Category Archives: 2L Fall Summaries

BWE 13-15: Puking hotdogs

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Before recapping the past few weeks, I offer my stressed-out 1L readers a metaphor. No, this isn’t about liability looming in the air or about tree-fruit. This is a metaphor about law school:

“Finals are like the last drop on a rollercoaster ride.”

Brilliant, no? No? Okay, let me explain…

A good rollercoaster ride is taxing and scary. Halfway through, everyone questions why they decided to get on the ride in the first place. It wouldn’t be a good rollercoaster if the ride was pleasant.

Pleasantness is for those Jennifer-Aniston lovers over there on the teacup ride. You waited in the ungodly long line for the rollercoaster because you are hardcore, and this is how you roll.

Right now, I am at the peak of the final drop of the rollercoaster. The view is great, but the bullshit fun is about to start. What’s the worst that can happen?

Erm… Okay. Barring some Final Destination disaster (or a stray bullet) the worst that can happen is a C, maybe a C minus.

And that is why law school finals are like the last drop on a rollercoaster. Finals entail stress and work, but the GPA concerns are about as serious as the rollercoaster rider worried about yarking up a hotdog. Yes, it’s a real concern – C’s and puke suck – but worrying about law school finals is still very charmed position to be in.

You guessed it, I’m pulling the “some children are starving” card:

hunger-2

Or the laid-off-worker-with-family card, or the foreclosure card, or the mental health card… the point is that some people have real problems, and no, sorry, law school finals do not qualify. The worst that can happen is a bad grade, and the world will not end with a C. Trust me. (And even if you aim to be an associate at a posh firm, remember they get fired too.)

Whether I am making videos about finals, throwing shade in the library, or shaking because I have just studied for 13 hours straight, I always remember that finals stress is about as serious (and non-serious) as puking hotdogs after a rollercoaster ride. I’m sure I’ll find a mop.

So the review of the past few weeks?

That’s all!

Fret, Tension, & Gladiators: Best Week Ever 12

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Amber fretted about finals at work today:

Amber: I am not looking forward to my week. You’d think I wouldn’t be so stressed out about a two-day week, but this is sort of the last breath of freedom before finals – but only, it’s NOT a fresh breath because I have commitments with NORMAL people who do not understand the madness that law students have to go through.

What makes law school finals stressful is not the material, but the curve. Our grades are not based on what we know, but on how much more we know than our equally-competent1 peers.

There are miserable students live in the library during November. Most of us don’t want to become that goonish, vampire-like study-carrel dweller, but we all want to do well.

This is why finals season feels like a SAW sequel: how much are you willing to give to stay alive? An arm? A leg? Your right toe? Dum dum dum…

A lot of us are saying “fuck it.” The job market is too slim to ruin our health and social lives for an arbitrary grade. It is more important to just learn the material as best we can and retain sanity.

This week was busy even without the unnecessary finals panic. There was the crushing weekly reading, work, and an oral argument that almost did not happen.

I have to work on my Vanna White smile for class. Some of my classmates are getting exponentially more inappropriate as the semester progresses and it’s hard not to glare.

There is one girl in particular who asks such amazingly off-topic questions that it will shock NO ONE when she raises her hand one day and asks:

Off-Topic Girl: “Professor, you were talking about x, and that reminds me – sorry if this outside of the scope of our class – but, what is the meaning of life? Can you speak to that?”

That’s going to happen before the end of the semester. Guaranteed.2

Aside from the circus that is school, I’ve spent my evenings and afternoons at work. And this weekend I went out on Friday and Saturday.

We started Friday at The Eagle’s happy hour, and then later that night went to The Saloon. On Saturday we went to this gladiator-themed gay bar called Gladius. The bar tenders at Gladius wear these little leather gladiator-skirts…with running shoes… and there was a boy trying SO HARD to sell a tray of these red shots that looked exactly like DayQuil (in the DayQuil cup and everything!) Fail.

The music at Gladius was impressive, and we spent some serious boomkat time on the dancefloor.3 The party continued at The Saloon, where I managed to get my glasses stolen.

The Saloon has a heater right above the dancefloor, so Eric and I took off our blazers and put them on a speaker. My overpriced plastic frame glasses were too light and kept slipping, so I set them on my blazer.

When I picked up the blazer the glasses were gone. Dum dum dum. Angela Lansbury had already gone to bed, so that case went cold pretty quickly.

I’m going into for a contacts fitting on Tuesday. I figure contacts are a more practical investment than another pair of lose-able/steal-able glasses.

I only have class on Monday and Tuesday this week, and nothing but Tax Law on Wednesday. The rest of the week will be spent working and outlining full time, but hopefully a little less stressful than Amber’s week.

1 And it’s really a shitshow at UMN law, where the 98/99% bar passage rate means that even the people with the lowest GPAs are competent enough to practice law.
2 Minnesota nice has gone out the window. Sure, off-topic girl is annoying, but a lot of people are just downright bitter. If I can hear the bitchy comment from two rows away, or read it on gchat screen on a nearby laptop, then off-topic girl will find out eventually.
3 Will and I were the only ones on the dancefloor, because Joel and Eric were too busy socializing. And no, although some minimal voguing was done, there were drops or duckwalks.

Best Week Ever 11: Reboot

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It feels like fall, it feels like finals.

The leaves lasted for (what feels like) two weeks. Some trees dropped their leaves immediately, whereas others went out in style:

fall leaves

That’s over now. Almost all of the trees are bare. The neighborhood feels both naked and urban because the buildings are no longer hidden by the trees.

The darkness is as glaring as the bare trees. It is pitch black by 5:30pm, so the evening commute feels like 30 days of night with potholes.

But I was warned. When I first came to law school the 2Ls warned me:

Scary 2L: “Finals are bleak. It will be dark when you go to school and dark when you come home.”

Insert a Dr. Evil cackle, and you have your typical doomsday-prophesizing 2L…coming to a cover of an Enquirer near you!

The darkness is why I spend as little time in the law school as possible. The classrooms are in the basement, so students who don’t make an effort to leave for lunch end up as pale as vampires.1

Besides avoiding vampires, my aim this coming week is to take better care of myself. The past few weeks were disastrous for my health – it’s as if I said, “Hey! Finals are coming up! How about I get as little sleep as possible, eat shitty food, stop working out, and then pump up the caffeine – surely they make caffeine IVs – and then I can have a nice Michael Moore chin to keep me warm and cushy for finals.”

Sexy.

The turkey is the only thing that needs to be festively plump this month.2 The marathon training begins in earnest tomorrow. Now excuse me while I get some of that much-needed sleep.

1 These are the same students who can be found hissing at whisperers in the library… I think they are trying to keep with the theme.
2 And the only thing that needs a turkey neck, mmkay?