First Day Of My Second Half Of Law School

Wow! I'm finally on the downward slope of my law school experience. It has both taken forever and gone by in a snap of my fingers. Time is funny that way.

Even with all my house guests in the last few days, I still managed to get the majority of my reading and class work for the week done. The only reason I managed it is because my brain has developed a glitch where I can only sleep six hours. This would be great if I only needed six hours but I definitely need more. But it did give me more time to get my work done so I won't complain too much. This is why we buy coffee after all.

This semester is going to seem more like undergrad than ever before. I have three classes that require weekly assignments. My Cuba class requires a writing assignment every week except this one. My advanced legal research class is the same except this week does count. However, I deserve a pat on the back because I already finished it last night. YAY me! Four days early. Then my interviewing and counseling class has many weekly assignments. Mock interviews, "firm" projects, meeting etc. Ay Ay Ay.

Add my job and my internship and I'm am going to be busy busy busy!

The only class I could not prepare for is Estate Planning and that is because he hasn't sent us a syllabus or reading assignment yet! ARG!!! My school has the least efficient procedure for giving first assignments ever. We have four platforms that professors can use to give them to us: An online assignment board that is only used for the first class assignments, blackboard, Twen through Westlaw, or by email. And every new semester, we have to keep checking each one to find out which professor uses what. But this time, I've checked them all everyday and nada for estate planning. It is the first day of classes professor! I know we don't have class until Thursday but come on!

The next best thing to a visit home

So I've now been in Florida for a year and a half now and haven't even made one trip back home. This week, I don't feel so far away. We had two friends from our undergrad visit only a couple days apart. One came directly from Washington but the other moved to Miami long before we ever considered moving here.

We had a ton of fun showing our never-been-to-Florida friend around town. I'm pretty sure he took over a thousand pictures and he just couldn't get over the warmth (it was the coldest temp we've had all year but he thought it was warm. I was freezing!) and the palm trees and the beaches. It really reminded me how lucky I am to live in paradise! While he was here, I think we managed maybe 4 hours of sleep over three days. Maybe 5. Maybe. We'd sleep a couple hours and then he'd drag us back out to the beach.

Our Miami friend was great to see too! We didn't do the touristy stuff with him for obvious reasons so we just hung out and talked all weekend long. It was awesome. He couldn't get over how cheap drinks were compared to Miami so we went to more than a couple bars. I really should have been preparing for classes on Monday but I managed to get a day or so done before he got here and I'm going to work on it all day today. So it could have been worse and it was so so so worth it.

Now I'm off to watch a video for my Cuba class. I need to find a Florida/Cuban connection that I want to discuss with the class. Hmmm.  Any ideas?

Florida Broke Us

So all last year while Fiancé was in Washington and I was here in Florida, he made fun of me for turning on the heat the second it dropped into the 60's. And I got it. He was dealing with 12 degree weather and two feet of snow. However, I also tried to explain to him how quickly Florida breaks your internal concept of cold. Long story short, he didn't believe me until this week when it dropped to the 50's. He's only been in Florida since the end of August but that was apparently enough time for Florida to do it's thing.

He has been freezing right along side me. We are the idiots wearing coats and thick wool socks in the mid-60's. They make memes after us. Two years ago, I would have been right there laughing along. Somehow it just feels so much colder when you're not used to it. One week it was 80, the next, 50-60 degrees. In my head, I know that it isn't that cold. But my fingers and nose and toes disagree. My teeth even chatter!

Florida, what have you done to us???

It's that time again - UGH

But at the end of the semester, I get this beautiful masterpiece. Yay?

Unlike many law students, I don't start my outline at the end of the semester as an exam review. Instead, I start the semester with the table of contents in outline form and add to it each week with my in class and reading notes. I also color code it as I go. Black is from the book, blue is from the professor's lecture, red is anything regarding the exam and brown is anything I added from a supplement. Yes, it sounds over-attentive and nitpicky but it works for me. Plus, if only I had a dollar for every time a classmate asked me, "So I have "this" in my notes (from class) but the book is saying "that." What do you have?" It's very helpful to know when the professor disagrees with the book!

The only downside of my note taking? It has to start before class begins and even before you crack open the book. My first semester, I typed it all by hand and Holy Batman did that take a long time. Finally, I figured out that many publishers post the table of contents online so I could just copy and paste and then put it into outline form. Even with my new and approved method, it still takes me a few hours for each class.

So that is what I have been doing ALL night long. It's currently 5 am and I have one and a half outlines started. Since I have six classes, this should scare me but I think only three need an outline. I'm taking Evidence (needs an outline), Advanced legal research, Estate Planning (needs an outline), Remedies (needs an outline), Interviewing and Counseling, and Cuban Legal System. I only have three traditional law school exams because Advanced legal research has a end of the semester project, interviewing and counseling has an in person exam and the Cuba class has a paper at the end of the semester after our Cuba trip.

As soon as this is done, I can start reading for next week.

Oh joy.

Proud Pet Owner With Pet Allergies

So as a person who is allergic to both cat and dog dander and yet still owns two cats and a dog, 90 percent of the time, I manage it just fine. I buy kleenex and Claritin in bulk and get on with my day. That other ten percent though . . .  Man it hits hard.

The other day, one of my cats was accidentally locked into my bedroom for hours. When I realized it and let her out, I expected an accident. I did not expect her to pee right in the middle of my bed. UGH. Then when I rolled up my memory foam topper to take it outside to clean it, poof, I couldn't breathe, I couldn't see. Gagging and hacking all over the place. Two days later, I still can't stop coughing up crap and my lungs are burning pretty much nonstop.

If it gets any worse I'll have to try to find a way to go to the doctor but I'm not sure what they could do other than tell me to get rid of my cats.

Never going to happen.

Guess where I'm going?

No really. Guess!

No. Not there.

Not there either.



CUBA! I'm going to Cuba!

I've personally wanted to go to Cuba ever since I first learned about it. But one, American's weren't supposed to and two, I lived in the Pacific Northwest. Talk about an expensive trip. Yikes.

But then I moved to Florida and then I found out that I happen to go to a law school that has a Cuban legal system class that includes a trip to Cuba. Hello, I was all over that. I went to all the info sessions last year even though 1L's can't take the class. Finally the application cycle opened and too many people applied that there were room for so we had to go through interviews. Finally I got the email that I was accepted and BOOM. I'm going to Cuba.

I'm so EXCITED!!!

The class is all semester long but the trip is only over Spring Break. I think it's 8 days and 7 nights. Not bad at all. Plus, although it's a little easier for American's to go to Cuba now, it's still pretty limited. So I get to go before Cuba changes too much. YAY.

Intro to Elder Law

I'm hoping that no one is surprised that this is the first class I signed up for last spring. After a year of basic 1L classes, I was so ready to start the classes that I was actually interested in. I've had more than a few people tell me that since I came to law school for elder law, I would definitely not be interested in it once I graduate. I don't know about that since I haven't graduated yet but I can tell you how the class went.

First of all, let me explain my survive class method. I sit in the very front row on the side because I'm basically invisible to the professor when he/she feels like cold calling. I'll talk up a storm before or after class but during? No. I never volunteer and I've probably been cold called 4 or 5 times (not counting this class that I'll explain in a bit) in the entire year and a half I've been in law school. My friends who sit in the back get called on 4 or 5 times in a month.

This class . . . I sometimes volunteered 4 or 5 times in a DAY. I turned into "that person." To used the dreaded word, I was a gunner. UGH. But I just couldn't help it. For one thing, they kept teaching about nursing homes, assisted living homes and in home care. I've worked in all three! And I came to the field with oh so many questions about Medicare and Medicaid, it wasn't even funny. It was a tiny class of about ten so even when I tried to not speak up, I got called on anyway! I was so ashamed but also, I had so much fun in that class. What a conundrum.

To make matters worse, my professor was writing our textbook as the class was going on and she hired me as her research assistant about halfway through the semester. It was awesome because I literally got paid to read the same material we were going to cover in class, and sometimes she would assign the cases I found for her. What wasn't awesome was that she apparently decided that since she knew I had read the materials, she was going to call on me ALL THE TIME.

I'm pretty sure the class hates me.

Out of all my classes, this was the one exam I wasn't too worried about. And I walked out of there feeling the same way. Then as soon as I got home I started panicking because imagine the horror if I had bombed the test in Elder Law. I would never be able to show my face again!

Luckily, she's the only Professor who turned in grades before Christmas so I now know I didn't bomb it. (I didn't 4.0 it but I didn't embarrass myself either) But it really showed me that just because I'm a jaded 2L, I still have the potential to spaz out like a terrified 1L. I didn't sleep for two days after that exam. Good grief.

Now I just have to wait for my other grades to come out. One thing I've noticed is that Fall semester of last year, the professors really hustled to get our grades out before Christmas. It didn't seem like it at the time but looking back, I can tell that they at least tried to hurry. This year, my first exam was on the 3rd of December. It's now the 28th and still no grade. UGH. And half of the questions were multiple choice!  

Come on already!