Six reasons why I complain sometimes.

Apologies times a million for slacking.  Being a grown-up is hard.

If you talk to me for like, 5 seconds, you know I'm in law school.  If you talk to me for 15 seconds, you'll hear me bitch about it.  I'm not sure I've made myself clear on why it's so difficult, so I'd like to walk you through some reasons why I pretty much feel like I've been steamrollered during every waking hour (and sometimes sleeping ones...no that's cool, I definitely wanted to dream about Torts.)

1. Your whole grade for a class depends on 3-4 hours
No, really.  Your WHOLE. GRADE. is the final exam.  There's no midterm, there's no problem sets, there's no "but I went to literally every office hour you had please do not give me that grade I will do anything."  Every single exam you have is like the Olympics.  Yes, Michael Phelps was in like a trillion events and won all of them because he's a pot-smoking champion with titanium ligaments and a dolphin heart or whatever.  But let me state: they were all SWIMMING events.  It's not like he had to go re-train for every single event; he still remembers how to swim.  Having a torts final and a criminal law final and a civil procedure final is like doing a race involving the butterfly stroke, but then immediately having to go do a shotput event, and then finishing strong with some rhythmic gymnastics. (Probably that hoop thing, too, what the hell is that even I DON'T KNOW.)  You also have to train for all of them simultaneously.

2. You can't miss class
Okay, you CAN.  I'm not saying if a bus hits you on your way to class that you need to pick your pancreas up off the ground and suck it up for 80 minutes, but barring OUTBREAK!-like illness, you have to go to class.  This is for several reasons.  One is that they take attendance every day, because if you miss enough classes, you legit don't get credit for the class, because the professor can move to exclude you from the final. Yes, on paper that sounds awesome (WHAT NO FINAL BEST DAY EVER) but really it means "oh hey champ do errythang again."  Because you probably can't graduate without whatever class that is.  The other major reason is things won't make sense in your notes.  Possibly ever.  You read for class in order to have the professor tell you where you are right (the facts of the case, sometimes), and where you are wrong (everywhere, about everything).  Yes, you can get notes from other people, but they will never look like YOUR notes, and you'll always be a little more confused about that topic/set of cases than you will about the other days. 
And this leads me to...

3. Read for class or you're f***ed
No really.  This is not like undergrad where it was better if you read, but not a disaster if you didn't.  You won't understand a damn thing.  And even if you don't read, it's not like "oh okay we covered it, now I don't have to read at all," it's more like "oh sweet now I have to do it at a later time."  Class is where you go to get your outside work clarified.  No, there is no homework: you don't have to turn in a book report called Our Friend The Commerce Clause.  But you HAVE to stay on top of the reading.  IT NEVER ENDS.  IT NEVER SLOWS DOWN. THE CASES ARE LIKE THAT WILDEBEEST HERD IN THE LION KING.  DON'T BE MUFASA.  THAT WAS WAAAAY TOO SOON BUT GOSH DARN DO I LOVE CAPSLOCK.

There's yet another reason why you should keep up with your reading.

4. You're gonna get cold-called
Let me see if I can paint a picture for you.  You're at a production of Cats. (Hang in there, it gets worse.) You're like 20 minutes in or so, and you're kind of lost, mildly bored and moderately uncomfortable.  They keep using unfamiliar words like "jellicle." You just want to call your mommy and tell her you love her.

And then the Rum Tum Tugger pulls you onstage and makes you sing "Memory."
Everyone is now looking at you, and you'd better not screw up the lyrics, or Grizabella's gonna write down in her beat-up notebook that you weren't prepared.  And someone dressed in a catsuit is now judging you, along with a bunch of people who paid money to see Cats.

Okay, so my analogy fell apart a little there, but you get it, hopefully.  It's scary and embarrassing and it keeps happening just like the show was on Broadway for like 15 years or some ridiculous thing.  

5. Gunners
Bigger, badder, more irritating version of That Guy/Girl.  This person will not shut up.  This person will make your class experience 10 percent more entertaining and 90 percent more filled-with-plots-to-murder. (Protip: don't tell me about them.  That's premeditation and it's gonna ratchet up your conviction.  Also protip: don't murder.)
If you don't know who the gunner is in your class...it's you.

6. Significant portions of school exist because horrible things happened and you're reminded of them constantly
Much of constitutional law exists because certain people who happened to be in power decided other people didn't matter as much.  A lot of torts law exists because horrible accidents happened to people and the only possible way to even come close to fixing it involved money.  All of crim exists because people did ATROCIOUS things to other people.  All the gradations of homicide and assault exist because lawmakers had to decide just how horrible you have to be for first degree versus second degree.  This "people are mean" element doesn't show up in every part of law, but it happens often.  And if you let it get to you, it REALLY gets to you.

If you hear me complain, this is why, or at least most of why.  Law school be HARD, and there are days I feel like I'm barely hacking it, but hopefully you'll understand why I sometimes gchat you saying "COME RESCUE ME PLEASE THIS IS HARD AND I AM WEAK."

Memoryyyy, all alone in the moooonlight.... 

Collection of things that bug me.

There is seriously less cohesion in this post than there is in a drop of water (actually, that's not a great comparison...), but there are several things that I've been thinking about lately and they should get said.

1. Girl power/gender roles.
One thing I've heard in my life is "if girls are the same as guys, then why can't I hit a girl?"  Okay, seriously? Because hitting people is shitty behavior. Don't hit girls, don't hit guys, don't hit turtles.  Why is this even an argument?  "If a girl is pissing me off, why can't I punch her in the face?  You say you have the same rights as guys, then why can't  I punch you?"  SHUT. UP.  No one is fighting for the right to get punched in the face.  This is why it really bugged me that they edited Snooki's getting punched but not Gary from Teen Mom getting hit by Amber.  It's not about size comparisons.  It's not about men  and women.  People hitting other people is horrible and shouldn't happen regardless of who the people are.  So stop using this as an argument.


2. "Only The Good Die Young."
Everything about this song bugs me.  I still don't get the title: if you're "bad" you get to live longer?  Logically that's the only conclusion you can come to: just because you're young doesn't mean you're going to die. (I teach formal logic for an LSAT class; don't judge me.)  I gots me lots o' favorite lines for this song.

"You Catholic girls start much too late."  If you opt out of something that's supposed to be fun, you get a whole bunch of awesome names tacked onto you: frigid, wet blanket, Mom, lame, and my personal favorite, "don't know what you're missing."  I'll start when I want to, thank you, Mr. Joel.  When this song makes me angry I like to think that "Virginia" is sitting there saying (a la Meg Ryan as Sally), "I never considered not sleeping with you a sacrifice."

"They showed you a statue, told you to pray/they built you a temple and locked you away"
No. "They showed me a loving God, asked if I wanted to pray/I chose to be Catholic, now please go away."

"I'd rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints/the sinners are much more fun" makes me so boiling angry I don't even know how to talk about it.   If this line makes sense to you, you've completely misunderstood exactly what makes the "saints" awesome.

3. Bruno Mars
Seriously this is awful.  If I hear anything about him going back and forth from catching grenades to not feeling like doing anything and letting things hang loose, I will hang something else.  It's not "cute in its simplicity," it's lazy songwriting.

4. Talking about literary genres you don't get
Since I'm a sci-fi and fantasy buff, that's the obvious conclusion here, but this can be applied to anything.  First of all, don't say "I don't like [type of book]" if you haven't read any, or if you've read one, or whatever.  You don't like that book, or that author, fine.  It's probs not the genre.  I'm not a big chick lit person, but I've read some pretty awesome entries in that category so I can't exactly summarily dismiss errythang.  I read Twilight for this reason. 

Second, you're not better than me because you've decided my genre of choice is low-brow.  I hate the Twilight series, but as long as you're not making your life decisions on the plot, knock yourself out! And in the same vein, you can go ahead and criticize what I read if you've read it and hated it, but you're not better than me because you're reading God-knows-what and I'm quoting Ender's Game.  

Third, this is a shout out to newspapers and magazines: don't let people who hate the genre review books, and don't let people who haven't read the book on which something is based review that either. Read a review a few months back on HBO's Game of Thrones, and the woman obviously hated fantasy and hadn't read the series.  How do I know? One of her lines was "omg there r sooo many peeps to keep track of itz HARD" and another was "how any woman ever could like this is wrong."  Seriously? Your argument is that there are TOO MANY characters?  Get out.

5. Complaining about getting hit on
This one might be my favorite. I've overheard loud conversations more than once on trains and in Starbucks-type places where pretty girls are complaining about attention they are getting from guys. And I'm not talking about "staring through your window with binoculars" dangerous attention.  I'm talking about "had the audacity to come say hello at a bar and offer to buy you a drink."


girl 1: Ohmahgah, I was out with Steph this weekend at PinkSparklyPalmTree and this guy just came up to me and started talking!
girl 2: Ugh, I HATE when that happens.Was he at least cute? I doubt it, LOLOLOLOL
girl 1: Haha, he was like four feet tall and I was in my 6 inch stilettos so why bother?  And you'll never guess what happened next!!!
me, in my head: I CAN!
girl 2: What? WHAT??
girl 1: he offered to BUY my next DRINK! Can you BELIEVE that?  Seriously, dude, I'm way better than you in every possible way, how dare you offer to do something nice?


Seriously, ladies?  You're at a BAR, you are PRETTY, and you're ANNOYED when someone pays attention to you and offers to do something nice?  I'm not saying you have to take the drink, or that you even have to talk to him, but to get annoyed by the attention is a bitchy move. 


I'm sorry for the lack of any sort of central idea in this post, but it's been a while, I owe you all one, and I'm whiny.  Much love.

Critical mass.

I’m not sure what it is about large numbers of people, but it seems like for every person who gets added to a crowd, the collective IQ drops by a point.  I don’t know if pushiness was once selected for (the Permian mass extinction was actually a Black Friday sale?) or if everyone just gives up in despair when they see other versions of themselves close by (when will my reflection shoooow, the tool I am, insiiiiiiide…), but there’s got to be something about both being close to people and forced to wait for something that freaks errybody out.   There are types.

1.      Waiting in line to order food.

Two summers ago, my sister and I had gone to an ice cream place by the Jersey Shore.  She’s generally a pretty hilarious person, but I was almost on the floor laughing at her descriptions of people who wait in line for fifteen minutes, get to the counter, and have NO clue what they want.  Her faves are the sneaky ones: you don’t realize that they have no decision-making capacity, because they start the sentence with “Can I get…” but then follow it up with a distinctly bovine “uuuhhhhh…” as if startled to find out they’ve reached a point in the line which requires participation.  My personal favorites are the ones who want a sample of things and can’t even decide on that.  There is NO risk there, and yet they react like this has become Sophie’s Choice or Who Gets That Piece of Wood After the Titanic Goes Down…Choice.  (you’re so STOOPID, Rose, you’re so STOOPID.)  God forbid there is a parent in line with children who didn’t question them while in line about what they want, because the process is then one hundred percent longer for each additional child.  If I am behind you and Timmy and Susie and Barkley and Cartwright (or whatever other strange, old-timey trade genre you’ve decided to name your child…Tanner? Blacksmith?) and Timmy is giving you a look like he’s seriously considering jamming his Transformer toy into MY femoral artery because they don’t have Lime Berry Marshmallow Cotton Candy Rainbow as a flavor (Timmy has made this name up out of a collection of words he’s learned from TV today), I will not only take Bumblebee from him and make him Go Long, I will also bury your largest child in coffee-flavored ice cream and tell your other spawn that they must eat their way to their sibling or Santa dies. 

2.      Traffic

Here, I do not mean times when there are cars, and lots of them, but there still is some hope of movement.  No, here I speak of F*** All times when no one can do anything.  Instead of patiently waiting, or using the time to throw your car in park and accomplish something (making new friends with the equally screwed people next to you is my dad’s preferred cocktail, but there are plenty of options: getting your tan on; cranking the No Strings Attached CD you’re listening to, admit it; reconnecting with your brother; going back to school; pouring yourself a Maker’s, neat, because by the time you move the alcohol will have been out of your system for about 6 hours; reading Hunger Games fanfic (notthatI’vedoneit); opportunities are endless.  Just try not to be one of these guys:

·         This is TOTALLY a lane – when everyone is required to merge due to construction or an engineering prank (dude, dude, DUDE: if we just cut down on a lane here for no reason how funny would that be?), this person decides the lane about to end, or even better, the shoulder, is a shortcut to be the grand marshal in the Parade of the Damned we are all a part of.  Sir, EVERYONE sees you sneaking up on the side and NO ONE is going to let you in unless your wife is in labor, and only if her contractions are less than five minutes apart and she’s having at least two babies at once.  We all have ultrasound equipment so we will know if you are lying.  

·         This lane is betterOHWAIT – if one lane momentarily lurches forward 4 feet, you can bet this broski will be in that new lane: even if it is two or even three lanes over because it’s CLEARLY the best lane.  I’m sure when I eventually receive my license to practice law that will be more satisfying, but at this moment I can think of no other experience better than passing the person who cut you off to get into a “better lane.”

·         I’ma lean on mah horn, kay? – This person, when seeing all of the people in front of him, comes to the conclusion that instead of some outside force keeping all these cars from moving, that all of I-95 has decided to play Red Light, Green Light, 1,2,3; that our last command was Red Light; and that the person running the game was subsequently hit in the temple and lost consciousness, leaving us confused as to what to do.  He’s a conspiracy theorist with a Twitter account named TruthPatriot3790 which he updates twice an hour.  He has an open can of Redbull in his cupholder and is listening to a death metal band called Sponge 4 Blood (title track: This Weeping Wound).  “Wake up, sheeple!” he bleats from his sedan.  “You can move if you want!  We are the only things in our own way, so MOVE, dammit!”  This person makes you wish you could turn your ears into hands: you would no longer have to listen to him throwing his tribal-tattooed weight into his horn, but you would also have additional middle fingers with which to flip him off, and additional hands for belting him across the face with a copy of Idiocracy (which will be located in his front seat). 

Champski, there is NOTHING any of us can do, so just sit tight and ease up on the caffeine.  And maybe switch out the CD?  No, Eminem is not a good substitute.  No, not even his new album.  Yes, sweetie, I know he’s said he’s clean now.  Here’s some Jack Johnson: there’s a song about banana pancakes that I’m sure you’ll like.

3.      Crowds

I generally don’t like to be touched, especially by strangers (worse than most people, it’s pretty bad), but I try to suck it up when it comes to events that naturally draw crowds.  We also learned last semester in Torts about the “crowded world” rule, and to summarize: if you’re on a crowded subway and somebody brushes past you, you can’t sue them for battery.  Basically?  S*** happens, sorry, and I get this, I really do.  I’m not going to start making a shiv out of my mailbox key so I can get your kidney the next time around.  The people in crowds that make me want to set myself on fire rather than be near them are the pedestrian version of “I’ma lean on my horn, kay?” and “That lane is betterOHWAIT.”  You give them an inch and they take a yard.  They IMAGINE you’ve given them an inch and they take 20 feet.  They scoot forward until their noses are buried in between your shoulder blades and you start contemplating faking leprosy or Christian fundamentalism to get them away from you.

They push into you, and you know it’s not the people behind them, because the people behind them have left a space, an actual space.  They often wear backpacks and whip around, turning their travel gear into the equivalent of a spiked mace.  They shout things like “what’s the hold up?!” and “let’s keep it moving, people!” and then snort to themselves or their friends.  If there are several members to the party, they will link arms, the leader stating “follow me, everybody!” and muscle their way through the crowd like a conga line from hell.  My personal favorite exclamation is when they are rudely PUSHING you forward and stating “I don’t have to deal with this!”  I always wonder what led you to that conclusion: why not?  Are you armed?  Are you here under duress?  Are you the monarch of a tiny but plucky country (major exports: a sour kind of citrus fruit and handguns) and have diplomatic immunity from crowds?

My ability to even form words, much less sentences, shuts down around these people due to a combination of hate and discomfort.  It’s mostly “eeeeeee!” with a little “AHHHGGGHH!” thrown it at low moments.  I just want to squirm and scream.  To disappear and take them out as I go with a garrote.  To Apparate out and elbow each one in the sternum.  Seriously, lady, I was not aware I signed up for a colonoscopy with you and your fanny pack, and I don’t know how you did this but your voice seems to trigger an adverse, sciatica-esque reaction in my vagus nerve (who are we kidding, you touched all twelve of those bad boys.)  The fact that you announced to the crowd that you need to pee only makes me want to dump my Nalgene on your head and start singing “Don’t go chasin’ waterfaaaalls…”  And seriously, it’s okay to want a piece, but f’reals, if your hand gets anywhere near my butt again, I’m going to travel forward or backwards in time, disguise myself as your wedding planner for 12 hours, and as you’re about to make your entrance, inform you that there was a little problem with the orchestra due to flight delays, and the only band available on such short notice is a Baha Men cover band.  You’re okay walking down the aisle to Who Let the Dogs Out, right?  They’ll be doing the reception as well. 

In slow-moving crowds, please remember you are a human, and remember others are too.  Best scenario for everyone: you get to live, and I get to pass the character part of the bar.      

So fresh and so clean.

Apologize for the hiatus.  Life gets tough sometimes.

Write some case briefs, write some blog post, write some case briefs, write some blog post. Oh, and prep for Kaplan training.  I may be teaching the LSAT soon.  Oh goodness.

Guysguysguysguys how much FUN is doing laundry in communal machines?!?!?!?!!!!1111

I'm seriously hoping this concept doesn't fall into the hands of our enemies, because there will be no secrets left once any hostages are made to wash a load of sweaters in a machine that jams up with quarters three-fifths of the time.  We would no longer be a super power.

There are roughly 87 million things that can go wrong with doing laundry in machines every one shares.  I can group them into four main categories: prep, paying, washing, and drying.

1. Preparation
Favorite part of this is if you live in a different building than the one where the machines are located.  Motivation shot before you've even begun.  Also guarantees that the instant you want to do laundry, it will begin to sleet.  Bed, Bath, and Beyond does not view "all-terrain, all-weather" as a selling point for laundry carriers: I say they are missing a large demographic right there.
You also have to do an awesome job (if you're me) making sure you actually have all of the items you want to wash.  My champ move is forgetting I'm wearing a favorite shirt right about 15 minutes into the washing cycle.

2. Paying
For four years of college I was using mostly quarters (and sometimes my card) to pay for laundry and this was a BLAST, let me tell YOU.  Learning you're a quarter short when you swore you just counted out enough for a full washing and drying cycle produces a frenzy only previously known in Viking soldiers on primitive methamphetamine.  You WILL find another quarter, goshdarnit.  You're knocking on people's doors you don't even know, desperately asking for just one George Washington so you can pleasepleasePLEASE not have to dry your socks on your radiator which is probably a fire haz-no, definitely a fire hazard and there isn't nearly enough space to hang everything because it's winter and that laundry load held like 8 sweatshirts and 4 pairs of jeans and they will all be DAMP FOREVER if you can't find one more flippin' quarter so time to dig through your purse and bottom of your backpack because this must happen.  It's a party and a half.  The machines at Brown were also gold-medal winners at not accepting your quarters after you've loaded an entire two weeks' worth of wardrobe in.  I started checking before I put clothes in to avoid the "...you're kidding, right?" feeling and the physical battle I'd then have with the machines (spoiler: they won.  Every single time.)
Cards were marginally better, but on those you generally have the problem of "this is boss, I have 75 cents left."  My apartment, bless its heart, only lets you put 5s, 10s, and 20s on the card, so God forbid you show up with 9 singles and a twenty.  You have no options; the laundry money credit thing cares not that you merely wish to wash your towels and require about 3 dollars on the card.  Your twenty is miiiiiiine bwahahahaaaaaa.

3. Washing
Mayyyybe your clothes will get washed.  Maybe they will just end up in a soggy, dripping pile that still has bits of your powdered detergent on it.  Then you get to transfer it to the dryers, which are sometimes open (I'll address this in a second) and this absolutely guarantees that you will drop your most valuable item of clothing onto the floor...and onto lint.  It will not be a sock.  It will be the sweater that Mother Teresa knit for you, made of equal parts rainbow and hope.  And it's FRAGILE.

4. Drying
This is perhaps the most dangerous, because it can potentially involve interactions with other people.  There is the general annoyance of finding that beautiful middle ground between "My clothes are apparently made of glacial meltwater" and "my clothes are magma-temperature and now suitable for Felicity, my American Girl Doll, to wear" in the sogginess spectrum, but the real crisis here is when someone else's clothes are in the dryer.  There are some rules here:

If you need to move someone else's clothing from a dryer, it will ALWAYS be underwear, and 7 out of 10 times it will be underwear belonging to someone of the opposite sex.

This person's things will be completed, but still in the dryer, for at least an hour after the cycle ends.

This person will appear the second you actually lose patience and begin to move their things.  Also, 7 out of 10 times, they will appear at the same instant you accidentally drop a garment on the floor.

My most recent experience with this was moving a man's underwear and socks which had been in the dryer, complete, for 90 minutes.  The underwear all had the Playboy bunny screenprinted on them.  I feel NO REMORSE OR SHAME FOR MOVING IT.  Thank GOD he did not show up. 

Someone invent self-cleaning socks and I will love you forever.