Basic Law School Whining…

I don’t know what the deal is in regards to the length of classes in law school.

At undergrad, the schedule was pretty straight-forward. Classes were 50 minutes for every hour. Therefore, an hour and a half class lasted 75 minutes. For example: A 2:30 – 3:30 class got out at 3:20. A 3:30 – 5 class got out at 4:45.

There is zero consistency in how this is practiced at law school. Some classes get out 10 minutes prior, 15 minutes prior, 12 minutes prior. It all seems to be based on the prof. You never know. Does it not dawn on the professor that people who schedule a class from 9-10:30 am might also schedule a class from 10:30 – 12 pm? Doesn’t it make sense to do that in lieu of sitting around for an hour and half? Why then, do so many of my profs this semester think that class really extends to either the full length or just five minutes prior? Travel time, people! Travel time! Smoke break! You try going three hours without a cigarette!

Where has she been?

Wine-time’s BF and roomie have cooked dinner a few times recently and I’ve been lucky enough to score an invite. I have no idea why this is as I have a less than winning personality, but I will keep going as long as they continue to ask me. Plus, I feel much less self-conscious about being a law student when surrounded by med students. They even find you literary and philosophical and stuff. Actually, I was quite thrilled to make the cut again this week after last week’s ‘scotch incident’.

Some time after dinner last week Ana discovered a bottle of scotch.

“Be careful, Ana,” said Wine-Time’s BF. “That scotch is 57% and can really mess you up.”

No kidding?

I won’t tell you the rest of the story, except to say everyone involved thinks it’s really funny except for moi.

WTG’s BF even handed me a new bottle of GlenLivet the other night and said, “Here Ana. I got a cheaper bottle and you can have as much as you want. – Go crazy.”

Ana hid her face in the futon, “No thank you.”

“Oh, come on? We have cognac, too. I know you like cognac.”

“No thank you.”

Not going to push that button again to see what happens, thanks.

At one point WTGBF brandished the original good scotch and I could see that the bottle was about a ¼ lower than it had been when I began to drink from it the last time.

Ana cringes.

“Oh Ana!” says WTG, “You weren’t that bad.”

Ana rolls into fetal position and hides under futon.

“Actually, the only thing is,” WTG adds.

“Yes?” Ana whispers from under the couch.

“Well, you did text message [past lover] several times.”

“That’s it?” I say.

“You’re okay with that?” she asked.

“Oh sure,” I reply. “I do that whenever I’ve had too much to drink and I'm bored.”

“Um, he wasn’t responding,” she says.

“Yeah,” I giggle, “because I do it ALL the time. I don’t even worry about it anymore. It’s almost a reflex. I figure it’s okay since I’ll never see him again and probably couldn’t repair anything at this point anyway.”

Later at other-university bar, Alex and WTG staged a tiny intervention.

“Ana,” they said, “the text messaging has got to stop.”

“But it’s funny!” I retorted.

“No, it’s not,” they said.

“But this way I just text him and keep my craziness confined to one person. And I never see him! It’s like he doesn’t really exist! Like I’m just sending messages into the ether! If I stop sending them to him, I’ll want to send them to someone else!”

“Ana, it’s not healthy,” they said.

“But he’s just as nuts as I am, possibly more so. It’s perfectly okay.”

“No, Ana.”

“Fine,” I said and deleted the number from my phone.

“Oh geez,” said Alex.

“What?” said WTG.

“She wouldn’t have deleted his number so quickly unless she had it memorized or stored somewhere else,” he said.

Ana just grinned.

In Trusts & Wills...

Or Wills & Trusts, I can never remember the order.

Prof walks into the room and says, "Welcome to Greed & Death ."

So, is she referring to the class or the legal world in general?

In my International Class...

Prof: So they needed to set up some type of system to regulate trade because, what do you do if the Dutch want to export a cheese with marijuana in it?

Um, yeah that was the first example that sprang to mind for me too. What?!?!

What it feels like to fill out the FAFSA form...

Ana,

Congratulations on submitting your FAFSA! In case you didn’t already know it, we just want to remind you of how poor you are. In fact we haven’t seen that many zeroes since the last time you went bowling. You are one unproductive and worthless individual, aren’t you? It’s because of people like you that America continues to run downhill on a global level.

We also noticed that you entered a zero for outside contribution from relatives and friends. While we use a complex mathematical equation to determine that you are a loser, your family has had years of first-hand personal experience to help them figure out that you are just not worth the investment.

And speaking of zeroes, we also noticed that you entered a big fat one for spouse. Just to remind you, Ana, you are not exactly a spring chicken anymore, and it might be time to lower your standards a tad. Luckily for you, we co-sponsor a matchmaking program with Immigration and Naturalization Services. With a little effort, we might find someone who’s willing to put up with you in exchange for a green card.

You might think that you deserve a pat on the back for entering a zero under dependents. You may tell yourself that this shows your sense of responsibility in avoiding the creation of an illegitimate child during a period of no income. However, our computer tells us that this is just indicative of a lack of people who are willing to sleep with you. Again, we are happy to inform you that we co-sponsor another program with the Federal Corrections Service. Not only will you get some action, but as a bonus, you will know exactly what if feels like to bend over when you receive the balance on your federal student loans at the end of law school.

In case you didn’t realize this already, your Expected Family Contribution is: ZERO.

Should you wish to attempt to gain some money from other sources, we invite you to visit the links below. There are several programs where we can film footage of you drudging through the law school and offer people the ability to sponsor you for just pennies a day. Unfortunately, you’ll be competing with those cute little kids in Africa that Madonna and Angelina have made so popular, so you might want to explore other avenues. We can also put your picture on the side of a milk carton, but after reviewing your form, we are pretty sure that no one will want to claim you as their own.

Basically Ana, what we’re trying to tell you is that you suck. We suggest that you just keep drinking and smoking until it kills you because, let’s face it, the only way we’ll ever make any money off of you is if we help cultivate an addiction, tell you and society that you are bad person for having such addiction, and then charge a massive tax on those addictive-products which we will call a ‘sin tax’.

Don’t feel like you are not contributing to society, because you are. You see, people are living longer and longer these days and the baby boomer generation is quite large. Their love of materialism and lack of personal savings, combined with corporate executive greed and the slow deterioration of pension plans, makes for some woeful times for the government. Their health care costs alone may send us belly-up.

While the federal government can’t publicly support legalized suicide for political reasons, we’re doing our best to make it happen behind the scenes. Both lung cancer and cirrhosis are virtually untreatable because even though these diseases affect millions, we see no reason to put major research dollars into something mainly acquired by ‘bad’ people. Your early demise will save the federal government a ton of money.

Good luck with your education, godspeed, and thanks for being a good American.

Love,
The Govt

Last day in LA...

A better kept secret about L.A. is that there are actually many cool non-film-based cultural things to do there. One of my favorites is visiting the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena. Sure, the Getty gets all of the hype, but if you want to see a really great collection in a small setting, go to Norton Simon. They have a wonderful selection of Degas, Van Gogh, Toulouse-Lautrec, Rodin, Picasso, Goya, and even a Raphael. In addition is a cool sculpture garden in back. I know so many people from L.A. who have never been there or even heard of it which is such a shame because it really is a great museum.



After the museum, WTG and I hit Old Pasadena to check out the H&M since there isn’t one in our town. I was a little disappointed with how many of the styles were available when I had been in Paris a month earlier (or maybe I just wasn’t happy with my post-holiday figure), but WTG claims she found some good stuff. In the end, I walked out with three t-shirts.

After Pasadena we headed over to Canter’s on Fairfax, one of the city’s most famous delis that actually lives up to its name. I managed to gross out both WTG and my brother by ordering Holishkes. MMMM!



We wrapped up our day by watching the BCS National Championship. After the game, both WTG and my brother were tired, but I managed to talk my brother’s roommate (maybe my new bra helped me!) into driving me over to Westwood for one last thing.

Be a local; get outta town...

One fun thing to do in LA is leave LA. Yesterday, Brother, WTG, and I headed north up to wine country. We took the 1, Pacific Coast Highway, which winds along the edge of the ocean and stopped for lunch in Santa Barbara, the city where I was supposed to originally attend undergrad.



Although I live in a large city, LA seems huge by comparison. There are people everywhere, every time of the day. Buildings are constructed in a hodge-podge assortment, added in to places that originally served as green spaces that separated other buildings. I was amazed by the fact that just an hour of driving could take us to a place as peaceful and quiet as the wine country.



We did wine-tasting at a few vineyards in the same location where the film Sideways was filmed. I asked one of the employees if they felt the movie had unfairly blighted Merlot. Personally, I believe that there are good wines for all grapes…and bad wines for all grapes. His response was rather entertaining. Apparently the movie has been a boon for Pinot Noir while Merlot has become the red-headed step-child of wine sales. This has had the effect of many vintners bottling and selling their Pinots before they’ve had a chance to really age. In effect, a lot of the Pinot that is so sought after right now is not good wine. So the next time someone mentions how they only order Pinot and can’t stand Merlot, feel free to give a little snicker in knowing that you're talking to a person whose knowledge of wine is limited to what they've seen in the movies.

My favorite line of the day from WTG (heavily paraphrased): "That's so dumb that people would buy that type of wine because of the movie! Don't they know that the Pinot grape is just a metaphor for how the main character perceives himself?"

Don't drink and sit...

L.A. always feels like a sort of home away from home. Though I’ve never lived here, both of my parents are from L.A. and during my childhood I spent many summers playing in the concrete jungle during visits to the grandparents. So though I think L.A. is somewhat strange, I also find it homey.

One thing you must do if you visit L.A. is go to the movies. You may think you’ve done this before in other cities, but you haven’t. In L.A. the film is high art and worshipped for the economy producing gold mine that it is. In this city going to the theater is like, well, going to the theater.

On my first night in town my brother ordered movie tickets for me and WTG. After a driving tour of Sunset Boulevard we exited the car and made the multiple block walk to the movie theater. (This is LA – They don’t do parking spaces here. The land is too valuable for frivolous little things like parking lots.)

Before entering the screening room we stopped for a drink – no, not in a nearby bar, the bar in the theater. Yes, a bar in the theater…with six beers on tap. One Chimay, Hefeweizen, Corona, and $25 later (that’s just the beer, not the tickets), we enter the theater.

There is an usher working the theater who takes us to our seats. Assigned seating? You betcha. I walk down a row of seats that resemble Lazy Boy recliners and plop down in mine. The screen is as big as a drive-in and the theater is packed. I am smack dab in the middle of the row and twenty-five people sit on either side of me. The movie starts and I’m engulfed by surround sound, dolby, digital, or whatever the heck sound system it is that makes it sound as if the actor is sitting right next to you.

This is so cool, so great, so…egad, I have to pee. Suddenly sitting smack dab in the middle of a fifty person row does not seem so enthralling. I stumble down my row, stepping on every other foot and irritating the people in the rows behind me whose view I’m obstructing. Getting up in the middle of a movie isn’t usually a big deal…unless you’re in L.A. If that wasn’t bad enough, imagine the time I had once I got back in the theater and tried to figure out in the darkness which of the fifty rows was mine.

Ana walks up and down the aisle stopping to ask the person on the end of the row, “Excuse me, did I just trip over you five minutes ago?”

Yeah, they love me in L.A.

I don't know if I will live to regret this, but...

I have firmly planted myself in front of the TV to watch the Rose Bowl in the hopes that Michigan will just pummel the living heck out of USC.

Cheese dip, beer, and a lot of yelling await...