New Kid on the Hallway

Life lesson

Something I realized today: I have finally grown up enough to figure out that when someone who gives you feedback makes you feel like crap, it probably doesn't mean that you actually are as stupid as they make you feel. Instead, they're probably just good at making people feel like crap. 

Robbing Peter to pay Paul

That's what it feels like when you miss one class to write a paper for another. (It feels a little more ironic when the same professor teaches both.)

This whole writing-a-paper-in-law-school thing has been extremely enlightening. And when I say paper here, I mean an actual academic paper, on a topic I pick and filled with my own ideas about the subject, rather than something like what gets assigned in Legal Writing (a memo or a brief, where you're handed the issue and what you come up with is the best way to spin the legal authority you dredge up on your subject, not any "new" insights on the matter. I mean, writing memos and briefs is creative, and it definitely requires analysis and insight and so on, but if all the case law out there says that 40-year-old married women with cats do not constitute a suspect class for hiring purposes, you're going to have a reeeeeeeeeeeeeallly hard time trying to argue that they should be, and will probably have to exercise your creativity in coming up with a different angle from which to advocate for your client. There are more constrictions; your exercise your creativity in trying to figure out how to deal with them. Whereas in an academic legal paper, you're free to write all about how bogus the case law is and why such women really SHOULD be a suspect class. I mean, you'd sound like an idiot making THAT particular argument, but you have more freedom to do so than you would in a brief).

See, I figured that I would be all over the academic paper thing. I mean, it's what I've done for the last umpteen years of my life, right? I know how to handle academic papers!

But I forgot that I also studied my previous subject for those umpteen years. I've mentioned here before how established skills deteriorate when you have to apply them to a new context (kind of like how college students might end up doing really well in Intro to Comp but when they have to write for a new class in a new field, they forget how to do things they'd been doing just fine in the familiar context). Struggling with this seminar paper, I'm brought right back to my early days in grad school, writing final papers for seminars when I was still taking classes in my Ph.D. program. There's a familiar panicky feeling of wanting to sit down and write, knowing you have a paper to do, but simply not having enough stuff in your head yet to come up with something substantial. And while the solution is simply to read stuff, learn more, put more stuff in your head so that you can start making connections and seeing what's going on, that panicky feeling makes it hard to focus on the material you really need to address. I look at the stack of cases and law review articles I could/should be reading for this paper, think, "I can't POSSIBLY get through all that," and waste a lot of time worrying when I should just be reading and thinking and then, only then, writing.

It's all part of learning new stuff, I realize that. I just really expected that I wouldn't have these problems any more. I completely forgot how much medieval stuff I managed to get in my head, and how much that facilitated churning out pages when need be. I've kind of mentally treated this seminar paper like a conference paper, which is off for two reasons: first, it's longer than a conference paper, and second, I just don't have the knowledge to dash it off the way I was able to do with conference papers, by the time I left academia.

On the bright side, though, one of the things that was also panicking me about this paper was feeling like I needed to have years of primary research under my belt before I could say anything useful about anything. It finally dawned on me: this paper isn't intended to be the masterful culmination of hugely sustained research into primary sources. It's a thought exercise. I need material about which to think (and seem to have managed to formulate a topic that requires more than some, of course), but the point is NOT to accumulate information, not in the way that it sometimes is in historical research. The point is to think of something and to communicate it. It was funny to realize how much historical argument is accomplished by accretion: by piling piece of evidence upon piece of evidence. You really don't do that in the same way in legal writing. Tis rather odd for me. 

Okay. Back to the paper I'm missing class to work on.

Because I can't wait for the semester to be done...

...I've been thinking ahead a little bit to Christmas.

I was talking to my mom on the phone last week, and she said something about having seen my sister, and being really happy that my sister had told her how much she loved all the Christmas traditions we had growing up. And I told my mom that I, too, loved our Christmas celebrations. At the time, I just thought we did all these things for Christmas because they were just what people did, but it was interesting to find out that my mom did them in part because she wanted my sister and me to have these kinds of great memories.

I should note that we grew up almost entirely irreligious--my half-brother usually spent Christmas with us and he'd often go to mass on Christmas day, and my dad would usually go with him (despite my dad's lack of religion the rest of the year; my dad grew up surrounded by Slovak Catholicism, but I think he left it all behind after he and his first wife divorced. I don't know whether this is because, going through the divorce, he lost his faith, or because he didn't lose his faith, but felt cast-out as someone who had divorced). And there were a couple of Christmases where my mom was part of a handbell-ringing group, so we went to a service of some kind (whether on Christmas or not, I don't remember) to hear my mom play carols on her bells, but I had no concept of the religious purpose of the event. So Christmas for us was never about celebrating Christ's birth--my mom said once that she tried to teach my sister and me about Jesus and Mary and everything, "but it just came out sounding so unbelievable."

Christmas was about getting and (when when I grew older) giving gifts, I'll confess to that. I'm sure that much of its appeal when I was a kid was that I got mountains of stuff. (Which I did--maybe because my parents probably didn't get very much in the way of gifts when they were growing up?) It's funny, though, because I eventually figured out that it couldn't be all about presents, because whether I had a few things or tons of things, there always came that moment when there were no more gifts to open, and you were still the same person as before. Getting mounds of things didn't magically make me better or happier than I was before the mounds of things; there were always specific items I was thrilled to have, especially when I was little, but the key to my happiness or sorrows couldn't lie in some inanimate thing.

Which is probably something I can say only because I always had lots of inanimate things.

But what I really remember was--as corny as it sounds--the magic of the season. My mom used to tie green ribbons on red glass balls and hang them from the wall sconces and chandelier in the dining room (doesn't chandelier sound fancy? hanging light fixture is probably more accurate). We had electric candles that got set up in all the windows in the front of the house (they were ancient with frayed cords--I remember plugging one in in my sister's bedroom and suddenly finding myself lying on the floor about 5 feet away. Ah, the days before consumer safety laws...). Our tree always had the big colored lights on it (classic 1960s-1970s), and big silver tinsel garlands, and the same ornaments year after year, augmented by the new ones my parents put in our stockings. My mom made certain kinds of cookies that only appeared at Christmas (Mexican wedding cookies and chocolate crinkles. She also made mince pies, but I wouldn't eat those.) She made a traditional English Christmas pudding each year (made around October and put aside to age properly. I didn't eat that, either, though my sister liked the hard sauce, which is basically buttercream frosting with brandy in it). 

Anyway, I could go on and on. The long and short of it is, my parents did a great job at making Christmas special for us--a festival of abundance, color, and lights, during the darkest, coldest, bleakest time of the year. 

But it's been hard to maintain those kinds of traditions. My dad is no longer with us, and we no longer live in the beautiful house in snowy New England, where he'd bring in logs and light a fire in the fireplace on Christmas day. If I spend Christmas with my mom and sister, it's in Florida, and while I've grown quite fond of palm trees draped in colored lights, it's just not quite the same. More often, we spend the actual holiday apart--since it was never about the religious meaning, for us, we simply try to reproduce the warmth and festivities at those times when we can get together; it doesn't have to be on December 25.

The other thing is that NLLDH is not very interested in Christmas. He's not actively opposed to the holiday, but he just doesn't consider it his holiday. I'm not sure how his family used to celebrate when he was growing up, but his parents are actively anti-religious (as opposed to just lapsed, like both of mine were), so certainly he never cared about the birth of Christ part either.

It's a little hard to carry on traditions by yourself. NLLDH would never begrudge me anything I wanted to do in celebration, but it's all on me; I know he won't care either way. We have no kids to create traditions for (the cats certainly don't care, and in fact, NLLDH was always worried that if we set up a tree, Youngest Cat would pull it over--which he's done--and hurt himself on broken glass ornaments or by eating tinsel). And our apartment is small, with little room for decorations, which would look a bit out of place surrounded by the usual clutter and mess.

But this year I'm going to make the effort. I'm going to get a string of lights or two to drape the windows with, or maybe even a pre-lit mini (fake) tree. Or maybe, just maybe, I can find a wee little real tree, a Charlie Brown kind of tree that no one else wants, and rig up a stand. I'll wrap a few small gifts for NLLDH and make him open them with me on Christmas morning. And in the nights leading up to Christmas, I'll turn off the ordinary lights and turn on the colored ones, maybe light a few candles, and sit in light amidst the darkness, warm despite the cold, and countdown to the turning point of the year, when the sun begins to return to us again.

Social angst in an intellectual setting

I find it incredibly difficult to talk to my professors outside of class, and for some reason it really bugs me that I can't figure out why.

Partly it's just me, I suspect, since I never went to see my profs in their office hours in college or even in grad school if I could help it. (Because I didn't usually have questions--even when I should have had questions--and why the hell would they want to talk to me?)

I think some of it is a generic non-trad thing: I have become way more sympathetic to the non-trad desire that your previous life and career actually mean something, that you get some kind of credit for having done other stuff before going back to school. I keep wanting to talk about the stuff I know things about, rather than what I'm actually in law school to learn. Because, you know, I know stuff! Some stuff, at least! Even if it has nothing to do with the matter at hand! The stuff I know, let me show you it! I think I usually avoid doing this (or doing it too egregiously), but I spend the conversation wanting to do it and reminding myself not to, which makes me uncomfortable.

Which isn't meant to say that non-trads (or anyone) should avoid talking about their previous life/experience. Just, you know, as it's relevant. Not just for the sake of showing that even if you're the biggest dunce in the world at Civ Pro, you've actually accomplished stuff in the past.

And some of it is that it's weird talking to profs from the perspective of having been a prof. Today I met with my seminar-of-the-crap-paper-draft prof, who at one point was explaining to me how profs, when they write papers, go to conferences to present them so they can get feedback and revise them before they send them out for publication. And I really wanted to say, Dude, I am QUITE clear on how that all works, thanks. But I didn't, of course, because he meant well and doesn't know that I know all that already, and why should he? I haven't said anything about my background, because how is it relevant to anything except making me feel better about myself because I have a spiffy, shiny degree that most students don't? Even though I sit there dying to tell my profs that yes, I have a Ph.D., because really, I would like them to think that I, too, am spiffy and shiny. (Ideally, they'd consider me spiffy and shiny because of my brilliance in law school, but hey, I'd take anything.)

(I wonder if this is what a retired doctor would feel like going to see another doctor, who doesn't know their patient used to be a doctor?)

You lose some, you win some

Got turned down for a spiffy summer job with the feds today. Now, I have nothing to complain about, because last week, one of the firms I had a callback with back at the very beginning of September contacted me out of the blue with an offer for the summer. I had finally given up on hearing from them, and I was so zonked from trying to write the crappy paper draft, that my reaction was pretty much, "Huh. That's good, I guess." But now I'm feeling especially relieved.

I am pretty bummed about not getting the government job, even though spending part/all of the summer in D.C. would have been complicated, because I'm much more interested in government work than firm work in the long run. I am just not at all interested in the business side of being a lawyer. And I'd really thought that the interview had gone well. But what's funny is that in the last 24-48 hours or so I'd suddenly started thinking of all the places in the interview where I could have, and should have, expressed my burning devotion to government work--and didn't. And I realized a couple of things:

• interviewing in the legal world isn't any more about being honest than it is the academic world. In academia, whatever institution you're interviewing with is EXACTLY the kind of institution you've ALWAYS WANTED to work for!! Community college? Great! Elite graduate-degree granting university? Lifelong dream! Small liberal arts college? Where I've always wanted to be! Law is EXACTLY the same way. Interviewing with a firm? I want to make partner as soon as possible! Public interest? I've been working toward this goal for years! Government? Only way to go! and so on. Why I needed to remind myself of this, I couldn't tell you, but I forgot it for a bit. (Maybe because big firms are kind of like the R1s of the legal world, and kind of take for granted that you want to work for them? A lot of people see government as a kind of second choice field, and as a corollary, government people want to see that you're REALLY dedicated to the work. Which I think I didn't emphasize enough, because I'm so used to thinking that government work is way cool, that I don't even think I HAVE to emphasize it!)
     
• I find it really difficult sometimes to admit to anyone (even myself, I think) what I really DO want to do. It's a combination of things--for as long as I can remember, I think, I've had this attitude that you don't let people know what you REALLY care about, what you REALLY want to do, because then they can make fun of your aspirations and how you'll never achieve them and how pathetic you are. (And no, I would never ask a guy out on a date, either, even though I think women should feel free to.) If I walk around saying I want to get the lead in the school play, and it doesn't happen, everyone will laugh at me for thinking I could do it. But if I don't look like I'm trying to get the lead, then when I don't, no one will think any worse of me. Or in other words, it's worse to try for something and fail than it is not to try in the first place. (Even if not trying kinda guarantees you can't succeed...)
  
  I think most of this is my own personal neurosis, but working in academia, I suspect, doesn't help. I mean, you're not allowed to want a SPECIFIC job in academia--you're supposed to take any job you can get and be glad to have it! (My god, I suddenly feel like Oliver Twist or something.)
    
  Of course, I kind of took this to the illogical extreme of not telling an employer in the field I really want to work in how much I want to work in that field. Because somewhere in my head I think that expressing a specific desire is going to come across as arrogant and presumptuous, and is worse than hedging. Even though the interviewers probably WANT me to want to work in their field. What can I say, I'm smart like that.   

At least, I think that was part of why I didn't get the job. But for all I know, in the end they decided that since they could fill all the positions with students from Yale, Stanford, and Harvard, they would--who can say?

But again, I really can't complain, especially because I'd never thought I had much of a shot at this position and applied largely on a whim. And because I have a job anyway! Which, as firm jobs go, is pretty much a perfect match for me; let's face it--I'm an unusual enough candidate when compared to your average law student, with good grades but not spectacular grades, that any firm interested enough to hire me is likely to be a little less traditional itself. I'm pretty sure that they made an offer to someone who turned them down before they got to me, but you know, it doesn't matter to me whether I was their second, third, fourth, or whatever choice, since I got the job in the end!

And at least now I don't have to worry about a summer job, and can spend all my energy panicking about what I have to get done this semester instead.

Let's see how long I can keep this streak going

I'm so glad to see I'm not the only one who likes The Good Wife! (But don't tell me what happened tonight, I DVRed it to watch later!) I only wish I could actually throw a Good Wife viewing party and hang out with the rest of you in person while watching--that would be so much fun.

Anyway. I found out today that two of the other people in the seminar for which I turned in my utterly crappy incomplete draft also turned in drafts that were incomplete (though doubtless less crappy than my own), and only 1 and 2 pp longer than my own incomplete draft, so I feel a little bit better. Not great--I still wish I'd managed to turn in something better, and length-wise, I still think I sit at the bottom of the curve--but at least it's not like everyone else in the class turned in complete papers. (We're also hoping the 3Ls are all so burnt out on school by now that they turned in incomplete drafts, too. Sorry, any 3L readers I may have. We are bad bad people, I realize this.)

The truly sad thing is I've so traumatized myself over this incomplete draft experience that I dread turning back to this paper again--I associate it only with angst and woe. Which will make it harder actually to finish and revise the darn thing. And I had such high hopes! I was all excited to take a seminar because Writing is My Thing, and I would write a brilliant paper and dazzle my prof and be guaranteed a good grade. Well, this semester has been a learning experience in how to get over myself...

Before I toodle off to bed, let me jot down a few things I was thinking about posting about in the future, and if anyone has any opinions about which would be most interesting, feel free to let me know:

• why Biglaw is like the tenure-track job of the legal world
• what it's like interviewing as a "non-trad" student
• my attitude to "networking" (hint: not that great)
• biggest differences between historical writing and legal writing
• why reading legal blogs these days can be like hearing fingernails on a chalkboard (I should note that this doesn't apply to my fellow students' blogs, I'm thinking more of blogs about the profession generally).

(Or if there is anything, you know, NON-law-related that anyone would like to hear about, I'm happy to take suggestions!)

In which I suck at juggling

So, my overcommitted schedule turned around and bit me on the ass last week. I had a rough draft of a seminar paper due, which would have been manageable, except that it was due at the end of the week that began with moot court (which I didn't know when I registered for the class). Last Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday I spent either preparing for or/and making oral arguments before the school's moot court board. (I made it to the final round, but not onto the teams that represent our school, which means I'm on the board that will run the competition next year--which will be fun, and is further than I really thought I'd get, so that's cool.) And while the arguments, especially on Monday and Tuesday, didn't take up much time, I could NOT concentrate on anything else, which I hadn't foreseen happening. So what with one thing and another, I ended up trying to write a 20-pp. paper between Wednesday and Friday night, and really only figuring out what I wanted to talk about on Friday.

Needless to say, that didn't go very well.

I ended up turning in something significantly under-length and incomplete, about which I'm completely ashamed. I hate that I did this, especially because I like this professor and don't want hir to think poorly of me, or that I haven't been taking the class seriously. And, of course, the draft is graded, which doesn't help. (I plan to turn in something really good for the final version, and I'm hoping my class participation and other work will counteract the draft, but still--not good.)

I am SO dialing back my schedule next semester.

Apart from half-assing everything, the other thing I hate about having taken on too much is that it turns me into a selfish, self-absorbed prima donna. How'm I doing, you ask? Busy busy BUSY! I have SOOOOOO much work to do! Poooooooooor me, I'm so swamped with all these things I'm lucky enough to get to do! OMG, getting to the finals of moot court is soooooooo much work! And my law review note is killing me! And I have a cite-check! Oh, and I had to take time to interview with federal judges for internships next semester! Interning this semester cuts into all my study time! Look at how hard my life is, people! Boggle at everything I am doing, most of which you're doing too! And some of which you might have wanted to do but didn't get the chance to!! I'm a pretty, pretty, overworked princess!!

Gah. Let me just take this moment to issue a blanket apology to my classmates (not that I think any of you are reading this, but you never know, and even if not, I hope sending this out into the ether has some cosmic karma effect). I'm sorry that I've turned into a complete narcissist with nothing to talk about besides myself and my woes (which aren't really woes and are the result of nobody's choices but my own). I'm going to do my best to shut up about all the crap I have to do, because you shouldn't have to put up with the consequences of my own poor choices!

The semester progresses. As does my obsession with all things employment-related

While I am taking Employment Law (and like it a lot), the employment referred to in this post title is my own.

CURRENT: I figured out today that I'm completely behind on my hours for this semester's externship. It's not a problem for my workplace--they're flexible--but it is a problem for my law school. So I have to up my hours for the next five weeks. On the one hand, kind of a bummer, since outlining and all that crazy exam prep is looming. On the other hand, I'd probably sleep in and not accomplish much on those days anyway, because I'm like that sometimes. And I like the work just fine, and I have my own happy little cubicle, so it's all good.

(As an aside, is it just me who thinks it feels kind of wrong to say "going in to work" when I'm talking about an externship? Since they're not really my employers and they're certainly not paying me, except in credit, which I get to pay for in the first place? But "going to my externship" sounds awkward and dorky. Anyway.)

It was kind of a relief to figure out my hours, actually, because I had been feeling like it was taking me FOREVER to finish writing the brief I'd been assigned, but I'd been doing few enough hours a week that if I had been working full time, I'd have finished the thing in a week, which is totally reasonable. So I'm not nearly as slow as I'd worried I was!

FUTURE: I have the chance to intern for a federal judge next semester. (Assuming that I can manage the number of hours zie wants.) Which is very, very cool, and makes me happy. For one thing, the judge's chambers are GORGEOUS. Holy cow, the feds have it good. I was with a state court last summer and while I really enjoyed it and the people were wonderful, the facilities left something to be desired. (It's not just me who thinks so--next spring the court is moving and the state's tearing down the building and constructing a new one, because this building is so sucky.) It was kind of like the difference between a nice well-fed Shetland pony, and a thoroughbred racehorse. Sadly, I feel way more at home with the Shetland pony, and the thoroughbred intimidates the hell out of me. But it will be very good experience, so I'll get over it.

The slightly awkward thing is that I have an interview with another federal judge on Friday... and if I had to choose between the two right now, I'd pick the one I've been offered. But you know, the Friday judge might turn out to be AMAZING, or offer different experiences or something, so I might as well show up and find out what their deal is.

EVEN MORE FUTURE: I had the phone interview for the spiffy non-local job. The people were totally cool. I so, so, SO want to work there. Of course, they were very flattering about my application, which is always an effective way to make me want your job. You think I'm smart????? I luuuuuuuuurve you!! Ahem. Where was I? Honestly, it was a little weird because they mentioned a number of times how "impressive" my resume was and asked me twice where else I had applied, what else I wanted to do next summer, and where their position ranked in my choices. They said they knew I had many options. And I wanted to say, Dudes, do you know what YEAR it is? NO ONE has many options! Well, the top ten in my class probably do, but the rest of us are struggling. It's certainly not like I'm so impressive that the local firms have been falling all over themselves to hire me. (Granted, I'm not the typical big firm candidate, and I think with big firms, that counts against me, whereas other employers see that as a plus. But that's a whole other conversation.) 

The other thing that's funny is that I assumed I was only competitive against the happy Ivy candidates because my school offers a specialty (that I am semi-pursuing) in one area that this job involves. I assumed it had to be my interest in that specialty, because I have no background in any of the other areas the job involves (I think those areas are fascinating as all heck, but everyone and his brother at my school is pursuing jobs in these fields, and they all have tons of background and demonstrated experience in the area, and I feel like I'd be behind even before I started, if that makes any sense.) But they seemed to think that I was comparable to the happy Ivy candidates in general. Which made me feel good. Baffled, but good.

So cross your fingers for me.

And I STILL haven't heard yay or nay from my one outstanding  firm callback. So who the hell knows what's going on with them.

And that's the employment update. It's really funny how much time you spend in a professional program trying to get a job. The academic job market is ridiculous and stressful and whatnot, but proportional to the length of time you spend on a Ph.D., I think it's a shorter process than the continual negotiation of internships/externships/clerkships/associateships etc. you deal with in law school, let alone getting the job after you graduate. Actually, I have a post in the works comparing these things further, but this post is way long enough as it is, and I have to read for class. Thanks for bearing with me this long!

All the stupid little things that go into determining whether you like a class or not

You know, it's funny: I always leave campus on Tuesdays and Thursdays feeling like crap, whereas I leave on Mondays and Wednesdays feeling pretty good.

I just realized it's because on TTh, my last class of the day throws up a number of roadblocks on the path to feeling good about myself:

1. It goes till 5:45, and my internal clock slows down something terrible between about 4 and 7-8 p.m. I'm sleepy, I don't want to put any effort into anything, I just don't care; I want to go home and eat and sleep. (I don't get home till 6:30-ish, either.) On MW, I get out of class early enough to avoid the killer sleepies.
       
2. It's a biggish class, at least for how the professor runs it. He's probably one of the most Socratic profs I have, so there are people on call each day and he calls on them and grills them. (You sign up for the three days you'll be on call ahead of time.) Annoyingly, my three days have passed, and he only called on me on one of them (because there are enough people on call every day that he didn't need to get to me). Which would be fine except he does (in theory) grade on class participation (except the class is big enough that I suspect, speaking from personal experience, that this means a few people will get excellent grades and a few people will get terrible grades, and the rest of us will all mush around in the middle). Anyway, more importantly, if you're not on call, there aren't a ton of opportunities to speak up, which is what keeps me interested in a subject.
   
   Granted, I have another class that's around 80 people (this one is around 50) and I like it just fine, but this second prof speaks generally to the 80 people, he doesn't grill you socratically, and my problem is I don't find listening to a prof's conversation with one student very engaging or compelling. Of course, I may just like second prof better. But I really think there's a difference between listening to a prof have a conversation with one student, and listening to a prof talk to an entire class, in which he may well call on different individuals at any given time.
     
   So my point is, I don't feel engaged or involved in the class, and so at the end of it, I come away feeling dumb, and as if I've just wasted 75 minutes. (It's the flip side of how I used to walk out of class on days I'd spent the whole time lecturing, and feel like a failure as a teacher since I was the only one who talked the whole time. Now, I feel like a failure as a student because I haven't contributed anything.)
       
3. It's a required class, which means that many many people in my year have taken it, to get it out of the way. It has by far the highest concentration of 2Ls of any of my classes this semester. So on the one hand, I know who more of the people are in the class than in some of my other classes. On the other hand, that means I feel much more surrounded by cliques I'm not part of than in my other classes, too; in my other classes, no one clique has enough critical mass really to affect the social atmosphere of the class. I often walk out of this class feeling like I have no friends and no one wants to talk to me because they're all too busy chattering away to everyone else.
   
   (Doesn't that sound pathetic and self-pitying? Writing this, I realize that it's partly because 1) the people I do consider friends mostly aren't in this class, and 2) those in the class that I consider friends have other, closer friends who are in the class as well. And I'm sure there's quite a lot of me being anti-social that's going on here. But still, it means I come away from the class feeling unhappy.)
      
4. It probably doesn't help that I have a really sucky seat (end of the row where the seats are in horseshoe formation, so I only ever really get to see the prof in profile, and there's only one person next to me to talk to).

It's just funny if you compare this to the seminar I have on Wednesday afternoons (dubbed by one student as "Seminar in Gays and Abortion"), which has 8 students in it, so we all get to sit around in a circle and shoot the shit about things like what's wrong with Scalia's jurisprudence, I get to talk and therefore stay involved in the conversation, the prof is talking with all of us at once (not very hard with 8 of us), one of my actual friends is in the class, I like all the others, and it's too small/mixed to be dominated by any one law school clique. (I mean, it's not even big enough to be its own clique.) And, of course, it's also taught by second professor, who I like better.

Although I'll grant that first professor told one of the better law school stories I've heard. A student's cellphone rang, with a goofy ringtone, and we all laughed. First prof laughed too, didn't get mad, and told us the following story:

"So, I was representing the plaintiff in a tort suit, and I had this expert witness I had to put on the stand, so we could get the damages up as high as possible. I needed his testimony, but he was TERRIBLE on the stand. He was a little wizened old guy, a real mole man, and I knew the jury was going to hate him, just HATE him. But I had to use him because I needed his testimony.

"So I've got moleman up on the stand, and he's just as awful as I thought he was going to be, and I'm dying inside; the jury hates him, we're not going to get our damages, this jury's going to award $1, he's killing me!

"But then his cellphone rang. And it was his twelve-year-old daughter's pink cellphone, playing a Britney Spears pop song. And you know what happened? The jury laughed, just like you did. The moleman fumbles the phone out of his pocket--'I'm so sorry, I thought it was turned off! I don't even know how to use this thing, it's my daughter's phone!'--and the jury now knew that he had a daughter and she liked pink and Britney Spears, and it totally humanized him. 

"And they awarded us every penny."

So, yeah, funny stories. But still not my favorite class. Maybe if I keep in mind all these stupid little factors contributing to my dislike, I can get over it (or at least enjoy a little serenity now).

Let's navel gaze metablog, shall we?

I've been struggling somewhat with the purpose and function of this blog for a while now. I recently came across a description of it as "self-absorbed," and while part of me wants to be outraged (what! how dare you imply my every thought isn't a precious jewel offered up for the greater good of humanity!!), I also have to admit that, yeah - this blog is pretty self-absorbed.

Because, you know, it's a blog. About me. And my life.

It got me thinking, though, and I do think this blog was less self-absorbed when I wrote from the position of a professor (although it's also possible that my self-absorption was just more interesting to my usual audience, since I was talking about the kinds of things they all encountered in their own academic lives as well). I would not be at all surprised--or offended--if some of you who started reading this blog when I was a professor find it less interesting now that I'm a student again, since I think most of my original audience were either academics or people interested in academia for whatever reason. 

I'll be honest, I think this blog was better when I was a professor, because by the time I'd started, I'd been in academia for thirteen years (counting all my time as a grad student). I wasn't an authority by any standard, but I had enough experience to offer commentary on the profession--commentary that wasn't all about me, myself, and my own experiences--and in which I could respond to some of the themes and issues that profession was facing.

It is very hard to maintain the kind of analytic distance that allows you to offer that kind of commentary when you become immersed in an entirely new endeavor, one that also places you in a the explicitly subject position of student. (I've talked about this before.) First, I don't feel like know enough about the law as a profession to offer any kind of informed commentary. Second, everything is new! and overwhelming! and coming at me a million miles a minute! (not quite as bewildering as last year, but still lots of new stuff, and just lots of stuff to deal with, period.) It's hard to maintain analytic distance when you're frantically treading water till the next wave comes your way--to totally shift metaphors, it's hard to separate the wheat from the chaff when you're buried under the harvest (I am abandoning this metaphor now). This blog becomes a way just to process what's going on, even though it's nothing remotely different from what every other law student experiences, nor is what I have to say about it remotely original.

It's funny, because I read some of my old posts--often posts I've forgotten I even wrote--and think they were actually pretty good. This blog never was a work of academic scholarship, but it was about academia as much as it was about me. Now, I think it's more about me than it is about the law, or even legal academia. 

And I suspect many of you will say, "So what?? It's your blog! You write about what you want to write about!" Which, if you do, I completely appreciate. It's just been an interesting shift - I have met, through blogging, a whole community of wonderful people who are now my friends regardless of what we do for a living. But it changes this blog for me to talk to "friends" instead of to "fellow academics," and I miss the kinds of conversations that used to take place here, rather than just providing updates on my life.

Which is not to say that I have any magical plan for how to change what I'm doing. And you know, maybe it really isn't all about me, and my blog has changed because blogging has changed. (I'm thinking especially of what Laura wrote here, which I wanted to respond to at the time, but never got around to.) But these thoughts have been tumbling around my head for quite a while, so I thought I would finally let them out, and see what they look like in the light of day.

Even though this entire post simply proves the whole self-absorbed thing.