Unfortunately I just can’t see being able to put in the time to do all of my weekly football posts that I did in previous seasons (power rankings, picks, NCAA top 25, etc).

I’ll still be keeping up on football of course, and I’ll blog about it when I can, but my school workload just won’t allow me to put multiple hours every week into blogging about it on a consistent basis. Sorry to Gabe and whoever else that likes coming here for my football stuff. Again, I’ll blog when I find the time to.

On the first day of orientation, the IU Dean of Student Affairs flatly told us, “Some days you’re just going to say ‘law school sucks’…I’d just say go with it for a while.” He also told us, in all seriousness, that 40% of law students deal with serious depression during the time they’re in school. Yikes. I plan to be in the 60%, but that’s an intimidatingly high number. If nothing else, it probably means that I’ll have a front row seat to some unfortunate personality transformations. Let’s hope not though.

In any case, classes started full-time last Wednesday. Everything in Bloomington is way different now than it was during the summer. The population has quadrupled (or whatever…but I think that’s about what it’s done), traffic is hideous, weather is turning to fall (and is absolutely glorious, though we’re getting much cooler mornings now), and the law school no longer belongs to us summer starters. There are now hundreds upon hundreds of law students; I don’t recognize most 2Ls, I recognize exactly zero 3Ls, and I’m probably not up to knowing half of my own class by name yet. I like a good number of fall starters, a select few have made pretty bad impressions on me, most I’m either neutral toward or I simply don’t know at all. One of the faculty mentioned during the summer that she always notices that the summer starters sort of stick together socially throughout three years of school, and it’s easy to see that it will likely be the case again here. There’s a comfort zone in finding familiar faces in every class…even summer starters that I was neutral toward are a welcome sight. In the summer, we all had plenty of time to do a number of social functions and we know each other really well as a result, and it’s obvious that there simply won’t be as much time to do those things anymore. I did, however, buy my Hoosier season tickets for football (just six games…for a grand total of $30), and have some friends who want to go, so I’ve got that to look forward to. Home opener on Thursday night, I’m excited even though the team is really not particularly good.

Things are busy with class…all the time. There’s always more I could be doing, I don’t think it’s really possible to say that you’ve done all you possibly could. You can say that you’ve done your required reading for the night, but you could be reading on supplements, working ahead so that you would have some hope of keeping all the way up on the reading for a while longer (eventually it will just become impossible to be fully caught up on all reading; someone said it best when they suggested that reading every page assigned to you would require a mix of insanity and stimulants; you have to learn what’s important to read and what can be de-prioritized). Early in the semester, things aren’t as bad because outlining for the final isn’t yet in the picture. Things will eventually ramp up in any case; I’ve been working ahead toward my Friday classes so that I can fully enjoy Thursday’s football game and just not worry about any school after I get out of class that day.

Basic rundown of the classes…
Civil Procedure: Relatively enjoyable, despite the dry subject of procedure. The prof is very engaging, easy to listen to and presents his lectures in an organized format that I really appreciate. He gave by far the best speech at orientation (which was a painful event as you could expect) and has a talent for the whole public speaking thing. I have him for my earliest morning class, so I’m glad he’s not boring at least.

Criminal Law: The reading for this class is some of the most engaging I’ll get in law school, I think. Fascinating stuff. The professor, despite having attended law school at University of Washington, is really engaging and interesting. He’s entirely uncharismatic as a public speaker, but he really knows how to conduct a class-wide discussion that gets you thinking. This is my early candidate for favorite class.

Criminal Procedure: Same professor as Criminal Law. Unfortunately it feels like I go to crim law and enjoy it, then I go to lunch and come back and he’s boring. The subject matter is pretty dry, and he does more straight lecturing without involving the class as much here. It’s pretty difficult to listen to him drone on. Interesting at times, but probably my least favorite class after one week. We’re also in this class with 2Ls and 3Ls, which is a dynamic I don’t love.

Contracts: The professor for this class is a grumpy old curmudgeon, and I seriously love him for it. He’s hilarious…but his grumpiness is real, and he’s the scariest one as far as not wanting professors to call on you. He’ll haul off on anyone. I had done all of the required reading for class yesterday, and as I watched him grill one student I thought, “Uhh, yeah, I’m really not ready to be called on, I couldn’t handle these questions.” He’ll eventually call on me, and whatever happens happens, getting grilled in class and looking stupid doesn’t hurt your grade. He’s the prototypical scary law professor that you might imagine though, grilling people with Socratic method and all of that. If you’ve seen The Paper Chase, this guy is the closest thing to that professor. Hilarious moment from class on Monday…my classmate from summer start who raises his hand all class long in every single class (and as such is sort of annoying to be in class with, though he’s a cool guy who I sometimes hang out with outside of class) raised his hand at the beginning of this professor’s lecture. The professor just looked up and said, “What, is your hand just still up from last time?” I laughed at the time, but after it died down I really had a hard time stifling for a really long time. It just felt good to see someone talk to this classmate so bluntly. I couldn’t get it out of my head and was afraid I was going to start cracking up again five minutes later. Thankfully I held it together.

Legal Writing: I like this professor a lot, he’s really young (just got his law degree four years ago) and relatable. I have him the same day that I have the grumpy old man in contracts, it’s a pretty interesting contrast of styles. This class isn’t as important since it’s graded pass/fail, it meets less often, it just isn’t a huge deal…but I do think it will teach me some good applicable legal skills.

Anyway, I’m up far too late due to a nap I took today, and I’m only looking at getting four hours of sleep tonight, so I’d better get going. Just wanted to check in and give an update. Summary: things are going well here. Different, and harder, but not bad. I’m still happy here, and I still feel lucky to be getting to do this. Having direction and feeling productive are wonderful things, and more than negate any bad feelings I could have toward the excessive workload.

The fall starters are arriving in town. I’ve spent the last couple of nights socializing with a few of them, there’s a function I’m getting ready to go to where I’ll meet quite a few more. If nothing else, I’ve already got my social core network down…hopefully I like a ton of these new people, but whether I do or not, I’m not generally worried about the social end of things.

Work-wise, things are about to get hectic. Summer start was only about 2/3 of a full law school load, and I felt somewhat busy then, so 1L will certainly be taxing. If I don’t blog for periods of time, that’s why. My free time will be spent trying to do some socializing and I’m certainly setting aside some time for following football. It’s a positive thing that my favorite sport is largely confined to weekends. I’ll still have to get work done on the weekends, but I still think I can free up enough time to spend a few hours watching on Saturdays and Sundays.

I have to sit through orientation again on Monday/Tuesday (blech), and class starts Wednesday. The difficulty level makes me nervous to a certain extent, but I should be fine.

I’ll try to check in periodically.

I don’t think it’s worth devoting a long post to him again, but I’ll acknowledge it.

I was fooled. I thought he was really done this time. I also thought that Rafael Palmeiro was on the level when he adamantly denied ever using steroids. I also thought that Sammy Sosa was a decent guy during his home run chase. Sometimes I get the wool pulled over my eyes. This one makes me feel dumber because of the whole “fool me once, shame on you…fool me twice, shame on me” thing. I knew that Favre was a phony long ago. It’s become silly to believe anything he says. But I believed him.

So, bring on another season of oversaturated coverage of Favre, I guess. I hope he makes a fool of himself. To be honest though, I think he can’t help but be an upgrade for a team with no quarterback, and it seems like it’s going to be an NFC North battle for the division title between by far the two least likable teams in the division, the Bears and Vikings. I hope the Packers can rally the troops and prove me wrong, but they look like a third place team to me right now. The Lions? I don’t even know why I felt the need to mention their name.

As you can tell, my days up to this point had been rather full. I was lacking energy the day after my trip down Music Row. I eventually rolled out of bed, headed over to Bob Evans, but there was a bit of a wait late on a Saturday morning. I put my name on the list, but figured I’d quickly drive over to Cracker Barrel too to see if the wait was shorter. I managed to get an immediate table there, so that’s where I had breakfast. I have to think that the only reason Bob Evans was slightly busier at this time was because its lot was connected to several hotels, where a person has to go down the road a ways to get to Cracker Barrel. That’s precisely why I went to Bob Evans first, and I’m one who’s loyal to Cracker Barrel as still being my preferred restaurant. Anyway, good breakfast as usual. And yes, I know that I spend an inordinate amount of time mentioning Cracker Barrel on my trip reports, they should send me a gift certificate or something.

I went back to the hotel and just relaxed for a while. I didn’t have any big plans before my Grand Ole Opry show that night…or at least until dinner before the show. I eventually got up and made the walk over to the Opryland Resort, which was probably a 15 minute walk away. As nice as Union Station looks, this Opryland Resort is definitely a place I’d like to stay at if I was rich. Absolutely beautiful inside of here.

The story I didn’t mention earlier from the Stoney River Legendary Steakhouse was that when the waitress dropped off the check, she gave the standard, “it’s been a pleasure serving you, and I know you’re not from in town (I’d been chatting with her, so she knew that part), but I hope you’ll make it back to see us at some point.” I told her, “You know what? This has been so fantastic that I’ve spent the last few minutes trying to justify coming back in tomorrow night.” Obviously that didn’t happen, as I went out with my cousin…but I couldn’t resist the urge to go back on Saturday night as a pre-Opry experience.

All it really lacked this time was the element of surprise of it being so great…the meal was just as great this time, and I was happy that I went back. Since I had left some slack in advance to either spend money on more entertainment or finer dining with my travel budget, obviously this was where a nice chunk of that went. It was worth it. I highly recommend Stoney River…it’s a small chain, there are 10 of them nationwide (some in St. Louis, some in the Chicago area, some in the Nashville area, some in the Atlanta area, some up in Annapolis, MD). If I’m in any of those cities and can afford to do so, I’ll certainly go back again. They don’t even do anything special to dress up the steaks, they just get incredible center cuts and cook them to perfection.

After that meal, I headed back to my hotel room, picked up my camera, and headed over to the Opry.

Picked up my tickets at will call and headed on in. I scored a nice seat, 14th row on the floor near the center. The model that the Opry runs their show on is that a different artist comes out to host each 30-minute block. I was pleased to see that Little Jimmy Dickens had been added as the first host of the night.

At 88 years old, Jimmy is pretty much an awful singer at this point…but his comic stylings as he hosted were hilarious. The announcer introduced him as “country music royalty,” and it rings true…his personality is second to none. Of course, as a Brad Paisley fan I’ve seen plenty of him, as he seems to always be willing to hang around and essentially be Paisley’s mascot-on-demand at this point.

Plenty of acts on the slate this night were entirely unfamiliar to me, but I enjoyed almost all of them. One that stood out was a bluegrass group called The Infamous Stringdusters. They were introduced as being up for quite a few bluegrass awards, and that much was very believable.

The other hosts aside from Jimmy Dickens were…

Vince Gill

Mel Tillis

Mike Snider

Snider was the only host I hadn’t previously heard of, but he was very entertaining…both his scripted jokes and his impromptu interactions with the announcer were very funny. While I enjoyed hearing Vince Gill sing, I’d say that Snider was the funnier host of the two, and probably ran pretty close with Jimmy Dickens for funniest host of the night.

The Whites bear mentioning as another previously unknown act to me who I enjoyed quite a bit.

But the biggest thing I was waiting for all show was the appearance of Josh Turner.

Sadly the structure of the show doesn’t even give the main act a bunch of songs, Turner only sang two (“Would You Go With Me” and “Everything is Fine”)…but he was certainly enjoyable and I’d like to see him perform a full concert at some point.

The show let out, I fought traffic for quite a while, and eventually got back to my room. I followed the Seahawks preseason game on the internet, and went to bed for my last night of sleep in Nashville.

I finally headed back home in the morning. Along the way, I stopped for lunch, and decided I’d take a mild detour to go hit up the Horseshoe Casino in southern Indiana (just across the state line after you get through Kentucky). As I got near the casino, about four miles away, I was just thinking that I needed to use the bathroom once I got there. At that point, horror struck…I was out of gas.

Folks…I am an idiot in this regard. There’s no other way to say it. I’ve run out of gas far too many times, which is nothing more than a silly and careless mistake. It’s embarrassing. In any case, that AAA membership I bought a couple of months ago certainly came in handy at this point. I was out in the middle of cornfields on a highway with no addresses handy, so it took a while for the AAA guy to even locate me (even as I fed him endless info from my GPS). Finally he did, and told me it would be “less than an hour” before somebody got there to help me.

So, at near 100 degrees and without air conditioning, or a restroom, it wasn’t a very fun hour…but help eventually arrived. The plus membership meant that the gas was covered and help didn’t cost me a cent, so all of that is good. Sure was a lot of trouble though, just to get to a casino and lose some money (not a significant amount, but I did lose).

After this side adventure on the way home, my vacation was officially done, and I drove straight home to Bloomington. It was a fun vacation to be sure. I will return to Nashville again at some point, and The Bluebird, the Opry, and the Stoney River Steakhouse are all certainly spots I will make a goal of returning to. The tour guide also mentioned that The Hermitage was going to be getting some remodeling done for the first time in nearly 50 years, so “it should be quite a bit better the next time you return.” I’d probably go back there again too, at least if my next trip to Music City is far enough away. Of course, I’d go hang out on Music Row again also. Okay, so basically the only parts I wouldn’t do over are Tommy’s Tours and staying at Hyatt Place…the rest was pretty awesome.

I’ve got enough other trips that I want to make that my next trip into that city may not be for a while, but it’s definitely on the list of places I’d go see again.

I headed home from The Bluebird, and got another good night of sleep. It’s wonderful to just be able to sleep in, with absolutely no need to be up by a certain time. Granted, my summer class schedule allowed me to start my school days no later than 10, so it wasn’t a huge issue at that time either, but I still generally needed to wake up and get stuff done. On vacation, the pace of “get whatever you want to get done whenever you want to” is even more lax.

I got up, and headed over to Cracker Barrel (which wasn’t much further away than Bob Evans; I could’ve walked it as it was just a half mile away, but I was lazy and drove over). I ate a good french toast breakfast here, good as always, and enjoyed. One thing to note that I haven’t yet, but I had noticed it from the beginning: people in Nashville are insanely friendly. Tommy mentioned on Tommy’s Tours that Nashville was recently rated the #1 friendliest city in America (I can’t remember the source), and I believed it. I had noticed it before he ever mentioned that also…you couldn’t pass a stranger on the hiking trail at the park without getting a warm greeting, for instance. The place just has a great vibe to it. It had me wondering what kind of a legal market this city has (though I did a cursory check and realized that getting in here from IU with no local ties would be pretty difficult).

After breakfast, I headed over to The Hermitage, Andrew Jackson’s home. This is a pretty impressive historical site. I had been here during a childhood trip to Nashville with my brother and parents about 15 years ago; I remembered liking it, but didn’t remember much more. To a person with a better grasp on history now, it was that much more enjoyable. Admission included an audio device that you could listen to at each station as you toured the whole site…and for $10 more, I paid for the horse-drawn wagon ride through the fairly vast property he lived on. I snapped away:

The outside of his mansion.

These horses smelled quite hideous. Otherwise they did the job nicely.

Unfortunately they don’t allow photography inside President Jackson’s mansion itself, it’s got a bunch of original stuff that they’re preserving behind glass, and it’s some of the coolest stuff to look at on the premises. Obviously the rule against photography is entirely understandable.

The horse-drawn tour was pretty cool, albeit really hot and humid. My tour took off at 11:45 a.m., so the heat of the day was really starting to kick in…and it’s worse right now in Nashville than it is in Bloomington. Consistently 95+ degrees out. I’m getting acclimated to some extent, but it was still pretty sweltering.

After the tour, I gave my cousin a call (he had left me a voicemail while I was in The Hermitage). I haven’t seen this guy in 15+ years, but he’s an aspiring songwriter in Nashville and offered to meet up when I e-mailed him and asked him what I should see when I got into town. Over the phone, we made arrangements to do dinner and then do some bar-hopping along Music Row.

In the meantime, I had five hours to kill until my plans with him, so I decided I’d head over to a place called the Flying Saucer for lunch (one of my IU friends is a Nashville native and told me that was her favorite bar in town, and that they serve a good lunch too). Honestly, I wasn’t overly impressed; the building was pretty cool, but the lunch was of the quality of any other bar you’d likely eat a lunch in. Admittedly, I wasn’t exactly the target demographic for this place, as they prided themselves on having a wider beer selection than anyone in the city (and it was a very extensive menu full of options)…they probably scoffed at me when I ordered a light beer with my sandwich.

As the Flying Saucer had me parked downtown anyway, I decided I would check out what Music Row was like during the day (though I had already been told that it’s much different and more animated at night). Along the way, I stopped at an art institute that was underwhelming and took a couple of other snapshots of the city.

The church architecture was really very cool throughout Nashville.

The near building is where the Nashville Predators play NHL hockey, the building behind it with the tower is the Nashville Visitor Center.

Frist Center for Visual Arts.

As I went down Music Row, I just looked for a bar and kept my ears open for one playing live music that might sound good. I went into one where an aspiring singer was playing…the place was relatively empty, and honestly the guy wasn’t anything great. He was fine, but he was generic; I remember his name, but I wouldn’t want him to be able to Google it and find this post or something. In any case, I threw $1 in his tip jar on my way out…if a person has a legitimate bar gig and is trying to make it, I like to throw them support if I can. It’s the capitalist in me; the more sincere competition that’s enabled to be out there, the better my final product will be in the end as a consumer. Never mind that this guy will probably never make it, I just think it’s best if everyone does their part to give incentives to struggling musicians to keep grinding away. God knows there are plenty of great talents out there that we probably never hear from because they never catch their break and eventually give up.

I was tired of walking around in the heat by this point, so I headed back to my car and went back to the hotel and wasted some time until it was time for my cousin to pick me up to go out. Around 6:30, he picked me up and we headed downtown to a place called Joe’s Crab Shack. He recommended it as a good place to eat, and seafood sounded great to me, so I was happy to sign off on that plan. He generously offered to pick up the check, since I was his guest in town…sheesh, he really didn’t need to do that, but he was adamant that he wanted to pay. I agree with the principle that if your friend visits from out of town and you go out to dinner, you should pick up if you can since he’s your guest (note to out-of-town friends: that was a real offer…spend hundreds to come visit me and I’ll pick up your $15 meal), but since we barely knew each other, I sure didn’t expect him to treat. In any case, I understood where he was coming from and accepted; it was very nice of him. Showing me downtown, buying me dinner, being my designated driver…all above and beyond the call of duty. I did pay for a couple of his beers later on in a feeble attempt to make up for it.

We went up and down Music Row after dinner, into quite a few bars with some pretty cool live acts going. One band stood out as particularly good, but I never did catch their name at any point…they were mostly doing cover songs, and even threw in some non-country (Tom Petty, Black Crowes), but pretty much every song was enjoyable.

(A couple of shots of downtown at night while we were waiting to cross the street)

Anyway, this was a good night with my cousin, he’s a cool guy and showed me a fun time out on the town.

Part four to come…

I really enjoyed the bus tours I took in Chicago, so I figured I should give one of the most reputable tours in Nashville a shot also (the top-rated one was unfortunately down due to “medical necessity”). Tommy’s Tours sounded like it would fit the bill in any case, and it was convenient in that he swung by and picked me up right in front of my hotel.

For the first hour, Tommy was pretty funny, took us through the nice part of downtown Nashville, I was in tune and interested. We stopped off at Union Station, which has been converted to a hotel…

Looks like a heck of a place to stay if you’ve got $200 a night to blow. Outside the hotel, before getting back onto the bus, I snapped a couple more.

I just had to get a closer shot of this one since it appeared to be straight out of Gotham.

After we got back on the bus, the tour began to bore me. He took us out into the rich suburb of Nashville, and was pointing out all of the mansions that local celebrities stayed in (lots of country singers)…pretty architecture, but since this wasn’t an open-air trolley or anything, I couldn’t get any pictures taken. He really never gave us any more time for any good photo ops for the rest of the tour. I was kind of frustrated with that. The only other stop was at a gas station so that we could get a drink, use the restroom, etc. This wasn’t a terrible tour or anything, but I was bored by the end and ready to be done with it.

In any case, back at the hotel, I unloaded my pictures into my computer, showered and changed, and headed out to Stoney River Legendary Steakhouse. This place…is incredible. I would not say the following lightly: this was the best steak dinner I’ve ever had. It was certainly pricey, from tipping the valet for parking to a really expensive menu, but they sure came through on every front. The service was fantastic, the food was just insanely delicious, I was absolutely loving it here. I brought along my copy of Dostoevsky’s The Idiot to read with my wine as I waited on my meal just so I could get the full snob experience.

The amusing thing is that they first brought me a steak that I started eating on, it tasted really good after a couple of bites but then a server came out apologetically telling me that they brought me the wrong one. He said mine would be right out, and it followed within a minute. My waitress and the manager came by and apologized profusely to me also. What part of the free bites of steak that I received was I going to be so offended by? I understand their embarrassment, as it was an unprofessional mistake they probably don’t generally make, but it’s not like I got a raw deal out of it…they brought me the right one, a finer cut, and this was considerably better than the first they brought me. Just absolute culinary heaven.

I wanted to explore downtown while I was here, because I had reservations at a place called The Bluebird at 9:00, but found that I would be paying for parking for a short period of time, so I just quickly returned back to my hotel and wasted some time watching TV until it was time to leave again.

The Bluebird is a bar with a stellar reputation in Nashville…the very best songwriters and up-and-comers play there trying to make a name for themselves. There’s actually a faded sign above the entry-way saying “the best songwriters in the world pass through this door.” There’s truth to that, I’m sure. Some people who played there on the way up: Kenny Chesney, Brad Paisley, Garth Brooks, Dierks Bentley, Taylor Swift, Faith Hill, Vince Gill…you get the idea. It’s a small, intimate place, and to get reservations you pretty much have to be on the ball the very hour they become available for that evening. Under advice of my cousin who lives in Nashville, I was waiting on the internet when the reservation for this night came available. When I got to the bar this night, there was a pretty lengthy line of people without reservations who were just waiting for seats that would come available if a person wasn’t there within 10 minutes after their reservation time. Very popular joint.

Sadly, I had left my camera behind, so I didn’t get any pictures inside of this place. That bugged me, but in any case I had a great time here. This place was about the best venue you could find for listening to country music…patrons are told up front to keep talking to a minimum during performances, that this isn’t a place to socialize, it’s a place to listen. The three acts on this night were John Ford Coley, Georgia Middleman and Rob Crosby. These were older songwriters, so probably not up-and-coming stars headed for big things, but they’ve already written some big songs amongst them. Rob Crosby was at his best on emotional ballads (a few he sang, which he was the writer of, were Martina McBride’s “Concrete Angel,” Trace Adkins’ “Til the Last Shot’s Fired,” and Andy Griggs’ “She’s More”). The majority of the songs were new material that they had written; if nothing else, I’m sure they want their songs to get some buzz so the big artists will pick them up.

Georgia Middleman told the amusing story of how a song she had written 11 years ago, called “I’m In,” just got picked up and is on Keith Urban’s newest album. Keith had told her in the past that he really liked the song and had been listening to it for the last decade intermittently, and said that he was driving with Nicole Kidman one day listening to it when he said, “I really need a song like this on my next album.” Kidman said, “Umm, well why don’t you just record this song?” Keith laughed and liked the idea, so that was how it got on. As a fan of Urban, I was already familiar with this song as an album track, and had actually thought it might be worthy of being a single off this album. Of course, more than half of all of his songs deserve to be singles, so who knows what will happen with it.

In any case, all three acts were highly entertaining, they were set up in a circle in the middle of the audience and would just go around the circle performing their songs. I basically liked all three of them equally, and was happy when each would come up again. They sometimes played accompaniment on each other’s songs, sang harmony or dueted. The whole thing was just very cool. Between the steakhouse and this, this night was going to be a tough one to top.

Moving onto part three…

Yeah, I’ve been lazy getting this up. I stayed busy for the vast majority of the time I was in Nashville, and the wi-fi in my room was the worst I’ve experienced in a hotel room, so I didn’t spend a ton of time on the internet anyway. Excuses aside, here’s the report…

After I put up my most recent posts on Wednesday, I packed up a bag and got in the car. The drive down I-65 is nothing special for scenery…traffic mostly stays light, except when going through Louisville (which did look really pretty from the highway, by the way). I made the trip in just under 4.5 hours. I checked into the Hyatt Place Opryland.

I got a ground floor room, so no skyline shot to speak of. I settled into my room and noticed two things: a funky smell (I can’t even identify what it was, originally I thought maybe they were going overboard in masking the smell of past cigarette smoke, but this odor was here for the whole trip), and the aforementioned spotty internet connection. I mean, this wasn’t a terrible room, it looked kind of nice, but it’s certainly on the low end of the Hyatt scale. It was no better than a Holiday Inn, I’ll put it that way.

I changed from my travel scrubs to something a little nicer and headed downtown, where I had a reservation at 7:15 at the Germantown Cafe. This was my first of many trips downtown, and I quickly realized I should have gotten a downtown hotel; staying in the Opryland area really only catered to one night of my trip, and didn’t mesh as well with the rest of the nights. Anyway, Germantown Cafe was nice, the food was fancy and the atmosphere was nice. The wait staff was a bit on the slow side, I felt ignored at times (I had one glass of wine, and was ready to order another but they took so long that I eventually just decided to forget it), but that was really the only downside here. Good meal.

I headed back for the night, settled down in my hotel room and figured out exactly what I was going to do the next day. With my final exam just over, I hadn’t gotten to spend as much time as I like to on planning the trip, I had some loose ideas in mind but hadn’t really thrown them into much of an itinerary yet. In any case, I got a general game plan together and got to sleep relatively early.

I was up the next day earlier than expected (my body just doesn’t tend to take eight hours even when I have nowhere to specifically be the next day and don’t set an alarm), so I headed across the street to a Bob Evans Farm restaurant. This is a chain over in these parts, one I had no awareness of in Washington. It’s essentially another Cracker Barrel, with the store out front and country music piping through the speakers (of course, country kind of pipes through the speakers everywhere in this city), as well as a similar menu. This was a fine meal, I probably like Cracker Barrel a bit more but it was nice to have this option within walking distance.

As my day was off to an earlier start than expected, I decided to move a trip down to Radnor Lake State Park up to this morning. It was the top-rated nature site in the Nashville area according to TripAdvisor, so I figured I would get some hiking done and be back in time to catch my tour bus that was going to pick me up at my hotel at 1:00.

Radnor Lake was nice. Nothing that blew me away, but it was enjoyable. I of course brought the camera.

The scenery here didn’t vary enough for my liking, but it was still nice to walk through it. I put my earbuds in and listened to Beethoven’s 6th as I walked through. The frustrating thing was that there was really no map or guide of the trails in this area, so when I came upon a fork in the road, one sign pointed “to Lake Trail,” the other pointed to “XXXX Ridge” (I’m just forgetting the name)…I went for the ridge. I knew it would be a good bit of climbing, and the temperatures were of course getting hotter as the day’s sun was rising, but I thought that “ridge” pretty much universally meant a cool lookout at the top. I hiked higher and higher, looking for that payoff…then found myself descending again. What the heck? There was no cool lookout. I don’t mind putting in the effort to hike a good ways up a trail, but I want a cookie at the top (generally in the form of a nice view). I felt cheated. Oh well, it was a good workout. I made my way back to the car right around the time I was aiming to.

I returned to my hotel. Tommy’s Tours was up next. I’ll write about that in part two.

I mentioned in previous posts that I wanted to get out and snap some pictures around here. Bloomington really is a beautiful place to live and go to school. I woke up earlier than expected this morning, and decided I’d do some photography while the sun was coming up and it still wasn’t too hot out yet. Maybe not my finest pictorial to date, but there’s some decent stuff in here.

Alright, I know I said that I couldn’t see being able to say much, but you know how much I love story-telling, so if you want an account of how the exam went…here it is.

The day before the test, I took my final practice exam, the 2008 fall exam that is the most recent one our professor administered. I had taken a few past practice exams but had broken them up over time, and had never gone four hours straight. I decided, to see where my endurance was, I should sit and take the 2008 exam under simulated test conditions, rigidly timed in the library, and go for four hours straight. By about the two hour mark, I was feeling very mentally strained and tired. I ultimately made the decision to quit at that point, because I didn’t want to simply contribute to further fatigue the next day.

This was at about 5:00 p.m. that I gave up, and I simply decided I was done studying for this test in general; I knew the material, wasn’t confused on any concepts, and I honestly thought as a practical matter I would probably benefit most from some rest and relaxation at this point since I was physically feeling the strain of the hours put in. I watched a disc from season two of The Office. I watched more TV for a while. It felt great to be so lazy for the rest of the evening, because I really haven’t indulged in that much mindless activity since school started up. In any case though, I was a bit nervous about how well I would hold up and be able to stay sharp for four hours, because wilting and giving up during the practice exam did make me question how good my endurance was going to be.

The test was at 1:00 in the afternoon, so I didn’t have to sweat oversleeping or anything…I got to bed at a normal time, I let myself sleep until I felt like getting up (ultimately this turned out to be 8:30 or so, not bad). A few days earlier, our professor had mentioned that we should get a good night’s sleep and get a good breakfast. I’m not one who generally eats any kind of full breakfast, but when he mentioned this, one thing came immediately to mind: Cracker Barrel. We’ve got one in Bloomington, or at least one with a Bloomington address…it’s a bit inconveniently located, so it isn’t a frequent meal stop, but their breakfast menu is excellent and I thought it would be a nice treat to start exam day.

I went, I indulged, I enjoyed. I did briefly look over some study materials while I was waiting for my food, but that was not a strain and it served its purpose of getting my mind back into the right frame of mind. After my meal, I returned home and just wasted some time waiting for the test to come. I headed over to the school at 12:30, where we were supposed to set up shop and download the test in preparation for starting at 1:00. My calm, cool and collected exterior was sincere in the days leading up to this test, but nerves did begin to set in with about 15 minutes to go before it began.

The way that this professor’s tests are structured is basically this: three hours are spent on doctrine, where we get given an extensive and detailed set of facts and have to spot the legal issues, point out who can bring a cause of action against who, what the arguments will be, what defenses might be available, how the action would likely turn out, etc. One hour is spent on what our professor calls Common-Law Kitbag, where you’re given a case and you write out arguments on behalf of each side of it. These are just suggested time frames, you can take however long you want on each question, but the suggestions seem to be on point.

Unusually, he gave us three questions to fill up our three hours of doctrine. All practice exams had either one or two questions for this part, so any work we’ve done on time management became a bit worthless. Regardless, I adjusted. It did intimidate me that I spent a solid 90 minutes on the first of the three cases, but I knew that I could reasonably do that and spend 45 minutes each on the next two. The reason my first one took so long is that I have to take the time to explain and hash out every single term that I’m bringing up, as if I’m writing this analysis to a layman (sample sentence: “false imprisonment can be defined as the intentional confinement within fixed boundaries by an actor, the conduct directly or indirectly resulting in confinement, and the person confined is aware of the confinement or harmed by it”). Once we had hashed out terms once, we didn’t have to explain them again like that on future sentences, so while I spent 90 minutes on the first question, plenty of the work contributed to making the future questions more concise. Sure enough, I got the next two questions done in the other 90 minutes total, leaving me with the full hour to complete the Common-Law Kitbag question.

This section was my weakest going in, and I felt like he gave us a relatively hard case to split hairs on, so I wasn’t loving this hour. I actually kind of enjoy the exercise itself of arguing each side, it’s incredibly useful to have a mind for that kind of thing as a lawyer (both because you might find yourself on either side of the issue and because even if you don’t, you need to know the likely arguments coming your way)…but the question itself wasn’t that fun. With that said, I think I answered fine; not great, but fine. I finished with maybe 20 seconds to spare.

Happily, I was able to go four hours without ever feeling particularly tired during the process. When you’ve got an entire class grade riding on what you type during this period of time, there’s no lacking for motivation, and there’s so much to type on these tests that you’re just straining yourself the entire time to get as much down as possible (and they’re designed in a way that you could basically never hit everything there is to talk about).

Basically, I feel just fine about how I did. I hammered out a ton of words, hit most of the big points that I wanted to touch on, used most sections of my outline to the fullest, and never lacked for applicable things to type about.

The bad news, of course, is the same thing I keep saying…I’m in a class full of really smart people, and everyone seemed satisfied afterward. People were freaking out beforehand, but nobody seemed upset with how they did (one guy did get up and leave five minutes early, which is just insane to me, tests are all about piling up more points and he could’ve found stuff to score points on unless he really lacked an understanding for the course).

So, while I think I did a good job, only time will tell how I fared relative to my classmates. I summed it up this way to one of my classmates after the test: “If that wasn’t good enough to at least put me in the median, then I’m seriously in trouble trying to keep up with this class.” However…I think I will be at least in the median. In about a month, I’ll get my grade back…and once again, if I make mention of how I did, the code is:
“I did fine” = B+, A-, A
“Not great” = B, B- (I really think a B- is very unlikely, but we’ll see)
However it turns out though, I won’t be ashamed of my performance itself. I can only help how well I do, not how well others do.

After the test, we all went out to Kilroy’s for drinks to celebrate, unwind, etc. Great times with my classmates, including quite a few of them who rarely join us when we go out.

I leave for Nashville shortly, but I might have one more post for you up shortly before I take off.

Just a bit more than 38 hours to go until my first law exam. Honestly…I feel pretty darn good about it. After doing some practice exam questions a couple of weeks ago, it put knots in my stomach to compare my answer to the sample answer that he put forth as a good one. It blew mine out of the water. Now? I don’t know, I think I’m going to be okay. I’ve got the organization down as far as how this prof likes things laid out, I have little confusion on they key concepts, and I type really quickly (which will be a bigger bonus with this guy than with future profs; he’s notorious for giving a nice bump to simply mass-producing lots of words in the course of four hours, assuming the words are pretty much on point).

At times, I’ve wondered if my classmates still might know the material better than I do…but the more I see them stressing out and reacting to the upcoming test, the more I think that there’s plenty of people I can beat out. I’m not getting cocky, I honestly think I have little chance of an A and am mostly just hoping for an A- (but will be fine with a B+, since it’s above the median and keeps me on pace to hold onto my scholarship money)…but in any case, the chance of a disaster happening on Tuesday’s final feels really small to me. Maybe it won’t go that well, maybe I’ll get my grade in a month and come crashing back down to Earth, but…for now, I’m content to be fairly non-plussed while many of my classmates freak out.

This is probably the last post I’ll put up about this before the test. In any case, I’ll report from the Hyatt Place Opryland in Nashville on Wednesday if I don’t check in earlier.

The last couple of days, the professor has explicitly told us that nothing that we covered would be required material for the exam. As a result, I didn’t really pay attention, except when he got to talking specifically about how we should prep for the exam, what he wanted to see on it, etc. In general though, these class sessions were not worth a whole lot.

I would’ve given serious consideration to just skipping the last session and using the time to study on my own instead, except one factor made me really want to go: it was announced that we would be turning in our evaluations of the professor and the course at the beginning of the session (they just have a third party come in and collect these as the prof leaves the room, they’re all anonymous and we don’t sign them…same as it was at WSU, same as it probably is everywhere). Ordinarily I wouldn’t care very much about turning in this eval, except that I’ve noticed that our professor is far less popular within our class than he deserves to be. I certainly know people who like him, but he’s got a bunch of detractors, and I honestly don’t understand it. As such, I wanted to make sure to be there to turn in a positive review.

My one review is relatively meaningless, this man has been teaching at IU for decades, and clearly has no shortage of job security…but he shows on a consistent basis that he honestly does care about us and cares deeply about his work (unlike too many other profs, he really does love it when people e-mail him, call him, visit his office hours, etc.), and I didn’t want to miss a chance to show some small token of appreciation. It’s my feeling that some of these detractors of his might look back in a year and realize that having him was a pretty good deal after all…though I’ll obviously be quite happy if a majority of the professors I have the rest of the way are somehow better.

After answering questions about the pending exam, he delivered a 15-minute motivational/inspirational speech to us to end the session. At times it was cheesy, but it was heart-felt and sincere, which goes quite a ways toward mitigating the cheese factor. It’s not as if it was part of the job, or that he had to do it. I liked it, it touched on some of the things I’ve already talked about on here, that I’m really lucky to be doing this. It was also hard not to be captivated by this guy’s story to go from being the first in his family to even graduate high school to working his way all through law school (interestingly enough, he mentioned that he was rejected by IU Law and went to a less prestigious school himself) and eventually becoming a professor. It was no surprise to me to hear a couple of other students mocking it on the way out of the building afterward, but whatever, I appreciated it. I’m sort of a cynic and a sap all rolled into one, if that’s even possible.

As to this final, to give us an idea of what kind of a curve we were looking at for this test, he e-mailed us the grade distribution that last year’s torts class got. IU doesn’t run a rigid curve where there’s a mandatory number of A’s, B’s, C’s and such…it’s different in that they just ask him to have the distribution come out to hit a certain median. Anyway, looking at the curve, he obviously doesn’t grade that harshly when it comes to the worst tests, but it’s incredibly difficult to pull an A from him. 53 people took this class last year from him…2 got A’s. The lowest grade in the class was a B-, and only 5 people got those. The other 87% of the class got either a B, a B+ or an A-.

If the distribution comes out similarly to that this time around (which he’s probably somewhat planning on, or it would be weird to show us this distribution), I’m going to tell you that you can safely assume that I won’t pull a B- or an A. I’m not sure which result is less likely, but I’m pretty sure neither one will happen.

When I get my grade, and that will take a month or so after I take this test (so I’ll already be into the full swing of fall semester), I can’t really just publicly announce what it is. If I make mention of it at all, on this blog or to anyone that I talk to in person about the test, here’s basically my code:
“I didn’t do that great.” That means I got a B. Or a B-, but again…unlikely. And while I wouldn’t be satisfied, and would obviously be looking to rectify the situation with my next round of tests, it wouldn’t be the end of the world.
“I did fine.” That means B+, A- or A. I think an A- is attainable, and that’s my realistic goal…if I get a B+, I’ll be just fine with it. And if I get an A, I’ll obviously be overjoyed, but I’ll guard that secret with my life too.

In my studies, my basic plan is to have my outline 100% done and ready to take into the test with me by the end of tomorrow (Friday). At that point, I’ll hit the practice exams hard on Saturday/Sunday/Monday, then do my best on Tuesday’s test. As the professor suggested to us to get up and get a good breakfast in on exam day, I’ve naturally decided to spend that morning at Cracker Barrel. Yes, I still love that place, particularly for breakfast. The test will then run from 1-5, I’ll go out with classmates and celebrate the end of summer start soon after, then I’ll get up and head to Nashville the next day for my vacation.

I may be able to get a snippet up here on the blog about the test before I head off on vacation (though I’ll probably get posts up while on vacation too), but I honestly don’t know what there will be to tell you. I don’t think I can really offer you an extensive trip report like I did with the LSAT. I basically am pretty sure I’ll come out of it feeling fine, not bad but not amazing, and we’ll see how it comes out a month later. I assure you that I’m not a robot, and that I’ll probably feel plenty of stress during finals period in December, but when it comes to this one isolated summer test…my rational side is winning out so far.

In sifting through some advice on the web about how to best succeed on law school finals, the topic deviated a bit more toward law school in general…I had high appreciation for this piece of advice that one 3L passed along.

<<Just remember to call your mom, read a book, have a beer, and stay out late with your classmates taking about non-law related things. You’ll be in school with some of the smartest, most interesting people in the US… don’t miss out on that.>>

That’s really well put. While I would be happy for everyone in my class besides me to turn into a knuckle-dragging idiot come 1:00 next Tuesday for a few hours (for purposes of the grading curve), in general I’m really happy to be amongst some of the best and brightest minds that I’ve ever been amongst in my age group…and I can’t tell you what a relief it is that the majority of them are very cool people too, given how many smart people are incredibly awkward.

I liked what my professor said in class this morning at 11:00. “A week from now, you’ll be done with torts. You’ll be hung over, but you’ll be done with torts.” Needless to say, my classmates and I do have every plan to finish our final at 5:00 and head straight over to one of our favorite watering holes. Professor Gjerdingen has been a very cool first prof to have. I’ve learned a lot, and he’s been pretty interesting to listen to on most days. He’s set the bar high, and I can only cross my fingers that the majority of my other professors are close to this level of quality.

For what it’s worth, even though I wouldn’t be ready to take the final tomorrow morning or something, I’m feeling relatively good about where it looks I’ll be by Tuesday afternoon. It helps to see classmates displaying their panic on Facebook; I love them, but they’re my competition for the next week, and seeing others show weakness puts me at ease. I’m sure that my own stress level will ebb and flow a decent bit in the next 5.5 days though, so we’ll see how things end up. In any case, as I was telling a stressed out classmate last night, “if you can’t keep it together under the stress of one final, you’re going to have a full-on meltdown when we do four of these in December.” I wasn’t going to tell her she was going to do fine, because I really don’t have the first clue how she’ll do; what I do know is that one isolated test isn’t going to make or break anything.

Alright, back to the grind.

Crunch time has arrived. I’ve got a week until my first law school final. It’s a bit stressful, but I simply have to remind myself of two things:

1. At worst, I’m still extremely unlikely to bomb this. It is curved, and there are people who will be less capable/ready for this than I will.

2. This is just 11% of my first year GPA. B+ is the average I’ll have to keep up to keep my scholarship by the end of the first year, so a B+ or better is fine by me…but I think my worst-case scenario here is a B-, and even if that somehow happens then I shouldn’t panic. For that matter, I shouldn’t get overly excited about an A if I somehow manage that. It’s just one test.

By the way, it’s a joke that those of us from Washington get the reputation as the rainy state. Seriously, the rain in Washington is nothing. It’s frequent, yes…but it’s nothing. I thought that when I lived there, but I really think it now that I’ve experienced a couple of Midwest thunderstorms. Being drenched in 30 seconds is simply nothing that ever happened in Washington; the rain there is little more than a sprinkle, and torrential downpours are very rare. In Washington, when it rains, you think, “Hmm…that’s annoying.” Here, a few of us were out to lunch today, we saw a storm looming in, we got up from our tables at the restaurant (we had already paid) and went sprinting back to the law school a couple of blocks away…but we were only successfully 15 seconds or so into a sprint when the rain came down, and I proceeded to be 100% soaked within moments. It’s sort of unreal when you’ve never been in it before.

Other piece of news: I booked myself a five day/four night vacation to Nashville the day after the final exam. It’s a 4.5 hour drive from here; I check into my hotel on the 12th, check out on the 16th. I’ll be going to the Grand Ole Opry on the 15th, Josh Turner is the featured performer that night. Other details I haven’t yet determined, but I’ve seen some good ideas and I think it’ll be a fun trip and a great way to unwind after a grueling final. I’ll post a trip report with pictures.

I’m busier on a consistent basis than I’ve ever been, I think. Full disclosure: within “busy,” I’m including social time, which obviously isn’t an actual obligation when you’re single. Regardless, I’m sort of doing something all the time, and extended moments when I’m at a computer with nothing in particular to do (the usual conditions for blogging) are at a minimum.

But, it’s Sunday night, on the eve of returning to the classroom, and I can’t get myself in gear to do more schoolwork. I’ve done my reading for Monday’s class, but I could still stand to do some more final exam prep. I could ALWAYS stand to do more final exam prep. I really don’t know how that test is going to pan out. I’m not too worried about bombing it, I have a good grasp of most of the concepts, but again…I’m competing against lots of intelligent people. Until I’ve done a test and been graded on it, I won’t have a very good feel for how well or badly I can expect things to go. Obviously math would dictate that I’m most  likely to land somewhere near the middle, and if that’s how it goes then I’m okay with it. No matter what my grade is in this class, it’ll only be 11% of my first year GPA, so while an A would be fantastic and a C would be bad, nothing that happens is going to make or break me. This first exam is in two weeks, on August 11th, after which point I’ll get some real time to breathe and relax a bit.

Socially, things are good. Despite being a rare conservative Christian in Bloomington (seemingly the most liberal area of Indiana), I get along great with everyone…these aren’t the militant liberals you might find elsewhere, they really are respectful of me having my views as long as I act respectful of them and their views.

Otherwise, I’ll give basic cliffs notes of how things have gone socially:

• I come to Indiana worried that I’ll have a hard time meeting people. I quickly get on a first name basis with most of my class.
• I worry that I’ll come off as too much of an old man, figuring I might look like I was 35 rather than my actual age of 29; turns out that most people in my class truly thought I was under 29 until I went out of my way to tell them that I was “only” 29.
• I get in with a sub-group of friends within my class. There are four of them, plus me. They couple off. I fear dreaded fifth wheel status in this group. Others start joining us often enough that it becomes a non-issue in a hurry.
• I start fearing that our clique has isolated ourselves too much from the rest of the class. I love these people, but I don’t want to cast my social lot with them entirely. It turns out that I was imagining things there also, and we still seem to have good rapport with everyone else.

Common thread? I worry too much, and it rarely even pans out the way my pessimistic self thinks it’s going to. I’m generally a pretty lucky guy. Everything is going to be fine. About a week ago, an old WSU friend of mine posted a great Bible verse as his Facebook status update…

“Be at rest once more, oh my soul, for the Lord has been good to you.” -Psalm 116:7

Simple, but great…and very hard to argue with from my standpoint. I immediately sent my friend a message to let him know how much I enjoyed seeing it.

Basically, things are good. Bloomington is a nice little town with great restaurants, nice architecture, good culture and a cool vibe. I keep meaning to get out and about one weekend morning and take pictures of the town to post here; that’ll happen at some point. My new friends are good people, and I don’t have a hard time fitting in despite being one of the oldest (but happily not the very oldest) student in the class. Law school is hard, and despite the fact that I’m only facing a load that’s about 70-75% of the load I’ll be facing in the fall, I always feel like I have work hanging over my head…but it’s fulfilling. I like the subject matter, it’s a good fit, I like learning and growing intellectually. Sure, I get tired of all the work at times, and it’s a source of stress, but I never feel like I’m anything but lucky to be getting to do this. No part of me thought I was signing up for an easy life when I set out to pursue my law degree, after all.

I’m in the right place, both with doing law school and specifically doing law school at IU. It’s good to be able to say that.