Those Things They Said

They say it will get better.  They say not to worry, to keep pushing ahead, to work hard and everything will be fine.  They say your second year is better than the first.  They say you should know what you're doing by now.

They talk a lot.  It annoys the shit out of me.  I'm tired of people telling my that things will get better, or that I should be counting my blessings as I'm one of the few who was capable enough to get this far.  As far as I'm concerned, this may not be the best decision in my life thus far but I'm stuck with it.  Nothing changes around here.  It's Eugene for god's sake.  Tiny town, bad food, worse bars, no nightlife to speak of, but they do have a plethora of dirty hippies who smell bad and complain a lot.  I'm thankful for that; without them I may not have realized just how much I absolutely despise living in this town.  This is all exacerbated by the bitter, not quite sour,  but definitely putrid taste that law school has left in my mouth thus far.  Second year has not been easier.  In fact it has been exponentially harder than last year.  My workload has easily trippled compared to what I was doing last year and since my grades sucked I got involved in a number of extra curricular as leadership.  I also realized that even without the economic downturn I have no money so I got myself a job.  Burning the candle at both ends?  In the words of Sarah Palin, YOU BETCHA!!

It's interesting to see my social relations this year.  Last year I was stuck with the same 60 people for all of my classes, and hung out with mostly 1L's.  There was a sense of camaraderie, of shared misery, a feeling that we were all in this thing together and it would be okay.  As time marched on I felt like I had made some decent friends here and was pretty stoked to see how my life as a 2L would piece together.  Remember how I said I've overextended myself?  Apparently so has everybody else.  I see people, give a nod or say "what's up" in passing but never really making any new connection or rekindling that sense of safety in numbers I had last year.  I rarely see people I want to see anymore and I can safely say that I'm pretty sure I'm in this on my own.  

This sense of isolation leads into a second issue.  When I go out now, I decide that I need to get excessively drunk and become ludicrously inappropriate, specifically to people I don't know.  For example, a few weeks ago after a football game where I was involved in something called "the Jaeger circle" I went to a shitty undergrad bar that I hate (but keep going back to) called Taylors.  While there my friend decided we should hit on girls.  Not one to back down from a challenge I agreed to play wingman for two girls who were really pretty and obviously out of my friend's league.  I however approach such situations with an unfounded sense of optimism figuring that if I get shot down by enough hot girls one of them will eventually say yes.  Thoroughly belligerent already, we go and strike up a conversation and the girl I'm talking to is smoking hot.  I mean, really, really hot.  However, she was also really, really vapid.  A complete waste of space who was breathing oxygen that I rightfully deserved more than she did.  I decided to cut her off mid-sentence by shushing her and saying, "You.  Stop talking."  She looked at me slightly stunned, so I continued.  "No, I mean it.  You need to stop talking.  You are entirely to stupid to be talking to somebody like me.  You need to go over there, now," and I then point to the corner of the bar.  My friend turned to me in complete shock, the girl's jaw he was hitting on dropped.  I remained unfazed.  I know that I have a deep and profound ability to be a raging asshole when I want to, but usually I keep it in check.  Unfortunately it's been rearing its head a bit more often recently.

So you get through this post, and are thinking, "Man.  This kid should just drop out already.  He hates everything."  I ask you, am I being negative?  Yes.  Do I care?  Not particularly.  The way I see it I should be honest about how I feel about this whole situation.  Yeah, I do have good days and bad days, but the majority of this year has been one long bad day thus far.  I'm not a "silver lining" kind of person so I just kind of roll with the punches, put on a smiling face, and keep going.  So what do I have to say to you?  You are one of "they" so then, you.  Stop talking.  No, seriously.  Stop talking.  I don't want to hear one more word of your inane drivel.  Go sit in the corner, stare at the wall, and bore it to death with your worthless advice.  I'm not listening.

I PUT ON FOR MY CHAPTER 7!!

I'm not sure why, but for some reason I study best listening to gangster rap.  Not just any gangster rap, but the dirtiest nastiest worst gangster rap I can find.  Today while reading about the complexities of Chapter 7 bankruptcy and the ramifications for failing the means test I was listening to Young Jeezy's new track "Put On" and bobbing my head.  What makes this situation even more awkward is that I'm a 20-something year old white Jewish kid from the suburbs who theoretically should be obsessed with Dave Matthews if comparisons to his peers mean anything.  So here I am, bobbing my head, listening to a man talk about selling cocaine and buying more diamonds while reading about what to do when you run out of money and options.  Yeah, I know, the irony is palpable in every sense of the word.  Shit, I just spilled coffee on my Lacoste polo shirt.

Class Rankings, A Found Balloon, and Acceptance

Sometimes things just don't work out the way you want them to.  It's just one of those things.  However, it doesn't mean that you are precluded from being extraordinarily pissed by that turn of events.  It is this conception that strikes me as appropriate right now.  

My fist semester in law school was eye opening, to say the least.  I worked harder than I have ever worked in school before and went into finals scared, but confident that I would be fine.  I knew I would come out of it at least in the median of my class.  I'd been talking to these people for the better part of 4 months and after hearing some of the questions and comments produced in class believed that I was at least as smart as if not smarter than many of them.  Unfortunately, if grades are an indication of intelligence, I found that I was well below my peers.  Not even close.  Epic fail.  I sulked about it and was angry and eventually came to accept that I totally screwed up a semester of school.  I thought about it, talked to some very powerful and wealthy attorneys I know and found that several of them had pretty bad grades in school too.  "Grades aren't everything, you'll be fine." was the resounding refrain from everybody.  I took it to heart and moved forward attacking the new semester with tenacity and the belief that I should learn from my mistakes of first semester and grow from them.

My second semester here I busted my ass.  I read for every class, I showed up to every class and did my damned best to learn the material, understand it, and prove to myself that I am intelligent, that I do deserve to be in law school and that I can get the satisfaction of receiving a good grade to acknowledge the amount of effort I'd put into my work.  Once again, things didn't quite work out the way I wanted.  My grades improved, but still left me below the median for my class.  Essentially, I'm 2 semesters into law school out of 6 and my grades are just shit.  I have officially solidified myself in the bottom quarter of my class and pending a miracle, will remain here for the rest of my law school career.

I was pondering this thought as I walked to campus today to turn in some paperwork, and found myself drifting towards an apathetic notion of my stay here at school.  As I stared at the cracks in the sidewalk pass beneath my feet with each step, my thoughts finally began to gel.  It has been a hell of a year for me.  I endeavored to attack law school with fervor and resolution while maintaining a strong relationship with my girlfriend who would not be moving up here to be with me at school.  It's just about a year after I left and my girlfriend and I broke up, I feel a disdain and apathy to the entire law school process and really am not even sure if I want to be an attorney anymore.  Although I have a decent stable of acquaintances here I really have made few good friends.  It's been hard.  Very hard.  I feel that I'm a stronger person for it and I can't say I regret my decision to come here and give law school a shot.  Now that I'm in the thick of it I refuse to quit, it's simply not an option.

As I walked home I took a moment to look up and happened to see a hippy bumper sticker that I've seen at least a hundred times before.  On a simple white background was a sentence in plain black text, "Not all who wander are lost".  I've always thought that phrase is kind of interesting because in my mind aren't we all wandering through life?  I mean, even those who have a plan for where they want to end up and how they are going to get there end up taking the occasional detour.  Nobody knows what tomorrow will bring and that inevitable curve ball will hit some day and push you from your track.  Thus, a small epiphany struck me.  Maybe part of why I am approaching my situation with an undertone of apathy is that I haven't had a chance to wander.  I really really want to wander.  I never got to study abroad because I was with my girlfriend.  I never got to take a big trip after undergrad because I was struggling to decide if I wanted to go to law school.  Now that I'm here I can't just stop and walk away for a year or two of carefree traveling because I'm in debt for $30,000 that becomes due as soon as I stop being a full time student and I have no money as it is.  I guess I don't know what the right answer is to provide some resolution to this situation, but at least now I know that it is something I should address.

Walking home I was still deep in thought and not particularly paying attention to my surroundings.  As I meandered through the streets of Eugene I suddenly saw a bright green blur fly in front of my face and smash into the side of a parked car.  I was startled but when I looked again I realized that the green blur was a balloon that had drifted in front of me.  I couldn't help but think to myself, "Shit, some idiot let their balloon go a couple days ago and it finally fell here.  I guess I'll pick it up and throw it away".  Upon closer examination the balloon was completely inflated and tied to a weight.  It had obviously been filled today or very recently and somehow ended up crossing my path.  It just seemed like there may be more to this than I originally thought so I grabbed the string and untangled it from the thicket that it had gotten caught in and brought it home with me.  I don't know what this balloon means or if it is supposed to mean anything at all, but it seemed appropriate after contemplating my desire to wander that an errant balloon would casually float in front of me.  I'm not sure why, but it kind of makes me feel better to have it around...

Hi, My Name is Adam, and I am an Addict.

Seeing how unbelievably interested I am in future interests in property right now, I thought I'd take a moment to make post number two.  So as usual, I failed to heed my friends' warnings not to start watching an addictive tv show in the middle of the semester so I figured now is probably the best time ever to start watching "The Wire".  Luckily another law student heard about my desire to shun my studies and he happened to have all 4 seasons on dvd and gladly offered to loan them to me.  I figured, "why not.  I can just watch an episode a day during breaks."  Unfortunately for me, I am apparently a liar.  In the past I have lied to my friends, I've lied to my family, and now I have started lying to myself.  I can't just watch an episode a day during breaks.  Furthermore, I have a 5-disc dvd changer that I am pretty sure has never had more than one disc in it at a time but luckily Season One has 5 shiny discs to fill all those lonely forgotten slots.  

It was after watching the first 6 one-hour episodes that I realized that I am a lying asshole and I hate myself.  I wasted 6 hours of my life watching what may be the best show on television and neglected to read a single page for the next day of classes.  Seriously, if other people feel about me the way that I feel about my lying ass self right now I'm lucky that people still talk to me.  I mean, yeah, school sucks, and yeah watching TV is obviously better than studying but did I really have to deceive myself in some conniving bid to make myself fail out of school?  I mean, law school is hard but my subconscious has had to stoop to this level?  I've been sitting here in class, generally ignoring my professor during what may be the hardest topic of my 1L year and I can't stop thinking about going home, picking up my remote and not doing shit for tomorrow and watching another 5-10 hours of the Wire.  I think I may boycott my subconscious and try going it alone for a while to teach him a lesson.  I am almost 100 pages behind in my studies and have an appellate brief for LRW due friday.  But it can't hurt to watch one more episode can it.....?

So I'm new to this whole blogging thing but I want to give this a shot.  I'm going to try to write here in between writing for LRW, studying for class, and ignoring most of my professors during class.  Hopefully I can find something interesting to put on here so you can get a better idea of what law school, the legal profession, and the general ridiculousness of legal life is like.

Cheers.