. A lot of firms give clerkship bonuses, and you'd come in as a second-year associate after clerking for a year (so you wouldn't lose time on the partnership track), but if you're aiming for the stratospheric salaries of BigLaw, you might not want to head for a clerkship. This is the case for anyone, of course, but again, non-trads often have more complicated lives and more responsibilities than traditional students, so might find a conflict between family responsibilities and clerking. (Though again, I don't think non-trads are always very attractive to BigLaw, so...)

So there are some reasons why non-trads might not find that clerking fits easily into their lives. But I don't think judges, as a class, necessarily have anything against us.^[4]

^[1]Of course, the person who told me that being a non-trad was a good thing was hirself a non-trad^[3] when they clerked, so may have a bit of a bias in my favor that not all judges share.

^[2] If you have great grades and resume from one of the top schools, this may be less true. though I still don't think it's easy to waltz into a clerkship with, say, the 2nd Circuit. But I certainly wouldn't know!

^[3] And by non-trad, I mean they did something else between undergrad and law school, but they were still a lot younger then than I am now. Of course, I have a really bad habit of not really counting anyone as a non-trad if they're under 30.

^[4] Personally, I'm currently feeling very pessimistic about the whole thing; in theory judges aren't allowed to look at applications until the fall, except that I live in a region where a lot of the judges say "Eff that" and hire over the summer, some have begun interviewing, and none of them are interviewing me. It's way early to panic about this, but being well-trained by the employment nightmare that is academia, I'm very good at assuming the worst.

Another reason why law school sucks

You know what I hate maybe MOST about law school? The way that it's about collecting credentials rather than experiences. I mean, the experiences are important, too. But sometimes it feels like the things you're supposed to do to have a "good" resume are necessary to do so you can check them off a list, so you can accumulate them on your resume, not for what you actually get out of the experience. 

Law review is a good example of this. Myself, I'm a huge geek, a research and writing nerd, who has actually published academic stuff before. So you can get that I value (and enjoy) law review for its own sake (and yes, I do enjoy a lot of the stuff I do for law review). I think most if not all of our board members feel the same way. But I know there are staff members doing law review not because they could give a rat's ass about research or writing or scholarship or publishing, but because law review is one of those things that you're supposed to do to make yourself look good.

And you know, I can't at all blame those people. I'm not trying to knock that attitude about law review, because it's completely rational (even though it entails spending a lot of time on stuff you probably hate, which isn't really that rational when you think about it). I just use this attitude as an example of how what you do in law school feels like it's about collecting the right experiences in order to get even more experiences; everything is presented as a trophy to compete for so that once you have it, it can be used to go on and win more trophies. (Admittedly, some of this is just my nature, not just law school, but law school brings it out in me in a huge way.) 

This bugs the crap out of me, because it makes everything about what it can get you at some point in the future. So you end up living for that mythical future, when you will have done enough stuff and collected enough accolades to be able to achieve whatever job/step/pinnacle you're trying to achieve. And even then, you probably won't know what to do with yourself because you're so trained to work towards some future goal rather than actually enjoy the experience you're having at the time you're having it.

(Of course I'm also in the midst of some annoying applications that will probably drag out through fall semester and possibly beyond, so I may not be very impartial about this right now.) 

Why I take notes on my laptop

I'm not sure why I felt inspired to write about this now that I'm NOT in class, but I did.

So, note-taking in class. There are many schools of thought about this - use a laptop; write your notes by hand; take notes before class, print them out, and hand write notes on the printout; write your outline before going to class and add class notes to that; etc. etc. I've even met a (successful) law school grad who never took notes AT ALL - they said their lack of note-taking completely freaked out their classmates, and I have to admit, if I were sitting next to someone who didn't take ANY notes, it would freak me out, too. (Although now that I think of it, that is kind of what a lot of the surfing-during-class types are doing... they just look busier!)

So far, I've taken notes on my laptop. The criticisms of using your laptop are multiple: that laptop users distract themselves by going online during class (and yes, I have done this... I do usually have my e-mail open so I can see what comes in, a bad habit I got into while waiting for responses to job applications the spring of 1L year; I don't generally surf, as in reading actual websites, but I will sometimes Google stuff that comes up in class if I'm confused or just want to know a little more). That laptops create a barrier between the professor and students (it's a weird dynamic to have all your students staring intently at a screen and not really looking at you, although the good professors I've had hold people's attention). And that laptop users tend to transcribe what's said rather than processing it, so they end up with reams of undifferentiated information they haven't really digested.

I do agree that laptops provide access to that evil source of distraction, the internet, and understand (maybe even approve of) the impulse to cut wireless to classrooms. While I like being able to Google something that confuses me, I don't do it enough for it really to justify having internet connectivity. And while I also agree that students manage to distract themselves without the internet, I think the level of distraction of doodling or writing a to-do list or the like can never rise to the level of reading sports scores or Facebooking and the like. (And if you don't have online connectivity on your laptop, you never run into the problem of clicking over to CNN to check the sport scores and having the website soundtrack roar into very loud life in the middle of class. Which has never happened to me, but did happen to someone I was in Torts with. And I'm quite sure almost all the rest of us responded by surreptitiously checking the volume on our own machines...)

The barrier thing also makes sense to me. I think it must be quite difficult for the professor to maintain as strong a sense of connection or engagement with their students when everyone's sitting staring intently at their computer screens. In fact, I don't use my laptop to take notes in seminars (15 students or less), because I feel like I should really be part of the conversation and participating in a way that's tough with a computer screen in front of me (and seminars at my school don't have final exams, so I don't need to use my notes to study at the end of the semester - more on this below). 

But I don't buy the "transcription" argument, mostly because I've ALWAYS basically transcribed what I hear when taking notes, even when I was taking notes by hand. A friend of mine I TAed with in grad school always laughed because I took 2 pages of notes for every 1 page she took (and my handwriting is quite a bit smaller than hers). This is, for me, the way that notes work. It's not just about going back and being able to find things; I process the material by writing it, and if I write it ALL down, then I process ALL of it better. (I know people talk about this as part of the kinesthetic process of writing by hand, but for me, it seems to work with typing almost as well. I mean, I have had periods where I've been typing so much, that when I go to bed at night I think by mentally typing out words and phrases.)

Even if you do buy the transcription argument, though, for me, typing is still worth it, and here's the real reason why: I'm lazy. I can't take notes effectively on my reading before class (except in the margins of the book), because it takes soooooo daaaaaaaaammmmmmmn looooooooooooong. I just don't have the patience to do it. Plus, my "transcription" habit means that if I take notes as I do the reading, I just write down everything, and in that context, I find doing so incredibly unhelpful. While I probably should do the reading, then stop and take notes, I never seem to leave myself enough time to do so, and when I do, they never seem to be very helpful. So rather than getting the material written down before class, I use class time to get down what I should know.

Finally, I find writing down everything in class is a huge help for when I need to study at the end of the semester. The traditional law-school wisdom is that one must make an outline of the whole semester's notes in order to prepare for exams. But when I try to make out outline of my notes, I spend more time rearranging stuff and making it LOOK like an outline than actually learning what the notes say. And time, at the end of the semester, is precious. I end up wasting a lot of time and not learning stuff. What has worked better for me this year has been to take detailed notes, and try very hard to outline as I'm taking them - to organize them carefully under main principle, sub-principles, examples of sub-principles, and so on. And then at the end of the semester, I just print everything out and study from that.

I do kind of suspect I might absorb things somewhat better along the way if I had the discipline to write all my notes by hand. But I find hand-written notes extremely cumbersome when trying to study at the end of the semester - they're longer (just in terms of taking up space) than printed notes, they're messier because it's harder to edit and rearrange stuff, and I find it harder to read my own handwriting quickly (for instance, during an exam) than I do to read the printed word quickly. And while typing up hand-written notes would probably be a great way of reviewing and learning the material, I know myself, and I know that I wouldn't have/make the time to type up everything. (For perspective, my typed notes for classes often run around 100-120 pages. Hand-written notes might be shorter, but that's a lot of transcription.) I'm better off spending all my time learning the notes that I do have in the form I have them, than spending time getting the format perfect before I can sit down to learn the material.

Mind you, this is only what works for me. I'm not advocating this as "the" method for law school study, or even "a" method. I'm sure there are lots of problems with what I do, and also lots of reasons why it wouldn't work for other people. But since there tends to be quite a lot of debate about what law students need to do to succeed, and what role laptops should play, I thought I'd throw this out there.

Well, that went by fast

Today is my tenth wedding anniversary. How the hell did THAT happen? (Not that I'm complaining, mind you!)

It's sort of funny, because my engagement ring is a sapphire, and NLLDH and I always had this kind of joke/promise that for our tenth wedding anniversary, he would get me a sapphire-and-diamond eternity band (or anniversary band, or whatever you call them). Because that seemed SO far away, and surely we would be well-established in our careers/lives by then, right?

And of course, since that time we've lived in five different cities between us, both acquired new graduate degrees (or are in the process of doing so, in my case), and both moved (or are moving) into different careers. So we're not quite where we thought we'd at this times in our lives, but who cares? We like where we are and what we're doing, at least most of the time, and that's what matters.

(And in case it wasn't clear, I could care less about getting a new ring. It's just a funny thing to realize the thing we joked about because it seemed so far away has come to pass. Besides, I still owe NLLDH a watch; he always thought it was a ripoff that women get engagement rings and men don't have the equivalent [because he wanted that symbol of being engaged, not because of the cost or anything], so I said I would get him a watch. Someday. And it hasn't happened yet, because when NLLDH talks about wanting a watch, he means a REALLY nice one, and we haven't had the money for it yet. I mean, basically all these things are winning-the-lottery kinds of items, and that hasn't happened yet either.)

Anyway, we didn't do much to celebrate today (we have vague plans for going to Vegas for a weekend later in the summer): chocolate cake for breakfast, brunch out, and a visit to the mall to indulge our technology lust. We're both overdue for new cell phones (me because mine sucks for actually having conversations, NLLDH because his is four or five years old, which is like one hundred in cell phone years), and while we're waiting to see what Apple announces on Monday, if they don't have anything especially new to offer, or it's not going to show up for months, NLLDH really wants to get a Droid Incredible from Verizon. Or at least, he thinks he does, so we went to the mall to see what the Droid is like. 

And it is pretty spiffy. But I'm such an Apple girl, it kind of breaks my heart to think of getting anything other than an iPhone. (Plus, I have an iPod Touch, so am really used to that interface.) So I'm really hoping that Apple announces something really cool that will be available sometime this summer, something that can lure NLLDH away from the Droid. I mean, we don't at all have to have the same phone, but it's likely a lot more economical to have two lines with the same carrier than two different lines with two different carriers, and the iPhone's only on AT&T, while the Incredible is only on Verizon. So that makes things a little complicated.

What is not at all complicated is that I got to pick up and play with an iPad at the Apple store, and, hello, WANT. That thing is fricking awesome. Sure, maybe it's more about consumption more than creation. But I do a HELL of a lot of consumption (web, e-mail, books), and would be thrilled to do so on the iPad. It is like a massive iPod Touch, but it's better. I love my Touch, use it all the time, and there was something just so satisfyingly tactile about using this lovely glossy tablet that responds instantly to your touch. I actually thought the virtual keyboard was great, almost effortless to use - I really could type away without errors, just as easily as on my laptop.

The other ADORABLE thing was the guy at the other end of the table, who had his toddler with him. His TODDLER was manipulating the iPad quite happily, swiping and zooming and so on. The dad said, "When he sees a real computer, he tries to do this, now" (where "this" means "manipulate with a touch"). It was pretty awesome.

We decided that an ideal setup for home (assuming we were both working, and therefore had computers at work, rather than going to school, because right now I need my laptop for school) would be to get a 27" iMac to have on a desk for real work, and then for each of us to have an iPad we could sit and play with on the couch while we watch TV, which is what we do with our laptops now.

So there are a few more things to go on the "when we win the lottery" list. Maybe for the twentieth anniversary.