Friday, August 5, 2011

Commencing, Part Two

I can't help but think some self-congratulation is in order. Not only did I survive sitting the Texas bar exam last week, but I think I've taken excellent advantage of the eight days since then to relax and have fun. But I guess that's only admirable if you can understand how much it had started to feel like I might never relax or have fun again. So let's start at the beginning.
When Russell and I got back from Cambridge, we had to settle into a mostly empty house for about two weeks while our moving pods were on their way. All we had were some basics I'd needed to live here those three weeks I came home before commencement (dishes, towels, a mattress) plus a few pieces of furniture I'd bought to help fill the bigger space (barstools, a small china cabinet, an armchair). No couch, dining table, TV, desks, nada. This wore on Russell and me somewhat, but our housemate and study buddy for the summer, Robert (the same one with the crazy trek to commencement I mentioned last post) seemed to have the hardest time with it. I kept finding him contorted in odd positions trying to read, which I felt bad about.

Especially since there wasn't much fun going on to distract us. Bar review classes were already underway when we got back from commencement, so we had no time to ease in. Each day we headed to a private conference center in north-central Austin for a lecture lasting from 9 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. or so, and sometimes another from 1:30 to about 4 p.m. Each lecture covered a different topic due to be tested on the bar exam, from Constitutional Law to Wills and Estate Administration.

Of the nine books of study materials we received in advance, many as thick and floppy as phone books, one was a big black book full of worksheets for these lectures. Basically these were outlines of the topics with blanks every so often for us to fill in, which several lecturers admitted were only there to keep us awake. Really advanced, well-proven teaching techniques, don't you think? This lasted four or six days a week (for some reason they alternated between giving us one-day and three-day weekends) for eight weeks. As Russell would put it, BARF.

And of course, that was only the in-class part. Outside of class, the bar review company's website fed us reading and practice assignments daily. Each night we were supposed to re-read the worksheet from that day's lecture, then practice answering multiple-choice or essay questions on it, then review the next day's topic in advance. I did a lot of this stuff - always the reading for the next day, often the practice questions - but it was literally not possible to do it all and have anything resembling a life. Eating dinner with friends, seeing a movie once in a while, or most importantly meeting my mom for her daily radiation treatments all happened at the cost of some bar review task or other. Robert had fewer of these kinds of things going on, and he was a lot more willing to turn down social invitations than me, so he got through a lot more. But I just couldn't bring myself to sacrifice that much for a pass-fail test.

Meanwhile, our moving pods also arrived at long last, and Russell and his dad managed to unload them completely in one morning while we had class. But unpacking everything was left to us, and I was determined to live out of boxes for as short a time as possible, knowing what the clutter and disorder would do to my test-prep focus in the long run. After a few days balancing the minimum necessary studying with a frenzy of unpacking, organizing, furniture-arranging, picture-framing, curtain-hanging, and cleaning, the house was more or less to my satisfaction. I left a few things for later, things I still need to do, but I think it looks pretty great. I'll try to post pictures sometime soon.

So then it was back to the bar review grind, but at least with enough furniture to make us all comfortable this time. I got my balance of (fairly) heavy studying and (some) social life back, even managing three days in Las Vegas with Russell's family in late June and a fantastic housewarming/cookout with about 20 people on July 4th. The next day, just like one of our bar lecturers predicted, I kicked into high gear. We had one week of classes left; they ended two weeks before the exam began on July 26. I made a schedule with the aim of finishing all the work the bar review people had recommended, plus a little more on my weaker subjects, in time for the exam. This would require about 4-5 practice essays or multiple choice sets per day, plus the necessary reading to review for them.

Amazingly, I got it done. Besides about 2/3 of a day to see the final Harry Potter movie with a big group I'd organized and one day to float the Comal River on inner tubes with some friends soon to move out of state, I took virtually no breaks for three weeks. My scores on the practice multiple choice sets fluctuated, but mostly stayed above passing, and the essays I submitted for grading online were getting high enough scores to bolster the rest if need be. Exhausted, I took the bar lecturers' advice and did virtually no studying the last day before the exam. I saw Harry Potter again at the Alamo Drafthouse with my mom, wandered the aisles at Target, had a couple of good arguments with Robert (a Republican, which if it isn't glaringly obvious yet is not my persuasion) and bought enough breakfast tacos to eat on the way out the door each day of the test.

Which went fine. Seriously. So fine, and so much as expected, that I actually had moments of doubt wondering what I was missing. It was held in a big, bare convention space in the city's Palmer Events Center, just across the river from downtown and a little over ten minutes from our house. My assigned seat was at the end (very much my preference) of one of several hundred long, metal tables covered in white paper, with power strips running underneath for the parts of the exam where we could use laptops. I got surprisingly comfortable there over the three days.

The 26th was only a half-day of testing, with the 90-minute Multistate Performance Test (a kind of closed-universe problem-solving thing where you use a made-up case file to write a legal document, in this case a memo persuading members of a state committee that something would be unethical) and the 45-minute Criminal Procedure & Evidence and Civil Procedure & Evidence short-answer tests that day. I was more time-pressured than I had been in practice, so I got to proofread less than usual, but afterward everyone else said the same thing. I was also happy to have remembered (vaguely, but enough to cobble together an answer) an obscure bit of vocabulary that seemed to stump a lot of people on one question. I know because, however much we were told not to, Robert and I and the group we sat with at bar review couldn't resist going over our general impressions afterward.

The 27th was the Multistate Bar Exam, the multiple-choice part I had been a tad more nervous about. In the three-hour morning session, I got hung up on a Contracts question I felt like I should know but didn't, and that shook my confidence for a while. But overall, it felt like most of my practice runs: several questions I was certain about, a few where I had no clue, and a lot I could narrow down to two answer choices but then had to guess. Since a passing score often involves only half to two-thirds correct answers, this seemed all right. After sandwiches at nearby café for lunch, the second half felt different - fewer questions I was certain about, but a lot more where I was more than half sure - but equally fine. Driving home afterward, Robert and I both said we felt like we did what we needed to do: in his case, get a score high enough to balance out a weaker essay section the next day, and in my case, get a score that could be balanced out by better essays.

The 28th was my best day by far; not only were the essays bound to be my strong suit anyway, but I also felt like the examiners didn't throw many of the curve balls they could have. On two different questions, I couldn't remember an important part of the topic being tested, and then the question turned out to skirt that part completely, so I could give a super complete answer without it. On others, I couldn't remember ever learning a particular legal test and had to make one up based on the facts that seemed to be important in the question. But we'd been told this would be necessary on a regular basis and that the examiners would weigh our reasoning and organization much more heavily than our memory for actual law, so that was no cause for concern.

Leaving the exam site that day, shaky with relief, I was so happy to be ending on that high note. After a few hours decompressing at home, Russell took Robert and I to a pub downtown for fried pickles, burgers, and (in my case) too many prickly pear margaritas. We shouted a lot of things about having shown the bar examiners who was boss. It was excellent.

So then the exam was over, and with it my time as a student, the most important role I have played every day of my life so far. Russell and I knew this deserved some commemoration, even though we lacked the budget (and I frankly knew I would lack the energy) for anything so exotic as the trips to Asia, Turkey, Peru, and who knows where else my classmates had planned. So we booked five days at the Hyatt Regency Lost Pines Resort and Spa, which is just outside Bastrop State Park, about an hour drive from Austin. We just got back, and oh my god, the time we had!

The first night we watched the resort's excellent choice of family movie, Mulan, outdoors on the grass with free popcorn. The first full day we went rock climbing and zip lining at the neighboring McKinney Roughs Nature Park, then lounged by the gorgeous pool and floated the "crooked river" tube ride to our hearts' content. The second day, we took advantage of the free bicycle checkout to explore the grounds, including meeting some adolescent alpaca and miniature donkeys in the pasture (too cute to be true.) We threw horseshoes, spent more time by the pool, and then watched another outdoor movie, this time Finding Nemo. The next day was probably the best: after riding bikes again, we took a 3.5-mile kayak trip on the Colorado River, beginning upstream from the resort and winding up on our own doorstep. It was the most beautiful combination of sun, water, trees, and wildlife I'd seen in a long time. And after a little recovery time back in our room, I headed - you guessed it - back to the pool. Followed by a foot treatment at the nearby spa. Followed by room service and a movie with Russell. Followed by our last night of blissful sleep without our feline alarm clock going off every few hours.

It was hard coming home from all that, and I can't recommend the place enough to anyone wanting a vacation in Central Texas. Combining just enough relaxation with just enough adventure, it was the perfect way to celebrate our return to this beautiful state and kick off this next phase in my life. I'll miss so many things about the last phase (not the most recent few months, obviously), but mostly can't wait to get going on the new one.

Tuesday, July 12, 2011

Commencing, Part One

The insanity continues! I'm sure my total disappearance has made that obvious, but it bears repeating. If bar review isn't the absolute least pleasant thing I've ever done in my life, it at least gives the full decade of heavy-duty orthodontia I once endured a run for its money.

But I want to look back on commencement a little bit, while some memory of it isn't totally crowded out by oil and gas law or corporate director indemnification, and only then work my way up to where I am now, running this miserable gauntlet that supposedly marks the start of my career and adult life.

I flew back to Cambridge several days before commencement and spent all of them boxing up books, clothes, office supplies, decorations, and all the other odds and ends Russell couldn't get to while still working full time at Harvard. When I looked up and it was suddenly Class Day, the day prior to commencement marked by several law-school-specific festivities, and I needed to meet my mother and her fiancée for brunch, not nearly enough was done. For all my hard work, I looked around our place and still pretty much saw our place, not the mostly empty shell I had pictured us easily transferring into our moving pods the weekend after commencement.

So that caused some panic, but I had to set it aside and soak up the celebration that was coming whether I was ready or not. Class day was fantastic, with a few relatives trickling in throughout the day to hear Alec Baldwin's memorable address to our class - he said if he could go back and take our career path over his, he would do it - and see perhaps my all-time favorite professor accept the teaching award from my graduating class with such humor and poignancy it made me cry. Dinner was pub fare at Cambridge Common, such a beloved law student haunt that I was shocked the family could find a table, but happy to show them where I had spent so many good times over the years.

My dad arrived late that evening, after a tremendous snafu by his airline that he only managed to salvage through a huge expense of time and money that I still feel awful about. (My aunt and uncle, originally set to fly with him, arrived even later because he literally took the last seat on the less delayed of the two remaining flights that day. Just think what that would probably cost, and double it, and you may be in the ballpark.)

Still, when we had to get up before dawn the next day to stop for coffee and pastries (a bit of a father-daughter graduation tradition) before I went to line up at the law school and he went to meet my mom to claim their two seats at the enormous university-wide ceremony, he was positively cheerful. It was hard to leave him and know I would have no contact with them through all the pomp and circumstance that morning.

But it was also great to join my friends in the big march from the law school grounds to the Old Yard, where the graduate students all wait to process to their seats. We joked around, took tons of pictures, and listened to one particular friend, Robert, relate his incredible ordeal getting to Cambridge to walk with us. Like my dad, aunt, and uncle, his flight out of Dallas was cancelled, but only after he had reached Dallas and thus ruled out any other possible routes. After almost a day in both that city's airports, he wound up on a plane to Baltimore, where some nearby relatives picked him up and drove him through the night to meet us literally halfway through our march to the Yard. It was like something out of Home Alone, but there he was, smiling for photos with the rest of us, while the Dean of Students scrambled to find him a gavel to carry and a safety pin to keep the hood on his commencement gown in place.

On reaching our seats, we settled in for over three hours of ceremony, including one address in Latin (mercifully translated in the program) and separate certifications of the graduates from each school. Things got warm as the sun crept over the buildings around the Yard, people were coming and going frequently for water or the restroom by the end, and most of us seated in the sun eventually wriggled out of our heavy gowns as discreetly as possible. After much shouting and tears when we were pronounced "ready to aid in the shaping and application of those wise restraints that make men free," and after the honorary degrees were awarded (including to Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and to Placido Domingo, who spontaneously sang for the Justice after hearing she was a big opera fan), we had to rush to get our robes back on to leave. After meeting my enormous family at the tables they'd claimed on Holmes Field, I stripped right back out again. So there are a lot of pictures of me from that day in just a black dress.

The law school ceremony was excellent, much briefer, and surprisingly informal with all the graduates and their families eating lunch at round tables packed onto the field. I, for one, completely chowed down and chatted quietly with my family through most of it. I was so happy to see them, a dozen or so having flown in the night before and not seen me yet, that their faces and kind words are what I remember most from the afternoon. Of course, Justice Ginsburg deciding to drop by and give an impromptu pep talk was also pretty spectacular. The graduates were called by first-year section to line up to receive diplomas, and my section was last, so I got a solid block of time to relax beforehand. Then there was a brief moment of panic when a problem with my robes made me the last person in the section to line up. I arrived with plenty of time, it turned out, but I regret not having longer with my classmates before we each walked across the stage and into our new lives.

That was definitely a surreal experience, up in front of the library with the trees rustling and cameras flashing all around. I don't know if it was appropriate, but I threw my arms around our section's faculty leader as he reached to shake my hand before I stepped off the stage. Other people had said they were going to do it, so I figured why not. On a broad set of steps near where we all picked up our actual diplomas (the thing they hand you on stage is just a cover to put it in), somebody suggested that all the section-mates hang out and take a picture together. We waited for every last person to walk, squeezed in tight, and smiled out at a hundred or so parents and spouses with cameras. In every shot I've seen so far, I'm making some funny face or other. I sure hope to find a good one someday.

So that was it, I had graduated, and the ceremony wound down quickly while I posed for a million more pictures with each family member of mine who had come. I knew that was important, but I was glad when it was over and I could take the robes off again and lead the group on a tour of the campus I love so much. We saw the gorgeous library reading room, one of the classrooms in Austin Hall (where everyone, very understandably, had to play at length with the microphones), and the Ames Courtroom, among other places. Then we ventured into my neighborhood, partly to show my Nana (who is the best cook anyone who meets her has ever met) the house where Julia Child lived and her favorite gourmet grocer where she signed "Bon Appetit!" in the sidewalk outside. Then we stopped for some refreshing sangria at Dali before heading through the Yard to catch the subway to dinner. We had a party space arranged at Tavern in Porter Square, where everyone loved the risotto fritters I hadn't shut up about for three years.

It was perfect.

Three fantastic days touring Boston with the family followed. We hit up the Freedom Trail, the North End, the Samuel Adams Brewery, the Kennedy Library, and who knows what else - my head spins just thinking about it. My feet have never hurt so badly in my life, and I used to dance ballet. But I could not have ended law school (not to mention three years in the dreary Northeast, which of course mustered such gorgeous weather for my relatives' entire visit that none of them believed me about the miserable climate) with a bigger bang.

And then Russell and I, with the help of some friends, neighbors, and one fabulous aunt who stayed for the duration, had to wrangle the rest of our belongings into boxes and load them into two moving pods and board a flight home to Texas.

What has happened since we got there, I think I'd better leave for another day.

Monday, June 20, 2011

Utter insanity

There's no other way to describe the experience of graduating from Harvard Law School, rushing home to start three-to-eight-hour-a-day, six-day-a-week bar review classes (and reading assignments, practice essays, and multiple choice drills), AND getting three people and a cat moved into a house WHILE two of your friends get married, another is in town from Hawaii, and your mom undergoes radiation therapy.
I've had scarcely enough time to sleep, eat, and shower, much less post updates on graduation and life afterward (to the extent that I get to have one!) But I thought some photos might satiate you for now. Enjoy:









Monday, May 30, 2011

Favorite Thing #8

I graduated on Thursday, and the grandeur and finality of that experience has still barely sunk in at all. The days in between have been a big blur of entertaining family around Boston, packing our belongings, and saying goodbye to some of the most extraordinary people I'll ever have the good fortune to know. I'm in total awe of the accomplishments of all my friends here and desperately sad to have to leave them tomorrow afternoon.

Anyhow, by Saturday morning when I took off for breakfast with my cousins, things had mostly quieted down on my path from the apartment to the Harvard Square subway stop. Reminders were everywhere of how much I have loved making that walk in the mornings, when the crowds of tourists haven't yet formed and there are glimpses of scenery so quiet and stately that I would hardly be surprised if a horse-drawn buggy appeared from around a corner somewhere.

As I walked, I started taking these pictures with my phone, using Hipstamatic settings on random. I think they capture it pretty well:

Thursday, May 19, 2011

Favorite Things #5, 6, and 7

As the content of every travel guide I've ever read seems to prove, a major part of the experience of any place is the food. I'm moving home to a place with such outstanding, diverse, and crave-worthy food that I've missed that aspect of it almost as much as all the others combined. But there is also food in Cambridge, which isn't even particularly renowned for its dining, that my heart absolutely aches to think of leaving behind. So I want to dedicate a couple of Favorite Things to that.
1. The Veggie Bill Clinton at Mr. Bartley's Burger Cottage, the tiny greasy-spoon establishment on Massachusetts Ave. just east of Harvard Square. I'm really struggling to get used to the idea that I may never have a veggie burger this satisfying again in my life. The Bill Clinton, named in gentle mockery of a public figure like all the other "gourmet" menu items at Bartley's, is smothered in barbecue sauce and cheddar cheese. And like every other burger there, you can order it with a veggie patty instead of meat. I'm sure some Bartley's acolytes think this is total sacrilege, but at a place whose offerings are so clearly about the delicious and creative toppings anyway, and for a dish that tastes so meaty and traditional and un-vegetarian without actually violating my chosen diet, I'm happy to tell them all to bite me. At least until I one this great in Austin, and then I can just shut up about my beloved "Veggie Bill," as the waiters call it.

2. The breakfast sandwiches on homemade English muffins at Crema Cafe. This wonderful coffee shop and bakery had just opened when my mother and I made our inaugural visit to Harvard back in May 2008, when I had just been admitted and realized I needed to find an apartment pronto. Because it was the first place we ever ate on that trip, and because we discovered it all by ourselves, we've had some sense of ownership or investment in its success ever since, and we shamelessly plug it to anyone with any opportunity to go. Happily, it is always jam-packed with people today - undoubtably due in part to the english muffins, ridiculous as that sounds. These things are like nothing you've ever tasted, totally incomparable to the store-bought variety. Tangy like a buttermilk biscuit, but more buttery (yes, that's possible) and less dense, they combine with the gooey cheese and peppery, always searing-hot eggs in such a simple yet wonderful way that it's difficult not to go back and order seconds. Maybe the staff will give me the recipe if I explain that I'm leaving forever and may wake up in tears on some future Sunday morning otherwise.

3. Everything on the menu at Dali, the eclectic and always absurdly crowded tapas place three blocks from our apartment. Every time I've been, whether for a friend's birthday, a date on some special occasion, or an end-of-week happy hour courtesy of Russell's boss, I haven't been able to shut up about a single thing on my plate. From the powerful sangria to the spicy potatoes with tart aioli on top, the rich tortilla espanola, the broccoli-cauliflower fritters, and most of all the creamy, sweet fried goat cheese we almost always order twice, I have never had a meal there not worth the high price and long wait (nor has anyone else, I think, based on the unsolicited effusive praise most people offer when they find out I live so close to the place.) I'm so glad we have plans to eat there one more time before moving!

Well, wow - can you tell I've been eating a lot of my own lower-calorie cooking lately in hopes of looking a little slimmer in all the pictures I'll be taking around graduation? I guess I should be careful not to undo all my efforts by scarfing everything in sight from the moment I land at Logan Airport! Maybe a post about the fantastic eating in Austin, just to remind myself not to seize too frantically on all my last opportunities to enjoy these foods, is in order. (:

Tuesday, May 17, 2011

Favorite Thing #4

My apologies for the long gap in posts as I wrapped up my final papers and got settled in a new house with no Internet yet! At the moment I'm sitting in the sunshine and 88-degree warmth on the beautiful lakeside patio at Mozart's Coffee Roasters in Austin, taking advantage of the free wireless and trying to get a little tan on my arms and legs so people at graduation will believe I spent three weeks away from Cambridge, where it's 49 degrees today.
Weather aside, though, as graduation grows nearer and nearer, I definitely find myself thinking of my favorite parts of living and studying there. A big one came to mind recently when the Dean of Students Office sent its weekly e-mail about graduation logistics. And fortunately, it's one thing about Harvard that I will NOT have to miss: my law school e-mail address.

It may sound minor, but I have to say how much I love that student e-mail addresses at HLS are assigned for life, so I will never have to surrender mine the way I did after finishing my bachelor's at Texas. There is something so great about the fact that, as long as I live, people can contact me by typing in my first initial, last name, and the domain "jd11.law.harvard.edu." And that I can contact my classmates the same way for as long as they live, too.

Harvard will quit storing e-mails sent to this address and instead forward them to another one we provide, so I finally had to set up that Gmail account I'd been avoiding, enjoying the simplicity of having just one e-mail address. But this was obviously for the best, and I know it's the only way Harvard could feasibly allow their alumni to keep their e-mail addresses forever. It still adds to the sense that by going here, I have joined a community with which I'll want to stay connected my whole life. Cheesy, like so much of what I've written here the past three years, but true.


Monday, April 25, 2011

Favorite Thing #3

I'm in Austin now, finishing papers away from the stressful law school atmosphere and getting settled for the summer and bar review before flying back to Cambridge to graduate and pack up the apartment. I think it's going to be fun doing these Favorite Things from here, where they take on a little extra nostalgia.

This is my favorite building on the law campus, the library, Langdell Hall.
It's so different from most of the other law buildings, and so much the epitome of what I think a law library should be, that it about stopped my heart the first time I rounded a corner on campus and saw the exterior and again when I hit the top of the stairs from the dim lower floors into the gorgeous Reading Room.

A huge portion of the things I'll miss most from Harvard are located in this building. For one thing, there's a table where I know a few members of my 1L section will always be sitting if I need some moral support while studying. Also, a funny assortment of milestones have happened around the printers on the ground floor, because ours at home isn't quite reliable enough for the really important stuff. So my applications to TAP, various "by permission of the professor" courses, and the Texas Bar issued from this building. And the lease for my house in Austin, which begins May 5.

I'm going to miss having access to insanely rare historical documents on demand. A scanner that nobody ever seems to be using when I need it. Reference librarians who work unbelievable hours and will always hand me a spare Bluebook when I leave mine at home. Big containers of staples, paper clips, and binder clips for anybody to take. The DVD library where I got seasons of The West Wing to show Russell. Having somewhere beautiful and nearly silent to work, sleep, or just stare outside whenever I want.

I told you these posts were going to be extra nostalgic.

Friday, April 22, 2011

Favorite Thing #2

These are my two favorite trees on the whole Harvard campus.


There's another one just like them outside Adolphus Busch Hall on my street, but it can't match the sort of critical mass of gorgeousness of these two together.

Because of the hardiness and waxy texture of the flowers, I was tempted to think they were magnolias. But the pink color (much brighter in person) and the shape of the trees didn't match any magnolia trees we had back home. So I did a little research, and it turns out there are some varieties of magnolia a lot more like these. So I'm pretty certain that's what they are.


It's so nice to have them waiting, in the springtime at least, at the end of a shortcut I take to school between some ugly science buildings. Just when I start to wish I'd taken the longer, more attractive route, there they are.


I've stopped to photograph them so much more than their fair share over the years, I almost wonder if the other trees are getting jealous. But these are the ones I'm really going to miss.

Thursday, April 21, 2011

Favorite things

With so much of my life wrapped up in preparing to leave this place, whether it's frantically writing final papers so I can get my grades and graduate or buying a duffel-shaped carrier and one of those ridiculous cat leashes to get Ramona through security for the flight home, I thought I should expend a little energy remembering the things I've loved here.
So prepare yourself for a series of sappy posts about my favorite things at Harvard and in Cambridge. I'll try to keep the sentimentality from getting too ridiculous, but no promises.

Thing #1 is that Richard J. Lazarus, who was only visiting Harvard when he taught my first-year Torts class and became one of my all-time favorite professors, has finally been recruited to join the faculty permanently. I have no idea what it ultimately took to pull him away from Georgetown and its easy access to the Supreme Court, but I know they tried for years, and this is a big victory.

Richard J. Lazarus

According to another professor of mine, Jody Freeman, "This hire leaves no doubt that HLS is the go-to place for environmental law." But my mind is on the 1L Torts classes he'll teach with the same, surprisingly rare Harvard magic he brought to ours. I can hardly picture this institution without him, and I'm so glad he's an official part of it now.

Saturday, April 16, 2011

Ridiculous luck

As spring finally comes to New England and the sun is actually starting to shine (which is weird to say today because it's cloudy, but more often than not it's true), I'm baffled not only by how little time I have left in this place, but also how far out of its way the universe seems to be going to remind me what an amazing opportunity it's all been.

For one thing, hard as it is to believe, the lunch with Sonja Sohn I mentioned last post turned out not to be the peak of my celebrity spotting this semester - not by a long shot. A few days later, I got an e-mail from one of the teaching assistants for the same class, proclaiming, "Congratulations! You have been selected to attend the dinner with the cast of The Wire this Tuesday, April 12, 2011!" I was one of ten winners of a lottery that students in the class could enter by writing a paragraph on whether or not we supported drug legalization. Amazingly, my good friend Nancy won as well. So after the cast spoke in our class Tuesday afternoon, and after another event open to the public that evening (where my friends were all ecstatic just to be in the same 300-person courtroom as the cast), the two of us hopped into a van to join Sonja, Donnie Andrews and Fran Boyd, Jim True-Frost, Jamie Hector, Andre Royo, and Michael K. Williams for dinner at one of the undergraduate houses along the Charles River.

Some things about the dinner weren't ideal. Our group of law students was outnumbered by guests of the professor and undergraduates from the house where we were eating, few of whom seemed to know the show like we did or appreciate the magnitude of the opportunity they were getting. Watching some of them sit closer to the cast members and barely speak to them was torture! And sorry for the tangent, but the lack of vegetarian option for the appetizer was just bizarre.

But all was forgiven when people began getting up and mingling, allowing Nancy and I to march up to each cast member in turn, introduce ourselves, and have a real conversation of substance. Without fail, each one of them was warm, funny, and receptive to our questions. Nancy's paper for the class is about the presence and absence of hip-hop music in the show, so she wanted to know which rapper each of them thought was most similar to their character. Meanwhile, I got an enormous hug from Andre Royo after Nancy let slip that I'm always saying I want to hug his character, Bubbles, every time he comes on screen. And I bashfully confessed to Michael Williams about the cat I named after his character, Omar Little. To my great relief, he was unsurprised and actually pleased to hear it!

I wish I had photos or autographs to show you, but Nancy and I decided early on not to join the people badgering the cast for those. My friend Ryan has some great shots from the public appearance, though, if you want proof that they came. And we've gotten a little media attention as well.

However, that wasn't even the only great thing to happen on Tuesday. First of all, I finished a paper for my Law and Social Policy course that was my last official assignment for the academic year. Now I'm free to focus on my final papers, which won't always be fun, but is much better than having them loom in the distance causing added anxiety as I try to get through more urgent, but less important, things.

And second, also on Tuesday, we got a really amazing and long overdue piece of news about life in Austin after graduation. It's the culmination of a really long, dramatic, and mostly miserable story I promise to tell here later, but I can't right now because (a) I can't possibly fit it into this one post, and (b) given the aforementioned long story, I don't want to tempt fate into seizing what tiny opportunity still exists to ruin this for us.

But I will say that it looks a little bit like this:

Cliffhanger enough for you??

Thursday, April 7, 2011

Another awesome Harvard opportunity

On Tuesday, the latest in a long series of guest speakers for my class on The Wire was one of its stars, Sonja Sohn, who played the police officer Kema Greggs on the show. She brought along a major in the Baltimore Police and the woman who works as Program Director for her nonprofit community group, ReWired for Change. They run afterschool programs and give counseling, yoga classes, and urban gardening lessons to kids of different ages in East Baltimore, a pretty cool development from just playing a character on TV.
The best part was that I got to be one of fifteen students allowed to sign up for a pizza lunch ahead of class with Ms. Sohn and her colleagues. We mostly socialized, asked some questions about why she changed to this kind of work after the show, and got some specific tips for working with kids and teens at risk. It turns out acting was a profession she resisted for a long time out of a sense that she was meant to make more of a difference in the world, so the transition was very natural.

My favorite thing she said: "We were all put here to work for the forward movement of humanity, and what you need to do is wake up each morning asking, 'Am I doing that? Every day, in my every act?'"

Pretty inspiring.

Thursday, March 24, 2011

I know a place, I'll take you there

Wow. I'm not really sure how to sum up my Spring Break this year, so I'll just stick to "Wow." Russell and I headed south for a family reunion on my mother's side, which may not sound too "wow"-inducing, but if you had the biggest, loudest, most talented, fun, drunken family in Northern Alabama, you would understand.
Our week started with a couple of quiet days with my amazing Nana, whose 75th birthday was one of the reasons for the reunion, and the trickle of relatives coming into town early like we did. We slept well, ate well, sat around chatting and doing nothing a lot, and spent an afternoon wandering the cute downtown area by ourselves. The weather was absurdly perfect, and it stayed that way as the stream of relatives turned into a rush and the lazy part of the trip came to a close.

On Thursday, more relatives having shown up, we shared a big dinner at the house my aunt and uncle took over from Nana after my grandfather passed away. On Friday, a family friend who runs the incredible Muscle Shoals Sound Studio took Russell for his first tour of the place where everything from "Brown Sugar," "Wild Horses," and "Layla" to "Torn Between Two Lovers" was recorded in the 1970s (and the Black Keys' award-winning "Brothers" was made last year.) Like everyone who goes for the first time, Russell had chills and couldn't quit grinning all day.

That night, our numbers swelled to at least 50 as friends from the area joined in a belated Saint Patrick's Day celebration. The loud singing, joking, fountain of Irish cream (literally), and rounds of shots lasted into the wee hours. But we were at it again the following afternoon, when the grandkids put on a musical revue in Nana's honor, leaving not a dry eye in the giant backyard. Even Russell joined in to sing "You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby" with my male cousins and cousins-in-law. And as that party stretched into the evening as well, the local police actually showed up to warn us about the noise! I don't know many people who can say the cops were called on their grandmother's 75th birthday party, so I'm pretty proud.

It's back to the daily grind now, and putting the appropriate emphasis on school is even more difficult after such a fun time. (I've been meaning to explain why it's difficult in general, but I should get to work on a paper, so I'll just say that a couple of my classes this semester are less than satisfying. Not necessarily a bad thing, since it will surely help me let go of this otherwise amazing place in just a few short weeks, but it's never fun being disappointed. More details later, I promise.) For now, as I always seem to be saying, I should be able to get by on the memory of having such a blast and the hope of doing it again before long.

Monday, March 7, 2011

The best kind of surprise

Well, the MPRE is over, which is mostly a relief. But the number of things I put off until afterward and now have to do, plus the many deadlines that have always been looming on the other side and now seem to be coming up impossibly soon, is pretty daunting. I have to make some long-overdue posts to the Law & Mind blog for tonight's seminar. I have to get graduation announcements under control or else my relatives are going to start wondering if I plan to finish law school after all. Spring Break is going to be awesome, but I have to turn in another response paper for my class on The Wire almost the moment I get back, and the final draft of a paper for Law & Social Movements is due a few days later. And I have to start thinking seriously about the big, final papers for three of my classes, or I'm going to look up soon and only have two weeks to finish all 50+ pages of them.
I think I'm inclined to fixate on these things, whether or not I can even do anything about them today, just because they're so much more of a reality all of a sudden. But what I really want to tell you about is Saturday, the actual day of the MPRE, which I had barely expected even to be a good day but which turned out so perfect that just thinking about it helps to offset all these obligations and anxieties really nicely.

I'll start the story on Friday, when I wrapped up some work at TAP around 4 p.m. and headed to our local grocer to shop for a study date with Russell. In exchange for his help preparing for the MPRE, I had promised him a smorgasbord of junk food of his choice, which turned out to be beer, Cheetos, and homemade cookies. I added pizza for dinner on my own behalf, lugged these things home just in time for Russell to arrive from work, and got started baking. He quizzed me out loud for the next few hours while we both pigged out - a good trade, I think.

On Saturday, I was happy to find that at least the logistics of the exam weren't as bad as they could have been. Back when we all registered, a lot of Harvard people found there weren't enough spots at the testing center at our own school, so we had been bumped to Boston University School of Law. I was one of three friends in my neighborhood in this situation, so we agreed to share a cab from a midpoint between our houses - something I rarely do, but BU is about 15 minutes away by cab and more than 45 by public transport. All that went surprisingly smoothly, especially because at 45 degrees and not too wet or windy, the weather more or less obliged. And then the exam was just what I'd been told to expect: pretty difficult, but not worth freaking out over, because the curve is so generous that to pass often requires barely half of your answers to be correct.

Back in Cambridge after the test, we met a large group of friends for brunch at the usual student haunt, Cambridge Common. Several had just finished testing at Harvard, but others had taken the MPRE in November and were just there for support. There was some rehashing of the test, but a lot more totally unrelated, raucous laughter. What a great way to decompress.

Afterward, Russell and I took the subway downtown to run a very important errand. I won't bore you with the details, but I'll say that this turned into one of those really exceptional customer service experiences, the kind that change a task that is mostly a source of anxiety into a cherished memory. Literally, we were so blown away by the humor and forthcomingness of the person helping us, we may never forget what he did for our afternoon.

However, this guy was also incredibly quick at his job, sending us back into the streets of downtown Boston in just a fraction of the time we had allowed ourselves for the errand. It was not yet 3 p.m., and we had nothing to do until our 5 p.m. dinner plans in the North End with a dear friend who is soon moving away. So we wandered around some of the stores in Downtown Crossing, where Russell got a steal on a new brown belt and some undershirts and, stumbling on a hidden cache of the Polish Pottery my mom uses in her kitchen, I bought three things for her at a terrific bargain. Then we started winding our way toward the North End.

First, we passed Quincy Market and Faneuil Hall, where Russell was able to recall a bunch of interesting historical facts I knew nothing about, having been out of town when his parents visited a few months ago and he took them to all the tourist spots. Then we somehow wandered into the New England Holocaust Memorial, which I had no idea even existed, right out on Congress Street across from the bars and fishmongers. Unexpected as it was, it completely took my breath away, and I now consider it unmissable if you're ever in the area. Also, Russell is so great with things like that - he held my hand tightly and took his time reading every plaque, then wanted to talk about it for a while afterward, which I'm sure is the memorial's intent most of all.

Soon after, we reached Haymarket Station, where we were due to meet our friend. We were still early, so we squeezed into the completely chaotic public market to take a look at the shouting vendors offering fish, meat, and produce at rock-bottom prices. The noise and crowds were a bit jarring after the memorial, but it also made me laugh to see life going on in all its vibrancy so close by. I was in a great mood and telling Russell all the latest law school gossip by the time we curved back around to meet our friend.

The three of us wandered through the North End, enjoying the atmosphere at dusk and checking out menus on different restaurant doors, until we picked a place called Piccola Venezia. The food was very traditional, but great - I ate the fluffiest, most melt-in-your-mouth gnocchi of my life in a simple, rustic red sauce while Russell and our friend enjoyed fried calamari and ziti with broccoli and spinach. We shared the latest news about various mutual friends, compared notes on some recent medical drama in our families, and generally had a great going-away meal. Then Russell and I headed home to drop off leftovers before going to campus for the HLS Parody, an annual student-run musical lampoon I insisted on seeing since I had missed it the two previous years.

When we first arrived, I was devastated to see the show already underway, because it turns out I had been mistaken about the start time. But a friend encouraged us to stay, and I'm so glad we did, because there were over two hours of great material still left to see. As I announced on Facebook the next day, the highlight of the evening was definitely "Cambridge Blows," to the tune of Nina Simone's "Feelin' Good," performed as a strip tease where after removing 5-6 layers of clothes the dancers were still in jeans and sweaters. But plenty of other moments were nearly that great. It was the perfect ending to a spectacular Saturday.

Of course, Sunday wasn't too shabby either. I spent nearly the whole day in bed, first watching George Clooney in "The American" on Netflix and eating leftover pizza with Russell, then getting some things done for school. For dinner, we headed to a friend's house for the best Chinese take-out any of us had ever had, and we finally learned to play Settlers of Catan, the game all our nerdiest friends had been (not wrongly, it turns out) raving about for years.

I'm back at school today, and although it's sunny in my window seat at the law library right now, the weather is supposed to suck a lot this week. Not to mention that all those deadlines I'm facing aren't looming any less than if I'd had a rotten weekend. But hopefully, with all this fun to look back on, I can survive all that until the next wonderful surprise comes along.


Wednesday, March 2, 2011

OKAY, SERIOUSLY.

ENOUGH OF THIS WINTER CRAP ALREADY. I AM NOT KIDDING.
No, seriously, it's getting really old. Early spring is the worst time for my seasonal issues anyway - there seems to be some cumulative effect after the long winter that the longer days can't reverse all at once - so all the bundling up and trudging through the snow and taking lukewarm showers because the water heater is on overdrive running the radiators is pretty much adding insult to injury. The effort it takes me to do basic things is unreal. I was so proud to have washed dishes, sent a bunch of e-mails, and ordered a passport photo for my admission ticket to the MPRE this morning. Studying for that thing is going to be a whole other story.

SO SERIOUSLY, CAMBRIDGE, KNOCK IT OFF.

In other news, I've managed to make more progress toward my obscenely high paper-writing page count this semester: I wrapped up another five-pager for Law and Social Policy last week and a seven-pager for Law and Social Movements this Monday. It's funny to type out both those class names and be reminded that they're so similar, when the classes themselves couldn't be more different.

Unfortunately, those papers were just two of the many balls in the air for me right now, from a meeting for TAP tonight, another for my journal tomorrow, and this MPRE business on Saturday to planning for graduation, signing for a bar loan, and getting health insurance for this summer. I'm definitely banking on my experience so far in law school that no matter how much it seems like things will never fall into place in time, they usually do.

But in case all this sounds too depressing, I want to highlight a couple of things that are GREAT in my life right now! The first is my upcoming trip to Alabama for a reunion with my mom's fabulous family. Russell is coming along, and it will be his first time seeing the family's home base in a cluster of little towns on the Tennessee River, not to mention meeting my zillions of great-aunts, great-uncles, and second cousins, all as loud and raucous as you could possibly want, who will be converging there. I'm so excited and ready for this break from school and the cold, I can hardly stand it.

The second great thing, which I've been meaning to share here for a long time, is the Law and Mind Blog I've been working on for my Monday night seminar at school. Almost all the assignments for this class are blog posts; each week the professor takes volunteers to post about the reading, connecting the reading to current events or other fields of study, or about any other mind science topic we like. Don't be turned off by the jargon in some of the titles - the result is a pretty cool assortment of silly and serious takes on how our psychology influences our lives and our laws. I really hope you'll check it out - especially the post I wrote about Born This Way, whose creator commented to thank me for my thoughtful discussion!

So it's not all work and crappy weather. Mostly, but not all. (:

Monday, February 21, 2011

Move over, April

I'm firmly convinced that February is the cruelest month around here.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: the way this month jerks you around with the warm weather, then cold weather, dry weather, then wet weather is just evil. Last week we had temperatures in the 50s, most of the snow melted, and I was able to walk to school without a coat on two separate days. This morning, big, fat snowflakes are pouring from the sky like someone is shaking out a giant bag of powdered sugar up there. It's beautiful, as always, but really? I had kind of hoped to be done with some of my winter gear.

Luckily, I didn't hope too hard. I saw this coming, since it happened last February and the February before that. Last week, when even professors were starting to hail the coming of spring, I was making sure to soak up the sun but not to get too used to it. Fool me three times, and I start to look pretty pathetic.

Tuesday, February 8, 2011

Four down, eighty-plus to go

I just turned in my first response paper for the Law and Social Policy Workshop I'm taking, and I feel pretty good about it. The reading assigned for it was interesting, a forthcoming tax law article claiming that government programs received by everybody, instead of targeted at poor people like welfare, can actually redistribute more wealth in the end because they have more popular support to help them last longer and give more generously.
It's nice to be done, and what reading I have for tomorrow can be done in the morning, so I plan to relax tonight and finish the second season of Deadwood with Russell. However, it just hit me that the four pages I just wrote were only the first of dozens and dozens I have to get done this semester. With about 90 days left and almost that many pages still to write, I'm realizing that the push I had to make to finish this first paper in time is what much of my next few months are going to look like.

Awesome.

At least one of my classes involves writing of a more enjoyable kind: most of the assignments for my Law & Mind Sciences Seminar are posts to the class blog! I'm planning to get the professor's permission to link to that from here (I'm sure he'll say yes, but it's good to ask), but in the meantime, I want to point you to an awesome website I posted about recently: Born Gay, Born This Way! Who knew little kids could be so fabulous!

Well, I had better run. I have a meeting to discuss my paper topic with the professor for Race and Justice: The Wire. He's a pretty busy guy, maybe the biggest celebrity professor I've had so far (in fact, I was interviewed by the local NPR affiliate about his class recently, and I'll be sure to let you know if I make it on the radio) so I had better not be late. Crazy how a paper that isn't due until the end of those 90 days I mentioned could be dominating my afternoon now. I guess I had better get used to it.

Friday, January 28, 2011

Update fail!

Hey, remember me? That friend/relative of yours who's in the middle of what's supposed to be the easiest year of law school? Yeah, about that...

I can't believe I'm saying this, but the past few weeks have been some of the craziest of my life! Not because anything incredibly major has happened, but because of the incredibly relentless stream of minor things that just keep cropping up. Once I realized I was three days away from going a whole month without posting here, I knew I had better clue y'all in on some of the hubbub. So here goes:

Winter term success. The extra three weeks in Austin this winter were amazing, and not only because I got to accompany my mom to both her latest MRI scan and the visit where her doctor announced there had been no growth in her tumor since surgery. No, the work was also fantastic - being back at my summer employer felt like starting right where I left off, even though the issue I worked on was different from before, and I got to help out with incredibly fun things like co-hosting a roundtable discussion with Elizabeth Warren and Holly Petraeus in San Antonio. I was ready to be back at Harvard with Russell and my cat by the end, but I couldn't have picked a better way to spend the term.

Snow like whoa. This is easily the snowiest winter since I came to law school - it's actually the most snow Cambridge has had in something like 15 years. At least a foot covers all the front yards, huge icicles are hanging off the buildings, and there are enormous person- and even two-person-high drifts in some of the places where the big, industrial snowblowers have cleared the sidewalks and driveways at Harvard. I think it's beautiful and mostly have no complaints - what an extravagant send-off for someone headed to Texas! But it is a little treacherous how it can hide ice on the ground. No real wipeouts yet, though - keep your fingers crossed.

Bar application blues. The postmark deadline for the Texas bar was today, so several friends and I have been scrambling to get our employers, character references, birth certificates, applications to law school, and everything else in line this week. It's exhausting and tense, so much more than it probably needs to be, because the instructions are as vague as possible and the website is positively archaic (truly, check it out yourself.) But we are finally done and can breathe a sigh of relief, at least until the fingerprinting cards come.

Last first week. Although the start of spring semester is never quite as exciting as fall, I'm so psyched about my classes that it still feels like the start of something momentous and special. It occurs to me that I never did post my schedule, so here it is now:

Monday

1-2:30 Race & Justice: The Wire with Charles Ogletree

5-7 Law & Mind Sciences with Jon Hanson


Tuesday

1-2:30 Race & Justice: The Wire


Wednesday

1:30-3 Law & Social Movements with Lani Guinier

5-7 Workshop on Law & Social Policy with Anne Alstott & Ben Sachs

7-9 Judicial Process in the Community Courts with Judge John Cratsley


Thursday

1:30-3 Law & Social Movements


Friday

1:30-2:30 Law & Social Movements

Of course, all that involves A LOT of reading, and even though I found all the assignments interesting, it was difficult not to fall behind the very first week! Add in the 15-page paper I had to write for my winter clinical - which was literally impossible to squeeze in with working full time during the term, so it all got done in the last week before the deadline, today - and I was about ready to start pulling my hair out.

Graduation around the corner. Did I mention this is my LAST year of law school, meaning I am going to GRADUATE in just a few short months??? I spent a good chunk of time in Austin, and a little more since I've been back here (with much more to come, I'm sure), juggling the travel and lodging plans of at least a dozen excited relatives I can't wait to see in May. This has been fun and, with some welcome help from my mom, pretty manageable. But between this and the bar application, the future is quickly becoming all too real.

Back in the fold. Well, hopefully just enough of all that is behind me now. The excitement of winter term and the craziness of this past week are over, I have an amazing semester of classes ahead, and life with Russell and the cat is lowering my blood pressure by the minute (and will do so even more once I clean up the disaster zone I made of the apartment while I was so busy). Granted, there is the usual ramp-up of responsibilities for Tenant Advocacy and my journal. But that's the regular (for Harvard Law School) amount of stress I feel confident I can handle, so I look forward to getting back to it very much.