Future Self Failure

One year ago yesterday I decided to attend GW. One week from this Tuesday I'll take the first of four finals that will complete my first year at GW. I'm not sure which makes me feel worse: Thinking back on the decision I made a year ago, or thinking ahead to the finals I'm so not prepared for.

Now is not the time to think about the past. Now is the time to think about the fairly immediate future. There will be plenty of time for navel-gazing three weeks from now when the finals are finished. Nose Down, Keep Going.

Thank you for reading my inner dialogue/self-pep-talk. I'm going to study now. Really, I am. Contracts, sales, UCC glee, all day long! Professor Contracts, who seems to be one of the most popular and beloved professors at GW, finished our final class last Thursday by teaching us sales law in three easy lessons:

1. What is the P's claim? Always the same: You made a promise and you didn't keep it, you dirty rat. (Keep your eyes out for implied promises such as those of merchantability and fitness of goods!)
2. What can the D say in his defense? Make a list of possibilities. It may be quite long. Along with each possible defense, list all the possible exceptions to that defense which the P might raise in response. This is where the fun is!
3. What remedies might the buyer or seller seek? There is also fun here: The UCC provides for lots of fun remedies, each of which is available in only specific situations, which you must also know. Enjoy

I know. Lots of 1Ls already had all this fun last semester, but GW spreads contracts over two semesters and puts all of sales in the second one. That means the UCC and I have really only been casual acquaintances up to this point; now is the time for me to try to make us fast and intimate friends. Emphasis on the fast part. Why didn't I study more and blog/surf/watch tv less? Yeesh.

In addition to teaching us Sales in three easy lessons, Prof Contracts also congratulated us on how far we'd come this semester. We learned a lot about contracts, yes, but in addition, he said, "Your mind has changed. For better or worse, you'll never think about things the same way again." Hm. True. I think. The problem is that better/worse part. I can't decide which it really is.

But that's not really important at the moment. It's time to study. Meanwhile, if you're still looking for advice on how to construct a schedule for your 2L year, Slithery D has some advice and links to others' thoughts. Is it just me or does GW's schedule seem way ahead of that of the majority of law schools? We had to plan our schedule weeks ago and the final GW final will be over by May 7th. I finish May 6th at 5 p.m. It's gone quickly, but I'll shore be glad when that moment rolls around. Yessir. So very glad.

Posted 07:18 AM | Comments (4) | law school

Knowspam?

Knowspam claims it will eliminate 100% of spam. I discovered it by sending email to someone who uses it; I got a quick reply from Knowspam telling me to click a link to verify the email I'd sent was coming from a human. No big deal, but a bit of a hassle.

Anybody have any experience with/thoughts on Knowspam?

Knowspam: It works well! I love it. OR: It's a pain in the arse! Discuss.

Posted 08:01 AM | life generally

Nahnahnah, heyheyhey, Bye Bye Chief

Thanks to This Modern World, I just learned that yesterday students, faculty, and community members at the University of Illinois have taken over the Swanlund Administration Building to protest the school's racist mascot, Chief Illiniwek. More up-to-date information (with pics and movies—this is a high-tech sit-in!) is at the activist's site, Retire the Chief.org, and one of the activists—a Philosophy graduate employee—is blogging the action. It sounds like they've done exactly what the GEO did two years ago when we took over Swanlund for a day to demand the University recognize the rights of its graduate employees to organize and bargain collectively. The sit-in strategy worked that time; the University agreed to recognize the results of a union election, which the GEO won, and now the union is bargaining for its first contract. (A glacial process, it seems). Here's hoping the Retire the Chief activists are as successful!

UPDATE: It looks like the action was successful; how successful is still unclear. While we wait for the press conference, how about a little taste of UIUC spin? Check out its announcement of why Swanland is closed today:

For the safety of students, faculty, staff and the public, the Swanlund Administration Building is locked today. Campus administrative activities are fully staffed and continuing in alternate locations. For the convenience of the public, offices have been established on the third floor of the Illini Union Bookstore and the Turner Student Services Building. Regular telephone numbers for the relocated offices are being forwarded to the alternate locations.

Um I think that should read:

We can't get into Swanlund today because we refuse to retire a racist mascot. We've got flack-handlers spinning to the press and public on the third floor of the Illini Union Bookstore and Turner Building. Everything is definitely not ok. Thanks for asking.

On a mostly unrelated note: Why doesn't the GEO have a real blog that nicely organizes and archives their news? I designed the current GEO site in about 2001 before I knew what a blog was. They've hacked my design into complete ickiness, and it looks like it's time for a thorough reworking of things. Maybe when he/she gets out of the sit-in, the blogging Philosophy grad could help whip the GEO's site into shape?

Posted 07:48 AM | Comments (3) | general politics

Audiovisual Crack

Maybe you're spending the day doing last-minute taxes, or maybe you're heading into finals period, or maybe you're just at work wishing it were Friday instead of Thursday. Whatever the case, you need some mental breaks. So, for your viewing pleasure:

• The M&M's Easter Commercial I mentioned the other day but couldn't find. I knew it had to be online! Thanks Cinnamon for finding it!
• We Like the Moon, apparently the inspiration for some Quizno's ads I haven't seen. This is far and away the funniest use of flash animation I've ever seen. Every time I watch it I bust out laughing again. Of course, YMMV. The first few seconds I watched it the first time, I didn't really get it. It just seemed dumb. But by the time it reached the end of its first loop, I was hooked.
• The great Cat Smackdown: A hilarious home video compilation of two cats, well, smacking each other down. Mostly it looks like Bumpo smacks down Francis on a regular basis, but it looks like Francis mostly enjoys it.

Posted 07:59 AM | Comments (3) | life generally

I Am Whatever You Say I Am

You are a GRAMMAR GOD!

If your mission in life is not already to
preserve the English tongue, it should be.
Congratulations and thank you!

How grammatically sound are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

This is so not true, but I'll take it. Now where's my crown and fiery halo? They were here just a minute ago and I think they might come in handy when I have to go to school and try to convince my professors not to flunk me. ;-) [link via a mi parecer]

UPDATE: It looks like Windoze users should not take this quiz —it might be loading crapware onto your computer! See the comments for more info.

Posted 06:31 AM | Comments (5) | life generally

Streaming Law School

I've missed some class recently (shock!), but thanks to Passover, at least one of my professors videotaped several of the classes I missed. As I watch these taped lectures, I realize once again how broken the learning model is at a major law school like GW. What do I miss by having not been in class and watching the class on video instead? Absolutely nothing. Sure, there was the one day per semester in each of my classes where I had to "perform" the ritual of regurgitating the day's reading, acting as little more than a foolish foil for my professors' otherwise largely canned lectures, but aside from those 4 days of class, I might have watched the whole semester on video. I would have learned just as much. In fact, I might have learned more; it's nice to be able to rewind to listen again to the confusing parts.

So what do I pay for in law school? Why doesn't GW just package videos for me to buy, rather than making me move to DC and actually show up on campus for classes? I can think of many reasons—attending class is only one part of a full law school experience—but it's hard to shake the feeling that the attendance requirements are just a mask for the fact that big law schools are just degree factories that long ago sacrificed learning models for business models. Sure, we do learn this way, but let's just drop the pretense, shall we? Charge me half the tuition, send me the videos, I'll watch them at home, and we can all stop pretending there's really a need to pay for the plasma screens in the lobby that no one even looks at. Grrrr.

I'm not dissing my professors. They are almost uniformly terrific this semester (as they were last semester, w/one notable exception), and their lectures—canned or not—are generally very very good. Also, I'm not really advocating online learning; it comes with its own problems. That doesn't change the fact that when you're dealing with classes of more than 100 students each, actual physical attendance seems to add very little value.

Oh, but don't mind me. I'm probably just bitter that I've missed so much class and am going to do so poorly on exams. ;-)

Posted 06:10 AM | law school

Electra Made Me Blind*

Speaking of bikes (see the last post) check out the cool new Electra Townie. It's an upright (traditional) bike that's supposed to put you in a sort of recumbent position so you can put your feet flat on the ground when you stop, while still maintaining the proper distance from pedal to seat when you're pedaling.

Although it seems many people aren't aware of it, you generally should not be able to touch the ground when sitting on the seat of a traditional bike. If you can touch the ground w/more than a tiptoe while sitting on the seat, your seat is probably too low and you're not getting maximum efficiency out of your pedal stroke. Worse, you could damage your knees riding with the seat too low. Trust me on this. When I started riding 70-120 miles/day, I found out the hard way how much difference proper seat adjustment can make. After the first week, I could barely walk because my knee was so sore, and I couldn't figure out why. But I raised the seat a few centimeters and suddenly, all was well. The knee pain magically disappeared. All was right with the world. So, long story short, if you're riding a traditional bike, stop/go traffic can be kind of a pain because if your seat is at the right height, you have to keep coming off your seat every time you stop.

That's why the Townie makes so much sense -- it's the perfect commuter bike. Not only would it be good for stop/go traffic, but also the upright riding position would give you a great view of the road and traffic. The 8-speed Nexus hub and the fenders on the Townie 8 also help make it the ultimate commuter. Suddenly my Bianchi Milano -- with it's loose bottom bracket and off-true wheels from a hard winter of commuting — appears out-classed and out-cooled. Good thing I can't possibly pay for or store another bike right now, or else I might be in trouble.

Oh, and congrats to SuperD, who just got a neato new bike of her own.

* Kudos to anyone who can name the source of the title to this post, but since that's so random, I'll give you more: It's a song title. Who's it by? Of course you can do a search, but that's cheating.

Random related: The Macintosh was briefly and unofficially codenamed "bicycle,"— it was like a "bicycle for the mind" because it allowed your mind to move faster and more efficiently, just as a bike allows your body to move faster and more efficiently. The name didn't stick, but how cool is that?

Posted 10:18 AM | Comments (5) | life generally

Welcome Scoplaw!

Venturpreneur's first poll* for his "Law Student Blog Honor Roll" seems to have spurred (or been a pivotal part of) a mini-boom of interest in law student blogs and pre-law blogs. Adding to this mini-boom, Venturpreneur's first poll has been followed by a second, and accompanied by Legal Underground's comments about those polls, including a little list of new pre-law blogs and a kind word about ai. (Thanks, Evan! No need to feel bad; I'm just that very rare beast: an anti-competitive law student. More on that later, perhaps.)

All of which is to say: If you're looking for a great new pre-law blog, say hello to Scoplaw. What could be more interesting than a poet going to law school? A poet who bikes to law school! Ok, I don't know if he's going to bike to law school, but he rides bikes, he has a garage full of bikes and bike parts, he refurbishes old bikes -- how can you not love this guy?

But yes, Scoplaw is also going to law school, and he's going to blog about it, which promises to be fascinating. How will a poet w/an MFA react to law school's demand that you replace creativity with regimented banality? Will he find a creative way to adapt, or will he feel like he's landed on an alien planet where nobody cares about the thoughts in your head except insofar as they mirror a blackletter law outline? ;-)

Ok, it's not that bad. But still, I can't wait to hear how things go for Scoplaw, because in some ways he and I may be a lot alike. Granted, a poet w/an MFA could be very different from a former candidate for a PhD in English, especially when that English PhD program was more cultural studies/critical theory than literature. For example, the English department I was in had a sort of invisible wall between the MFA program and the MA/PhD program, an oil and water type thing based on politics and petty power struggles, mostly, but also on what seemed to be a mutual disdain. The creative writers seemed to scoff at the seriousness with which the "Lit" people took their theory and cultural studies, while the "Lit" people scoffed at what they assumed was the creative writers' free-floating superficiality and lack of critical consciousness. The two groups did different things, and therefore had different goals, but that's exactly why Scoplaw's experience of law school should be so interesting. I imagine it's a lot easier to go from lawyer to poet/creative writer than the other way around, but I'd be very happy if Scoplaw proved me wrong.

At any rate, check him out, and wish him luck. We all need that.

* Note: Speaking of that Venterpreneur poll, if ai is going to lose any contest, it would be hard to think of a better blog/blogger to lose to than Mixtape Marathon. I'm not familiar with Sapere Aude, but I'll be checking out out in the future since it's so well loved.

Posted 05:43 AM | Comments (7) | law school

Finalizing

My first final of the spring semester is two weeks from tomorrow. At this point, I've done about nothing to prepare. This is not good. Loose ends still remain to tie up before I feel I can focus on finals, but that focus is going to have to come soon or I'll be seriously testing the conventional wisdom that no one flunks out of law school (because the school wants your $$!). Those loose ends include:

Summer Job Update: Thanks in no small part to all the good advice from you, my readers, my summer job dilemma has been resolved for some time now -- I took the public defender job. At first I was very torn and regretted having to make that choice, but since then I've been very very glad to have the job thing settled and to be doing something this summer that will provide such great experience. Taking that job also allowed me to qualify for a GW Summer Subsidy, which I was awarded last week. (Last week was an incredibly full week!) So the summer is looking like it will be terrific -- exactly what I need. I'm not sure how much I'll be able to say about the details of the job here, but I'll certainly post what I can.

FYI: I'm not working in the D.C. Public Defender's office. That office is known as one of the best PD offices in the country, so it would be great to be there, but I'll be spending my summer at a nearby PD office. I didn't even apply to the DC office, mostly because the job hunt went so quickly I just never got around to it. I'm

Scheduling for Next Year: Thanks to everyone who also offered advice about my course scheduling questions a couple of weeks ago. For now, the schedule for fall looks like this: ConLaw II, Evidence, Labor Law, Admin Law, and probably the Moot Court Competition for one additional credit (for a total of 14 credit hours). This might change during drop/add in the fall, but that's it for now. I'll probably be taking the Consumer Mediation Clinic in the spring, along with CrimPro, Ethics, and other things I can't think of at the moment.

Property Review: A couple of weeks ago I offered to share my notes from a Property review session. For those who expressed interest, the notes are here. I've since learned that those notes are even more superficial/surface than I at first realized (if you rely on them for the rule against perpetuities or to navigate through the maze of servitudes, you'll be in a world of hurt), but they still provide a good big-picture overview and might give you some structure on which to hang your own outline.

Posted 06:54 AM | Comments (2) | law school

Bawk! Bawk!

You know you live in a consumer society when you associate holidays with ads as much as with anything else. I can't think "Happy Easter!" without thinking of a 1980s tv commercial for M&M's candy, that featured a kid in a chicken suit saying "Thank you Easter Bunny! Bawk! Bawk!" If you know of an online version, please point it out because I can't find it and I'd love to see it again.

Nostalgia for television commercials. How sad.

For Christians, this is supposed to be a day of happiness, and I hope it is. Yet, regardless of your religious beliefs, today might also be a good day to think about the world we're living in. Just about a year ago the U.S. went to war in Iraq for no clear reason. Thousands have died in the last year — for no clear reason.Now, the Bush administration has declassified the August 6, 2001 memo saying Bin Laden was determined to strike in the U.S., that al-Quaida cells were in the U.S., and that their plans included hijacking planes. It's no coincidence that this memo was released on a late Saturday afternoon on a holiday weekend; clearly, Bush and Co. are hoping people will be too absorbed in their holiday observances to pay close attention to the significance of this development. Meanwhile, the completely lackluster walking corpse that is the Democratic nominee for president is MIA. Oh happy day!

I've been so absorbed in moot court competition (I didn't make the board, by the way), the auction and the finals looming over my head that I haven't had time to pay much attention to the news. I'm sure I'm not alone; it really is easier in many ways to concentrate on your own life and what's going on w/in your immediate sphere of existence than to devote time and thought and energy to the larger world. And there's certainly a bliss to ignorance, but where is our bliss leading us?

But what am I saying? It's Easter. We have funny television ads. Thank you Easter Bunny! Bawk Bawk!

p.s.: I really didn't sit down to write such a bitter pill, but then I read that memo and there you go.

Posted 07:35 AM | Comments (4) | general politics life generally