My first week on the new job.

I began work for the Office of the Indiana Attorney General this week.

The first day

I had to force myself to get up incredibly early after not being able to get to bed before midnight (even with the help of Benadryl). I wanted to work in plenty of slack to shave and get dressed up; naturally suiting up takes a bit more time than throwing on my usual t-shirt and shorts. I was scheduled to check in at my office at 8:30…although driving to Indy from Bloomington only takes roughly an hour, I left at 6:45 to account for possible traffic issues in downtown Indy as well as possible issues of getting lost since I hadn’t been there before (I landed this job through an interview held within our school). Sure enough, I arrive in downtown Indy a good 40 minutes early, and initially thought I overshot a bit. Then traffic got thick really quickly. Then I struggled to find the parking garage we were directed to, making me worry that I was actually going to be cutting it close. Then I finally found it and was turned away by a lady saying the garage was full, which compelled her to direct me to another one. Happily, she gave me wrong directions to an intersection that didn’t even exist. It now became really clear that I was indeed going to be late despite the fact that I had seemingly been cautious; I phoned in and apprised them of my situation before I ever actually got late. Eventually, after arriving to within a few blocks of my office 40 minutes early, I strolled in more than 45 minutes late, agitated as could be. Obviously I apologized profusely, and they did understand (especially given the unexpected parking issues that had plagued others as well). I was assured that no harm was done and that nobody I was working for would even realize I was late since I was just dealing with HR people for orientation initially, but it wasn’t exactly the auspicious debut I had hoped for either. Orientation is what it is. It’s boring no matter where you are, but companies have to do a certain amount of it. By orientation standards, this was an eminently tolerable day. They got most of that stuff out of the way, and midway through the day we were already assigned projects to work on and basically told, “Have at it. Tell me if you have any questions.” There wouldn’t be much else to say, except that a surprising twist took place during the second half of the day. 

Don’t worry, I haven’t left again yet.

Weekend got busier than expected and now I’ve started my new gig in Indy that will keep me pretty busy on M/T/W. First day was yesterday, and while first days are basically always long, it was still a successful day. Despite the pain of commuting between Bloomington and Indianapolis, this does look like a good gig. Will write more in a couple of days.

Nashville Trip Report (May 9th, 2011 — Canucks at Predators edition)

Well, I still intend on more general recapping, but as this is obviously fresh in my mind, I thought that people might enjoy reading it. My friend Drew (a fellow native Washingtonian) and I, in somewhat bandwagon-like fashion, have been enjoying the Canucks’ playoff run. Bandwagon probably isn’t the term since Vancouver has always been my team of choice, but my interest in hockey waxes and wanes. I always have thought that it’s a great sport, and when I have a team doing well (such as this year, or the Olympics last year), I really enjoy it…but I don’t always pay close attention to it. Drew and I were at the bar for game 7 of Canucks-Blackhawks in the first round, in a bar full of obnoxious Chicago fans…that description is kind of a redundancy, as I don’t know of many non-obnoxious Chicago fans to be in existence. I truly love the city of Chicago, but I detest their sports fans. They might be my least favorite sports city in America now as a result. Watching Vancouver score the OT goal to shut this entire bar up was such a sweet moment, and we immediately started planning for the possibility of going to a game in the upcoming series against Nashville. For one, I’d never been to a hockey game in my life. For two, I’m always looking for an excuse to head to Nashville since it’s one of my favorite cities in existence. Games three and four coincided with our finals schedule, so we just pre-ordered game six tickets and crossed our fingers that there would actually be a game six. This led us to some rather unfaithful thoughts during game five when the Canucks were trying to close things out, since we were really looking forward to our road trip.

Drew and I take off down the road to Nashville a bit before noon. The drive from here to Nashville is fairly lengthy and somewhat boring, but I threw together a playlist before taking off that we both enjoyed; he is decidedly not a country fan, so I largely left any and all country off the playlist with the exception of the Zac Brown Band. There’s simply no excuse for not liking them unless you haven’t heard them, and there’s becoming less and less excuse to have not heard them as time goes by either. (Link)

Returning to the blogosphere.

Well, if you used to read my blog, I’m sure you long ago gave up on me ever updating it again. However, I’m going to make my best attempt at resurrecting it. If I get views, then great; if I don’t, then I’ll probably end up stopping again, but blogging my thoughts is time well spent anyway I think. It’s a good time capsule and I’ve enjoyed going back through my blog and reading a number of my posts from the past.

I don’t know exactly where to jump back in, so let me just give an update and then get some reflective thoughts down from the last year and a half that I’ve spent away from blogging.

What I’m up to now

Something of a postscript to first semester…

Over the break, there was little responsibility to deal with, it was mostly just a time to kick back and relax. However, I knew that it would be in my best interest to get started on my job hunt. I decided that I wanted to pursue work for the summer in Indiana, so I phoned and sent my resume and cover letter to every judge within a reasonable daily commute of Bloomington. I decided that since I’m still something of a generalist and am unsure exactly what type of law that I want to practice, I preferred the idea of working for a judge to the idea of working for a firm so that I could possibly be exposed to more areas of the law; I realized that there was very little chance of landing a paying 1L summer job, especially in this economy, so I decided I should get my name out there early for any position I could find before jobs started to get picked over.

Thankfully, the whole process was far less difficult and painful than I was expecting. A county circuit court judge sent me an e-mail that sounded like he was basically willing to hire me sight unseen, assuming that I was okay with not being paid. I talked to him over the phone soon after, and he did end up offering me the spot without even having met me in person yet. He said I could set my own schedule, do research work from home if I wanted to, and that he would give me plenty of input into what area of law I’d want to work on for my cases. Also, and this was vital, he said that the work should provide me with a good writing sample that I can use in future interviews. I was quite surprised to get all of this done from Washington, but I managed it and it’s nice to have my summer work lined up before the semester even starts…it will happily provide me with one less thing to worry about.

The new semester starts Thursday. I’m sure that before long I’ll become too busy to blog regularly again, but I have every intention to complete a journal of this coming semester as well when all is said and done. This is one of the most important years of my life, and I’ll be happy to have a detailed account of it later.

My First Full Semester of Law School (Part Seventeen)

Finals Week #2 (December 13^th-19^th, 2009) – Part Two

Unlike the previous exams, I knew in this case that I couldn’t take the rest of the day off. I grabbed lunch with my study partners, then had to hit crim pro hard. I kept on telling myself that I would work ahead to crim pro during my other studies, but it simply didn’t happen (I spent maybe a couple of hours on it two weeks before, but that was all). Procrastination is very much part of my nature…my undergrad GPA more than reflects that. I’ve fought it off reasonably well during law school so far, but it still seeps in sometimes.

Basically, at this point, I had no outline whatsoever for crim pro. Outlining for a class that doesn’t allow you to bring the outline into the exam only has utility in that it’s a really good learning tool to write down concepts to commit them back to your memory from when you first heard them in class and put them in your notes, but I still felt that I was woefully behind. I had barely read for this class, and was starting on my outline about 48 hours before the exam. Sounds like a recipe for disaster, right?

My First Full Semester of Law School (Part Sixteen)

Finals Week #2 (December 13^th-19^th, 2009) – Part One

I had to put my disappointment in the civ pro exam behind me so that I could perform optimally on my last two exams, crim law and crim pro from Hoffmann.

As I put it in an e-mail later in the evening on the day that I took the exam,

“Hope the test went well for you Lauren. I’m putting mine behind me; I have to be like Peyton Manning and shrug an interception off like a man, not like Jay Cutler and go to the sideline to cry like a little baby about it. Okay, so I was whining through much of lunch with Justin and Ryan about it, but I’m done with that now. Until I see my grade, at least. Besides, I do think contracts went well.”

My First Full Semester of Law School (Part Fifteen)

Finals Week #1 (December 6^th-12^th, 2009) – Part Two

I woke up the next day worse than expected. No, I wasn’t hung over…that would have been preferable, honestly. I woke up with a back injury, or more accurately a pinched sciatic nerve. I’ve had this before, it’s extremely painful and doesn’t go away for weeks. It makes it difficult to ever get in a comfortable position. This is not exactly what I wanted to run into as I knew immediately that I would have to sit for my last three finals with it. Ugh.

In any case, as we had begun to do every day in preparation for our finals, I had my study friends over and we got back to work. Honestly, I had gotten pretty irritable by this point. My friends did absolutely nothing wrong, but when you spend that many hours with someone doing an activity like studying that isn’t fun, you’re going to get edgy. When you do all of the above while dealing with sciatic nerve pain, you’re going to get really edgy. I bottled all of my frustrations with them since I knew very well that they were doing nothing wrong, but I was annoyed since I had begun hosting the study sessions instead of doing them at the library and that made it way harder to end the sessions without being rude. I couldn’t sit comfortably, I felt that my outline was behind theirs, I attempted to talk with them while laying on the floor of my living room…it just wasn’t ideal.

My First Full Semester of Law School (Part Fourteen)

Finals Week #1 (December 6^th-12^th, 2009) – Part One

Two days before finals, I e-mail my friend Lauren looking for reassurance:

“Please reassure me that there’s a bunch of stupid people milling around silently under the radar who are going to pad the curve below me even though I don’t actually know anything about contracts, civ pro, criminal law or criminal procedure.”

Seriously, I figured that a lot of people that I haven’t met and don’t see around very much might be getting overwhelmed around this time. Not exactly the nicest thing for me to hope for, but I needed some kind of insurance against landing in the bottom half of the curve. In competition, part of succeeding is hoping that your opponent slips up.

My First Full Semester of Law School (Part Thirteen)

Week Fifteen (November 29^th-December 5^th, 2009)

This was the last week of actual classes. I hesitate to let you in on the ridiculously dorky humor that we law students share, but when I missed civ pro this week and my friend Heather sent me notes, I responded:

“Much appreciated.

I’m sure these notes were meant as a gift, but my decision not to come to class could also constitute consideration since I woke up 10 minutes before class and still in need of a shower.

P.S. I hate contracts.”

(Consideration is a legal term that would help distinguish a gift from a legally enforceable bargain.) Oh the humanity. Not only was law school sucking my energy by this point, but my humor standards were falling through the floor. How embarrassing.

My First Full Semester of Law School (Part Twelve)

Week Fourteen (November 22^nd-28^th, 2009)

It was Thanksgiving week. For the first time in my life, I wouldn’t be spending the holiday with my family. Granted, it’s not a holiday I actually care much about, but it was just going to be weird spending it alone. Happily, my network of friends came to the rescue as they always do.

After crim pro on Monday, I’m walking back toward my apartment when my friend Lauren strikes up this conversation:

Her: So, heading back to Washington for the holiday?
Me: Nah, too expensive and too close to Christmas. I’ll just be here in town.
Her: So what are you doing for Thanksgiving?
Me: I don’t know…Arby’s? (I was kidding about that much, haven’t had Arby’s in years.)

My First Full Semester of Law School (Part Eleven)

Week Thirteen (November 15^th-21^st, 2009)

The Seahawks still technically had a shot at doing something this season as they headed into Arizona. And if you’re a fan and tuned into the game, you’ll know that they actually played great early on. That’s when I unleash this e-mail:

“The Seahawks are playing a great half, they’re underdogs today and they went up by two touchdowns a bit before halftime.

While part of me is happy about this, a whole bunch of me truly has an inner reaction of, “Oh crap…this is just going to hurt worse now when things go south.”

Sadly enough, this is just how I roll.”

Sure enough, the game fell apart from there. At some point, it stops being paranoia if you’re right often enough. My emotional attachment to the Seahawks season officially died this day.

My First Full Semester of Law School (Part Ten)

Week Eleven (November 1^st-7^th, 2009)

The semester was continuing to grind away at me. From the beginning of the first class of the week, as a case where an oil refinery was being sued came up:

“ Here’s hoping that Professor Geyh doesn’t remember me talking to him about working in an oil refinery, and consequently call on me today because I’m his legal oil refinery correspondent.

Monday mornings become harder and harder to wake up for.”

The funny thing is that, in spite of this type of correspondence, and in spite of the fact that I tend toward being a curmudgeon a lot of the time, I honestly maintained a more positive attitude toward law school than most did. It was, as expected, a lot of work wearing away at me…but I never became unhappy with being there, even on days that I wasn’t enjoying myself.

My First Full Semester of Law School (Part Nine)

Week Ten (October 25^th-31^st, 2009)

Upon return from break, I bumped into my friends Heather and John, and they mentioned that they figured I’d be getting cold-called in civ pro this week. They were confident that basically everyone but me had been called on (they already had), and since Professor Geyh was working his way through the class seating chart, my number was bound to be up soon. This naturally put me even more on edge in each ensuing civ pro session, but honestly I just wanted to get it out of the way at this point. As it turned out, they put me on edge more than a bit prematurely, and I didn’t get called on in any of the three sessions this week. Or the next week. Apparently there were plenty of people left who hadn’t been called on. It was sort of tough to keep track of this, since our civ pro class had more than 100 people in it.

Anyway, you’ll remember in my previous post that I asserted the fall break to have recharged my batteries as needed. That was my feeling at the time at least. Fast forward to my very first class session after the break, and this would be the first e-mail I sent.

My First Full Semester of Law School (Part Eight)

Week Eight (October 11^th-17^th, 2009)

It was the week before fall break. I was becoming hugely burnt out. I previously mentioned the frequent short e-mails that I would send and receive in civ pro. This one pretty much summed up my feelings.

“It’s still only frigging Tuesday?? <expletive>.

I need fall break…”

My First Full Semester of Law School (Part Seven)

Week Seven (October 4^th-10^th, 2009)

This week began with my friend Drew and me heading up to Indianapolis to watch the Seahawks get slaughtered by the Colts. Drew is a fellow Seahawks fan. He went to the University of Washington, so obviously he’s morally inferior to me, but we’re buddies Sunday through Friday every week. Saturday, especially during the hours that the Huskies are playing, I naturally hope and pray for him to be as unhappy as possible.

Hanging out in Indy a bit before the game was fun. The game itself was pure misery. To give you an idea, it was midway through the third quarter that I started wondering to myself when it would be appropriate to broach the subject of leaving. Since we both were out $50 each for the game ticket alone, I didn’t really want to ask to leave so early in the game, but there was truly no fun at any point while sitting in the stands for this game. Thanks for wasting my time and money, Seahawks. Naturally, with the Colts being so local, I was subjected to endless taunting. Even my friend Derricka texted me during the game to taunt me, and she’s generally as nice as they come. I just turned to Drew and said, “You know this game is going badly when Derricka of all people is busting on me.”

My First Full Semester of Law School (Part Six)

Week Six (September 27^th-October 3^rd, 2009)

This week began with the Seahawks getting severely ripped off against the Bears. Already a Bear hater, this loss would have ticked me off severely as it was, but having to live amongst a bunch of Bear fans in the Midwest now…well, let’s just say that September 27^th wasn’t a great day to know me. Most Chicago fans I know left me alone after that game. One chose to taunt. I have a long memory. That is all.

(By the way, while I was trying not to spend too much time watching football when there was work to be done, the combination of the Seahawks still potentially having a season to play for at this point and their actually playing a local team that led to them being televised in the comfort of my own living room meant that I was glued for all 3+ hours in this case…and yes, I already had tickets in hand to go watch them play at Indianapolis this week.)

My First Full Semester of Law School (Part Five)

Week Five (September 20^th-26^th, 2009):

School was still chugging along in my lecture classes. I felt like I had a good grip on Contracts; the doctrines of this class clicked pretty well for me, and I anticipated being able to write a pretty good exam when all was said and done. I had a reasonably good grip on Civ Pro (though the sheer number of rules and concepts was starting to intimidate me a bit). Crim Law had become a bit of a mystery class to me; I enjoyed most of the lectures, but couldn’t for the life of me pin down what areas of the class I should really be focusing on as the main ones that Professor Hoffmann cared about. I talked with classmates about this, and they all agreed, so at least we were in the same boat. In any case, it bothered me to not know exactly how my studies for that class should be directed.

My First Full Semester of Law School (Part Four)

Week Three (September 6^th-12^th, 2009):

Week three was not the most eventful of weeks from a school perspective. I mean, I was certainly busy enough, you can sort of assume that for every week of the semester; by this time though, I had basically settled into the groove of doing lots of homework and going to lots of class. Not much stuck out.

I did amuse myself in one day of crim law this week by taking…less conventional notes than usual. The best strategy with law school notes isn’t to write down everything the professor says, but to constantly be looking for what points the professor seems to really care about and what is likely to show up on the final exam. When my classmate Ryan e-mailed a few of us because he was going to have to miss our crim law session that morning and asked us if we would take “more copious notes than usual” on his behalf and send them along, I took the request to the extreme and made my best attempt to take full dictation of every single thing said in class that day, meaningful or not, complete with snarky comments about some of the dumb things that my classmates had raised their hands to say. This became a bit awkward near the end of class when Professor Hoffmann entered into a fairly graphic play-by-play of President Clinton’s tryst with Monica Lewinsky, but I was committed to complete the job by that point. Sometimes I find strange ways to entertain myself.

My First Full Semester of Law School (Part Three)

Week Two (August 31^st-September 5^th, 2009):

Hosted a few friends for a movie night on Sunday night leading into the week. One of my friends hadn’t seen Pulp Fiction, and obviously that situation had to be rectified. It was a nice way to kick back at the end of the weekend though, watched the movie then chatted for a few hours until it was late. I can’t overstate how much I like my group of friends here.

It was a nice revelation on Monday to discover that my initial read of Professor Hoffmann being boring couldn’t be further off. In fact, in an e-mail shortly after I got out of his crim law lecture that day, I said: