Christina fail.

I'm sick.  I'm sorry.  Post soon.

I have a fever (that's going down, thank God) and some achy-headachy-congestion shenanigans, but honestly, what I've got is "hyperlawschoolism."  I crashed, so I'm restarting.

Apparently the only thing I missed today was a kid talking about a hypothetical pet dolphin in civil procedure.  Not crying over it.

Cashier killin'.

I worked at Kohl's for almost 5 years on and off.  Y'all know this.  And while you all know my hate for many, many aspects of the job, I really think everyone should work in the service industry for some period of time: it makes you nicer.  Be a waitress, be a cashier, work in customer service, whatever.  Do something that makes it abundantly clear how you come across to people, so you can adjust and make the world a better place.

People are rude, it happens.  Rude people exist, and they've decided what's going wrong in their lives is completely up to you and your desire to keep them down, or if they haven't, they're gonna make your life miserable anyway.  My worst experience with this type of person was actually when I was in line, not working, and she had a little something extra going for her: she was completely lovely to me, and chewed out the cashier like the girl was a duck and she was a rumor about Patrick Verona.  Everything but the beak and feet.

This happened when I was grocery shopping back at Brown in March or April.  I was behind Nondescript 40-Something who was struggling with her groceries.  I offered to help her, to be nice and also to, you know, speed up the line.  She turned around and said, "Oh no, sweetie, thank you!  I'm just clumsy right now."  Fair enough, I'll wait.

In the next moment, everything changed.  She went from normal, sweet lady (she looked like a Paula...) to Angry Lion Denied A Wildebeest.  ALDAW turned around after I offered to help, grew out her canines (maybe not) and snapped, "Is there a reason this is taking so long?"  I swear I looked at the back of her head for Voldemort.

The cashier apologized, and instead of separating the groceries like she had been doing to keep cold things together and fragile things together, she began throwing things randomly into bags to keep up.  ALDAW either looked away or decided she didn't need to supervise for a moment, turned around and snapped "Why would you do that?! You need to SEPARATE things!"

The manager finally saw what was going on, and came over to help bag things, and ALDAW mentioned the poor cashier's "incomptence" to the manager, and also insulted her hiring practices by stating that she didn't know where the manager found her cashiers.  She stood there like a 13-year-old being told she couldn't wear shiny lipgloss because it gives the boys the wrong idea, paid, and then stomped off to find another victim, presumably.  She also requested a carrying service to her car. 

When my turn came, I apologized to the cashier, and not that she needed to hear it from me to know it was true, but I told her that the ALDAW was being ridiculous, and that you just sometimes get people you can't please.  There are just people who turn into a pissier version of the Hulk because they had a bad morning/week/year/life and they take it out on the lowest rung.

What made me actually angry instead of just resigned was the fact that she was openly kind to me, and full-on Fenrir Greyback at the wrong time of the month to the girl behind the register.  That's unacceptable.  You're nice to people who are in your spot, waiting on line, but you've decided that since this girl is just a cashier, you can verbally abuse her?  She knows how to do her job, trust me.  Not only are you rude, you're awful as well.  I've overheard people at my job stating that "they really hire dummies here" and I'm lucky enough to have the trump card of "I'm in college/going to law school."  But even if that weren't true, I'm still doing my job competently, and most people in retail are.  Just because it's a simple job doesn't mean you know how to do it, and it doesn't mean the person doing it is capable of nothing more.

We try to do our retail jobs, the least you can do is do your job being a decent human being.

Stress baking.

It's kind of my thing.

There are positives and negatives to this trait of mine.  It's a study in contrasts: I'm productive, but I'm making cookies or brownies or cake.  I'm not wallowing in misery, but I'm not making any progress on things I need to do.  I can give them to my friends, but many have a reflex emotion or concern rather than elation when I hand them delicious melty chocolate chips.

I do other things to dodge stress.  Not that it works, but I guess it helps.  I take an exceptionally long shower.  I watch (or re-watch) a scene of A Very Potter Musical.  I pick up any of my Terry Pratchett books and choose a page at random to start reading.  I go to Wikipedia and study up on the past cycles of Top Model.  But when it gets REALLY bad, I decide I have to incorporate whatever I'm learning about with my other passion: hip-hop.

I'm combining it with criminal law.

I started to re-write Kelis' "Milkshake," and I got through the first chorus:

My homicide brings all D.A.'s to the yard
And they're like,
"Is this depraved heart?"
Manslaughter?
No, it's depraved heart.
I could free you, but I'd rather charge.

I got through a bit of "Hey Ya," as well:

My D.A. don't mess around
Because she does her job
And this I know fo' sho....
But did he really want to
Kill that dude with that knife
Which degree should go?.....
Do try to fight the villain
'Cause mens rea alone is killin' guys just now...
Thank God that MPC [Model Penal Code for all of y'all]
did stick degrees together 'cause we don't know how....

Aaaaaactus..... reaaaaaaaas (etc. etc. like 80 times)


This is as far as I've gotten.  Help me if you can, if not; pray for me.

Feelin' no remorse, feelin' like my hand was forced,

-Christina

Sleep fighting.

I need it, I can't get it, I'm tired at the wrong times.

From here on out, in order to combine analysis of my three major classes, I'm going to try to apply every new issue to the lyrics of DMX's "Up In Here."  Crim is an obvious one, I think we could definitely argue for a tort or two, and for civil procedure?  Well, he does accuse the guy of being an "up North type," so maybe we can throw jurisdiction in there too.

I've lost my mind, officially.  I'm worn out, I look like hell, I feel poor and ugly when the tiredness catches up to me and I'm going to school with a bunch of Abercrombie models, and I don't even know how I'm doing.

Hence, Up In Here.  I AM wack and twisted.  Your old man say you stupid, you be like, "so? I love my baby mother, I never let her go..."

Don't disrespect.

Break from my memo, and a reward for finishing citations, which are dozens of tiny devils.

I don't want to beat on my fellow classmates here at law school, but there's definitely a need for some one to say KLASSROOMZ ETIKIT: ur doin it rong for some of them.

Pretty Pretty Princess Mac user, for example, does in fact have to spend a lot of her time trying to collect jewelry and avoid getting the black ring, but in between her quests for that gray plastic crown, she likes to look at Facebook.  During class.  While sitting directly in front of me.  She often Facebook chats people during crim law, but she also likes to browse through photos at random intervals.  Unfortunately, this results in my classroom experience turning into something like this:

Professor:......."There are several problems with the concept of felony murder, and we will examine them..."

PPP Mac: ......*FB chat...chat...Photo of friends...photophotophotophoto...FB chat.... look at manicure..*

My thoughts:...*Felony murder.... GAHHHH DUCKFACE... what? what problems? what happened?.....*

I HATE this.  We have assigned seats, and therefore she can't even move to the back row.  Not only is this super distracting for everyone behind you (her, plus the dude who checks his fantasy football league like something's gonna change at 11:15 AM on a Wednesday, ensure that I will be challenged to focus every day), but it's ridiculously rude to the professor.  Trust me, sweetie, he knows more than you do, even if you spent 90 minutes flat ironing your hair and he's balding.  People would kill for your spot in that seat, start acting like this matters.

The second major group that has classroom management problems is the Gunners, also known as the Classholes, also known as That Guy/Girl.  Must raise his hand for every question, even the rhetorical ones.  Likes to answer the questions everyone knows the answer to.  Must share personal stories and feelings in the answers.  If he doesn't know, he's gonna guess, doggone it! 

The absolute BEST thing they do, though, is ask questions that begin with "What if....?"  This beginning guaran-frickin'-tees that the question will be barely remotely related to the issue at hand, not be for the benefit of the class, attempt to make them look smarter and fail miserably, and waste limited classroom time.  Today's example was discussing a homicide that occured when a drunk expert skiier ran someone else over and the dude died.  Gunners-R-Us asked every possible question, from the somewhat reasonable "Is a ski slope similar to a road?" to "some inane thing we've already addressed and isn't important."

"What if the skiier did shots instead of drank 40s?"
"What if one of his skis was actually a badger?"
"What if the snow suddenly turned into powdered cocaine?"
"What if I cut off your arms and beat you with them every time you look a little bit pensive so you need to rethink every dumb, stupid thing that even has the potential to come out of your dumb, stupid mouth for the rest of the semest- oh wait, that one was me, in my head.

If you don't know who That Guy is in your classroom, it's you.

Seriously, guys, this education thing is pretty legit, your professors in general deserve your respect, and so do your clasmates.  This is a shared experience; let's not make it miserable, kay?

Postponing crim law.  We haven't had the class in over a week because of cancellations and other shenanigans so God knows where we are.  Probably in homicide.  Possibly manslaughter.  Possibly I just flipped to a page trying to find where we were starting to find a hypo case in which the victim's name is "Tyvester."  This is my life, folks.

And I have realized recently that my life is a sham.  Lots of people think I am a fuctional adult, and that is simply not true.  I am in "professional" school, and the only step I have taken it that direction is buying a blazer and not plagiarizing.  I pay rent, but my checks occasionally have cute puppies on them.  I cook for myself, but my greatest culinary accomplishment is making chicken parm and not setting myself on fire.  I drive a car to school, but I still get flustered pumping gas and I play the "try to get it to the closest dollar" game with the nozzle pouring highly flammable liquid into my car.  (My most recent attempt yielded $25.02, and I pouted for the next half hour.)

The worst part is some part of my brain has decided that I deserve a Congressional Medal of Honor for fueling my car and making tacos.  I'm constantly looking around, wanting people to tell me I did a good job, pat me on the back, and give me a cookie.  I want my parents to be impressed with me, and that is probably the most ridiculous part - I'll call Mommy and Daddy to tell them what a boss job I did turning in my rent check and asking a question in class.

I'm 22 gosh-darn years old, and I'm nowhere near being Miss Independent.  I'm A Moment Like This, maybe.  I'm probably still stuck in Texas.  If you don't like Kelly Clarkson, you did not understand those last few lines, and you are fooling yourself. 

My go-tos for rough days are childish, too.  Sad? Re-read Harry Potter.  Need a break?  Watch the first season of Arrested Development or attempt to learn the Single Ladies dance.  My most "intelligent moments" are when I turn to the Bible or Sporcle. 

Don't tell my professors (or my mommy), but I am pushing 13, maybe.  And give me a high-five if you see I've done my laundry.

Strength training.

I've been having a rough couple of days.

I haven't been sleeping, which is partially due to my recently developed sensitivity to the lights in the parking lot of my apartment (there is no good reason for their brightness other than the landing of a plane... curtain shopping is happening soon), but also due to the overall stress of being in a completely different situation.  Law school is a LOT of work, I'm away from Brown friends, I'm away from my family, and I'm in a completely new location.  What I've found in the past week or so is that my biggest problem is being away from my church.

This is not in the sense that I haven't been able to see God in what I'm doing, or in the people around me: I'm at an Augustinian university, so there be mad churches everywhere and a cross in every classroom.  The people I've met have nearly all been kind, friendly, and helpful, and it's very easy to see God at work in them.  I'm talking more about the fact that I built a community at Brown, which I'm now distanced from.

The choir here is maybe 7 or 8  times as large as the one at Brown, and the church (and its attendance) are about 5 times as large as Brown's.  They hold 5 Sunday Masses there, there are three priests, tons of Villanova students, families, stained glass windows, full pews, more than one tenor, half a dozen EMs, a busy parking lot...

And.  I. Feel.  So.  Alone.

I think it's because I don't feel "needed" at this church.  I'm one of like, 2 dozen altos that can sing decently,  and if I'm not singing I'm sitting by myself, getting there a little too early, praying a little too intensely, sitting uncomfortably close to the lovely people next to me, accidentally belting out harmony parts because I've forgotten melodies.

God's there, He's everywhere, but the point of church for me is a gathering of souls to pray and praise Him and just generally get happier because you've got this awesome thing in common.  But when I can't connect to a church, I get frustrated and figure I might as well be praying in bed and singing in the shower. 

The choir here is great, and there is an activities fair for the law school that will showcase a Catholic law student group (among other things, obviously), but right now I'm kind of pushing on alone.  Of course, with my brain, I immediately go into the spiral of "this is pathetic, He's still there, why are you complaining?  There are people across the world and across time who have been in situations that are actually HOSTILE to their faith, and they stuck it out.  You're complaining because the church is full, and so you're not necessary? Please.  Grow up."

I eventually remember that even though I'm in this pathetic state, God loves me and thinks I'm worth it, and it's not like he's not there; I'm just selfish. 

Anybody else had this problem?  It doesn't even have to be a religious organization.  It's just an odd feeling of not feeling at home in a place where I'm used to safety and confidence, simply because I don't have responsibilities.  Does this even make sense?  If Christina be crazy, tell her.

You and everyone else around you.

I should stop posting that I'm taking a break from my legal studies, because at this point, everything I do is a break from my legal studies.  Today, I am sick of doing torts.

Since I started law school, I wa kind of banking on not having to deal with the same difficulties as those I dealt with in undergrad: most importantly, the difficulties people around me seemed to have with spatial awareness.  I hoped, stupidly, that gone were the days where some dude decided that the main hallway of the mailroom was a perfect spot to stop to read the reminder he had gotten about the blood drive, or girls decided that a cellphone meant walking in straight lines no longer applied to them.

I was wrong.

I now have to deal with girls who cross areas of our parking garage without looking, and then stare me down as I leave like I am doing something inappropriate by attempting to drive 5 MPH over the speedbump and exit the garage.  My personal favorite is a girl who likes to walk in the middle of the lanes in a parking garage, which makes me look like a predator because I have to follow her path back to her car because she's blocking the exit.  No, I'm not stalking you because you're pretty and look like you stepped out of the pages of a Vineyard Vines ad: there is only one way to get out of this concrete monstrosity and you, your polo, and your Blackberry are blocking it.

I have to deal with three girls who walk in the main entrance of our law building and stop two feet in the door to look at each other and state, "I love your pink computer!"  Me too, princess, me too, but you'd still love it if you took 3 steps forward.  You don't even have to ask "Mother, may I?"  Just do it.  And for the record, Elle Woods did the pink Mac way better than you ever will.  If you don't move I will trip you and you will land on the tile floor and your Pretty Pretty Princess computer will crash into pieces and you will weep and I will give you the coldest stare you have ever seen enabling me to skate to class on your frozen TEARS.  MOVE. 

I have to deal with girls who plan their weekends on Tuesday blocking my locker and about 3 dozen others because they are discussing how "the guys so want to party like, like ALL of this week.  I think I could like, you know, join them for some of it, but I don't like, I don't know.  That's a LOT of going out and, you know, we still have like, stuff to do!  And you know how they like to, like, play beer pong and like just be totally wasted and like, I have to DRIVE back to my apartment, you know?  I can't just like, crash on their couch, that's gross.  CACKLECACKLECACKLE."
One, that conversation could just not have happened and absolutely no part of the world would be different.  None.  Two, we are taught about brevity and clarity in our legal writing class and therefore I have to assume you slept through the whole thing.  Three, my civ pro book weighs a lot and your foot is fragile.  Four, I hate you and everything you stand for and I will record this conversation and discover your name and send it to every last one of your potential employers including surrounding restaurants looking for waitresses if you do not MOVE IMMEDIATELY because I've had 5 straight hours of class before this and I am hungry and would gnaw off your arm right now if I were sure I couldn't get kuru and also alcohol poisoning because your behavior can only suggest that you are still drunk from last night partying with your boyzzz because you could not be THIS IGNORANT for ANY OTHER REASON.  (My patience and my hunger have an inverse relationship.)

Spatial awareness: it saves lives. 

Jersey Shore.

I'm straight up avoiding my civil procedure reading. 

For the past two weeks, my roommates and I have crashed in front of the TV with beer (or in my case, a gin and tonic... I drink like a male retiree, I'm aware) and enjoyed the witty repartee of these 8 crazy kids.  One roommate came in with a love of the show, while the other, while aware of it, had never seen an episode.  Now she's quoting Snooki and getting sick of the Sammi-Ronnie drama.  She's hooked.

I'm just going to say it: I LOVE this show.  It's entertaining as heck, and for me, a bit of schadenfreude every week.  No matter how poorly my life is going, I am not nearly thirty, spending two hours on my hair, and using words like "smoosh."  I'm looking at you, DJ Pauly D.

For those who haven't seen the show, here's a quick breakdown: MTV found 8 exemplary members of society and stuck them in a house on the Jersey Shore, and it was so frickin' entertaining that they did it again, but in Miami.  The show's cast must work for a few hours at entry-level jobs (a T-shirt store and a gelato shop), but they spend most of their time prepping to go out, going out, and then being hungover from going out.  They are all of the "guido" and "guidette" persuasion, and use a very specific vocabulary to talk amongst themselves and others like them.  I did not intend this, but this paragraph looks very David Attenborough plus Steve Irwin-narrated.  My B.

Some of the vocabulary:

GTL: Gym, Tan, Laundry.  It's a lifestyle.  I personally call it Steroids, Melanoma, Febreeze.

Smoosh: to have sex/hook up.

"Insclude": Not a real word, but this is what one character sounds like when trying to say "exclude."

Grenade: an ugly girl, generally a friend of the girl one is trying to hook up with.  The name originates from the need for your wingman to "take one for the team" and throw himself on this girl in order to let you hook up.  Synonyms: Zoo creature, hippo, hyena, landmine (if the girl is thin, but ugly).  Plural: The Bronx Zoo.

Etc., etc.  I have a very difficult time with the fact that I like this show, because some of the behavior on it is absolutely horrendous.  And I'm not talking about pearl-clutching, overreacting, dear,-that-neckline's-a-LITTLE-low horrendous, I'm talking disrespectful to humanity horrendous.  And then there are times people are actually very nice.

In the first season, one of the girls, Snooki, was a bit of an outcast on the show for the first bunch of episodes.  On one outing, she attempted to stop a guy from stealing drinks from her friends, and she got punched in the face for it.  Several of the guys from the show immediately launched themselves at him, the girls took care of her, and collectively, they were very supportive of her, cheered her up, and let her know she was part of the "family."  They went out of their way to make sure she was taken care of, and they didn't need to do that. 

Another girl in the house, Jenni (or JWOWW, as she goes by... it's apparently what the guys say when she walks into the club, I... I don't even...just...ANYWAY) was out with Snooki, when another girl started to harrass them, asking Jenni "Who's your fat friend?"  JWOWW started a fight with the girl and got tossed out of the club.  When Snooki later asked her what happened, she said, "The girl was calling both of us fat." (emphasis mine)  Jenni is not a girl you would look at and say, "Now that is a classy human being" based solely on her appearance.  She gave herself enormous implants as a present, had blond streaks in her black hair for a time, has the unfortunate voice of a 90-year-old chain smoker, and her clothing can best be described as "costume-y" (her outfit on the evening of the fight included a teal bra and a pink, sparkly corset, if I remember correctly).  However, telling Snooki that the girl was calling both of them fat was a classy thing to do.  She was a good friend at that moment, and there are plenty of girls who walk around looking like a million dollars but treat their friends like a non-funny version of the Plastics.  I'd say to her, keep wearing the rhinestone-encrusted clubbing tops, JWOWW: you've got more class than most.

And then we come to the not-fun part of how they act.  I don't mean to pick on only the guys, and this could be MTV encouraging or filming this behavior in some way, but the guys, in particular Mike (also known as the Situation... don't even ask, really, don't), are straight-up misogynists.  The "grenade" aspect of the show seems to be more prominent this season, but the guys spend quite a bit of their time proclaiming certain girls hot enough and the rest grenades (and I for the life of me cannot tell the difference).  Any girl over about a hundred pounds is almost certainly a "grenade," but other than that, I can't tell who is and who isn't.  My favorite time is when they bring girls home, and then pretend to sober up quickly (my interpretation), and then act as if they've suddenly realized they've brought large African mammals into their hot tub.  MTV helps by occasionally inserting a sound bite of an elephant trumpeting at the moment one realizes "We got grenades, man!"

Part of why this is so difficult for me to watch is that I'm 100% positive I would be immediately rejected and labeled a grenade by these guys.  Part of this knowledge is due to a little vignette: several girls who walked into the gelato shop while two of the guys were working attempted to give them their numbers, but as soon as they found out the girls were in law school, they wanted none of it.  That's MEEEEE!  However, even if I were at a club and law school didn't come up (for the love of Jesus why is the music always so loud in those places), I'm not skinny.  I can't even attempt to define their standard of what a grenade is or isn't, but I do know if you ain't thin, you out.  Also, probably, if you're not impressed by their abs or their helmet hair (not hair that looks like it's been under a helmet, but hair that actually is hard enough to double as a helmet), you're probably also a grenade.

I've come to the conclusion that I can watch this show for its entertainment value, but I've also justified watching the misogyny.  These guys have impossible-to-meet standards.  They insult girls who have done nothing wrong to them.  They reject intelligence as a flaw.  They invite girls to their house and then reject them.  One of them regularly cheats on his girlfriend.  They lead girls to their bedrooms past a sign that says "no one's ugly after 2 AM."  They call girls on the cast variations on "fat" when they're disagreeing over something, despite the fact that one girl (Snooki) has openly shared her history with eating disorders.

I may be a grenade, and I may not be on TV, but I am not a sociopath.  I call that a win.