Unfathomable Designs

"Holiness does not consist of extraordinary signs.  Above all, it consists of the daily acceptance of the unfathomable designs of God." -Archbishop Colombo


Well, by some miracle I have completed my 1L year.  It was a whirlwind of hard work, frustration, and spiritual, emotional and physical challenges... all made bearable by my dear family, friends and faith.  So, hats off to y'all for being there for me!  I am so grateful to still be here instead of at Notre Dame or Texas all by myself!


Exams went.  How they went, time will tell (although I wish I didn't have to find out).  I feel okay about three of them.  But Civ. Pro.  Oh, Civ. Pro.  We'll see.


Now I'm in the middle of the Write-On competition to *hopefully* get onto a law journal next year.


Once that finishes, it's off to see my family for a week and then back here to begin my internship with the Public Defender and research assistant position for an IP professor.


I am excited for summer for many reasons, but most of all to see what God has up His sleeve!  This year has been surprising in so many ways, and I'm still chugging along and trying to trust in Him for everything.  I think I'll have some pretty crazy work experiences and hopefully learn a lot.  I'll be able to spend a lot of time with friends (no homework!) and the thing about Nashville is there is ALWAYS a party.  We aren't called Music City for nothing.


Summer Highlights:

• Seeing my family
• Celebrating my grandfather's 90th birthday
• Work 4 days a week (yeah, 3 day weekends!)
• No homework
• Swing dancing in the park
• Friend-time
• Friends' wedding
• Moving into a beautiful new apartment
• Reading books for fun
• Exploring Crim. and Copyright
• Live music all the time
• Learning the guitar (Thanks, Stine!)
• Practicing piano
• Creative writing
• Europe + World Youth Day in August

So, let's go!  One step at a time.  One moment at a time.  +JMJ+

"Not all who wander are lost."  -JRR Tolkien

Civil (?) Procedure

My Civ. Pro. exam is this coming Tuesday morning.  And, in honor of my studying, I would like to share the following quote with you...


"If there is a hell to which disputatious, uncivil, vituperative lawyers go, let it be one in which the damned are eternally locked in discovery disputes with other lawyers of equally repugnant attributes."  -A US Court


In that hell, interpretation of the Erie doctrine will also be endless.


Oh Civ. Pro., how every 1L in every law school ever survives you, I am not sure.  I guess on Tuesday at 12:30 p.m. I will know.

New Things: Tests and Truffles

"You can teach a student a lesson for a day; but if you can teach him to learn by creating curiosity, he will continue the learning process as long as he lives."  -Clay P. Bedford


Tests


I have taken tests before, but never a law school exam.  There were practice exams in two classes, but those didn't count and they weren't as long (only one hour).


Today my final Torts exam was a four-hour marathon, and my brain is exhausted.  For four hours all I heard was rustling papers, typing fingers and that tension-you-can-cut-with-a-knife buzz that filled the room.  And that was with earplugs in and everything.  All I can say is, "Wow."  They tell you it will be hard and unlike other testing experiences, and they (whoever that "they" is... the reasonable person, perhaps?) are right.  It's a lot of pressure knowing that your entire semester grade -- your entire semester's work -- depends on one four-hour period of several multiple choice questions and an essay.


And that's that.  I'm glad it's over.  Just two more to go... and then four more next semester... and then... it never does end, does it?  Nor will it end when I am officially a lawyer because the law changes, and we must learn the changes... it truly is a lifelong-learning profession.  Perfect.  I always said I wanted to be a professional student.


Truffles


I am a shy cook and do not put much stock in my culinary talents.  I can follow a recipe and cook meals that I consider tasty, but... the fewer ingredients, the better is my motto!  I like simple recipes, and prefer to spend my time doing things not in the kitchen.


This year, however (since I actually have to cook on a regular basis), I have found little, hidden joys in cooking and baking.  Sometimes, I actually enjoy it, and I am slowly starting to desire to try new things and actually do new things in the kitchen.  Maybe it's because I like eating so much, but I also think I'm starting to enjoy the process.  It's kind of fun to watch things blend together into something rich and creamy and it's kind of fun to stir it up myself.  It reminds me of my first cooking forays with my mother using my Easy-Bake Oven. There was something just neat about creating a treat.


So... truffles.  Something new, and, frankly, something a little bit scary.  They seem so fancy, don't they?  Luckily, I am modeling my truffles after The Pioneer Woman's recipe which she reassures her readers is quite simple.  I feel like a pioneer woman... let's forge ahead!


Here goes somethin'!

The recipe calls for semi-sweet, bittersweet, and milk chocolate (8 oz. each).  You can use any type of chocolate, but I read on a another website that fancy chocolate (yes, pricier chocolate) is better since it is higher quality. So, Ghiradelli it is is for the dark chocolate and Perugina for the milk!  Yum!

You put the dark chocolate into a double boiler (or, for the poor cooks like me into a class bowl over a pot of simmering water).  The chocolate will start to melt after a few minutes.

Before the chocolate is fully melted and before you even mix it up, poor in one can (14 oz.) of sweetened condensed milk.  Now there is some sweet and yummy goodness if I ever saw some!  As The Pioneer Woman says, nothing can beat the real deal here... go all out!

Then, mix the chocolate and condensed milk together, keeping the bowl over the pot and the water at a gentle simmer!

I just love this swirly goodness... something that looks like that just has to be delicious!

Keeping folding the chocolate into the condensed milk and do not worry about the texture... it turns out just fine!

Once all of the chocolate is folded into the milk, turn off the heat and remove the bowl from the pot.  Add 1 tablespoon of vanilla.  It will make the chocolate a little extra shiny.  Pretty!

Next, cover the glass bowl and stick it in the fridge for a couple hours to let the chocolate become "firm and workable."  Once it is, take it out of the fridge and get rollin'!

Rollin' some chocolate into balls that is!  Place the balls on wax paper on a cookie sheet and then stick them in the freezer for 15 to 20 minutes until they are firm.  You can leave the truffles like this and add a topping if you please... or...

You can give them an outer coating!  I followed The Pioneer Woman's advice and dipped the truffles into melted milk chocolate.  Make sure the truffle is fully coated and use a fork to lift them out to allow the excess chocolate to drip away.  The milk chocolate will begin to harden quite quickly, forming a nice shell.  You can leave them plain and pretty like this... or...

You can add a topping!  I chose nuts (crushed pecans to be specific) because I like a nutty-chocolate flavor, but you can choose whatever your heart desires.  The Pioneer Woman used sea salt, but I don't think I'm that brave of a baker yet!

There you have it!  Dark chocolate truffles with a milk chocolate shell and pecans on top!  I tried one tonight, and I must say they are quite tasty... don't worry my roommate tried one as well and approved!  I am proud of myself!  A new culinary adventure -- Success!




"I am learning all the time.  The tombstone will be my diploma."  -Eartha Kitt

The (First) Homestretch

Time continues to amaze me.  Life moves from one day to the next, and (still to my surprise) those days add up to weeks, to months, to years... and I ask, "Where has life gone?  What have I been doing?"

I remember meeting my first best friend in second grade.  Her name was Emily, and she asked me a simple question: "Do you want a gerbil?"  I do not think I knew what a gerbil was at that moment, but I soon learned, and I named him "Squeak."

With memories from when I was seven years old so vivid, life seems short... yet those memories also seem like a lifetime ago and like they belong to a different person.  I admit I am not old.  Twenty-two can hardly be called ancient, but the experiences I have had since meeting Emily have helped me grow into someone very different from that little, curly-haired girl.

I now spend my days staring at podiums that say "Law School" and think, "Gosh, am I really here?  How did I get this far?"  Law school is something I have been thinking about since I was in high school, and now it is real, and that reality makes me feel older than my actual age.  Maybe because it was always something that was part of the ambiguous thing called "the future" and now the future is the present.

I have finished classes for my first semester at law school, and three exams stand between me and three weeks of vacation.  It's the homestretch at the end of the year...

 These are the books that have been my friends through this semester, and they will be through the next 12 days...







These are some of the orange and pink highlighters that have graced the pages of those books.  I only have a few because the suggestion to save them was made to me quite late into the semester... I probably went through one orange and one pink highlighter per week (much more quickly than the other colors) and had to order boxes of orange and pink highlighters from Amazon.  Maybe I will create a masterpiece with them at the end of this first year.

 These are the chocolates that are now my friends as I study.  A study party cannot be a party without some chocolate... Dove Dark Chocolate makes life very sweet... or semi-sweet, if you want to be technical.

These are the things that are carrying me through life outside of school.  There's only so much law school and law reading one can take.  Life is empty without poetry, adventure and prayer.






Besides these things, there are beautiful people who make life truly worthwhile and help to keep me sane, or -- rather -- quite silly and quite myself...

I am blessed with wonderful friends, including my lovely roommates with whom there are many fun conversations... especially if they take place late at night...

I avoid the law library at all costs because it stresses me out and often study in more relaxing places with my dear friend and nursing-student study buddy... with whom there are probably too many laughs and not enough productivity...

And, of course, my wacky and amazing family that shows their support through letters, emails and phone calls... though they are a thousand miles away (literally), they are truly very close to me, and I look forward to another crazy photo shoot this Christmas...






These people and things have shaped my life in significant ways over the last twenty-two years and brought much joy into it.  I am thankful that I have such great support as I tackle law school and especially this first of six exam homestretches...

"Tell me, what is it you plan to do / With your one wild and precious life?" -Mary Oliver

Living Thought

"A word is not a crystal, transparent and unchanged; it is the skin of a living thought and may vary greatly in color and content according to the circumstances and the time in which it is used." -Justice Holmes

Language.  Sentences, phrases, words, syllables.

I have always loved them.  I am the eldest child, so when I was little my parents did not have many baby books.  But they did have books -- lots of them.  My mother would choose one that had pictures and make up stories about them.  I would sit quietly for long periods of time listening, listening, listening.  Of course, when my brother came along and could not sit still for more than thirty seconds to listen to a story, my mom was baffled.  "I thought I was such a perfect mother because you were so easy!" she has said to me on a few occasions.  My brother, as it turns out, has become quite the reader as well, though I do not think he will ever have enough books to make his entire closet collapse under their weight... (Oh gosh, did that really happen??)

I think I knew I wanted to be an English major since before I knew what a college major was.  Reading books?  Yes.  When I arrived at college and learned there was specifically a Creative Writing track within the English major I said, "YES, PLEASE!"  Though so many of the stories we read in class dealt with the extremes -- either silly love stories that sound like Taylor Swift songs in prose or sexually explicit "art" -- there were gems.  Those classes made me write and edit and write and edit...

I always knew language was a powerful medium.  Journalism, political documents, books filled with moral lessons.  I wanted to be a part of it.

Then I realized I needed to pay rent and feed myself something besides peanut butter and jelly everyday.  Hence, law school.  Also something I've been wanting to do since... forever... or at least since high school.

Reading court opinions and law school text books is certainly not the same as reading 1984, but the language is so very precise and so very ambiguous all at the same time.  When preparing for mock trial in my Torts class, I got excited if I realized the special importance of a word or phrase and how to use that to the advantage of my client in oral argument.  Reading Justice Scalia's opinions are especially fun because of the emphasis he puts on the specific language of statutes or regulations.  It leads you to really think... what is in a word?  How clear is it really?  Gosh, darn it, what does "modify" really mean?  Can you really write pages about the definition of one word?  Yes, and the Supreme Court does.

As my Contracts professor says, "Judges are telling stories."  Their written opinions contain legal rules and reasoning, but in the end it's the story that matters.  As my Reg. State professor says, "There is no right and wrong answer, just better arguments."  As John Quincy Adams says in the movie Amistad, "Whoever tells the best story wins."

Is language really that malleable?  Is it all shades of gray?  As someone who believes in Truth, I find it hard to believe that words can mean almost anything you want them to mean... and yet, as a creative writer, I love their nuances.  In the end, it's our varying interpretations and biases that give words shades of meaning... But how, then, do we communicate with each other?  Yes, we use this language called English (with which I am currently writing)... and I am confident that if you are reading this post, you can understand its language... So there must be some black and white behind all that gray.  If there was not, we would still be communicating with grunts and pointing fingers.  I will admit and allow for linguistic ambiguity and evolution, but words do have inherent definitions and meanings -- language would be pointless without providing a solid medium with which to communicate.

"'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less.'
'The question is,' said Alice, 'whether you can make words mean so many different things.'
'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be the master, that's all.'"
-Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass

Colors

From September 16, 2010:

Before starting law school, I glanced through a couple of prep books, full of advice on how to survive the next three years.  One method they suggested was highlighting in technicolor — i.e. Use a different color for facts, procedural posture, reasoning, precedent, holding, dissents, etc.  I’ve been putting this practice to use, and I like it.  Not only does it help differentiate between the different parts of a case, but when I open my casebooks, they are aglow with bright, happy colors.

There I sit in Torts, Regulatory State or Contracts about to discuss res ipsa loquitur, the 1966 Motor Vehicle Safety Act, or consideration when I would have really liked to sleep for another hour… and bam!  I open my book and a beautiful array of greens, blues, pinks, oranges, reds, yellows and purples adorn the pages.  They make the words look so much prettier, the cases look more inviting and the statutes–yes, even the statutes–seem friendlier.

Seriously, seeing the sentence, “First, in those contracts where the condition calls for satisfaction as to commercial value or quality, operative fitness, or mechanical utility, dissatisfaction cannot be claimed arbitrarily, unreasonably, or capriciously…, and the standard of a reasonable person is used in determining whether satisfaction has been received…” is so much better when highlighted in cheery orange (Mattei v. Hopper, Supreme Court of California, 51 Cal.2d 119, 1958)

So, to all of you out there, I encourage technicolor highlighting.  Even if you have no idea what the case is about, it certainly will look perty after you’ve colored the whole thing.  If you really use your imagination, you can pretend you’re back in kindergarten and your only homework consisted of coloring in the pictures on your math homework: Two fish plus three fish equals… lots of different colored fishies.

Happy highlighting.

Underlining Periods

From September 4, 2010:


The first two weeks of “real” classes have been crazy to say the least, but I am enjoying them.  The reading has not drowned me and I have not been the “it” person yet, but I have learned that I am in a “brave new world.”

From the moment I stepped foot on campus, I heard: “Law students and lawyers are all Type A personalities.”  Driven, organized.  Control freaks, perfectionists.

It is true.  I have not necessarily learned this from my classmates or my legal theory courses, but from my Legal Writing Class.  Did you know that lawyers have a thick book that details–and I mean details–every single little thing about legal citation.  It’s so specific that they tell you not to underline the period with the rest of the case citation.  That little tiny dot at the end… don’t you dare extend that underline an extra millimeter to encompass it.

I know that citation is picky and doing things uniformly is important, but did you know that some abbreviations like “Co.” for “company” has to have a period but “Ass’n” for “association” should never have a period after it?  Eek!

Type A?  Check.

On a different note, this “brave new world” has already (yes, I admit it) infiltrated my daily thought.  They want us to “think like lawyers,” and I have begun to wonder about duty and breach when I watch a car accident on a television show.  Oh dear.  Just wait until I’ve gone through ALL of Torts.

I figure that the best solution is just to laugh at myself (and all the other lawyers) who want to regulate underlining or not underlining periods and analyze television shows with legal jargon running through our brains.

(But really, is that driver liable for negligence?)