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4 . 2 5 . 0 6 Last week of classes, busy refining outlines and reviewing cases, looking forward to completing my first year. I'd like to say that everything is coming together rather nicely, but you never know with this style of learning and evaulation. They really build up the performance pressure cooker a couple notches, a little bit of real life training I suppose. The last few classes have a different tone, I can tell it in my classmates, there is some light at the end of the tunnel. In my case it'll be more work during the day and summer school. heh. I guess I've survived alright so far, we'll see how things turn out mid-may. Lots of stuff going on in the world that I would like to comment on but haven't found the time really. Hopefully by my next entry we won't be at war with another middle-eastern country, the third one in 6 years, but the way things are turning out I really wonder whats around the corner. Dubya's approval rating hit a dismal 32% - a number that should really speak more to the state of the nation right now as far as being lost without direction and in serious need of a change of course. Too bad the opposition doesn't look too great right now either. I find myself often wondering what historians a hundred years from now will write about this time period at the turn of the century. I remember reading books back in grade school about the 1900s and thinking it was so definitive living between two centuries. Meanwhile I'm continuing to keeping myself amused, lately its been from riding the train. There are a lot of characters that ride at odd hours of the day, I may need to expand on my "3 types" observation from my first summer out here. still working on the mirror site. 4 . 1 2 . 0 6 Pau with appeals argument week, a rite of passage of sorts for 1Ls, or 0.75Ls as it pertains to evening students. I can say that in hindsight it was a good experience, however stressful and rushed overall with the brief due the same week among other things. We have one less class to worry about now going into the home stretch of the first year. It really is crunch time from here on out. Working on moving some of this online journal into a blog format on another site, at the moment I'm a little swamped with school and work and stuffs, but I'll get around to it eventually. The blog format does make it easier to enter links and entries. more on this later. I have to make a decision on placement preferences at work in the next couple of weeks, I am a little torn between two of the three divisions that I rotated through. In retrospect I can see the pros and cons in both divisions, it seems like the longer I am with the current division I realize the potential there. On the other hand I think in more ways than one the last team was more fitting to my personality and working style. Wish I could get the best of both worlds but thus is life. 4 . 2 . 0 6 Busy weekend spent researching and writing for my appeals brief, the culmination of the first year's legal research and writing course. There is mountain of opinions and material out there on both the topic and methods of writing, I'm gaining more and more respect for this profession yet at the same time I keep thinking there has to be a more efficient and equitable way of developing a process of remedies and recourse. The million dollar question of course, one that I'm not prepared to tackle yet. The courts are a battleground, building on past rulings, higher court holdings, amicus briefs, legal restatements, law journals, and the inevitable government regulation or ruling that shifts the weights of the law in one direction or the other. Somewhere through all of this the actual facts and merits of the individual case are addressed, at least in theory, a judge makes a decision and then everyone goes home happy - some people very happy, the others licking their wounds to fight another day. The adversarial structure of the American court system - fitting to the American psyche and source of identity, written into the US Constitution, every citizen is entitled to his/her day in court. Sakura are in full bloom in the tidal basin, I'm missing out this weekend's bloom to get some things done. hopefully they'll still be out over the next two weeks so I can check them out on the weekend. Temperatures have been getting a lot warmer lately, strangely the weather on the East Coast has been pretty nice compared to back at home. Otherwise, I have more observations about religion, intolerance, outright bigotry and ignorance, all with no real resolution in sight. I think the analogy of a train/car wreck is fitting, the self-rightous have a tendancy to go through life recklessly tearing up anything in their path, and are honestly surprised when a cop comes along and tells them they are liable for the damages. I read up another article about the next 16 days to be crucial in deciding the direction that we all are headed. 4 . 1 . 0 6 Early April fools day and I'm up kind of studying but kind of not. lots going on, more later. |