Not a Sissy

In Administrative Law, the term capture refers to the phenomenon of when the mindset of the government agency regulators and those industries they are supposed to regulate become the same. Basically, the industries influence and end up controlling the agencies.

Well, I feel captured by Administrative Law itself. Last night I had a dream that I was interviewing for the Administrative Law Editorial board when it appeared that someone was robbing the hotel we were in. In my dream, we all dropped to the ground and tried to hide from the gunmen. Turns out that the robbers were actually the Department of Homeland Security exercising the full powers of the police state. At the end of my dream, the President from '24' (a show that I have never watched) declared that Homeland Security abused its delegated power.

I am presently sitting in my apartment waiting to take my Administrative Law final in a little over eight hours (yes, a final on a Friday night), wearing my Admin Law Review tshirt that says "Administrative Law is not for sissies . . ." quoting Antonin Scalia.

It has taken over my life. I have been captured. At least I know I am not a sissy.

Top Chef'ing It: Blogs

If you are a Top Chef fan like me, I highly suggest that you check out the Top Chef Blogs on the Bravo website. In addition to giving insight into each episode, the blogs also impart cooking tips (ie: instead of salting your food, sometimes all you need is some acid) and factoids about food generally.

I especially enjoyed Chef Tom Collichio's response to this week's $10 Family Meal Challenge:

"And while this week’s Elimination Challenge may have seemed Draconian -- $10 to feed a family of four? And cooking healthily to boot? -- here are a couple facts to help put that in perspective:

• 28 million Americans (almost 10% of the population) will rely on food stamps as a primary source of nutrition this year.

• A typical food stamp allotment in this country is $21 a person a week, which breaks down roughly to $1 per meal, or $4 per meal for a family of four.

Suddenly that $10 doesn’t seem so bad, does it?"

Reading these blogs has been my routine before work on Thursdays. Ted Allen's and Tom's are probably my favorite, LeAnne's blog about behind the scenes action is really cool, and I love Harold's straight-talk. Just do not read Dale's (season 3) one blog-- he confirms that he is just as whiny and egotistical as I always thought he was. If only Anthony Bourdain would come back to blog, I would be most happy.

Over It

Over the Democratic Primary
Over dealing with the jerks at law school
Over Dominique still being on Top Model

Ready for a summer by the beach
Ready for lots of weddings to attend this summer
Ready for finals to be over on Friday

Then & Now, Here & There

As I read the Daily Bruin yesterday in an attempt to distract myself from finals, I stumbled across the platforms for this year student government candidates. I feel so old as friends who were freshmen when I was a senior are this year's seniors running for office.

I smiled as I saw each slate have the same coalition of candidates running on the same kind of platforms as when I ran and candidates much older than I ran on as well. When I ran for Vice Pres, I thought our ideas and tactics were so different, so reinventing the wheel, so progressive from the past. How naiive I was.

After observing UCLA politics for six years now and talking to alumni, I have realized that there will always be the blue slate (my team) with the Greeks, the Hill, Jewish Groups, Bruin Dems, Moderates, sometimes Republicans, and independent organizations against the red slate with the cultural groups, labor people, lgbt groups, and "very liberal" protester types. Sometimes a student group will switch sides or the slate may try a new color, but it always seems to go back to this formula.

Moreover, I have learned that the coalitions, major players, and issues of student elections are the same school-to-school. When I clicked on my friend's links to the UCSB election, I saw that they even had the same exact tshirt color and design as the one we came up with three years ago. (Faith, we should have copyrighted it then).

There's a lot I do not miss: passing out flyers during campaigns, being called a race traitor, someone threatening to revoke Bruin Dem's charter, meetings until 2am, and losing races. But there were many aspects of student government that I am still grateful for: mostly the people I met. Some of the coolest, ambitious, smart, crazy, and dedicated people at UCLA. And of course, there was my running mate Alex. We really need a reunion.

The Law Won

I fought the law and well . . . I have never come out of a final feeling so defeated. It is really just frustrating because I studied so hard and thought I knew the material so well. I do not know what happened.

Alex took me out to dinner afterwards to clear my mind and I have had a lot of support from my friends. But I cannot stop thinking about it no matter how much I try.

Then & Now

People often ask me how law school is different from college. Wow, it is hard to believe that my undergraduate days were only two years ago. It seems like such a long time ago when I took those kind of finals. Finals which had no preceding reading week because you did not need one. Finals which you could prepare simply by reading through all your class notes. Finals which you could take one day after another, or even back to back on the same day and still be ok. Or maybe you had papers which you could write the night before (I actually never did this because I was too risk adverse--but it was still doable). At least this is how it was as a political science major/public policy minor. I will concede that South Campus majors (math/sciences) had a completely different experience.

Nowadays in law school, reading week is a necessity. We make outlines that review entire semesters. We buy supplements. We spend hours locked down in our rooms or at the library. We neglect significant others. We think that having only one day in between exams is a horrible schedule. And papers now, they actually have to have real footnotes.

Sometimes I wonder if the material is that much harder or if we simply go through these motions because we are told this is how we prepare for law school exams. But all it takes is looking at a practice exam to remember that it actually is harder and there is less room to 'bs.' And oh yeah . . . we might actually want to retain some of this information to pass the bar and do our jobs. At least knowing some of this information will be applicable later validates this whole process, a little.