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5 . 2 1 . 0 7 It's looking like a busy summer alright, already looking forward to the chicago trip to go to Patty's wedding, visit the kid brother, and meet up with my folks all in a short weekend. After that I'll be hunkering down on the books for my corporations class this summer, keeping going with the law training. I'm hoping that with just one class to focus on I'll be better position to pull of a decent enough performance as an add on for the last semester, build more experience and push on through to the 3rd year. Juggling 4 courses and working full time was pretty challenging. First day of summer session was today, first impressions of a course are always memorable being that you don't really know what to expect at first. So far I'm finding some interesting side observations on the readings so far which comes to somewhat of a surprise as that this course isn't one that at first thought comes to mind as one that I would be interested off the back. I think its the public policy training and all the economic theory that I've crammed into my brain that gives me an interest in this area, one things for sure, I'm not going to be closing off any possible interests that might develop through this course of study. Having some interesting dreams. The theme lately has been that I keep finding secret tunnels and doors in my apartment that lead to hidden rooms, corridors and exits that I never imagined possible. At times I'm able to peal away the concrete foundation and walls with my hands to reveal another passageway. The spooky thing is that some of the rooms I've been in before in previous dreams, and they are over the top extravagant, like a luxury hotel room overseeing a cliff with wall to wall, ceiling to floor windows. In stumbling on these rooms I kid myself in not realizing that this was here all this time, and I had been confining myself to only a handful of small rooms. I think there is some symbolic references to what is going on in my personal life and perceptions, especially in the past month or so, persons of whom I am very protective of in some difficult times. I've noticed that I'm not anxious at all in these dreams though, in fact I'm more thrilled at the prospect of finding rooms and passageways that I've overlooked, or been too busy to notice before. It seems like every time I look there is someplace new to explore, and each time I feel strangely at peace. Linkes 5/21/2007 9mm violence on the rise in Honolulu Ron Paul Can't say that, can he? Sure, why not? Foreign Policy of Freedom - Bomb or Subsidize Why China must be scapegoated Ron Paul - SC debates party crasher Live Science - top 10s geek style Torture - its ok now? DC demographicless shifts, compared on a national scale. 5 . 1 2 . 0 7 Finally pau with finals. Right now I'm feeling both utterly beat mentally and physically, and yet at the same time very liberated. Don't know how I ended up doing, there were a few exams that didn't turn out as nearly as well as I had hoped, but whats done is done I guess. Preparing for law school exams is a different animal all together. First off, if you're cramming the week before exams, you're probably screwed. Secondly it takes a crazy amount of concentration and tenacity to sit in one place and go over things again and again, recall a random case that you barely remember reading, and making some sense of how the facts and the holding even matter to what you're trying to study. If you're fortunate to have annual leave to take off, the weekdays and weekends blur together, if not, co-workers quickly notice the zombie like status you've succumbed to, trying to get through the day without thinking about how you really should've taken off to work on those outlines. Finally, its just a lot of stress and anxiety over a prolonged period of time, no matter how early you start, or how well prepared you are (or think you are). You become very familiar to the workers at coffee shops and fast food diners where you end up eating 2, 3 meals a day (if at all). When you do sleep, the legal theories and concepts invade your dreams in very random and strange ways. You accidentally insult waitresses who are trying to be friendly because you are too distracted and feeling guilty for taking a break from studying to get something to eat. You fall asleep on the train writing notes for your paper on a yellow post-it pad and wake up suddenly when it drops from your hand. You fall asleep on the couch with a casebook in your lap and a draft outline in your hand. This past month has been a perfect storm on just about every possible level imaginable. Leading up to my exam period was a crazy period at work processing the draft report that limited my month-before review time that I normally use to wrap up my notes and really hunker down on the studying. In past semesters I usually put in for annual leave during here and there in the month leading up to the exams, and definitely block off the days before and after. The deadlines for work just got rescheduled and put me in a bind. Once I was able to push through the work tasks it hit me quickly how far behind I was as far as finishing up my paper and exam prep. It was pretty much sleepless nights and lots of coffee for the next 4 weeks. Earlier this week there were more distractions at work that I had to attend to while officially on leave, but still plugging away at my exams. Throw in some family drama the day of an exam, announcements for promotion paperwork due on the same day as another exam, announcements on agency-wide personnel changes at work the day after an exam, and it can all make you feel like you're going crazy trying to juggle everything all at once. I'm sitting here typing it Saturday morning after it was all over, still not used to sleeping for more than 3 hours I've been up since about 5am trying to clear off my desk at home. If anything at all this hell of an exam month has reiterated the difficulties of trying to attempt this degree program at night while holding a full time job. every time I think that I've gotten a handle on how to hack it I'm rudely reminded at how very wrong my assumptions were, and I'm left scratching my head on how to avoid all of this crap hitting me all at once. My preliminary conclusion is that for the most part I can't. just hope for the best and suck it up. One week off till summer school. 5 . 8 . 0 7 Got done with a Trust and Estates exam last night and just got up from my first 6 hours of sleep in about a month. I feel a lot better about this one compared to my first exam, given the amount of material I was able to review in a short amount of time. Although with any of these exams you really have no idea how you did until you get the grades. one more to go, but its a take home and is due a a few days. Just have to stay focused and theres a light at the end of the tunnel. It really has been a perfect storm these past few weeks, month even, it seems like work, school, personal life, and more and more all comes at once and you just have to deal with it. Still not pau yet, but I’m still standing I guess. The symbolic dreams are back again. A few nights ago I had one where I was holding the door to my apartment shut with my back, because there was a constant wind blowing it open and I couldn’t get it to shut completely and stay shut. After a while of this I noticed that there was a side door/cabinet that I had never seen before. While still holding the first door shut I opened the side cabinet which revealed a bunch of pipes like an old radiator and a tiny hallway leading away from where I was standing. once I opened the cabinet the wind seemed to be somewhat diverted enough that I was able to close the door. I wondered what was down that hallway. Part of the significance is that this is one of the few dreams that I’ve had in my apartment up in DC. new sense of home, maybe, and all of the symbolism that comes with it. Last night I had another where I was back home in Hawaii, many years in the future. I had rode the rail line that they are supposedly planning on building and I was either down in Waikiki or by Kaka’ako, down by the water in some kind of a tourist trap. There were a lot of boats in a shallow harbor and I was watching an old local man going fishing with a bunch of tourists standing around, yapping and eating lunch. For a while I was distracted with the tourist’s conversations, a few of them started talking to me. I noticed the old man caught a medium sized fish by snagging the hook on the side of the fish and pulled it up. Immediately the fish started growing bigger and bigger, with its teeth widening alongside its mouth. I noticed that the tourists were both frightened and intrigued. As the man pulled up the fish he quietly was talking to it as he removed the hook, and then gently put it back in the water, rubbed its belly and the fish grunted back at him like a dog. Then it swam along the water on its way. the old man then jumped in the water and somehow was able to tread alongside the fish by moving his feet, gliding through the water at his ankles. They were like two old friends who hadn’t seen each other in a long time. The violence of the hook snagging the fish was necessary to restart their acquaintances and then they could go along their way. I noticed that the tourists of course were not noticing any of this. A bunch of them came and asked me which rail line to catch to manoa or someplace, and I told them that I wasn’t as familiar with exactly how the rail line works, despite being from there originally. Jump either earlier or later in the dream I was back at an old work place, I was talking to a bunch of people I hadn’t seen in years, but they recognized me. I was going there to get a copy of a record or something, and ended up walking around the place. apparently they had remodeled and made part of it a bank. 5 . 4 . 0 7 I had a scary thought that this might actually be my last hell week after how I felt after my first exam. It was one of those that catch you off guard despite the fact that you’ve studied your ass off the whole year and for better or for worse just got caught up in the last final weeks. Leaving the exam room I immediately started getting post-test anxiety, thinking about all of the different things I could’ve written. The format of law essays really suck, especially when they are all rolled up into a single exam at the end of the year, often closed book and written in a way that there is never enough time to possibly answer everything, and sometimes even with a word limit imposed on you. Then there are all of the nuances of each professor to consider, and the overall subjectivity of how this will all be graded. If there ever was a recipe for test anxiety it would be a law school exam. Adding to all of this crap I think it has something to do with working full time, and having to worry about the unpredictable work schedules that may come and go regardless of the exam schedules, but hey that’s the breaks. One thing I’ve learned so far about studying law is that the barrage of finals at the end of the semester so far has been an increasingly stressful round of intellectual hazing. I’m just hoping that I have a couple more in me. I’m not afraid to admit that I have procrastination tendencies, but that all has had to change very quickly since I embarked on this degree program. If its worth anything I’ve come a long way from HS and College pulling all nighters as a result of putting things off to the last minute. The crappy thing now is that instead of feeling stupid and kicking myself for not starting reviewing material earlier in the semester instead I just end up feeling beat down and defeated going through a circle in my head in figuring out why I ended up feeling so overwhelmed with no end in sight: “1) Damn I should’ve started reviewing my stuff earlier. 2) But I did, throughout the semester/year, I seem to have survived last semester alright and I did even more this time around. 3) Damn. Maybe I should’ve got by with less sleep during the week. 4) But I was averaging 3-4 hours on weeknights, 4-6 on weekends. 5)Damn.” Conclusion: This really sucks. Oh well, back to the pit to get ready for the next exam. |