The 10,776 Word Monkey on my Back

154 footnotes and it's still not quite done...

But, in 36 hours, with my T&E final over and my paper turned in, I get to take a nap.  SO excited!!!!!

The Finals Diet

If I kept a food diary, this is what the last 24 hours would look like:

Dinner last night -  a mini bag of baked potato chips, orange juice, and one bite of disgusting macaroni and cheese, made with canned whipping cream instead of milk

Midnight snack - tortilla chip fragments from the bottom of the bag

Breakfast this morning - 1/2 a mini bag of baked potato chips and a handful of sweetened coconut

Lunch - a can of green beans and three oreo cookies

The conclusion?  Studying for finals and trying to finish several massive papers = no time to cook or go to the grocery store = a wonderful way to encourage creative meal planning. If I don't get off Blogger and finish footnoting my paper, dinner tonight just might be canned tuna and ranch dressing over spaghetti noodles.  Yum!

Wrapping It Up

So the advent of March has made me aware of just how lazy a blogger I've become. The hiatus has also made me decide to revamp the blog a little bit - after all, mikeandlashel.blogspot.com should really be about more than LaShel complaining about her homework once every several weeks. So stay tuned for new content and, if I can talk my techie brother into donating an extreme blog makeover, a snazzy new layout as well.

But first, before bringing in the new, we'll wrap up the old. It always makes me sad when I'm reading a random person's blog and they describe a conundrum or an exciting upcoming event, and then never mention it again. So I'll comb through later entries looking for hints on whether their dog ever came back or they got the big promotion at work, but to no avail. My own life is not nearly that exciting, but here are some random updates just in case there's a stranger out there wondering:

I did end up dropping a class - the one taught by the "greatest living legal philosopher" which turned out to be a fortunate choice because he retired a few weeks before the semester started because of health problems and the class wasn't offered after all.

My summer to-do list was semi-successful. I did the write-on and ended up on the Journal of Law, Ethics, and Public Policy, we enjoyed the swimming pool at our complex twice before moving to our new, deluxe apartment, and we traveled everywhere on our list except Washington DC. The writing a novel, watching movies in French, and getting ahead on coursework decidedly didn't, but it was a great summer nonetheless.

The British Museum collection was amazing... Victoria is a beautiful city. In fact, I was so enamored that it was disappointing to find out my legal education is not transferable to Canada.

The Venus Fly Trap, as predicted, died a hasty and inglorious death. I'm pleased to announce, however, that our marriage somehow managed to survive.

Luckily, the IRS, after months of investigation and endless letters, concluded that Mike and I were truly poor enough to not owe them any money. Yay!


Long story short, the special meeting called by the journal wasn't about my lack of morale, but because the elected leader of our journal was suddenly no longer a student at the law school. Speculation as to why continues to abound.

And there you have it! Stay tuned for further exciting adventures :)

Ugh

In one hour and thirty minutes, I will be swept up in an epic battle against a business law final. While at the beginning of the semester, I might have had delusions of obtaining victory, my goal now is merely to survive.

As a self-professed nerd, I'm usually a little bit excited to take tests. While I complain about them excessively and have my fair share of exam anxiety, I'm a bit of a junkie for the thrill. There's something strangely exciting about getting the chance to show off how much you've learned from reading that 1400 page casebook and attending class all semester. This test may be the first one in my life that I've honestly dreaded entirely.

Every self respecting law exam is in an essay format, which gives you a lot more room to show off what you do know, without having to focus too much on the things that you don't. Business Associations, however, culminates in a three hour exam of short answer questions - the cruel kind.

Take, for instance, this sample question from an actual final my teacher gave a few years ago:

"John says shareholders should be glad that, in setting executive compensation, directors are not permitted to be wasteful. What do you tell him?"

The correct answer? "He's wrong - salaries are reviewed under the business judgment rule and will be overturned only if they amount to waste"

Double Ugh...

Summer!

After 2 semesters as a lowly first year student, I'm now officially a 2L.  Unfortunately, unlike levelling up in a video game, this hasn't appeared to give me any special powers or even made me aware of any previously-locked secret areas.  I guess that must not happen until you become a 3L...

My exams went alright(ish).  As mentioned earlier, I forgot about the First Amendment during my Con Law exam.  My Torts exam was so severely word limited that I couldn't really explore any nuances.  The exam I'm most worried about, though, is Property - I started getting a migraine half an hour before the exam, and even though I loaded up on Excedrin when I realized what was happening, I know the first third of the test was consequentially a probable disaster.  But enough about that... there's no point in obsessing now, considering that I won't get my grades for at least 3 weeks (some rumors have even suggested that they won't be in until late June!  I don't think my sanity is that patient). 

Almost as predictable as my impatience for my grades, the end of the semester has also filled me with grandiose plans for this summer:

1. Do the law review write on (of course, this goal might be a little bit easier to accomplish if they actually gave us the packets with our topic assignments - we were expecting them 62 hours ago).

2. Assuming I make law review, start working on research for a note topic

3. Travel (visit Utah, Chicago, Michigan City, the Amish, Canada, and hopefully D.C.)

4. On campus interviews

5.  Try to get a jump-start on coursework for semester

6. Move to a bigger apartment (meaning one that actually has a bedroom).  Furnish/decorate it adorably.  And keep it clean.

7. Write another novel.  Maybe actually let someone besides my mom read it this time.

8. Find a recipe for brownies from scratch that I like as much as the box kind (a surprisingly difficult struggle, to be honest... I've already been working on this one for several months)

9. Read something literary.  I'm not sure what yet... any suggestions?

10.  Watch all my DVDs with the French dubbing on, in a probably-too-late attempt to remember the language.

11.  Start hitting the gym again.  Law school killed all those good exercise habits I built up in grad school.

12.  Actually use the pool at our apartment complex, at least once

13.  Get caught up on movies and TV shows.  Especially want to see Benjamin Button.

14.  Write letters.  And actually mail them.

15.  Take pictures of me and Mike doing all these fun things.  Maybe even blog about it.

And, of course, (16.) work.  This summer is going to be epic.

Random Ramblings of an Exam-Fried Mind

I may be in the midst of the most grueling finals week of my life, but, hey, at least one week from today I'll be free!*

Although, truth be told, as demoralizing as exams are, there's a little part of me that kind of likes the insanity.  If only that little part of me would have chimed in to remind myself about the existence of the First Amendment during my Con Law exam this afternoon...

I had the first Gyro of my life today, and thought it was delicious.  Plus, an excellent excuse to get bakalava... mmmmmmhmmm! 

*Working on a twenty or thirty page paper and an exam on citation forms for the law review competition.