I usually start making plans for my vacation around this time of year, and unlike those who usually have their main vacations during the summer, mine takes place in October, which is by far my absolute favorite month out of the year.

This time though, I’m breaking with tradition for a few reasons. One, I’ve grudgingly accepted the fact that I desperately need to save money to pay off my loans so I’m more financially prepared for law school. Two, taking vacations by myself seems to have run its course. In the beginning I used to really enjoy vacationing by myself, being only slightly peeved by that ever omnipresent young couple that always seemed to find me wherever I went, holding hands and playing suck face while I did my darnedest best to try to ignore them.

Now though, it’s gotten tiresome. I’m tired of going back to an empty motel room at the end of the day. I’m tired of visiting a fascinating tourist attraction while having no one to share that experience with. I’m tired of using a tripod just so I can take pictures of myself. I’m tired of walking around by myself while the rest of the world walks in pairs. I’m @#$%-ing sick and tired of it all. So the last time I came back from vacation, I resolved that I would never do it again until I met the girl of my dreams. Yeah yeah, I can hear the critics now: “You’re gonna be a lonely mother for a long, long time, Linkie.” But I can’t do it anymore. Ironically enough it’s made me more anti-social as a result, because now I’m losing the desire to even leave the apartment, much less take a vacation somewhere. It simply pains me too much to put myself out there these days. I have to get over it though, especially considering that I’m not gonna be meeting anybody any time soon if I continue to hide under the bed all the time. *sigh*

Ah well, worse comes to worse, there’s always escort services.

Tags: apartment, dating, desire, escort services, friendships, holding hands, last time, law school, loans, loneliness, lonely, long long time, pairs, rest of the world, single, smile, soulmate, time of year, tourist attraction, tripod, vacation, vacations
Categories: Romance and Relationships
 
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I live on an apartment complex that assigns you one parking space per unit (which makes perfect sense since everybody and their mother around here owns at least two cars). Additionally, the town in its eternal wisdom has decreed that no car can be parked on any of the streets adjacent to the apartment complex for more than 4 hours. “F”-ing brilliant. Quite naturally as a result, parking has become a bit of an issue. When I first moved here, I figured I could pull a fast one when parking on the side streets by putting a police decal on my dashboard, indicating that I was on “official police business.” Since that’s what I actually use my car for when I’m working, it wasn’t really that far off the mark.

Nope, they ticketed my horse anyway. So much for camaraderie, fricking uptight code enforcement dweebs.

The funny thing however was that I managed to get the ticket torn up anyway, due to a long lost friend of mine working inside town hall. She had been my commanding officer back in the days when I was a reserve cop, and by sheer luck she was now working code enforcement. I found out months later that I wouldn’t be ticketed in the future, so long as they knew I was a resident of the area (kind of an unwritten rule they follow to cut residents some slack).

Before I found out about that though, there were times I parked my ride in front the dumpster used by the complex, along with three other cars that did the same thing. I really couldn’t blame them, because there simply was no other place to park, and I figured since they were doing it, no harm in me doing it too.

Nope. I got a letter from the landlord flatly stating how it has come to his attention that certain tenants (read: me) were illegally parking in front of the dumpster, and that if this continued, the cars (read: MY car) would be towed.

So I stopped parking there, though evidently I was the only one who got the memo because the other cars stayed right where they were. In fact another car now occupies the same spot I usually took in front of the dumpster. After asking around, it appears I really WAS the only one who got the letter. Hmmmm. So much for equal treatment.

To add insult to injury, when I’m parking on the side streets, one of the newer tenants has this habit of parking thisfrickingclose to my rear, even though there’s never anybody behind her, and there are always plenty of other spaces on the street where she could park much closer to her unit. This I don’t get, I mean if it were me, I think I’d park my ride a little bit closer than that, and definitely where I could actually see it from my apartment, right?

Today was different though. The car was parked in the same spot as always, except it was missing a few things. 4 tires to be exact. And the rims.

Whoever did it not only left the bolts but the jack behind as well. It was almost comical, but a little weird. For one, why was the car parked 2 feet from the curb, which inadvertently made it much easier for the thieves to jack and boost the tires from that side? And why leave the jack behind? The whole thing about it makes me suspect an insurance scam, especially since she didn’t seem overly upset about it when the police came knocking. I would have gone ape, but I guess that’s just me. I guess I’ll know for sure that something was up if she gets new tires, and then ends up parking in the exact same spot as usual.

Weird neighborhood I’m living in, but at least I won’t have to worry about Tire Lady parking up my ass for a while.

Tags: camaraderie, car, code enforcement, commanding officer, cop, dashboard, decal, dumpster, funny thing, landlord, long lost friend, parking, parking space, parking ticket, police, ride, side streets, slack, street, theft, tires, town hall, two cars
Categories: Lincoln's Personal Log
 
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Caught this interesting news piece:

On June 27, 1995, the Department of Justice(DOJ) filed a complaint formally charging ABA with fixing professors’ salaries and other violations of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. It charged ABA with furthering “the self-interest of professors instead of improving education,” Hagan said. Although ABA agreed to a DOJ consent decree at the time, Hagan said this did not put an end to ABA’s restrictive practices. “Even after the consent decree, the ABA continued to require schools to hire huge, expensive full-time faculties who had light teaching loads, to build expensive buildings costing millions of dollars, to have a huge and expensive hard copy library even though legal materials are available on-line, and to demand high LSAT scores from applicants.” Hagan reflected, “The decree did nothing to open law schools to persons who had been unfairly excluded.”

If you ever wondered how law professors manage to find the time to become such prolific bloggers, now you know.

Tags: ABA, bloggers, consent decree, department of justice, doj, faculties, full time, june 27, law, law professors, law school, law schools, legal, legal materials, restrictive practices, self interest, trust act
Categories: Legally Speaking
 
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Lately the blogosphere has been dishing out advice for beginning law school students by the dozen, mostly by professors offering a suggestion or two on how to survive law school. Some are good, the rest make me wonder what reality these people are living in. And while there’s plenty of suggestions on how to perform well in school to go around, so far no one has given these “pearls of wisdom” a critical look to see if they’re truly worth their weight in gold. Enter, yours truly.

Below contains a summary of most of the advice I’ve found so far, followed by my own personal critique. Note: I found tips for students going through orientation and some advice that dealt strictly with how to brief cases, but I decided to ignore them since they don’t deal with the overall picture.

Suggestion #1: Develop a strong work ethic.

My initial response: No @#$% Sherlock. Honestly, this could apply to just about everything else in life, and if a student hasn’t learned by law school the value of having a strong work ethic, he never will. I don’t know what’s worse, that this is the kind of advice law school students are being given, or the fact that some feel it’s necessary to reiterate those life lessons we should have already learned in kindergarten.

Suggestion #2: Working smart is as important as working hard.

This might have been helpful, except virtually no information is given on how a student can work SMART. Instead we’re just fed some analogical anecdotes that tell us nothing. Anyone with a positive IQ point knows they have to work smart as well as hard, but the key issue is, HOW? We’re not told that here.

Suggestion #3: Read the materials in casebooks actively/Do the reading.

It’s true that law school isn’t about memorizing and regurgitating legal rules, but about learning how to skillfully perform legal analysis. However, being an avid reader in casebooks is a moot point if you’re not told WHAT to look for, as if earnestly reading badly written casebooks will somehow magically impart in you the skills necessary to perform a lawyerlike analysis. The truth is you have to first KNOW the law (otherwise known as Black Letter Law), before you can learn analyzing it and then applying it to various scenarios (fact patterns). But the necessary Black Letter Law can be so buried inside the casebooks that you may end up wasting eons of time just trying to find the relevant BBL before doing anything else, much less taking a crack at doing legal analysis.

Suggestion #4: Refrain from using a lot of study aids.

We’re told here that study aids can be inaccurate, and even if they were accurate, relying on them would discourage the hard work needed to perform legal analysis. Yeah right. What study aids, (specifically ones like primers and commercial outlines) can do is give you the BBL plain and simple, making it far easier for you to learn and internalize the relevant law, and thus provide a foundation for which you can learn how to perform a lawyerlike analysis of fact patterns. You CANNOT analyze cases and fact patterns until you first become familiar with (and have internalized) the relevant Black Letter Law. Good study aids can help you accomplish this by helping you learn BBL in a straightforward and easy to understand manner.

Suggestion #5: Don’t think about exams right away.

The professor bemoans over how too many students are concerned about exams and even ask questions about it on the first day of school. Might that have something to do with the fact that for the most part, a student’s grade for the class will be almost completely based on one final exam? Naturally that’s going to make a student a wee bit curious about the exam’s contents, and how can he can appropriately prepare for it beforehand.

Suggestion #6: Treat law school like a job.

This one isn’t so bad. I would venture so far as to say you should treat law school like a FULL-TIME job. I’m sure a lot of student suffer from a “party mentality” that they developed during their undergrad days, and find themselves dismayed at the thought that law school will require them to actually have to WORK for their grades. Time-wise, investing 40 hours a week towards your studies is not bad advice, especially if you are studying the right way, and it emphasizes the importance of creating a schedule that will bring some order to your daily routine, helping you to balance studying time with free time without sacrificing either.

Suggestion #7: Exercise.

Duh.

Suggestion #8: Maintain outside interests/Take a break every now and then from law school.

It’s certainly a given that law school should not be your WHOLE life. But there’s something wrong when law school seems to create such an isolating environment that students feel they have no choice but to let it monopolize ALL of their time at the expense of everything else, including their relationships with family and friends. It’s one thing if it’s because law school is just uniquely demanding, but it’s quite another when a large part of it may be because of a badly flawed pedagogy that often sends students chasing after their own tails.

Suggestion #9: It’s ok to feel lost.

Gee, thanks. Instead of being a part of the problem, why not be a part of a solution and develop a teaching method where students WON’T feel so lost? And no, it’s NOT ok to feel lost because we SHOULDN’T be feeling lost to begin with. What are we paying you guys for anyway?

Suggestion #10: Talk to your professors and ask them questions.

After admitting to the shortcomings of legal education, we’re entreated here to approach our professors outside the classroom for help. This might be all well and good if A) the professor has sufficient enough time to help you out and B) he actually happens to be a GOOD teacher. But if not, what then? And what if you have a REALLY bad professor, as opposed to one who is merely an incompetent idiot? In many cases these very professors are perpetuating the students’ problems in trying to learn the law. Talking to them may help you get a sense of what they are looking for, but if they’re the sort that love to play hide the ball and other mind games, then this kind of advice won’t take you very far.

Suggestion #11: Take classes based on who the professor is, not what the subject is.

This is very good (and telling) advice. I’ve heard elsewhere that the best classes students ever had was not because of the subject, but because the professor was so good. This may not apply to first year law students who’ve had their schedule preprepared though, but if you can choose your professor, even if the subject sounds drop dead boring, it would be sorely worth it just to sit in a class where the professor has an excellent reputation.

Suggestion #12: Take practice exams.

YES. ABSO-FREAKING-LUTELY. Taking old exams given by professors in the past is one of the best ways to prepare yourself for the real one. Practice does make perfect, and being able to practice on old
exams is an opportunity you should never pass up. More importantly, start taking practice exams early in the semester (maybe about midway). Do not start taking them a week before the final exam. This is something you should work on throughout the semester rather than as a means of cramming for the final exam.

Suggestion #13: Go to class.

This just in: water is wet.

Suggestion #14: Law school is tough. Deal with it.

This one gave me a headache. After being told law school will suck up all my time and then some, I’m then advised that one way of dealing with the stress is to (you guessed it), make time for myself and my family.

Suggestion #15: Use law review articles to help learn and understand the material.

I’m not sure about this one, as this is the first time I’ve heard of the use of law review articles as a study aid. She does make a point about Commercial Outlines not being sufficient unto themselves, since they only convey black letter law without providing the reasoning (or policy) behind them. That’s where the use of a good primer comes in though.

Suggestion #16: Find out what works best for you.

As LawMommy would say, this one should be emblazoned on a t-shirt or on professional labels, not because it’s good advice, but because it’s been said repeatedly, over… and over… and over… and over again.

Closing Thoughts:

Blackprof.com offers some of the better advice for law students that I’ve found so far, and Madisonian.net also offers a few tips definitely worth looking into (with the possible exception of the suggestion that you should brief every day). As for me personally, I indicated before that I believe legal education is (or should be) a two step process: 1) To learn and internalize Black Letter Law and 2) Applying your knowledge of Black Letter Law to different scenarios and fact patterns. I honestly believe it can be as simple as that, but for whatever reason there seems to be a perpetual need to inject mystical qualities into the law by the powers that be, making it far harder to master than it should be. I suspect a lot of it is by design, and is being perpetuated by little more than elitist snobbery.

Tags: advice, anecdotes, blogosphere, dating, education, exercise, family and friends, gold, iq, kindergarten, law, law professors, law school, law school students, legal, legal education, love, mind games, moot point, orientation, pearls of wisdom, pedagogy, professors, sherlock, shortcomings, studying, suggestion, teaching method, whole life
Categories: Legally Speaking
 
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When Hell vomited forth its presence onto the Internet, the net result was the creation of Myspace.

I’m no stranger to online social networking, but what goes on at Myspace can only be adequately described as some drug induced psychotic nightmare that even the marginally sane among us would do best to avoid. At one time I had actually thought this might be a good place for networking and meeting reasonably intelligent, morally upright women. Good God, what the hell was I thinking?

But what truly irks me is not so much the neon green text on a yellow background layout that some brain damaged Myspacer thought would look cool, or the auto-streaming of some lame urban rap song AND a music video all at once (?!?!?!), or the appalling mass of bloated crap Myspacers upload to their pages that could cause even IBM’s Deep Blue to grind to a screeching halt. Instead, it’s the utterly obnoxious, completely unhinged, whacked out to the freaking gills mentality these Myspacers exhibit. Having all the grace of parentless teenagers on crack, the contents of the Myspace universe are often lewd, obscene, vulgar, and at times downright disturbing.

The only redeeming quality I could see in using Myspace is if you want to look up people from your college or high school days. There were about 400 people in my graduating class in high school, but I found less than 30 of them were on Myspace. I pretty much didn’t recognize any of them either. Either the rest of my classmates hadn’t caught on, or they turned out to be very smart people. So much for me connecting with my old high school buddies.

I have to admit, scouting sites like Myspace can be a very depressing experience, especially when my only desire here is to find a network of likeminded people who I could truly connect with. That and of course, finding the girl of my dreams. It’s not just Myspace though, it’s also the many other networking and matchmaking sites that turn out to be utter crap. My personal favorite out of this bunch has to be eHarmony though, of which I filled out three personality tests at various times in the past and got back three different results. Either I have multiple personalities, or eHarmony’s questionaire isn’t worth a bucket of warm spit. For this they charge 50+ dollars a month?

Apparently though, I’m not the only one who’s been getting frustrated over this. A recent article indicated that social isolation has been steadily increasing for quite a while, in spite of the rapid rise of online social networking. Even with the Internet, people are more disconnected from each other today than they ever were before.

This quote by the way from a Slashdot commentator was quite telling:

I agree and I face this situation on a daily basis. Every potential social outlet has been closed off in the face of shopping malls and such and it seems like the only place to meet anyone is at the bar where you have the choice between the girl with tatoos or one of the girls… {uhh, no more need be said about these sort}. It’s getting quite desperate. It’s actually getting me to think about going back to school or joining some type of community service organization just to meet people. The world has turned into a lonely, lonely place. Online socializing isn’t the solution though, I’ve learned that much. But it is the symptom of a larger problem that will probably not be going away anytime soon.

In spite of the declining number of social outlets that could possibly suit me, the sobering reality is that I’m going to have to put myself out there more often and as much as possible, even though it requires far more work… and far more risks as well. It’s so easy for me to just plop down in front of a computer and try to network that way, but I can’t help but feel it’s an ass backwards way of developing a genuine social network of friends. It seems more ideal that I meet and connect with people first in real life and then continue that correspondence online, as so many others have successfully done.

Instead of expecting it all to be handed to me on a silver platter, it looks like I’m gonna have to actually put some muscle and effort into this. I may even have to, God help me, start talking to people as well. Oh the depths to which I must now sink in order to find my true love! Will there be no end to this atrocity???

Tags: classmates, college, crack, dating, eharmony, friendships, good god, graduating class, high school, love, matchmaking, mentality, music video, myspace, nightmare, rap song, romance, social networking, soulmate, stranger, teenagers, urban rap
Categories: Romance and Relationships
 
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I think I need to change the focus of my blog a little bit. Most of my writing thus far has been utter monkey crap, so it’s obvious I haven’t found my niche just yet. I think the problem is that I’m trying too hard to mimic the style of the more successful blogs, and investing too much effort trying to scheme up ways to boost my traffic levels. I really should just write and be done with it, and let the rest take care of itself.

I’ve been a real mess lately, partly because this should have been the time I’d be starting law school and a brand new life, and instead I’m stuffing my face in with ho-hos while watching Grade-B horror flicks on the Sci-Fi channel. Probably not the best way to be spending the last days of summer, but, whatever.

So, where to go from here? Bottom line: I have a year to pull my self together before I start law school. That’s a year to get healthy again, pay off my debts, finish the rest of my law school prepping, and get myself bulked up so I can impress those impressionable law school chicks.

Problem is, it’s hard to stay motivated when I’m not even sure I’m going to law school. But then I consider the alternative… there IS no alternative. All I have now is a dead end job I’ve been working for 6 years, and 6 years could easily turn into 60 if I don’t start taking chances NOW. So… this is it. The next 12 months will either make me or break me. But I can do it, because I have the discipline and the will to go out there and accomplish great things, right? Right??

Oh hell.

Tags: 6 years, blog, blogging, blogs, bottom line, chicks, debts, discipline, goals, job, law school, little bit, monkey, niche, sci fi channel, taking chances
Categories: Lincoln's Personal Log
 
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