A Deeper Kind of Hard

This week was the end of my 1L year (sort of; there’s still Joint Journal Competition). I spent the first few days studying (or trying to convince myself to study). On Thursday morning I headed to school for my Constitutional Law final. After four hours, fifteen minutes, fifteen pages, and waiting in a long line to turn in a printed copy, it was all over. I walked slowly out to my car and headed home.

No, my fifteen page exam was not a long one. It was probably on the short side.

I didn’t feel intensely relieved like I did after exams last semester. I think my emotions had been wrung dry. I simply had no more energy to give. It was a hard year, and a hard semester.

Looking back, it’s strange to me that it was so hard. On the surface, the last few months appear so simple. I went to classes for a few hours each day. I did a lot of reading and thinking. I wrote a couple of papers and did some role plays. Occasionally I commented in class. In between all of that I was well taken care of: plenty of food, shelter, clothing, and spiritual and family resources, even leisure time.

But there is a deeper side to the last year, and especially the last few months. That is where it was hard.

Fall semester, for me, was about survival. Shortly after school began, I realized law school would be a different kind of hard. I expected to work hard, to spend many hours studying and doing homework. What I didn’t expect was how hard it would be to do the work. School had always come easily to me, but law school was different. It didn’t come naturally and intuitively. There were parts I didn’t enjoy (for example, all of criminal law). I wondered if I was really capable of succeeding.

But, as Mom has always advised me to do, I hung in there and finished the semester.

Spring semester I was less worried about survival, but I was confronted with weakness. I found myself weaker than I thought in almost every way.

Where I had prided myself on confidence and ability, I felt insecure and unqualified. Where I considered myself resilient, I felt protracted resistance. Physically, mentally, emotionally, socially; each area felt frail and fragile. Sometimes it was all I could do to get through the next assignment or the next week. Often I felt I was reaching a bare minimum of accomplishment, not the excellence of my past ideals. Many things touched me more deeply than I expected, almost to my very core.

I was a person who used to run ten miles a day without a second thought struggling to get through a mile and wondering how all that lead ended up in my shoes.

It was a deeper kind of hard.

Finally, a couple of weeks ago, I felt like I had turned a corner. I wasn’t at the end yet, but I could see it. I knew I was going to make it. On Thursday as I drove home, I was just grateful to be done.

Looking back, two things got me though the semester. First, was reliance on Jesus Christ. If there was one area of my life that didn’t feel weaker than I expected, it was in spirituality. I am by no means a spiritual giant, but I knew the Lord brought me here and He was aware of me, my weaknesses, and what He wanted me to do. While all my strength felt under siege, that knowledge was a rock to hang on to and a source of hope.

“And if men come unto me I will show unto them their weakness. I give unto men weakness that they may be humble; and my grace is sufficient for all men that humble themselves before me; for if they humble themselves before me, and have faith in me, then will I make weak things become strong unto them.” Ether 12:27.

My other strength has been my parents. I feel so blessed to have parents who support and encourage and cheer for me in everything I do. Parents who believe in me when I have a hard time believing in myself. Parents who are righteous and committed to God, each other, and their family. The other day I was thinking about the simple refuge my home has always been. As I paused I had a little glimpse of the impact my parents have had on my life. I was amazed and grateful.

So I made it to the end of the semester. And I feel reasonably confident I’ll make it through the next two years. I know my weaknesses aren’t gone, but eventually they will become strong.

In the meantime, I’m getting back to work. Supposedly, my 1L year is over; but that ignores the monster that is Joint Journal Competition. JJC is a writing competition for those who want to join one of the law school’s published journals. Those who chose to participate are given one week to distill a 600 page packet into a 10 page “comment.” So even though I’m technically a “rising 2L,” working on JJC makes me feel like I’m still a sort of quasi-1L.

I’m also making plans for the summer, getting back into running and biking, doing a little exploring, taking some classes, and making myself useful. As far as next year goes, I’m trying to approach it as Joseph Smith described in D&C 127:2: “[N]evertheless, deep water is what I am wont to swim in.”

Final 1L Finals

Here’s what my exam days have been like this week:

• Up working on outlines until around 2 am
• Setting my alarm clock for 6 hours later and going to sleep
• Waking up after 5 or 5½ hours (before my alarm goes off)
• Studying until it’s time to head to school
• 3 to 3½ hours of multiple choice questions and essays
• Going back home and doing almost nothing the rest of the night

Happily, this only happened twice this week, Tuesday for Property and Saturday for Contracts. The rest of the week was spent in off-and-on studying and other miscellaneous activities.

Outlines are the law school equivalent of permissible cheat sheets. Each is a personally created summary of rules, cases, and notes from the whole semester that you get to use during the final exam. Ideally outlines get done early, but my exam preparation wasn’t exactly top-notch this semester, hence my finishing them the night before exams.

I came out of my Property exam feeling it was relatively easy, which probably means I missed a lot of the nuances of the essay questions. But I was just glad to be done.

I went into my Contracts final feeling generally confident, until I saw the first question. My option at that point was to either break down or slog through, so slogged through the next three and a half hours.

I came out of Contracts feeling I’d somehow missed the connection between the given facts and the law we had learned. But after overhearing some classmates’ reactions I felt somewhat better. It seemed that a good portion of the class felt the same as I did. Again, I was just glad to be done.

So I only have one more final exam this week (for Constitutional Law), then (yay!) I will be a 2L and my first year of law school will be over.

Finals week is a much bigger deal here than it was during undergrad. Most professors let you take the exam anywhere in the school (or in some cases anywhere at all), as long as you turn it in on time. That means there is a general embargo on noise anywhere besides the lobby. The library is closed to everyone besides students, faculty, and staff. The lobby serves primarily as a post-test forum for expressions of relief and commentary on the most recent exam.

Turning in an exam is also different than when I was an undergrad, mostly because ten years ago almost no one used computers for finals. Now everyone does. They say you can hand write your exams, but I’d be shocked to actually see it happen. Also, all the grading is done blindly, so each student is assigned a blind grading number to use instead of his/her name. That number goes on everything – exam booklets, scantrons, and essays.

If your essays are typed, submission is a multi-step process. They must be uploaded to an online system before the end of the exam time, so you have to watch the clock. Then a copy has to be printed (the library printers are very popular for about 20 minutes) and turned in within a certain time frame. The good soul who receives them takes each copy one by one and has each person mark the time the printed copy is turned in. She does this for every exam over the two weeks of finals.

So, this week feels like the next volume in the long series of tests that is law school: Law School Admissions Test, Fall 1L finals, Spring 1L finals, Fall 2L finals, Spring 2L finals, Fall 3L finals, Spring 3L finals, Bar Exam.

Plenty left to look forward to, huh?

Sometimes I'd Rather be Flying a Kite

I was sitting in Property earlier this week when I suddenly realized I had lost track of what the professor was saying.

Five minutes later, it happened again.

I started doodling, hoping that would help me pay attention, but I think I still spent most of the time counting down until the end of class. It felt like my mind was at capacity for the semester – nothing else was getting in.

And that wasn’t even the last class.

But, I made it through the week. Contracts helped by finishing a day early, which everyone (including the professor) enjoyed. Now all I have left for the semester are three finals.

Each of those little tabs is a reading assignment from this semester.

In other news, the Dean lost a bet with the 3Ls, and therefore shaved his mustache in the law school lobby with everyone watching. He said it’s the first time in about 30 years that a male member of his family has been clean shaven.

Also, all the squirrels are back. I don’t know what their cue was, but they seem to have all emerged from their winter hiding spots simultaneously.

And spring continues. Watching the green leaves come back is like watching a time-lapse film. Trees that were barely budding one day are full of foliage two days later. The visibility diminishes almost by the hour. On the other hand, the flowering trees seem to take turns; the white ones came out first, then the purple, then the yellow and pink…

As far as seasons are concerned, I’ve preferred Utah’s to Virginia’s. Spring in Virginia might buck that trend, though. It’s messy and somewhat noisy, but the mass and variety of life here is remarkable. And it all happens without feeling dramatic; mainly, I think, because there’s much less wind.

So Utah spring wins in at least one respect: more wind and fewer tangling trees make it much easier to fly a kite.

Happy Easter!

Ah, Spring

Is it a bad sign to dream about a judge granting adverse possession rights to a thieving blue jay? I recall the judge telling the plaintiff something like: “I’m sorry, there’s nothing I can do.” I’m not sure what the blue jay was holding in its beak as it flew away, but the blue jay won the lawsuit.

I was also dreaming in PowerPoint that night.

(Thankfully, these aren’t recurring dreams.)

I spent a while this week filing taxes with the IRS, the commonwealth of Virginia, and the state of Utah. Between the three, Utah wins. Utah’s taxes were the simplest and took the least amount of time.

Highlights of this week:

• General Conference, part of which I watched in Richmond with a good friend.
• Four days in a row of getting outside to run (running, or any other exercise, has not been a frequent occurrence this semester).
• Having less than one month of my 1L year left (I’m having a party the evening of May 1, then sleeping in late the next day).

Happy Spring!

Con Law Disillusionment

My Constitutional Law class did a mock impeachment trial this week. One of my classmates served as the “president,” who sent an invading force of 20,000 soldiers to counter a communist threat in Central America – without a declaration of war from Congress. Another classmate was the “Chief Justice,” who moderated the trial and took the vote at the end. A few people served as special prosecutors and special counsel to the president. The rest of us were senators; we questioned the president and debated whether to throw him out of office. It was heated and feisty and we ended up with just enough votes to fire the president and replace him with the VP.

Yes, I was one who voted the president out of office. I based my decision on his flagrant abuse of power and the other cavalier and unsavory actions he took as described in the fact pattern. For example, he secretly asked the Chief Justice to help him avoid the impeachment trial. (I had D&C 121:39 running through my mind.)

During another Con Law class, we had a guest speaker (a professor from California) who addressed whether politics does or should affect the Supreme Court. He and my professor informally debated their ideas and addressed questions from the class.

I came away from both events with my blood pumping and my hands shaking – apparently I’m somewhat passionate and defensive about my understanding of the Constitution.

I’ve heard from several people (outside the Con Law department) that Constitutional Law is all made up. And I agree with them to a point. It’s as if whoever tells the best story wins, or whoever has politics on their side wins, because the Supreme Court will interpret the case using whatever test or ideas give them the result they want. It’s a little disillusioning.

No, I’m not disparaging the Constitution itself. I know it was inspired. But the modern interpretation of it is often tenuous, forced, or even twisted.

Perhaps that is an overly cynical view, merely the result of mortal beings not living up to my ideals. I do think the Justices are generally trying to do what’s right and stick to the Constitution as written. But I also feel they too easily go beyond the plain language of the document, even to the point where an average person wouldn’t understand or expect the outcome. The most frustrating aspect of law is any appearance of disingenuousness, favoritism, or absurd technicality.

So here’s my little soap box interpretation of Con Law: There are enumerated powers in the Constitution and there is a necessary and proper clause. The laws the government makes, enforces, and interprets should fit within both descriptions. There are conceivably laws that would be within the enumerated powers, but not necessary and proper. And there are laws that are necessary and proper, but outside the scope of the federal government’s enumerated powers. I feel the Venn diagram of those categories is much clearer than the actions of the government imply.

I also think, however, that my interpretation is the harder road. It leaves the pressure for solving problems (beyond a very basic safety net) in the hands of the people. More free and less bureaucratic, but far more risky to individuals, groups, and society.

Okay, I’m back off my soap box. A more pleasant turn of events is that the prevalence of blossoming trees has vastly expanded. The white flowers are a nice addition to the landscape. (Sorry, no pictures.)

Counting

The buzz around campus lately is that William & Mary Law School has jumped in the national rankings from 35th to 24th. My immediate reaction to the news was, “no wonder I feel out of my league.”

My contracts professor has gotten a lot of traction out of the announcement. For example, he congratulated us on being smarter than the students in nine more law schools than we were before the rankings were posted. He also brings up the ranking whenever we are discussing a hypothetical case involving “unsophisticated parties” (a law school term for lower intellectual ability or lack of expertise): “Not everyone goes to a top 24 law school.”

This week encompassed final mock oral arguments by the 1Ls. I’m happy to report I went into this one better prepared and had a better experience than I did for the practice oral argument a couple of weeks ago.  This time we argued in the courtroom, which gave a mock officialness to the atmosphere. The judge (my adjunct professor) even wore a judge’s robe.

Our courtroom is one of the most technologically advanced in the nation, so there are indicator lights, a screen, and several other gadgets on the podium. Plenty for my small, 5’4” frame to hide behind. My writing fellow/TA (who was also a judge) told me it was a good thing I held onto the sides of the podium; otherwise they might not have been able to see me.

Also this week, flowers have finally appeared. The daffodils that line South Henry Street have burst into bloom and there are blossoms on a few of the trees. I say “finally” not because it’s taken them a long time to grow, but because I’ve been expecting it for so long. In my mind, spring is associated with a certain temperature range, and Williamsburg has been in that range since mid-January. It’s been very strange to have spring-like warmth concurrent with persistent (relatively) brown foliage.

But spring is finally here. And I’ve started counting down: four weeks of classes, three finals, two legal practice events, and one final memo.

Some of the daffodils on South Henry Street.

Ambiguous Chicken and the Haunted House Rescission

So much for continuity. I’ve had three weeks of not wanting to write a blog post. I started to write one once or twice. I also jotted down some ideas of what to write about. But deep down I was just tired of school and not in the mood to work at typing anything up.

But in the meantime, some interesting things happened that are worth mentioning:

At the #10 redoubt in Yorktown

Ambiguous Chicken

This is another example of something that looks simple anywhere outside of law school (and the courtroom). The basis of this case was two companies arguing over the definition of chicken. If I was asked to come up with an ambiguous term, I would not have considered “chicken” to be a contender.  It’s amusing to read a case discussing the many meanings of a term most of us would be able to define at age 3.

In case you’re wondering, one company claimed chicken meant, well, any chicken. The other company was arguing that chicken meant (within the chicken selling industry) a young and tender bird, not the old and tough ones the other company shipped to them. The Department of Agriculture, by the way, has at least six classes of chicken (broiler, fryer, roaster, capon, stag, hen, cock…). Frigaliment Importing Co. v. B.N.S. International Sales Corp., 190 F. Supp. 116 (S.D.N.Y. 1960).

Jamestown Fort

The Haunted House Rescission

Speaking of amusing cases, quite possibly the best opinion I’ve read is from Stambovsky v. Ackley, in which the plaintiff sued to cancel a contract to buy a house after learning the house was widely reputed to be possessed by poltergeists. I suspect the judge had fun writing the opinion: “While I agree . . . the plaintiff hasn’t a ghost of a chance [under a certain legal doctrine], I am nevertheless moved by the spirit of equity to allow the buyer to seek rescission.” The judge also quoted the Ghost in Shakespeare’s Hamlet.

But by far my favorite statement from the judge was, “If the language of the contract is to be construed as broadly as defendant urges to encompass the presence of poltergeists in the house, it cannot be said that she has delivered the premises ‘vacant’ in accordance with her obligation.” 572 N.Y.S.2d 672 (1991).

Monticello

Spring Break

I don’t have time to detail all of Spring Break, but I’m grateful that two circumstances combined to take me to more new sights in a week than I had visited in the previous seven months. One circumstance was, of course, time off from school. The second was the presence of a good friend to go exploring with.

Jamestown Glasshouse

My favorite sights were Monticello (the one-time home of Thomas Jefferson) and the Jamestown Glasshouse (with live glass blowing). I could happily spend another day or two at either location. I also enjoyed driving all over Yorktown, as it was late in the day and we had the place to ourselves (not counting the deer). We spent a lot of time in Jamestown and not enough time in Colonial Williamsburg. And we wore coats all week (because it was cold).

Spring break was a treat. It whetted my appetite for more exploring. I doubt I'll get to do that much in the last seven weeks, of this semester, but Summer Break will be longer (and warmer) than Spring Break...

At the Jamestown Settlement