i'll have what he's having

last night in my sleep i was at a picnic. the sun was low, as it was at last year's fete, and dogs were playing in the cool grass. buffs was in a tight pink polo, serving drinks from a long, ice-filled bin. "what'll you have, l.i.t.?" he asked. "a natty light," i say. at least i think i say natty light. i might also order a vodka tonic, i don't remember. buffs looks at me askance and hands me a can of something. the aluminum is sweating. i crack it open, take a drink, and all my blood surges to my face.

even as i take my first drink in almost two years, a funny thing happens. i make amends to buffs, something done only in AA's ninth step. i apologize to him and everyone in the blogosphere for not showing up with integrity. for pretending everything was OK when it wasn't. i say i want to live differently, but i keep drinking, and everything looks fuzzy...

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i don't write much about my AA life here, even though that's why i started this blog. i wanted someone to be able to google "sober law student" and find a voice out there. after all, there are lots of lawyers in the program. AA's founder had been a lawyer and corporate dealmaker. same with AA's third member. sober lawyers back East helped get me off the bottle, and a sober law student here welcomed me to Boulder. so i wanted to be here, 'case anyone else needed this deal.

still, i struggle sometimes trying to live a sober life, one that involves being there when i'm supposed to and refusing to feed off my own excuses. two years ago, i remember driving back home one morning, jittery and high, while everyone else in the neighborhood headed off to work. "how'm i ever gonna do this differently?" i thought. fast forward to last night, when i got a letter from my summer job. they asked me to show up at 8:30 the first day. my face instantly flushed, just like in the dream. "how the hell am i gonna do that?" there will always be a part of me that finds "normal" life unfathomable. but god keeps putting me in places where i've got to be up to the task. i kick and scream like hell, but usually if i just show up and do basic stuff, it turns out better than i'd imagined.

that said, i've got to take contrary action this week. i would love nothing more than to hang out in this enticing blog world and blow off work. i'm really most comfortable when i'm deepest in denial. but the work is there and needs to be done. and i've got to show up for it.

so, i'm taking the next week and a half off. i say this not b/c anyone cares, but b/c i've got to keep the promise to myself. so here's wishing you all the most that anyone could wish: the confidence of finishing finals with integrity, the satisfaction of a tough task done, and the bliss that comes with being divorced from the results.

reason 5,437 to take land use planning

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i have learned (finally) to study with headphones on. too bad i didn’t get this in undergrad, when my roommate chewed her gum out loud and constantly belly laughed about postmodern theory. (more on that later).

but musical outlining becomes cause for musical celebration. here’s a list of guilty pleasures and things i love right now:

1. the fact that the killers sound like a better-produced version of duran duran. only i don't fantasize marrying them like i did w/ dd in 5th grade. (seriously: sis and i totally cried when nick rhodes finally wed.)

2. that enthusiastic little "clap clap clap" noise in snow patrol's "tiny little fractures." and the fact that the song is totally pretentiously about nothing: "If I've forgotten what to say /It's because all words are dust" (!) and then later: "is there a t-shirt i can wear / cuz i am soaking, look at me / what do you mean i don't love you? / i am standing here, aren't i?" now that's my kind of guy. when standing in a wet t-shirt = love.

3. along the lines of post-modern pretentions: i also love that eve 6 song "heart in a blender." "I burn burn like a wicker cabinet / sharp wire and oh so frail / I see our time has gotten stale." i can't think of a sillier metaphor than burning like a wicker cabinet. except maybe this one: "or am i oragami/ fold it up and just pretend / demented as the motives in your head." sweet!

4. offspring's "feet all up in the air." i used to hate it, till i realized it's just a rock 'n roll version of a raunchy rugby song. and it's a lot funnier than "at the gang bang," a rugby ballad my dear sweet ex would sing to me.

5. my old guided by voices albums. nothing can make you chuckle through corps quite like this line: "i met a non-dairy creamer / explicitly laid out like a fruit cake / with a wet spot bigger than a great lake ... took me to pie land / said, 'i'm a thigh man' / i will be eternally hateful. HOT FREAKS!"

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and finally: i'm buying a new computer today. (yes, right in the middle of finals! when i have no money!) any suggestions on what NOT to buy? i'd advise anyone out there to *avoid* the toshiba satellite. motherboard gone in 2 years without even a teary good-bye. and right when i needed her most! at least she didn't sing rugby songs...

do i know you?

i wish i could get frequent flyer miles from the psych services office at wardenburg health center. i'd be owed a trip to cancun by now, maybe even paris. or at least a smidge of sanity. i'd take that any day.

i am one of the bajillions of law students on anti-depressants. too bad i don't have real figures on that, but i'd bet my dog's ass that there are more people medicating in law school then there are in the top 25%. i read somewhere recently that more than 40% of law students report feeling depressed by the end of third year. and while the rates decline post-graduation, they never return to levels enjoyed by the population at large.

what's my point? well, between all my different medications and vitamins and painkillers for the inevitable library headache, my backpack sounds like a baby rattle. and the medication, generally, has helped a hell of a lot. i'm pretty comfortable admitting that i need a pharmacological cocktail just to stay sane. cuz i remember the alternative all too well.

so why, then, when i ran into a law schooler last week at wardenburg, did i pretend to be invisible? i've seen fellow fleming rats there before, and it's usually been cause for laughter: "tough row to hoe, eh?" but i never thought this person would need psychological care. i didn't want this person to know i saw him/her, so i ran off. not so much because of my own shame, but for fear of theirs.

this strikes me as funny now. is this person not supposed to get depressed, to sweat a bit in the lion's pit? like it's ok for me to be there, because i'm prone to thinking m'self a low life, but it's not ok for someone else? then i realized: this is a lot like all the other calculations i've been doing in my head this week. sitting in my classes, trying to compute who is smarter or more type-A than me so as to predict where i'll fall on the curve. it's a kind of mental darwinism we all engage in, an attempt to locate the fittest and then plan our studying rituals accordingly. and i've apparently become so good at this law student taxonomy that i've also factored in who is more mentally stable or unstable than i.

it's a sick ritual, i know. i also know i'm not alone in it: it was part of the OCI dance; it was there in the l/s application process; it'll be part of the summer clerk experience and of firm life thereafter. in this conformist world of lawyering, each of us will be measured against a rigid norm (does she golf? did he go to all the social events? did she bring an extra jacket to work?) , and we will measure others against that post. if not, we'd be unable to find our own place on the invisible hierarchy of professional life. so perhaps we shouldn't pull so hard against the academic mean to which we're tethered these three years of law school. because we help create it as it creates us.

or, maybe we should just stop giving a fuck and love people for the work they do and the people they are. so with all cynicism aside: i wish you much luck next week.

and with all cynicism intact: i plan on falling below the mean in corps, above it in legislation, and right on it in ethics. feel free to calculate accordingly.

chicago southwest?

buffs has posted recently posted about ways to raise CU Law's profile. here's another option, based on an illuminating article in this week's NYTimes magazine. the story highlights Constitution in Exile, that other judicial activism movement, which seeks to restore supreme court jurisprudence to the Lochner era philosophy of inalienable economic rights. while its guru is Richard Epstein, author of our torts book and the intellectual sin qua non of the deregulation movement, many of its proponents have roots right here in Colorado. one is potential Rehnquist replacement Michael W. McConnell, now on the 10th circuit, as well as several "activists" involved in some of Joe Coors' early political organizations like Mountain States Legal Foundation.

given Colorado's increasingly conservative bent, combined with CU's smattering of Epstein adherents (soon-to-be Solicitor General Allison Eid chief among them), perhaps CU Law could re-brand itself. we'd be University of Colorado School of Law: Chicago Southwest, the wild west pioneers of legal objectivism. here, Lochneresque law could start a Sagebrush Rebellion against the Environmental and Indian Law departments, and those gunners in the Federalist Society would have guaranteed Supreme Court clerkships. amoral professors could finish the state's battle against medicaid and lead the rush to drill through the bottom of Grand Lake. meanwhile, CU would take a seat at the table of the top 10 law schools and play footsie with the likes of Yale and Stanford.

sure, this deregulatory legal philosophy would put even the most sold-out corporate lawyers out of business, and the rest of us would be left eating porridge in the legal aid clinic. but that's one way to raise the value of our degrees...

perfunctory post...

EDIT: last week, when i posted the lyrics to jim infantino's "stress," i was pulling them out of memory 10 years gone dry. found the real, whole song online & it's worth sharing:

©1993 Jim Infantino
covered by James Naughton

I'm addicted to stress that's the way that I get things done
if I'm not under pressure then I sleep too long
and I hang around like a bum
and I think I'm going nowhere and that makes me nervous
Everybody's out to get me but I feel alright,
everybody's out to get me but I feel alright,
everybody's out to get me but I feel alright,
everybody's thinking about me.

It's the little things that get you it's the little things that get you,
it's the little things that get you when you weren't paying attention,
It's the little things that get you it's the little things that get you,
it's the little things that get you when you weren't paying attention.

I'm trying to cut down on my caffeine consumption
so when I get up I just have one cup of coffee
and I like to have another cup of coffee with my breakfast
and when I go to work I like to get a cup of coffee
like the kind of cup of coffee that you get with a doughnut
'cept I never get the doughnut I just get the cup of coffee
and when I get to work I like to have a cup of coffee '
cause I like to have a coffee when I'm talking on the phone
but It usually goes cold and I need to get another
cup of coffee and it's lunch and I have an espresso.
And when I get back it's not morning anymore
so I have a diet cola and another diet cola
and by then I'm feeling fine and I'm feeling pretty sharp
and I'm feeling pretty wired and I'm getting things done,
but right about two I get this little tiny migraine
and it starts behind my eyes and it moves to the back of my
neck and it moves to the bottom of my spine
but it doesn't get there until five or six o'clock
which is the end of the day so I'm fine so I'm fine so I'm fine so I'm fine,
except when I have to work late when I have to work late which I usuallydo.

I'm addicted to stress that's the way that I get things done
if I'm not under pressure then I sleep too long
and I hang around like a bum
and I think I'm going nowhere and that makes me nervous
Everybody's out to get me but I feel alright,
everybody's out to get me but I feel alright,
everybody's out to get me but I feel alright,
everybody's thinking about me.

I love to work I love to run I love to play real hard
I love to steal little things from the grocery store
like a piece of bubble gum or sometimes I just stick my thumb in a peachand leave it there.
I love to work I love to run I love to waterski, snowboard, jetski, skydive,
parasail, hang-glide, rollerblade, mountainbike, bungy-jump,
well I mean I'd love to do theses things if I ever had the time,
I love to work I love to work, I love to work out after work,
I love to spend a little time with this woman that I'm seeing
'cept we never really get a little time to spend together
so we call each other up and we talk about work.
But what I think I'd really love is to get out by myself
on a little tiny island in the middle of the ocean
with just me and a book and a cellular phone
and a personal computer incase something came up
and I'd eat and I'd drink and I'd run and I'd sleep
and I wouldn't do nothing except swim all day
'cept my beeper doesn't work under water,
where are the sharks? where are the sharks?
and there's this kind of anemone
that sticks in your foot and the poison goes up to your brain and you die
and sand fleas? sand fleas - yuck!
but actually I think it'd be really relaxing
just me by myself in the middle of the ocean
and that's what I'd really love to do more than anything else
except I'd probably hate it.

I'm addicted to stress that's the way that I get things done
if I'm not under pressure then I sleep too long
and I hang around like a bum
and I think I'm going nowhere and that makes me nervous
Everybody's out to get me but I feel alright,
everybody's out to get me but I feel alright,
everybody's out to get me but I feel alright,
everybody's thinking about me.

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last spring, when i was almost non-functioning and not coming to school, i assumed everyone was thinking about me and knew what a slacker i was. surely, they were whispered that i didn't deserve to be here, that i'm a nasty bitch who just ought to go back to burger king. that's funny, because that's what i was thinking about me.

when i finally snapped back into reality, i realized that i finally did have a role at the law school: as a foil for all those type-A personalities who feared God would strike them down if they didn't read all the hornbooks. i would be the poster child for depression: here's what happens to you when you beat yourself up too much! or, to strain another metaphor, i was the priestess for perfectionists. classmates would confess how behind they were in their reading, how they feared they just weren't made to be lawyers. we'd swap secrets about anti-depressants and trade casenotes outlines. hell: anyone could talk to me. having dropped one class and taken an incomplete in another, i certainly wasn't going to judge them.

so, if you feel like shit right now: it's going to be allright. you don't have to wish you could go back to january and start it all over again. you don't have to dream of being 7 and playing in the backyard with your dog. it is possible to plug on and get it done. if you want to confess your worst law school fears here, well, then shoot. and if not, happy thoughts are going your way.

or, if humor suits you better, here's a reminder that you're not the most nerotic person on earth.

a ditty from Jim Infantino, folk singer:
"i'm addicted to stress cuz that's the way that i get things done.
and if i don't think about it then i sleep too long,
and i hang around like a bum
and i'm never going to make it
and that makes me nervous.

cuz the world is out to get me
but i feel allright.
the world is out to get me
but i feel allright.
the world is out to get me
but i feel allright.
EVERYBODY'S THINKING 'BOUT ME!"

put the F in FCQ

buffslaw has thrown up some mighty useful posts about professors and FCQs. i tried to comment, but found i couldn't wedge all my complaints in the common comment space. that said: here's my take.

*avoid the adjuncts*. the reasons are both practical and principled. first: most of them really do suck, and they teach law more for a CLE crowd than an academic one. i'm no genius, but i'd much rather watch Campos run up to his office, mid-class, to pull a "perfect" quote from a Borghes text than watch some schmuck read from a powerpoint slide as he contemplates how much work he left back at the office. professors are a rarefied bunch, but they stretch the mind a bit. and i'd much rather find myself standing in front of a judge someday with a stretched mind than a sketchy recall of a powerpoint outline...

second: this administration has got to get the picture. i can see calling in an adjunct to teach a practical course on mediation. but a core class like evidence or tax? that's just crazy. unless CU hires an adjunct who can hang with the likes of Collins and Weiser, then we should put the "F" in FCQ. listen: we don't have to persecute the teacher; just write in the comments that, while this guy is surely a fine lawyer, we're going to see a lot of them in our lives. but we miss out on valuable educational experience by not having a professor. the F is really for the school. if we ever want to become top 25, we've got to stop pretending that key social issues like immigration and bar-related courses like family law can be handled by first-time teachers pulled from the local donor list. (after all, the professor for both those courses was hired just this year).

and we've got to start building on the major strengths we have. for chrissakes, phil weiser brings some of the top names in tech law to this school every year, but he's the only IP teacher we've got. anyone wishing to specialize in new media has to take everything he offers--and a boatload of powerpoint classes. i truly rue the day he takes sabbatical. and what about our international law profs? the choice between them is a hobson's choice, if anything.

ok, i'm getting bitter and a bit off topic. but this school seriously hired Rainman to teach evidence last year. and you never know when that's going to happen again. you get to choose 20 classes in your three years here--and when you think about the time and money invested, that's not a lot. as a late-stage 2L, i've been told often enough to value law school because it's hell when you get out. no one's going to give a shit about policy, unless you can manipulate it for your client.

in the real world, there won't be a hell of a lot more high ideas ... but there will be powerpoint.

my boyfriend is out of town

it’s not just a come-on, it’s a fact. in actuality, it’s scary. cuz i get crazier than a seagull on alka-selzer when he’s gone. and thinking me’self an independent woman, i don’t like to admit this. after all—i got stuff to DO! imPORTant stuff. law school! so i turn myself into a machine that stays up too late and reads too much and yells at the dog.

and the dog knows it too. not just because He Who Smells Sweaty hasn’t crossed the threshold of late. it’s cuz mom keeps looking into that Flat Rectangle of Light. which apparently gives doggie license to soil the carpet. and he has: twice.

but i’m not just a codependent girl who’s certain she’ll die obese and alone. i hate aloneness for the sheer inhumanity of it. without someone to hog the covers at night, i quickly grow cold. i forget how to love and think about what someone else is doing. i become the Law School Machine, unoiled, poorly calibrated, and scared.

he comes back tomorrow, and i’ll promptly announce i can do only one dinner this weekend, and could he please, please, go to the mountains or something. and then i’ll still stay up too late, flitter about nervously, and still wake him up when i stumble to bed.

but when i do that, i’ll be me: a walking, breathing, loving woman.

when editing goes awry

this one from a highly condensed summary of an ethics case:

"insurer has standing, over insured's objection, to raise insured's counsel's conflict where insurer, not insured, would ultimately be liable for any judgment."

yeah, thanks, mr. supersmartprofessor, i got a lot out of that.

baby, remember my name...

and now, for something completely arrogant:

i've been worrying lately about my legacy at the law school. not really about how people will remember me, but what people i will remember from law school. an associate at the firm where i work recently mentioned that she'd gone to dinner with a group of law school friends. that's nice, i thought, especially since she graduated 6 years ago. i hoped i would still sup with l/s buddies in 6 years. then i realized: i don't go out to dinner with them now. in fact, there isn't even a group of them. i've made one close friend in l/s and there are some people i wish i could bond with. but mainly i hang out with an assortment of students who dislike each other quite a bit.

there's definitely a part of me that wants law school to loom large in my mind as more than a painful learning and ego-defeating experience. i'd like to remember the friends i made here. then why do i feel so disconnected? is this inherent in the law school experience--that we ultimately pursue our own studies and splinter apart? that the competition fundamentally divides us? that we become so specialized and near-sighted that it's difficult to relate even to each other?

for most of the first year, i thought this problem was specific to me. because i was terrified to go "drinking" with law school comrades, i never had those seminal drunken chats with my newfound community. i've never cried and slurred "i love you guys" to anyone at CU. for me, that's still part of the problem. an example: while studying in the library friday, a classmate started heading out to the international law society f.a.c. "c'mon, l.i.t., let's go have a beer," he said. i was genuinely surprised he requested my company. and deep in the gut i wanted to go: nothing seemed nicer than sampling an international selection of beers on the sun-drenched lawn with the shadows growing long around me. to simply gab with my colleagues and feel that "ease and comfort" that comes with a drink.

course, i can't do that. even when i stop by for a soda, it's a little awkward. i go home to feed l.i.t. doggie and later head to a meeting.

perhaps this isolation is peculiar to me. but somehow, i fear i'm not alone in it. the big cliques that congealed last year seem to have dissolved, and even classmates who find close friendships make particularly odd couples. sadly--and no offense to you guys--i feel like the blogging community is the closest thing to a "gang" i got. and we all pretend not to know each other.

since i'm determined to end this on a happy note, i'm making a proposal: let's all have dinner together. a bloggers-only event. buffs, bolder, moop, l.i.t., jaded and blue parrot. monkey law would get a special dispensation. even tim hadley could come. no one has to know. we'll break our anonymity, so to speak, but only with each other. and, maybe, only for that night.

go ahead, tell me i'm an asshole. but in my sick, romantic way, i imagine it would be fun: like a law school blind date. or, it could be a disaster.

you tell me.