Spring Cleaning

For some people, going shopping or getting a pedicure is like therapy. For me it's cleaning. If you ever feel unmotivated to do work, stressed out, or overwhelmed, I highly recommend some cleaning time. Instant gratification with productive results. And oh so good for people like me who like to be in control of things. Euphoric.

Today it was gloomy outside and I really didn't feel like working on my brief. So I finally unpacked my spring break suitcase, organized my increasingly cluttered closet, cleaned my bathroom, did the dishes, sorted through and recycled papers I didn't need anymore, straightened up my desk, etc.

I love it when everything is in its place. I was so happy and satisfied afterwards, I had a lot of engergy. If I didn't have my friends birthday dinner, I might have even plowed through a bunch of work with my spurt of energy. I'm just hoping that it carries through tomorrow. Because I have nothing else to clean.

Guilty Pleasures

Yesterday, my away message mentioned Sweet 16. One of my friends came up to me and said, "You watch Sweet 16 too!" I replied, "Well, actually I do, but I was talking about the the college basketball tournament." At this point, one of our friends shook his head in disgust for watching the MTV show about spoiled bratty girls spending tens of thousands of dollars on birthday parties.

My name is Kristina, and I watch bad television.

As sophisticated law students as we try to be, all of us give into temptation sometimes. In fact, I think guilty pleasures are the only things sometimes keeping us sane, not just law students but everyone. I think the fact that guilty pleasures are slightly embarrassing makes the satisfaction of secretly giving into temptation every once in a while all that more satisfying.

After reading a funny list of a columnist's guilty pleasures, here are some of mine:

NY Times Wedding Page & Washington Post Date Lab: I will reiterate again that I am not getting married, nor do I plan on it anytime soon. But like my friend Lauren and Carrie on Sex & The City, I love reading the NY Times wedding page. The stories are just so cute and/or entertaining. I'm part alpha-female, part girly-girl. [I also remembered that my roommate and I love looking at wedding pictures of people we know and judging their bride's maid dresses. I guess I'm also part catty.]

Spam, not the inbox kind: When I coyly admit that I've eaten spam and actually like it, people look at me in sheer horror. Minnesotans love their spam though, and I grew up on it. It's not like it's any more artificial than the processed cheese that we all love.

Cheerleading Competitions: I hope I'm not embarrassing Megan by saying that we loved watching cheerleading competitions on ESPN- she at least was a gymnast who could appreciate that aspect. And I can't even count the number of times I've watched Bring It On (another guilty pleasure).

Journal Reading: I'll admit that I read the blogs/live journals/xangas of people that I rarely or never talk to anymore. Reading about the lives and thoughts of people, even people I'm not friends with, is interesting. I'm sure some people reading this right now could agree.

Nerdy Podcasts: Every week my iPod uploads the newest episodes of Meet the Press, Countdown with Keith Olbermann, Newshour's Supreme Court Watch, CNN's Race to '08, NPR's Wait Wait Don't Tell Me, and Real Time with Bill Maher. You may be rocking out to your cool hip music, but this is probably what I'm listening to. Either that or...

Pop Music: Of all generations. From ABBA to Ace of Base to Christina Aguilera (it must be the name thing) to Kelly Clarkson. As much flak as pop music gets, it wouldn't be so popular if it wasn't so catchy.

My Humidifier: I might feel like an old woman (which, I guess, isn't a new feeling) filling up my humidifier every night, but I get really excited when the vapors start emitting.

And of course, Reality TV: I don't watch much tv, but every once in a while I will indulge myself. Some of these shows are more socially acceptable, some shows people shake their head at (enough people watch it to keep it on air though!). A list of shows I've watched more than once: Project Runway, Top Chef, Top Design, America's Next Top Model, The Apprentice, Real Housewives of OC, Bridezilla, Platinum Weddings, Real World, Extreme Home Makeover, and of course Sweet 16.

What are your guilty pleasures?

Diversifying

It's funny how when I went to UCLA, a campus that was 38% Asian-American, I wasn't part of any of the many Asian organizations. Come to my law school, the 8th most diverse law school in the nation but with only 6% Asian-American, and I now find myself the secretary of the Asian Pacific American Law Students Association.

And funny how I've decided not really to be active in the WCL Dems or Student Government, which would have been continuations of the two biggest parts of my undergrad life. What a difference a little time makes.

Now that I'm lifting my ban on extracurricular activities, it's interesting for me to reflect on what I'm choosing to do. I don't think I got sick of Democratic Party stuff or student gov (OK, maybe a little bit of the second), but I think I like exploring new types of activities. I also naturally gravitate towards places where I think I could really contribute. I was far too disgusted with how USAC was being run to not go in there myself and try to fix things; similarly I figured I couldn't complain about how APALSA was this year willing to put in work myself (which appears to be the catalyst of all the people who are going to be on next year's board).

I'm already really excited about trying new things next year...but I have to remind myself I have to finish this year first.

Bong Hits 4 Jesus, Part Deux

Now that we've all turned in our write-on submissions and our vows of silence have ended, I can finally talk about the subject (for the first and last time). I wouldn't mention it if it wasn't so hilarious, but it is. So amusing that it caught my attention and I mentioned it here in January. Weird, huh?

In a nutshell: a kid held up a sign saying "Bong Hits 4 Jesus." School tears it down. There's all these disputes about whether the poster was at a campus event or not, if it was offensive, if it caused a disruption. We had to analyze if the school violated the student's First Amendment rights by ripping down the poster and suspending him 10 days.

The Supreme Court coincidentally heard oral arguments on this case as we were submitting our own decisions. It was on the front page of every news site: NY Times, Washington Post, LA Times, CNN, and even BBC (I went to Fox News just for kicks, and they were the only one who didn't have it on the front page...odd, no?) And I read all the articles when I could. You would think that I would be so sick of reading about this, but I wasn't. I'm a nerd.

All that I will say is that reading these stately old Justices talk about "bongs" and "pot" is hilarious. This article has a compilation of some of the funny quotes, like Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg asking, "So if the sign had been 'Bong Stinks for Jesus,' that would be . . . a protected right?" Oh Ruth...

I predict, and hope like the NYTimes editorial, that the Supreme Court finds in favor of the kid. As stupid as the poster was, as against drugs as I am, and as fascist as I can be sometimes, there's a lot of reasons why you shouldn't censor kids for something like this (since I don't want to re-write my paper here, you can contact me if you want to discuss).

Like I said in January, I can't wait to see what happens. Especially now that I feel so much more personally invested. Oh Constitutional Law, why are you so fun?

Write-On Of Passage

My non-law school friend once made an astute observation, likening law school classes to army platoons. First year of law school is thus analogous to bootcamp, with many challenges testing our mental strength. And while we may not love everyone we're around, we'll bond over surmounting obstacles together.

We bonded over bbq'ed food and beer after turning in our first memo. We bonded over hating hot tubs after turning in our second memo. And we bonded over surviving our first set of law school finals. These are all like rites of passages for law school, things that you hate while you're doing them but things that you're so glad that you accomplished after they're done. Things that only the people who went through it with you fully understand.

Spring Break for many lL's is consumed by the write-on competition that I've written much about. As much as I wanted to quit so many times, reading through hundreds of pages, I'm really glad that I went through with it now. Regardless if I make it onto a journal (obviously I want to, but I'll be ok if I didn't), I learned a lot both academically and personally. . . as cheesy as that sounds.

It's also funny that as I was in the library measuring my margins to make sure that they were precisely 1-inch (contrary to popular belief- if you set your margins on Word to 1-inch, they will not turn out that way) or waiting in line to turn in 20 copies of my 10 page paper, I talked to people that I've never talked to before. It's the bond. We suffered together, we helped each other within the parameters of the honor code, we share each other's pain.

I was going to mention some things about the topic that we had to write on, because I'm allowed to and it's all over the news now, but I'll save that for tomorrow. I am exhausted!

The Right to Reproduce

We've all thought it in our heads, maybe even said it aloud: Some people really just shouldn't reproduce.

We might have thought it but we probably wouldn't support a law legalizing it (well, at least I wouldn't. . .Nazi Germany, no thanks). Little did I know that the United States did have laws regarding sterilization for repeat chicken thieves, and that the Supreme Court actually agreed.

Finally getting into the "sexy" subjects in constitutional law, we discussed many things today including the right to contraceptives, the right to abortion, and something that most of us probably didn't know was contentious: the right to reproduce.

You see back in the day, there used to be laws calling for the sterilization of individuals for "the health of the [person] and the welfare of society." Sometimes this applied to people convicted of committing 3 crimes (as my Professor said, "Three Strikes and you're sterilized!") and sometimes it would be applied to people in mental institutions.

In one of the most callous (to the point of funny) decisions I've ever read by the Supreme Court, Justice Holmes affirmed the sterilization law in Buck v. Bell, where the state wanted to sterilize a "feeble minded" woman* who's condition had run in the family for at least three generations. The usually very eloquent Justice Holmes argues that sterilization is good:

. . . In order to prevent the nation from being swamped with incompetence. It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. . .Three generations of imbeciles are enough.

Ouch.

*Footnote: They later found out that the "feeble minded" woman they sterilized, one of 20,000 sterilizations in 1935, was actually a woman of normal intelligence.

Oh Canada!

Alex and I ventured up to Niagara Falls with his friend Idriss and Idriss' fiance Meghan. Fun times were had by all, and though we couldn't venture over to Canada because Idriss is in the US on a student visa, I did learn some things about our friends up north:

• The Canadian side of Niagara Falls is vastly superior to the American side. Pretty much the only time they are better (well, prescription drugs too). As we looked longingly across all the fun things Canada had, like a observation tower and ferris wheel, Alex noted that this is what it must be like looking at America at the Mexico-American border.
• Canadians try to make their currency look like ours and people will try to use it as American currency, even though it is worth less money. Cheaters!
  
• Canadians have TGIFridays, really big TGIFridays.
  
• Airport security is far more strict than border security between the American-Canadian border.
• Canadian squirrels are really fat. Much fatter than even UCLA squirrels. Must need that insulation to keep them warm because it's cold up there!