JD Law Students Blog

Today, when I prepared some briefs for Torts, I set the text in Garamond instead of Times New Roman.

The difference between the two fonts isn’t really important; the point is that I took a few minutes to doll my briefs up a bit, and afterward, I realized that it was satisfying. Actually, it felt liberating. It didn’t seem significant at the time, so I couldn’t understand why using a different typeface was registering with some part of me as being so important.

I thought about it some, and I decided that what I really found so gratifying was that by using Garamond instead of Times New Roman, I injected a little bit of aesthetics into my daily life. There hasn’t been a whole lot of that lately; attention to aesthetic detail seems to be lost in law school. I think I’ve been missing it.

The law school environment places a premium on getting to the core of an issue; the fewer frills, the better. We throw out colorful language in favor of terse but accurate description. The abandonment of decoration spills over elsewhere. Textbooks are dense tomes of solid text – an illustration is unthinkable. Our papers are always twelve-point Times New Roman, probably with one-inch margins. Our thought, our presentation, and our expression must be crisp and clear. The message underlying it all seems to be: get to the point, and fast.

Earlier today I got a letter in the mail. I opened it and shortly I was scanning a Thanksgiving letter from my mother, seeking out that all-important main point. I caught myself after a minute and adjusted my attention to actually reading the letter, instead of putting everything through the “ESSENTIAL INFORMATION ONLY” filter.

As long as I retain the ability to turn off that filter, I think I’ll be okay. Now, to brief some cases.

…but there’s a catch, the South Royalton sun sets by 5:30pm. This neat mountain trick makes it easy to sleep late and hard to wake early. Grrr…week eleven is exposing the gruff underside of my otherwise cheery disposition. Chilly winds and teeny tiny power outages, keep it interesting in between short term snow blasts and eerily warm days. The multivitamin was made for days like these.

We have moved quickly through midterms and are flying through the in between, barreling clumsily into finals and the coveted Christmas break. To be brutally honest, there were bumbling victories and unsteady reassessments following this first set of measurements. I am starting to sense some correlation between what I read, write, discuss and are expected to understand.

I’m in the home stretch now. Thanksgiving used to be the tofu-rkey stuffed start of the holiday season. This year it’s a guilt-free, mid week break and the ramp up for the last push of the semester. I’m back in NYC for the vacation and ironically, I feel a bit alien here, LMAO. My torts professor often makes jokes about this process, this education, as a corruption of sorts and yikes…he’s may be right. Although, it depends, on who you ask, like everything else in the law school corridor.

The kicker is that I am privileged to be here, and I know this. I’m blessed to be pressed, squeezed and uncomfortable because just like puberty, this is the way it works. On the plus side there are only 13days, 328 hours, 19737 minutes and 1184200 seconds left until I’m halfway to where I want to be and are poised for forward motion.

ttyl,

I couldn’t think of anything original to write, so I dug into my treasure trove and remembered that an Ann Landers column provided the perfect Thanksgiving message:

“Things to Be Thankful For”

“Be thankful for the clothes that fit a little too snug, because it means you have enough to eat.
Be thankful for the mess you clean up after a party, because it means you have been surrounded by friends.
Be thankful for the taxes you pay, because it means you’re employed.
Be thankful that your lawn needs mowing and your windows need fixing, because it means you have a home.
Be thankful for your heating bill, because it means you are warm.
Be thankful for the laundry, because it means you have clothes to wear.
Be thankful for the space you find at the far end of the parking lot, because it means you can walk.
Be thankful for the lady who sings off-key behind you in church, because it means you can hear.
Be thankful when people complain about the government, because it means we have freedom of speech.
Be thankful for the alarm that goes off in the early morning hours, because it means you’re alive.”

From the Ann Landers Column
To all of my colleagues at VLS and everyone reading this blog, I wish you all a safe, warm and happy Thanksgiving. Don’t eat too much Tofurkey (I love saying “Tofurkey” it is a funny word) and remember, although many of us will be studying, and then some, always keep it in perspective.
Best Wishes to all.

Most dogs wake up their “people” every morning. Not my dog, Ranger. He is not a morning dog. Every morning when I get up for school, he looks at me like, “Are you insane?” In order to get him to go outside before I leave for school, I have to literally push him out of my bed (yes he sleeps in my bed and he is a bed hog needless to say) and encourage him to go out. Then, once I successfully get him outside, I usually see that he is just sitting on the porch staring back at me with a look on his face that says, “Why am I out here, again?” Luckily, I get back to let him out again about mid-morning when he is more awake. He’s only a little over 2 years old, so it’s not like he’s an old dog. He just hates mornings.

Ranger is much more awake toward the afternoon. Then, he is constantly nudging me as I am trying to check my email or do my reading because he wants me to go out and pay Frisbee. It’s nice on the weekends. He never wakes me up early!

I am so glad to have my dog with me! It seems at this point in time it is good to have your best friend around when my confidence may not be at an all time high. Ranger doesn’t care if I made a complete idiot of myself in Torts or if I gave an incorrect answer in Civil Procedure. It is about this point in time when my eyes hurt at night as I sit and try to read for class the next day. Or, I am reading and going over notes from the last few classes in an attempt to play catch up.

I think I am not alone. The looks on the faces of my fellow 1Ls are not as crisp and bright as they had been during the first month or two of school. By now, reality is setting in, and finals are approaching, and everyone is ready for Thanksgiving break, to get that second wind. Perhaps keeping your head above water has become the new goal, instead of taking the world by storm. The latter was probably the sentiment of many of us before we stepped foot inside of a law school classroom.

Perhaps you can hear the “Bad Day” song in your head as you go through these difficult days. In my case, the song in my head is something much stronger, such as an 80s or 90s tune with a head-banging twist to it, but I digress…

All I have to do when I am not feeling 100% is look over at my dog. He is usually peacefully lying on the rug next to me with a slight bounce in his tail as if I am the greatest person he has every encountered. It is a priceless feeling!