New Kid on the Hallway

I am so effing proud of myself

In class today, I identified a question I had about the material,* I asked the prof about it after class,** the prof said it was a good question and got excited about answering (granted, she's an excitable type - in a good way), and I actually understood the answer. I rock.

Tomorrow: conquering the public transit system!

*Seriously, folks, usually I can't do this to save my life - either I don't realize I don't know something, or I can't articulate what it is I don't know. It's amazing I made it through grad school.

**This is recommended as Key to Getting to Know Your Profs, which is a Very Good Thing.

What have I done??

So, you know the complete-the-sentence meme I did below?

I've been reading people's versions all over the blogosphere, and almost everyone else has completed "If I ever go back to school, I'll..." with some variation of "have to be crazy," "kill myself," and the like.

Right now, it so feels like they're right.

Today was the first day of class (three subjects today), and I feel completely confused, overwhelmed, idiotic, and out of place.

Don't worry, I'm not going to judge how well this is working for me based on the first day. But it's been so long since I've had to learn to do something completely new from scratch - as opposed to just learning more about the same thing, or more generally similar stuff - that it's kind of painful. And it's reminded me of the sad truth that I have always been a really rotten, cranky beginner. (At least at anything I give a shit about.) Seriously, I am the worst student in the world, not in the sense of being bad at stuff, but in the sense of wanting to learn and being open to new things and humility and shit. I want to be the one who KNOWS EVERYTHING. I mean, why the hell else would I become a college professor?

(As an aside, I've already had a couple of people assume I'm going to breeze through this because I have a Ph.D. People, you do realize my Ph.D. has nothing to do with this, right? Okay, we did have an example of a pleading from medieval England in our Civ Pro book last night, and yes, I was probably the only person in the room who's read one of those in the original. Which helps me understand modern Civil Procedure...not at all. Well, maybe a teeny, tiny bit, and it was pretty damn cool to see the medieval stuff. But then I turned the page.)

It's a little unnerving that the people who pipe up in class seem to come up with different answers to a lot of questions than I do, but you know, most of them have had really different experiences than I have, and besides, just because they volunteer answers doesn't mean they're always right.

Okay, gotta go read more cases where someone has done something really bad to someone else and is trying to get out of it, or argues that someone's done something really bad to them, and the like. (Did you know that, according to one case at least, if you swallow a fishbone while eating fish chowder in New England and it injures your throat, you're shit out of luck as far as getting anything from the restaurant that served you the chowder, because it is inherent to the glorious tradition of making New England fish chowder that bones might remain in the finished dish, and if you eat the chowder, you're doing so at your own risk?)

(Oh, and you people totally ROCK. I love all the suggestions and info about schlepping lunches that you gave on the post below - I will definitely go through this well-nourished!)

A food bleg

Not to spammify the internets this morning with a gazillion posts, but: I am looking for advice. What are your favorite things to pack in a bag lunch? (or box lunch, or however you carry it.) I'm particularly looking for things that are yummy, easy to make, and easily carried to and from school. I am determined not to throw money down the drain at the law school cafeteria, so I've resolved to pack lunches this year, but whenever I think about what to bring, my brain immediately goes blank (it's kind of like how NLLDH and I can sit at home and say, "I'd like to see this movie, this movie, this movie, and this movie," but if we ever make it to a video store, we can't remember any of them). So I thought I'd see what kinds of ideas you, my brilliant readers, might have.

(I'd also love suggestions for a good container for schlepping said lunches. I've been pondering this, or a more traditional bento, but it did dawn on me that I might want something insulated. My priorities here are to find something light [because I have HUGE books to haul as it is, which sort of rules out the Mr. Bento], and something that makes carrying lunch feel like fun, not an economy.)

Cognitive dissonance

You get: An e-mail with the subject line, "Last minute course materials for fall."

You think: Crap, something more I have to get/read for class.

You read it and find: A message from a book company rep, addressed to you as "Professor."

Also, it's weird how reluctant you can be to open your mouth in class when you're used to being the one who evaluates what people say, not being (explicitly) evaluated yourself. Okay, we've only had three classes - I'll get used to it. But right now it's weird.

First day down

And I survived! But am brain-dead, so we're going to go with random bullets:

• I am one of four Ph.D.s in my class.
• I am not the oldest person in my class. (Though as an aside: I totally can't tell people's ages. Everyone either looks way younger than me/straight out of undergrad, or way older than me - and the oldest person in the class is not THAT much older than me. I totally read jeans as younger than me and suits as older than me. Yeah, that's effective.) (And I should add that the people who look way older than me probably only look that way to me, because I have no idea how old I actually look - to everyone else we probably all look pretty much the same.)
• Yes, it was really weird to sit in a classroom as the professor went through all the first day kinds of things that I used to go through on my first day of class - often the exact same first-day things. (This was Legal Writing, which is structured differently from the other first-year courses, I think in a way closer to the traditional humanities class.) It kinda makes me want to apologize to my past students, actually. (Not because it was terrible - the prof seems good, the first day stuff was effective as first day stuff. It just reminded me how much I hate first day stuff!)
• It was funny how NOT weird it was to be on a campus again - because I've never actually LEFT campus. And no matter how different each looks, to some extent a campus is a campus is a campus. Yes, my role is really different this time round, but the surrounding culture is still pretty familiar.
• The Legal Writing prof warned us that the (usually humanities) people who come in thinking they have this writing thing down cold frequently have to relearn how to write specifically for law. Great.
• I knew that laptops in the classroom is a contentious issue. I've seen people talk about the pros/cons in the context of undergrad education, I've seen lots of legal folk complain about the ubiquity of surfing/e-mailing/IMing etc. in law classes, I know U of Chicago Law School cut wireless access in its classrooms, and I myself banned laptops in my class last spring. That said, I did not quite realize that meant it would be a big issue at my law school, too. It is. Wow.
• I met lots of cool people and enjoyed speaking to (almost) all of them. And no matter how much the place looked like it was populated with my students from last year, I know I'm not the only older student. I also realized that I have to broaden my definition of non-trad student somewhat, since I'm tending to think, "my age and older," when honestly, people who are ten years younger than I am are still pretty non-traditional. Someone who's 29 probably wouldn't appreciate it if I treated them as if they're no different from someone who just graduated at age 22. (Which is not a knock at people who've just graduated - I don't mean that I plan to treat anyone a particular way based on their age. I just need to recognize that "younger than me" encompasses a pretty wide range of people at this point, and I shouldn't lump them all together!)
• That said, two of the people that I most wanted to hang out with, that I most identified with, were profs on one of the panels. Sigh. Gotta work on that student identity thing.

And saving the best for last:

• A former student of mine is a fellow 1L at my school. In fact, ze's in my Legal Writing class. (Thankfully, ze was a very cool student, so it was a pleasant surprise, but yeah, kind of weird.)

The introvert's lament

So, this is really dumb, but the first day of orientation is tomorrow, and I'm already nervous. I think orientation actually stresses me out more than classes starting, because so much of orientation is social - tomorrow we have a two-hour lunch in which to get to know each other, a bunch of other socializing-type breaks, and I signed up to go to a Fun Social Event in the evening (though I am allowing myself to consider ditching it if by that time I'm feeling completely wiped from being around strangers all day). And then there are two more full days of it!

Dr. Crazy posted today about how  she finds the first few weeks of school intense and draining, because after the relative isolation of the summer you're suddenly dropped in the midst of students! and colleagues! people! people! people! again, and I am SO with her on this one. The only people I've spoken with face to face this summer, besides NLLDH, my mom, and my sister, have been various medical professionals, and one charming blogger who came through town with whom I met up recently. And while I enjoyed the meetup immensely, after two hours of lovely conversation I was both wired and drained (I went home and babbled nonstop at NLLDH). I also came home completely convinced that I have the social skills of a baboon and that I had droned on about myself WAY too much (not that the other blogger made me feel this way, this is just my usual reaction after being around unfamiliar people for the first time in a while).

I mean, I feel relatively confident about my ability to handle classes at this point - I know law school classes will be very different from what I've previously encountered, I don't mean that I'm going to coast through with a 4.0, but the academic arena? Not that intimidating to me by now. The social arena? Please. It still baffles me. (I'm not sure how being an academic has affected this. On the one hand, the common refrain is that academics are people who didn't get asked to dance in high school, and some people seem to wonder if academics have any social skills at all. On the other hand, we have to handle meeting and getting along with classes full of complete strangers at least twice a year, which has to count for something.) I guess it's not surprising that when it comes to Myers-Briggs, I score about as Introverted as you can get.*

Anyway. This whole nervousness thing wouldn't be such a big deal, except I feel like I have a zillion things to do today, but I just can't quite concentrate on any of them because I'm fluttering around like a ditz!

*ISTJ, in case you were curious, which is apparently one of the most common personality types among lawyers.

Law school syllabi, and a bleg

I have syllabi for my fall classes! Well, all but one; that prof hasn't posted it yet. (They're posted on the law school equivalent of Blackboard; Westlaw does its own course-management thing. So I don't have to wrestle with Blackboard. Given that back when I took grad school classes, professors didn't all use e-mail yet, some profs still typed syllabi, I don't think I'd yet seen course materials distributed as PDFs, and online course management systems didn't exist, it's a little weird negotiating one as the student rather than the prof. It's not any prettier than Blackboard, I can say that much.)

This also means I have the reading assignments for my first day of class. Ack!

Two of my profs have an interesting (to me) policy called "present and prepared": when you get to class, they circulate a seating chart and if you're present and prepared, you circle your name and they know they can call on you. One prof docks you if you're not present and prepared for x number of classes, the other rewards you if you're present and prepared for more than x number of classes. If you say you're prepared and the professor figures out you're not, you get docked; and if you get someone to sign you in as prepared and present and you're not there at all, you're in BIG trouble. (Though I suppose some days the luck of the draw would let you get away with these bluffs, if the professor didn't get around to calling on you.)

I thought this was fairly cool because it means that if you're not prepared, the prof knows not to call on you and waste everyone's time (and embarrass you in front of everyone).

It also seems to encourage you to come to class even when you're not prepared so you can learn something - because you don't have that fear of being called on when unprepared to keep you away. This was something I struggled with when teaching - students who thought, "well, I didn't do the reading so I won't go to class." Yes, I much prefer students to DO the reading, but even if they haven't, I still want them to show up! Not because I want to call on them and make them look stupid, but because they might learn something regardless.

I wonder how well such a policy would transfer to a different academic setting? It seems better suited to larger courses than wee tiny ones (my law school classes run from 35-40 to 80-90, I think). It also seems more designed for a course in which the professor is running the discussion/interactions, rather than students generating them (it's about answering the professor's questions, not so much about other participation). Anyway, I thought it was interesting.

It was also heartening to think that class participation counts for something. It's a teeny-tiny something, but it can add or subtract a couple of points from your final grade (and I'll take all the points I can get). I mean, I know the crucial thing remains the exam - that's what determines your grade, really - but since I know that I learn better if I go to class and talk about the subject, it's nice that these profs seem to consider that a valuable activity as well.

It has also dawned on me that this means very soon, I'll be sitting in class taking notes. I plan to use my laptop for note-taking (I always liked writing my notes by hand in the past, but I also want to be able to cut/paste/reorganize/revise/otherwise manipulate my notes when studying for exams, which is much easier to do with computer files than handwritten sheets, and if I take them on the computer to start with, I don't have to waste time entering them into the computer later), and this leads me to my bleg:

I've been looking at two programs that are basically note-takers/outliners (outlining is very big in law school): Circus Ponies' Notebook, and the Omni Group's OmniOutliner Pro. Both are effective, easy outliners. Both cost about the same (I'd be upgrading to OOP, not buying the full version). Both have things going for them: OmniOutliner Pro feels more "professional", more like a multi-functional power-app. Its interface is extremely clean - almost to a fault; it's a little spartan for me, who likes her Mac because it's pretty. OOP feels a bit more flexible than Notebook, but conversely the learning curve for using that flexibility seems a little steep. Notebook flirts with cutesiness - you take notes on "notebook pages" of ruled yellow or white paper, or you can use graph paper - but I actually quite like the notebook metaphor. I like that Notebook allows you to keep "writing pages" (plain text) as well as outline pages in the same document. And Notebook seems maybe a bit more limited in what it allows you to do, but it's easier to learn what it does allow. Notebook indexes your notes for you, which is a feature that appeals to me; I'm not sure if OmniOutliner Pro does that or not. (I'm sure you can search OOP for keywords, but what I like about the index feature is that you don't have to know already what term you used in a given context - you can just skim the list to see what they are.)

So the bleg part: anyone out there have an opinion on why one of these applications is better than the other? (FWIW, I've played around with MS Word's outlining feature, and first, it's really ugly, and second, it doesn't have the features that I like about Notebook/OOP, so I know I'm not going to use that.) Thanks so much!

I am FINALLY home

And I am kind of bemused that the Olympic commentators keep calling the French swimmer Alain Bernard "a-laine." Um, people, that's NOT how it's pronounced.

Okay, that has nothing to do with anything, but I felt the need to share.

This was one of the most annoying journeys I've ever taken, travel-wise. Thankfully my schedule was flexible - there wasn't anywhere I had to be at any given time. But delays still suck. On my way out to the east coast on Thursday, NYC was apparently hammered with thunderstorms, and since I was flying through NYC (JFK, specifically - wow, is that airport in need of an upgrade), I hit delays, and ended up reaching my mom's place at 2 in the morning. Okay, that's only about 3 hours late, but I think once you hit midnight, every hour feels more like two or three, yes? (I felt worst for the car service people she had picking me up, since she lives 2 hours from Boston and she does not drive into Boston anymore. Actually, she pretty much never did. The guy was nice about it, though). And then of course thunderstorms descended again on Monday, when I was supposed to return, to such grand effect that my flights were canceled. So I took a 2-hour bus ride to Logan, found out that my flights had ceased to be, and couldn't find a single alternative that didn't cost $1100 or have me arriving in, say, Cleveland at 9 pm and departing Cleveland for Current City at 6 am, or both. So I turned around and took the bus back again. And then did it again the next day (yesterday) - and then THAT flight was delayed ~2 hours, and I made it home between 2:30 and 3:00 am.

But I'm here now. Phew!

It was a very mellow weekend. I watched a lot of Olympics and started knitting a very pretty scarf. I've had to rip back a section of the lace like three times, and I seem to have lost two stitches along the way (but I cast on two extra by mistake, so I guess that's okay), but it's starting actually to look like lace. Unfortunately, I picked a pretty multi-colored yarn (this, in Sinbad the Sailor) - I bought the yarn before I'd decided what to make, so thought I might just make a plain scarf - and the colors of the yarn kind of hide the lacy pattern of the knitting. (I like the way solid-colored things look once they're done, but when I'm in the yarn store, I get completely sucked in by pretty, shiny multi-colored stuff.) Oh, well, if I like it when it's done, maybe I'll make a second one in a solid color - there's a lovely little yarn store mere blocks from me that I haven't dared explore yet....

The weather was fairly gray and dreary most of the weekend - the kind of New England summer weather I actually sort of miss, sometimes - and there were a few moments when it felt like fall already. And right before I left Current City, a cool front came through and the temperature dropped about 10-15 degrees, which made it all too clear that fall is right around the corner. And in case that wasn't clear before, it was when I finished buying my school books this morning.

My most recent fall crisis was yesterday, when I called up my favored hair salon to find out that they're closed this week for remodeling, and while I could get an appointment before classes start, I couldn't get one until after orientation. Can I tell you how distressing this was, the idea of showing up at orientation un-trimmed and then turning around and showing up for the first day of class with new hair?? Actually, it wasn't really THAT distressing; even I had to laugh at my dismay, because it shows you how much power I invest my hairstylists with - at some level I really thought that getting my hair done between orientation and the first day of class would mean that I would look COMPLETELY DIFFERENT when classes started. And how could I make my best impression on everyone at orientation if I couldn't get my hair cut/colored by then?? I would be shunned - SHUNNED - if I had crappy hair, even if I then turned around and had nice hair. And then I got a grip and said, Self, 90% of the people you meet in orientation will NOT notice any changes, short of cutting of six inches or going platinum blonde. And the minor details of haircut/color are NOT going to determine how people respond to you. You are more than your hair.

But I called and made a pre-orientation appointment at another salon, anyway. Some neuroses aren't worth fighting.

I'm such a geek

I just spent a bunch of quality time with my local public transport web site, figuring out my options for getting to school in the fall.

It turns out that there are three different routes that get me straight to school. One is direct (and stops right outside my door), but it only runs once an hour and only during prime commuter times. The other two both require changing buses, but they run continuously throughout the day. I think I'm going to plan on taking the direct line to campus, and then take whatever line shows up first to get home at the end of the day.

Can I tell you how geeked out I am about this? I know, it's not like public buses are really that exciting, and I'm sure they'll get old pretty quickly, but I like public transport - not so much the being packed in a small space with my fellow humans part, but the giving up of responsibility. Once I get on the bus, my job is done (apart from figuring out when to exit the bus) - I can sit and stare out the window and enjoy a little brain-dead time. If we hit traffic, if we're delayed - not my problem; I did my part and got to the bus on time. Conversely, if I drive, and I hit traffic, I'm fairly likely to hit the depths of road rage pretty quickly.

Plus, there are all the environmental and economic pluses to public transport, which also fill me with joy. As a student, I get a free bus pass (well, included with my tuition - so free, or $18+K, depending how you look at it), so no buying gas! My happy little car can sit safely in its parking space! No added pollution!

The downside of living an hour from campus, of course, is that I have to get up early to get there in time for class. Calculating when I'll need to get up in the morning (5:45-6, I think), I realized I have a kind of hierarchy of time in my head. It goes like this:

• Getting up at or after 9 am: decadent.
• Getting up between 8 am and 9 am: late.
• Getting up between 7 am and 8 am: reasonable/respectable.
• Getting up between 6 am and 7 am: early.
• Getting up before 6 am: buttcrack of dawn.

So, I will be teetering on the buttcrack of dawn, which is a bit distressing. But I can nap on the bus. Or listen to study aid recordings on my iPod. (Yeah, right...)

* * * * *
Thank you to people who've written claiming books (see post below)! I will get back to you soon with numbers, I promise!

In which I choose "girly" over "shark"

So, what I really want is a new iPhone. (By "new" I mean "newly released," rather than "new to me," because the latter would imply I have one already, which would be a big fat no.) But those suckers are expensive, and I really can't justify getting one right now. NLLDH is so sweet - he sort of hinted that if getting an iPhone would help me excel in law school he'd be willing to consider me getting one. And I was very tempted to say, "Why, YES - yes, an iPhone IS necessary to my success in law school!!" But that would be a bald-faced lie, and I hear that's not a good foundation for a marriage. If I actually had a job as a lawyer, I might need to be connected all the time (hence all those lawyers attached at the hip to their Crackberries), but I think I can handle keeping track of when class meets and such pressing law-school-type things without MobileMe technology. (By the way, if anyone has any great suggestions for student-y time-management things, especially of the technological variety, feel free to share them, since the last time I was actually taking classes, I took notes on legal pads, e-mail wasn't an official form of communication, and I had profs who still handed out photocopied typed syllabi, so technology has, you know, advanced since then.) Anyway, the fewer options I have for connecting to the internet during class, the better.

But I do kind of need a new phone - my current one works fine (except for a couple of mornings when the alarm didn't go off - which ISN'T GOOD, but I can't entirely rule out user error in those cases), but Youngest Cat has knocked it onto the floor enough times that the face-plate has split open all down one side and there's a gaping crack I could stick a finger into. (Okay, a small finger.) I thought about supergluing the crack, but decided that would look awfully low-rent, and I've had this phone long enough that I can get a free replacement anyway (that is, free if you overlook the $18 upgrade charge).

NLLDH's suggestion: "Which one screams 'shark'?"

What I got:

So, not exactly shark-like. Incredibly girly, in fact. And I don't really like the dark blue of the front display against the pink. But you know, I am SO SICK of black phones (for me - no offense if you love yours), and it wasn't worth paying money for a non-black phone that met all my aesthetic requirements. And this will be easier to find in the gaping black abyss that is my purse. And my other purse. And my book bag.

So I'm all ready to intimidate on the first day of law school, with my Elle Woods phone.

* * *

In totally unrelated news, it appears that getting my gall bladder out has severely limited my chocolate chip cookie tolerance. If I eat more than one, I feel absolutely vile.

This is a tragedy of epic proportions.