The Law Revue

In Law School Land, there's Law Review (well actually, there's four Law Reviews). These are the journals that are uber-competitive to get onto and what I'll be working on during my spring break. Then there's Law Revue, which is my law school's annual musical making fun of our sad existences.

I went last night to Law Revue to support my friend and appellate brief partner Vicki. In addition to being extremely impressed with the talent of people at this school, I hadn't laughed so hard in a really long time. For my fellow Bruins, Law Revue resembles Spring Sing Company acts. There were song and dance numbers making fun of our bitterness at Gerogetown, how professors arbitrarily give out grades, law students with rolly backpacks, how we can't go to a bar and hold a conversation with a non-law student anymore, law school romances, and of course all those 1Ls miserably spending their Spring Break trying to get onto the other law review.

It's funny how many inside jokes laws students have amongst themselves. Just like any other occupation, organization, or group of people, we bond over things that no one else understands. My friends once asked me why everyone always loved the people within their section, and I explained its because we share our downs and occassional ups together. Things that people outside of our section, and outside of law school will never fully get. It's just like inside jokes between friends.

After three years in our little law school bubble, it'll be interesting to see how we assimilate back into the real world. That is, if we don't take jobs that don't have us chained to the firm 90 hours a week.

A Few of My Favorite Things...

It's interesting how being in a good mood can make being in the library at 9am on Friday, your day off from school, bearable...if not even a little fun. Despite the slow and stressful start to the week, things have gotten much better. A lot of this can be attributed to some of my favorite things:

• UCLA Basketball: Not only did we win a big game against Washington State last night, not only did we win the Pac-10 division last night, we did it with class. In an article my friends have posted, UCLA has championship material, a columnist points notes how mature our team is and how humble they are. UCLA actually waited until they got off WSU's court and up the ramp to celebrate their Pac-10 victory. So much more class than USC, who I still remember threw oranges onto our field at the Rosebowl when they beat us and got a bid to the Orange Bowl.
  
• Post-it Notes: Invented by a Minnesotan, colored post-it notes makes organizing your stacks of materials so much more fun. I'm really glad I found a profession that caters to my obsessive compulsive tendancies.
• Finetune.com: My roommate showed me this really cool website. You're better off just exploring the website instead of having me try to explain it fully but in a nutshell: you can listen to different commercialess radio stations that relate to artists you like and make your own playlists. Fun times.
  
• Natural Light & Lunch: After rain last night and this morning, it goregous this afternoon and amazingly 60 degrees. Even if I only got to enjoy it when I was having lunch with my law school friends, it was great. And having the opportunity to eat lunch with my friends outside the law school dining room made it even better.
  
• The Boyfriend & Wings: Knowing that I was staying in to work on my argument and unable to go to the bar to watch UCLA's big game, Alex surprised me by ordering wings and having them delivered to my apartment. Words cannot even describe how giddy I was.
  

March Madness

Last year my March was filled with a 2 week Spring Break including a trip to Hawaii, and March Madness of the basketball kind. This year my March has a quasi-Spring Break and a madness of its own kind.

Sure, I'll be watching basketball since I've become a college bball addict and having fellow law students from other elite basketball schools makes it even more exciting (I am a bona fide Gator-Hater). But I have competitions of my own this month. Even at my kumbaya school there is still a lot of competition.

There's the intense write-on competition to get onto a law journal, the competiveness to get into a clinic (even if it is a lottery system, you're still hoping for one of the coveted spots), fierce campaigning for student government elections and elections in every other student organization, rivalry for jobs against fellow students, and of course our appellate oral arguments against another side infront of our professor and a judge.

It can, and has been somewhat stressful, but law school students thrive on competition. The best is example was this week when there was a "Penny Wars" competition between the law school sections (where you put in change in your team's jars and put in dollars in your opponents jars to cancel out their change). I don't think most people even knew what the fundraising was for, but let me tell you there was fierce competition. Trashtalking, strategizing, plan of attack emails, the works. Law students, competitive, who would have thought?

A Dating Disclaimer

My non-law school friends often ask me to set them up with my law school friends. I always ask them, and myself, why in the world would you want to date a first year law school student? Not to knock on my own kind, or ruin the chances of those single law school students, but we're nuts. This week in particular, where everyone is uberly stressed out and cranky, is why I would never want to be held responsible for setting up a friend with a 1L. Here is what you would be in store for:

• Law students are prone to lapses in sanity. Riding the elevator this morning, it was almost eerie how at ease everyone felt in the freight elevator with padded walls.
• Law students have late nights at school. On Monday I was on campus for 15 hours (from 8:30am-11:30pm).
  
• Law students are masochists. They will all sacrifice their Spring Break to read 500 pages of materials and write a 10 page comment, crossing their fingers that they make one of the coveted spots on law review, and in turn, have more work to do.
  
• Law students lost their sense of normal humor and had it replaced with nerdy legal humor that few people understand/find funny. [See picture of fitting shirt my friend actually got her boyfriend.]
  
• Law students smell. If it's a choice between doing laundry and sleep, guess which one we pick.
  
• Law students can sue you. Considering the fact that we see potential lawsuits everywhere we look, you better be on your best behavior. Can we say tort claim for intentional infliction of emotional distress?

So I asked my boyfriend why anyone would want to date a law student. His answer: financial stability. I would question this answer but I'm just grateful to have someone who will deal with me.

[Note: I'm joking...well mostly. We're not that bad unless you deprive us of our caffeine.]

A Political Junkie

I've noticed that law school students tend to cope with academic vigors through different types of addictive behavior: many people drink, some people chain smoke outside of class, and a scattering of people partake in recreational behavior that...well, wouldn't get them past a FBI background check.

I read news addictively, particularly news relating to the 2008 election. In addition to hitting up all the major newspapers in the morning and reading Newsweek before I go to bed, I've been frequenting this website: DailyPrez.com, a really good blog about everything '08 created by my good friend Doug Ludlow.

While I certainly agree that there are more important issues to read about and act upon right now than who's ahead for a general election 615 days away, it is incredibly addicting to follow this stuff. It's a soap opera and lesson in electoral politics all rolled into one.

Plus, after having lunch on Friday with a friend who's fundraising for Hilary, I realized how much I miss it all (not Hilary in particular, I don't have a candidate besides Gore). It's hard not doing anything political after it's dominated your life for four years. Maybe I'll free up some time to get involved in the general election, but for now I read the news because I have little time to do anything else.

Finally, seeing as how this is probably going to be the most dynamic and interesting election, perhaps in our entire country's history, why not start paying attention now?

I Heart Al

I took a break to watch the Oscars, pretty much just to see Al Gore. Although Gore is the new "it" guy, I've always loved him. Maybe because we both lost Presidential races in 2000. Anyway, I'm just glad that everyone realizes how great he is, even the Academy.

Reasons why Al Gore is one of my heroes...and what we can learn from him:

1. He got right back up again. We all know the heartache of dealing with a tough loss; could you imagine what it is like to being so close to President? But Al proves that after a hard fall, you can get back up again and do even more amazing work.

2. He uses his celebrity for good. If our country is going to be obsessed with celebrities, celebrities should use their fame for good (or at the very least, don't be bad role models.)

3. He is passionate about a cause. Everyone had kind of heard about global warming before, but I think Al Gore's efforts really brought it to the forefront. Even when it seemed like no one else cared before, he kept working. I for one think it's a really important cause, and even if you think that there are more pressing issues, you have to be at least grateful that the focus is on something other than a wedge issue (ie: gay marriage).

4. He reaches the masses. Before class today, some girls were debating about whether people would take Gore seriously as a candidate now that he's been at the Grammys and Oscars. Say what you will about liberal Hollywood or just people in entertainment in general, entertainment reaches millions if not billions of people. And if you can get your word out through making a documentary or making a speech at awards show, I have far more respect for you than most politicians. Imagine if we spent more time educating the common man about important issues.

5. He doesn't take himself too seriously. He introduces himself as the "former next President of the United States." He parodies himself on SNL. He makes jokes at the Oscars. He embraces the fact that everyone thinks (or thought) that he was boring. In a time when far too many politicians, and people in general, take themselves and life too seriously, I think we have to remember to be like Al.

I can't fault him if he doesn't want to run for President again, but if he did I would jump onto his campaign in a heartbeat. Gore '08!

Snowy Sundays

The best way to describe weather in DC is schizophrenic. In addition to sudden terrential downpours during the summer, I learned today that mini-blizzards can also come out of the blue. Yesterday my roommate and I were just talking about how there were very few traces that it had ever snowed because the snow and ice had completely melted. Spoke too soon.

What was predicted as rain today turned out to be 4 inches of snow in a few hours. Naturally, the city went into panic mode and ordered that cars not park on the streets so the snow plows could clean up. (Un)fortunately I was inside reading and reading some more with a cup of hot chai. I did take a little break to take pictures and document my first experience with seasons.

Snowing All Day Long
But Even More Studying
Is It Spring Break Yet?
-another original kpd haiku

ps: happy 21st birthday lil tall brother.