I didn't want it to come to this, but...

Evidence grades were not posted on Friday.

Getting the hose ready.

Edited to add: A more comprehensive approach has been suggested at T.J.'s Double Play.

_____________
Footnote for people without a sense of humor. My professor probably had grades in on time and it was out of his/her control the the registrar did not post them on Friday.

I further assert that I do not now nor have I ever intended to threaten anyone with waterboarding or any other form of torture, nor could any such statement on this blog be construed by a reasonable reader to advocate, threaten, instigate, or inspire such activities, nor could such statements create in a reasonable reader any fear or apprehension of imminent harm of any kind, waterboarding or otherwise.

Please read the site disclaimer for further information.

Pinch me

I thought I got pwned by tax. I've been really upset since, because I studied hard for it, and it was the only class about which I felt good going in.

I guess its true what they say if you feel awful coming out of an exam, its probably because you knew so much you felt you didn't address the issues adequately and therefore are sure you bombed.

Hell, that's crap too. Because I've left exams sure I would do badly and did.

But not this time.

Did I pwned Tax after all? Eh...

But, I did better than my worst fears, which to me, is an enormous relief.

Lesson: grades really are a crapshoot sometimes.

I should change the name of this blog

to Rejected Again.

I had applied for a very cool fellowship.

Just got rejected... didn't make it past the first round screening.

Not terribly surprised, but I thought I'd at least make it to the interview stage before they rejected me. You know, to keep with the theme.

(Never fear... the "bitterness" is almost entirely tongue-in-cheek at this point.)

Shit

Just got my Family Law grade.

Shit.

My worst grade in law school.

Edited to add: So far... *gulp*

DONE!

Evidence: pwned.

Butterflyfish: now officially halfway done with law school. *clap clap clap*

I guess its time I figure out exactly what I want to do with my law degree, now, huh?

Oh, and find a job for next summer.

And work on my note, which has languished for well over a month, though I have to have it substantially complete by early January.

*damn*

Can't I enjoy victory for one night?

Post-BA

So, I have no idea how I did. Can't even hazard a guess. Totally fine with that.

I wrote a lot about agency and proxies and securities and the business judgment rule and the Williams Act and LLCs and piercing the corporate veil and white knights.

I just hope I wrote it when and where I was supposed to, and that what I said was accurate.

Feeling ridiculously unreasonably good right now... probably because I have my final exam on Tuesday and a 10 page paper due between now and then... this is the least I've had to do in months!

Gonna vegetate and maybe drink a little.

Lipstick

Away message of my friend and fellow MILS:

The zen attitude to law school finals: I am hoping for a butterfly (an A) but put lipstick on a caterpillar (B-) and I will be happy.

My response:

Nope. Lipstick is a B. A B- is a caterpillar sans lipstick, and that won't make me happy, no matter how cute the little bugger is.

Its business time

Bus Ass final in t-minus two days.

Corporations Don't Protect Fiduciary Losers.... and all that.


**Also... super mega bonus points for anyone who gets the title.

Edited to add: Forget bonus points, just watch this:

Pwned

Tax was my favorite subject. I studied it pretty much to the exclusion of Family Law (which is today). I had templates and notes and the wherewithall to answer any of the nasty little tricky questions she made available through prior tests. My prof is reasonably transparent and has no problem giving multiple 'A' grades if the students meet the point threshhold.

I worked f**king hard in that class. I thought I could nail an A. I really did.

Yeah . . .

That test kicked my ass.

And not in a 'gee, I was tired but I feel like I did my best on most of the questions' way.

More like a 'holy hell, I have no f**king idea where the authority for that is and cannot answer it in 12 minutes' kind of way.

Did I fail? No... definitely not.

But I feel So. Totally. Screwed.

Writing this at 4:40a.m. ... and now I study for my Family Law exam in less 12 hours.

Tax exam

...is in T-minus 40 minutes.

I don't need luck. I am gonna f**king pwn this exam. It IS my bitch.


*gulp*

wired in a fire

wired wide awake and working on family law. no i'm not, i'm doing this. but then i'll do family law. i have R.E.M. 'its the end of the world as we know it and i feel fine' stuck in my head.

thats great it starts with an earthquake birds and snakes and air-o-planes

Clownfish will undoubtedly have no pity and will awaken me with his usual cry

Mommy . . . help me!

coming in a hurry with the furies breathing down / your / neck.

at six-zero-zero. every night when he goes to bed, he says "Mommy I will see you at six-zero-zero." the time thing started back at the post where he became obsessed with digital clocks 5-4-4 look its 5-4-5 he's all about the time now

save yourself serve yourself world serves its own needs listen to your heart bleed

except it won't really be six-zero-zero because he tends to wake up around five-three-zero. and i'll be lucky if i slept a few hours be that point.

uh oh this means no fear cavalier renagade and steer clear tounrnament and tournament and tournament of lies

of course tomorrow is the day before my tax exam and i only recently discovered that my professor likes to f*ck with us by giving us depreciable assets with class lives and enough info to do a 168 rigamorole

the other night i tripped a nice continental drift divide

but then has the caveat of 'most favorable deductions' --- which apparently means 179 but i didn't know that so i've been depreciating the shit out of stuff that i was supposed to expense because she mentioned 179 in passing like once so now i have to learn that

leonard bernstein!

in my blearyheadedness clownfish'll be lucky i don't give him i don't know like a raw egg in his lunch box tomorrow

birthdayparty cheese cake jellybean boom

consistent capitalization and coherence are for suckers

right? right

its the end of the world as we know it and i feel fine

Overheard in Bus. Ass.

That f*cking diamond is huge. When she waved her arm, I thought she was gonna put that diamond ring through your head.

Its enough carats to feed Bugs Bunny.

Her arm must get tired. I'm tired just looking at the thing.

It looks like a ring pop.

Captain Planet lives in that thing.

BFF Playground

So I have the song sex and candy stuck in my head. You probably don't remember it. Its an annoying ear-worm of a one-hit-wonder of a song that I caught a few bars of this morning when I turned on my car and before I pushed in the pre-schooler music tape. Worse, I have alternate lyrics playing that relate to the two exams that are causing me to panic and write in run-on sentences. And I am not really clever enough to make it all work.

Anyway the alternate lyrics go something like this but since I am putting no real time or thought into this don't expect anything close to comprehensible, let alone brilliant... also apparently i start somewhere in the middle of the song.

Tax and Family

Hanging out basement by myself and I've had too much caffeine and i've been thinking bout the code and there it was

like an unrecognized gain yeah
there it was
like alimony reclaimed
yeah there it was
like long term capital gain

i smell tax and family here
who's that with fringes there
who's that with 165(c) losses at their election
this surely is a dream yeah
it makes me wanna scream.

Edited to add the Youtube video in case you really want the full effect of this awfulness.

Zamxiety

(zam ZI et eee): Noun.

The feeling that creeps up on a law student when she realizes she has her tax exam in less then 10 days, followed in less than 24 hours by her family law exam.

- - -

So every time I think about my future as a lawyer, I get upset. Its probably because I don't really know what I want to do with my law degree. I am sad I don't have a job lined up for next summer, but I also realize I probably would not have enjoyed life at most of the places at which I interviewed. So maybe its a blessing. But it doesn't help me with my current identity crisis.

I once wrote about my post-law school personality profile here -- ESTJ.

In the comments I discussed one thing that hasn't changed. The J. I have always scored off the charts on J.

I said:

J's feel better after they've made a decision and feel anxious when things are unsettled. They tend to decide and move forward, and deal, right or wrong. P's prefer to leave things undecided for as long as possible, weighing options and exploring possibilities. P's feel a bit trapped once they've made a decision.

I think that is part of the problem now. I've never not had a plan, for the big picture stuff anyway. I mean, I didn't expect my husband to get deployed or to have trouble conceiving or any host of other things beyond my control. But in my life, in the things that I do make choices about, I have never not known what the next step would be.

It should be exciting. Perhaps it was at the start of law school, but only because I knew it was acceptable to say "I don't know" in those days. It has ceased to be exciting.

Not knowing what I want to be when I grow up causes me great distress.

Thanksgiving meme

A. Things I'll Eat Today

1) Turkey
2) Mashed Potatoes
3) Apple Pie
4) Veggies and dip
5) Corn

B. Things I Won't Eat Today

1) Giblets
2) Sweet potatoes
3) Pumpkin pie
4) Pecan pie
5) less than 3000 calories ... mmm... food coma

C. Things I'm Ambivalent About

1) Gluttony
2) Holiday shopping
3) Law school exams
4) Thanksgiving television fare (football and giant balloons)
5) Law review

D. Things That Can Bite Me

1) Family Law
2) Two exams within 24 hours
3) Law firms that sent more than one rejection letter (I get it, asshole!!)
4) Law firms that didn't hire me
5) Bus. Ass.

E. Things I'm Thankful For

1) Clownfish
2) Bullshark here and safe this year
3) Thanksgiving at my sister's house (plus her Hubby and my Niece and Ben the Bird) with my parents and my brother and his fiancee -- so good we're all healthy and living in the same time zone...
4) My extended family and dear friends, none of whom know about this blog but for whom I am thankful nonetheless
5) MILS, Mommy Lawyers, and all my bloggy buddies, especially the one who checks up on me when the tone of the blog gets a little down. You know who you are. Thank you.


Hat Tip: Corndog.

Its the most wonderful time of the year

I feel like dancing through the color-saturated set of Pushing Daisies. Tra-lala...

Why?

I'm not cooking Thanksgiving dinner. I'm not hosting Thanksgiving dinner. I spent no time cleaning my house this weekend, or cooking, or panicking about apple pies and sides and defrosting frozen turkeys.

I get to go to my sister's house with some token dessert and flowers and my family.

Sure, I'll help out that night, probably rinse some dishes for the dishwasher and/or entertain the kids.

But I am not cooking.

Tra-la-la.

* * *

I AM however studying. A lot. Because this semester sucked and I had too much going on to consistently read and/or outline.

F*ck.

Reading evidence at 5:30 AM has a way of ruining my good mood.

*Snort*

You have to read this post.

Ah, the 70's.

I haven't laughed that hard in weeks.


Hat tip: Mommy Tracks. My mistake was reading this in the law library.

Professor Gotcha

One of my professors makes it a point to call on people she perceives (correctly) as unprepared for class. She thinks it makes some kind of point. What it does is slow down class and waste every one's time.

Worse yet, she goes after the people who are prepared just at the moment they seem to be distracted ... its probably easy to tell, as that person is probably looking like something close to happy for a brief shining moment.

I would love to just shake her and yell:

We are NOT in middle school!

The students are adults making choices. Some of them choose to listen. Some choose to play Scrabble, watch basketball, or download p&rn. Valid choices all.

Call on the students who wish to participate, they generally indicate as much with a raised hand. You know who the gunners are and use them judiciously, for which we all thank you. But there are other intelligent people who try to participate and you ignore them until that 30 second interval they happen to be checking email, then you nail them.

Please stop. Its rude and wastes every one's time as you repeat your question for the fifth time.

Besides, and here's the point, WE'RE NOT F**KING 1Ls!!!!!!!!

Me, Interrupted

I'm getting back to good.

No, I'm not on a rollercoaster. Yes, I've been off meds for a long while. No, I am not currently drunk.

I know I just posted to say I didn't see things changing anytime soon. But a few things in my personal life that have been bringing me down have gotten . . . well, a lot better.

Amazing what a few heartfelt conversations can do.

Moreover, I asked for the help of a friend. I almost never do that. All she did was watch Clownfish on short notice for about an hour. But I hardly ever do that. The fact she did it willingly, without hesitation, when it was inconvenient for her to so do, amazes me probably more than it should. I mean, I'd do that for anyone. It just really doens't occur to me that others will as well.

I remember last winter when I was sick right before finals and Bullshark was in Iraq ... I may not have blogged about it. I drove to the emergency room about 2:00 AM, Clownfish in tow, because I was so sick and in so much pain and didn't know what to do. I know a Mom who, had I called at 2:00 AM, would have gladly taken Clownfish in for the night.

But I didn't call. I'm that reluctant to impose, I brought my child to an urban ER on a Friday night... well, Saturday morning I guess. As they say on Thomas the Tank Engine, "Luckily, no one was hurt."

Anyway, that was a long way to say a little help, asked for and given, goes a long way to make me feel less alone.

Not myself

Some have noted I've not been "myself" on the blog or in person lately.

It is true.

And I'm not talking about it here.

Which is also not like me.

Things will get better, I hope.

Until then, I'll continue to scribble off the occasional slapdash post and host the Roundup.

Bear with me.

Also: see 934 F Supp 1395

The kind of thing law students find funny. Motion to kiss my ass.