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.

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:

Nobody said it was easy

Last week was surprisingly okay, considering I didn't spend my weekend preparing for it. I got through my Monday classes just fine, and after more classes and a trip to the voting booth on Tuesday, I made time for another little break to watch election returns with Russell and the comfort of homemade margaritas. These are the times when it's especially great to have your own blender.

Wednesday and Thursday were a blur of Admin Law, Taxation, and training the 1L's at my journal for their technical edit or "subcite" of the articles we'll publish this semester. If the 1L's do good work, the job of my Technical Department is much easier down the line. So I've been training a lot of them myself, an investment I sure hope will pay off.

All this was made extra-busy by the fact that I decided, at the last minute and way past the official deadline, to apply to do an "independent winter clinical" this January. It's one of the ways to get academic credit between the fall and spring semesters each year, which is required for every HLS student. And since I could do it from Austin while helping my mom continue to recover from her surgery, it recently took on a new appeal.

Which is why, with typical Harvard generosity, the Clinicals office is letting me apply so late. I'll need a project I can't do at any of the existing clinics, a licensed attorney to supervise me, and a faculty member to supervise the paper I'll be writing in conjunction. I'm planning a project back at one of my awesome summer employers, so I'm pretty excited, but I'm also getting my butt kicked a little by working out the rest at a speed I think is considerate.

And that's fine, because a different part of my life got much easier this week, even if it did take a really difficult decision to make it happen. I'm talking about my Political Economy for Modern Capitalism class, which for weeks I've been feeling frustrated about.

I know I haven't really let on here, but it has been such a struggle trying to catch up with my fellow students' lengthy backgrounds on the topic, to develop any remotely decent ideas for the very long paper looming at the end of the year, and to square it all with my towering stress levels in other areas of life. So this class was seeming less and less worth the two credits it would earn me, and I was feeling less and less worth the professors' time.

Hating that feeling, I had started to wonder about withdrawing from the course. It seemed like such a terrible idea, but was it more terrible than staying in all year? On Friday I visited the Dean of Students Office for some advice, and as usual, they made the whole thing crystal clear within minutes. Because of my mom - because people just cannot pass up any chance to make things easier around my mom, and it is so sweet - the class is coming off my transcript without even the "WD" notation that would usually indicate it had ever been there.

It felt like crap to tell my professor, but with that done, I feel so incredibly relieved. I have plenty of credits without the class, and everything else I'm doing seems so much more manageable without it tacked on. Most importantly, I've spent the first part of this week wrapping up that clinical application - both my faculty and attorney supervisors just fell into place today - so with any luck I'll be approved soon for three great weeks in Austin.

This is a tough time to do it, maybe the toughest, but I'm starting to feel like I've struck the right balance between school and family. Which, as everyone at school keeps graciously, wonderfully telling me, is the most important thing of all.

I've got a golden ticket

It’s funny, I had planned to write a whole post about how horrible last week was, but I never got around to doing it. And while last week really was awful—I still can’t sugar-coat it—not only have things gotten much, much better since then, but it also turned out to be pretty lucky that I didn’t post just to complain.

To sum it up, last Monday was the first day when judges could call clerkship applicants to offer them interviews under the federal hiring plan. Of course, the calls immediately flooded in for all my most brilliant classmates, while I sat staring at a silent phone. It didn’t mean I would never get any interviews, since various judges have their reasons not to start calling right away, and that seemed even more likely in the less competitive locations where I applied. But people tended to forget this fact, and those who didn’t ignore me completely were a bit too sympathetic, like this whole career path had already closed for me forever.

I’m sure other people were also struggling with the feeling that everyone had gotten calls except them. But like me, they didn’t exactly advertise it. So I sat alone when I could, slinked straight home after class every day, and stayed there. It was the loneliest, most alienating time I’ve ever spent at Harvard.

But enough of that, because things changed a lot very soon. I was in Tax class on Friday morning when my former boss left me a voicemail saying she had been at a function with one of the judges I’d applied to, and she’d taken care to recommend me at length. She suggested, though, that I call chambers to make sure they had my application, because the judge hadn’t recognized my name.

In a class break, I got the message and called the judge, trying to sound calm and casual in a voicemail requesting confirmation, out of an abundance of caution, that they had received my materials. I guess this was just pushy enough, because soon after I got home that afternoon (and was thanking my lucky stars just to have survived the week), I got a call from the judge saying they had indeed pulled out my application, had been impressed, and would love to interview me.

I had to laugh at this point, because of course the call had come on Friday afternoon before a week-long school break when I would hardly have anyone to tell about it. It was like the cosmos wanted me to be successful, just not in time to disrupt the test it was putting me through socially. Thanks a lot.

Anyway, the judge gave me the weekend to schedule a flight to Austin, and when I called back on Monday, we set the interview for Thursday afternoon. Then she mentioned that her clerks had discovered my blog and thought it was “very well-written”—high praise, but you see why it was a good thing I never managed to post my long tirade about the injustices of last week! A nice big pity party about the lack of attention you’re getting from employers, full of bitterness toward peers who are doing better, is just not the first thing you want a judge to see when she has the good sense to probe your online identity.

(By the way, I’ve often questioned whether I’ll want to continue this blog after graduation, and I think my answer came when the judge said, “By the way, there will be no more of that if you come work for me.” I couldn’t help but joke, “What, good writing?” And she laughed, but she also made it clear what she meant: “Blogging!”)

Well, after a shopping trip for a terrific new suit, several hours of interview prep, and a hellish couple of flights to Austin (are you noticing a trend? Don’t all my flights to Austin lately seem to be hellish?) I was in the judge’s chambers for my interview. I won’t go into detail, but there were some tough questions, a lot of great information about the job, and a really encouraging amount of laughter. So I left feeling pretty good.

And that turned out to be justified, because I was stopped in traffic, not even home yet from the interview, when she called to offer me the clerkship!! She didn’t want me to answer right away and said I should call her next week, but I couldn’t wait and accepted first thing on Friday. We exchanged a couple of voicemails that day, in one of which she invited me to a party at her home over the holidays. What people say about the best judges making their clerks feel like family already looks to be true.

I’m exhausted now, having spent the rest of the Austin trip celebrating with every friend I could get my hands on, but I have enough work to do for classes Monday that I can’t relax completely. I think it’s going to be a little tough concentrating, but I have to power through—my work ethic dropped WAY below normal while I was so bummed last week, and I had better catch up.

However, I am beyond relieved to think how much attention I can give school, TAP, the journal, my friends, and everything else I should be savoring about Harvard now that my job search is over. Most of the great things about this clerkship haven’t quite sunk in for me yet, but that’s one blessing I’m very aware I have. I think I earned it, but if I ever take it for granted, please somebody remind me about last week.

Respite

It's Sunday morning here in Austin, making it my second completely free day since the end of both my summer internships. I don't know if this will really sink in until tomorrow, though, since I would have had the weekend off anyway.

Things ended well - a few good going-away lunches, some cases closed, others transferred. I was frustrated that unresponsive clients kept me from finishing a few things in the time I was at legal aid, but I know that happens sometimes with clients whose struggle to make ends meet can be even more pressing than their legal situation. C'est la vie.

I also wrapped up a big round of judicial clerkship applications this week - the ones for judges who want paper rather than online applications. They're due to Harvard for mass mailing tomorrow, but I mailed them last Wednesday to be safe and already got delivery confirmation that they arrived. This is a huge load off - for fully half the judges I'm applying to, things are entirely in someone else's hands now. In the coming month, I'll need to upload all the same materials to the online database most federal judges use, but that's a little easier (and less permanent) than the printing, stuffing, and mailing part.

In the meantime, I need to gear up for my good friend's wedding a week from today and the move back to Cambridge two days after that. But I'm feeling a little sluggish: the other bridesmaids and I threw a damn successful bachelorette party Friday night, with so much eating, dancing, hairspray, high heels, and loud karaoke singing involved that even as designated driver I needed a full day to recover.

Today I have a movie date with my mom and one of her friends, and I'm weighing whether I should spend the time beforehand cleaning and doing laundry and making my life feel more in order, or getting out and soaking up some sun. Whichever I don't pick, there will be plenty of time to do tomorrow, which is a nice change of pace from the last ten weeks!

How time flies

It's hard to believe how much of my summer has gone by already. It's even harder to write about it, because that kind of reflection only reminds me of all the things I still have to do, and before long I'm pretty much panicked. But I'll try to stay calm enough to give a good update on what's happening with me.

For starters, in the past week or so I've seen the first few conclusions to some of my projects at work. In one of the first cases I worked on at legal aid, the opponents have agreed to a settlement that couldn't be better for our client: she gets an apartment with them, and they revise their policies to be fairer to applicants like her. I got to write the actual settlement agreement they'll sign and submit to the judge, which was satisfying and a much better resolution than we expected back when I was researching contingencies in case they got us thrown out of federal court.

In another case, we seem to have succeeded at helping a tenant pull enough money together to pay all her back rent and convincing her landlord to quit trying to evict her in exchange. This client is very young and formerly homeless, but truly seems to have her life on track now and just had a rough adjustment to a pay cut and new childcare costs for her son, whom she's very cool when talking about. So it will be really gratifying if we're able to save her tenancy.

Meanwhile, at my policy job, we just submitted an enormous research product on health and life insurance law to the international NGO that commissioned it from my boss. She's actually out this week presenting it, but at least it's finally out of our (the interns') hands, to our great relief. I'm also relieved to have finished a more individual project to revise, introduce, and do some ancillary research for a proposal we want to make to the Treasury Department.

So those things are going well, although there are twice as many things just like them still lined up to get done. And predictably, a whole new round of things for Harvard and career planning have presented themselves. We're into the add-drop season for fall classes, which is pretty important since this will be my last year, and so far I have:

Monday

10:45-11:45 Administrative Law, Rakoff

1-3 Environmental Law, Freeman

5-7 Political Economy of Modern Capitalism, Desan

Tuesday

10:45-11:45 Administrative Law, Rakoff

1-3 Environmental Law, Freeman

Wednesday

10:45-11:45 Administrative Law, Rakoff

Thursday

10-12 Taxation, Alstott

Friday

10-12 Taxation, Alstott

That Modern Capitalism class is a big dilemma, because it really interests me, and I may need it to keep my fall credit hours from being unimpressively few. But it also extends into the spring, when a lot of other classes interest me even more, and I'm so worried it will crowd one of them out of my schedule when it comes time for spring registration that I'm considering dropping it entirely. Like a lot of Harvard students facing the ridiculous abundance of good classes, I'm not sure which gamble to take: that it will be wonderful and totally worth the sacrifice, or that something even better will come along? I've got time to consult some fellow students, so I'll probably mull it over for a while and be sure to let you know once I decide.

Finally, a whole host of deadlines in the judicial clerkship application process is approaching fast. I just had my resume reviewed by the folks at Career Services, and it looks like a fair amount of changes are needed. Plus, I have to finalize my list of judges to give to my recommenders by next Monday, July 26, then gather everything including their letters to submit for Harvard's centralized mailing by August 9. All this seems absurdly soon, but luckily I seem to have cleared what I once thought of as my biggest hurdle: getting Russell on board with the idea that some of the really excellent clerkships to which I really can't justify not applying are in Houston, so I might need to spend a year there before coming home to Austin.

Speaking of which, it may sound like it's been all work and no play around here lately, but that couldn't be less true. Monday was the last day of a fun, busy, incredible four-ish day visit from Russell that involved at least four margaritas, seven breakfast tacos, two movies, one visit to Toy Joy, and one amazing day at Schlitterbahn. We're both totally exhausted and bummed to be back at work. But we get to look forward to a repeat performance in just under a month, when Russell will come back to attend a friend's wedding and help me move back North.

In entertainment news, seeing Inception at the Alamo Drafthouse was definitely one of the weekend's highlights, and I sincerely recommend it (even if you live in a city without an Alamo Drafthouse.) It's smart, exciting, surprisingly emotional, and creative like nothing I've seen before. Which, come to think of it, is also a decent description of my new pop culture obsession, Buffy the Vampire Slayer!

I know, everyone and their sister has seen this show already, and I'm way behind the times with this. But can I just take a moment to say how great it is? Not just the show, but the experience of discovering it for the first time (which I always knew I'd get around to doing eventually, but had finally put off a bit too long) with the knowledge that there are 7+ whole seasons to go through and enjoy. I'm trying to savor it, but my coworker keeps lending me his DVDs.

Well, I think that last bit kept me from panicking completely as I try to sum up all the activity in my life right now. And I may be able to avoid complete nervous collapse if I make good use of this coming weekend. Wish me luck, and in the meantime, go see Inception!

Long-awaited

Wow, two full weeks without posting - you'd think I didn't love you guys or something! In fact, I love you so much that I'm using what little battery I have left after leaving my laptop charger at work over the weekend (I know, I'm an idiot) to write this post.

To be frank, though, I'm not sure what I have to add to the things I've already written about work and life in Austin. Things at both offices are going smoothly. After working full-time for a few days at one (because the other hadn't started yet) and then nearly two weeks at the other (because of a death in the family of my boss at the first) I'm just now hitting a rhythm with splitting my time between the two.

It is a little awkward paring down my portfolio at both places to reflect my part-time schedule, since I got my hands in so many interesting things when I was there every day. For instance, a client I've been interviewing for legal aid finally got her eviction notice on Friday, with a court date set for next Wednesday. But I won't be back at the office until next Tuesday, so I may miss most of the preparation for a case I've been pretty involved with until now.

I think my boss actually wants a postponement for other reasons, so it may all work out, and even if I had to bow out of this case it'd be okay since there are so many other interesting ones. But that's an example of the funny consequences of splitting.

Fortunately, the benefits far outweigh the costs. It's almost bizarre how well my work at these places dovetails - like when, after a week talking about how immigrants should create powers of attorney for their relatives in case of deportation at one job, I wound up drafting (albeit for completely different purposes) a power of attorney at the other. Most of all, being involved in poverty law both on the ground and at the policy level is suiting me so well that I worry about having to choose one or the other after graduation.

Meanwhile, I'm trying to take full advantage of Austin in summertime with lots of time by the water and warm nights outside with drinks and friends. Tomorrow evening I may be hammering out a work trade arrangement with my yoga studio to help squeeze more classes into my tiny student budget. And Russell will be here to visit in less than three weeks, thank goodness.

I think that's all the news that's fit to print, but I'll try to be more diligent with the updates from now on. Take care, dear readers, and thanks for listening.

Hardly working

I've been waiting to post about my internships until I logged some time at both, which took a while because the second one started a week later than the first, after I got back from a long weekend in Florida. It was a great trip:

But even more exciting is the way my summer work is panning out. The two places I'm interning couldn't be more different, but I'm eating them both right up.

The first one, for instance, is a policy organization working to open financial institutions to immigrants and the poor. I share two rooms of a lovely downtown suite with one other intern and a fabulous female boss whose positivity, intellect, and rolodex are best described as superhuman. Her overriding concern is to provide me with a good experience (imagine that) so the four or five projects I've got going on any given day are varied, creative, and chosen to match my interests. And lunch dates with all manner of good Austin contacts are already in the works.

At the other place, a direct legal services office, I get a nice mix of legal research and client contact with reassuringly close supervision by a really acclaimed housing lawyer. If his sheer kinetic energy wasn't enough to keep me busy, working in a large bullpen with ten or so other interns would be. It's great to meet law students from all over, hear about their schools and projects with different teams around the office, and always have someone to commiserate about sad client stories or unproductive phone calls.

Were it not for getting up at the same time each day and having to drive at rush hour, this would barely feel like work at all. It's Saturday evening now, about mid-way through the weekend, and I'm actually a little bored. Looking forward to eight more weeks like this, I hope all you readers out there have the good luck to feel the same way.

A beginning

I start work at my first of two summer internships tomorrow! I just got back from having frozen yogurt at the shop down the street as a "last night of freedom" treat for myself. Now I plan to turn in early, read a little of my book, and try to make my early wake-up call tomorrow a bit easier. Having taken a few early yoga classes lately should also help, but I'm trying not to overestimate how much.

To give you an idea of what I'll be doing at work, here is my last post of the school year to Harvard's admissions blog:

http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/admissions/2010/05/26/summertime-lea-downey/

Wish me luck!

Better late...

Folks, I am so sorry not to have updated you on my big move and new life in Austin sooner! It's been delightfully eventful ever since finals slowly tapered off - not that I've been too busy to write, more that I've been just busy enough to want to spend my spend free time doing things that demand less mental energy than writing.

Like catching up on EVERY GOOD SHOW EVER on Hulu, because I have Internet but no TV here.

I also wanted to wait until the little apartment I'm subleasing here was ready for pictures! It came furnished, but sparsely, and luckily I've had the time to pour some serious energy into making it look cute without spending serious cash.

But first, a little something I put together to show you what an absolute nightmare it was getting from Boston to Austin this time around. Think mechanical delay, followed by cancellation, then a failed standby attempt, re-checking 115 pounds of luggage by myself, and almost six hours in the Boston airport:

Those are all the documents I was given in the course of trying to get here. Since you probably can't read them, they are: boarding passes from Boston to Dallas to Austin; luggage stickers and charge receipt for Boston to Dallas to Austin; an itinerary for Boston to Chicago to Austin; "priority verification" slips (whatever those are) and new luggage stickers for Boston to Chicago to Austin; and finally boarding passes for Boston to Chicago to Austin.

Hard to believe all that happened in one day - my mom says it wouldn't have if I hadn't cried.

Anyway, that's all behind me now, and here is the new place. The living room:

Kitchen area:

Bedroom, seen from the kitchen:

Back patio, seen from the bedroom:

And some touches I got cheap at Big Lots and Hobby Lobby to make the place feel a bit less naked:

I'm excited about spending three months here, and I'll certainly update you as things develop and my summer work begins!

Summer jobs and clerkships

I'm pretty glad I can re-post these things from Admissions instead of re-hashing them here. Excited as I'm getting about both, the process has been (or is about to get) a bit long and daunting, not the kind of story I'm dying to retell. But as you'll see, the news is mostly good:

http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/admissions/2010/04/02/private-sectorocs-week-lea-downey/

http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/admissions/2010/04/08/public-interest-week-lea-downey/

Before the storm

I know this post is a long time coming. But preparing for, then taking, and now recovering from a whirlwind Spring Break trip to Austin and El Paso has really stolen any time I would've had to sit down and write.

Fortunately, I've been getting all sorts of other important things done in the meantime. Most critically, while I left Cambridge with quite a lingering case of the New England Februaries, a week in the incomparable Texas sunshine has me feeling much more energized and ready to do what I need to in the last weeks of this semester.

Which is a lot. I fell behind in the readings for my Constitutional Law course leading up to the break (however entertaining the lectures were), so this weekend I've had to catch up in addition to reading for tomorrow's class. I can't let that happen again, or I'll wind up wasting time that I should spend studying for the exam just catching up. I also need to get started planning my final paper for Housing Law, but luckily I have an interesting topic in mind.

More immediately, this Tuesday will be my third workshop with the Boston teenagers I'm meeting through the RFK Children's Action Corps and my Community Action class. This is the single most exhausting thing I've got going this semester, but it's also the most fulfilling, so I hope to write a whole post about it sometime. For now, I'll just say that getting young people whose whole existence is so punitive just thinking and talking about ideas like justice can truly take your breath away, even if it's also a little like pulling teeth.

There's also work for TAP, which is steady and productive if sometimes disappointing. I'm ready to move on from a long-shot case that I recently assigned myself entirely out of sympathy for the delightful Haitian tenant, but (predictably, but no less regrettably) got word over the break that I'd lost. Lousy, but as in every case, I learned a lot and made someone feel supported in a difficult time, so I'm eager to try again.

Of course, all this - plus Corporations, my journal, and the first round of preparations to apply for judicial clerkships in the fall - has to wrap up in just over six weeks now! Luckily, in Austin I took care of one other big thing that was weighing on my mind: I found an apartment for the ten weeks I'll be there doing internships this summer. It's a kind of breezy one-bedroom in a cool neighborhood off North Lamar Boulevard, and it's making me long for summer even more (as if a dear friend's August wedding, in which I'll be a bridesmaid for the first time ever, weren't enough!)

Luckily, I think I have just enough steam to get there. Even with rain in the forecast through Wednesday.

Sports & admissions

My first post of the new year, capturing my life for the past few days surprisingly well:

http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/admissions/2010/01/03/suddenly-sports-fan/

Study observations

Exam time is nearly upon us, and for those of us who had multiple papers due throughout the last week of class, the accompanying stress level settled in long ago. The things I'm eager to blog about have slimmed down from long-winded stories to quick observations, and since these rarely seem worthy of their own post, I thought I'd compile a few:

• I've noticed that the more tired I become, the more my thoughts format themselves as Facebook status updates. For instance, "Lea Downey is infuriated that weather.com promised her 'breezy' today when it is clearly windy," or "Lea Downey once was lost, but now am blogging in bed with the cat."

• From a research study cited in a journal article I'm editing, I just learned that 84.2% of responding tenth-graders believed there was a serious risk of harm in taking heroin occasionally without a needle. Meaning 15.8% believed there was NO serious risk IN SNORTING HEROIN. Meaning I may need to adopt 15.8% of all tenth-graders.

• The more Russell and I miss Austin, the more enthusiastically we dive into any activity that helps us feel more connected to Texas - however much we may have shunned that same activity in the past. Last night I found myself unable to watch as Russell stood up and shouted at the television in the last second of the horrible, mistake-laden, comeback-taunting, heart-stopping, INFURIATING, but ultimately winning Big 12 Conference Championship football game against Nebraska. How did this happen? Did I actually come to Harvard and wind up LESS nerdy???

Well, that's it for now - if the fifty short-answer questions on my Evidence exam this coming Monday have anything to say about it. More soon, maybe about the lovely snow we got this weekend! In the meantime, hope all is well!

At it again

This gate on the undergraduate campus is a regular source of mushy, inspirational Harvard moments for me. With the school year finally starting and life kicking into full, brutal, can't-believe-I-forgot-how-hard-this-is gear, I find myself wishing education were always as dignified as these words!

I'd assumed my adjustment to school would be smoother the second year, but it hasn't exactly. Some things, like my speed getting through reading assignments, didn't come right back like I expected. Other things I figured would come later on the calendar, like the search for my next summer internship, have instead been pushed straight into these first few weeks.

So my 2L year so far has been insane! One appointment, meeting, errand, class, or study session after another, then another, then another. For a while I even attended two different Evidence courses because of some scheduling uncertainties that also prevented me from sharing my schedule with you until now. But those have been resolved (in a decision I might occasionally regret, an entertaining professor won out over having Fridays off) so here it finally is:

Monday:

9-12 Sex Equality with Catharine MacKinnon

Tuesday:

9-12 Sex Equality with MacKinnon

7-10 p.m. Community Action for Social and Economic Rights with Lucie White

Wednesday:

10:20-12 Sex Equality with MacKinnon

Thursday:

9:50-11:20 a.m. Evidence with Alex Whiting

5-7 p.m. The Art of Social Change: Education, Child Welfare, and Juvenile Justice with Elizabeth Bartholet

Friday:

9:50-11:20 a.m. Evidence with Whiting

It's downright gentle compared with last year, but with everything else added, there's nearly as much to stress and overwhelm me this time around. And if I weren't careful, there would be a lot less excitement to counterbalance all that. Luckily, there's a certain excitement in having a friend in her first year - it's part commiseration, part vicarious glee over famous professors and first cold-calls, and part gratitude I'm not in her place any longer!

So I'm sorry for all I've left out of this post, from career advising and all my incredible professors, to video chats with Mom and my incredible, TALKING baby sister, to our lovely Labor Day in the grass on campus and the gorgeous cool weather we're having. But I'm so insanely busy, and there's only more to come: new TAP cases, new duties at my journal, the public interest career fair I'm set to attend...

Maybe I'll manage to post it all during my visit to Austin next week? Because I already CANNOT WAIT for the free time. Until then, dear readers, take care. I hope all is well with you!

Finally

It's official: I am THROUGH with my 1L year at Harvard Law School!

Truth be told, I have no idea how to feel about this. It's been trickling toward completion for so long- classes ending in April and exams spread over two weeks, half my classmates already done because they weren't going out for Law Review, and everyone leaving Cambridge at different times- that I have trouble believing it's really over this time.

At 1:30 on Saturday, I handed my competition materials over to the Law Review people in a small classroom in Hauser Hall. Suddenly, I was done with 1L year for good- but I couldn't really go anywhere, because one of my classmates was using my USB drive to print his case comment and another, who realized at the last second she didn't have any Crimson Cash to pay the Copy Center, was borrowing my Harvard ID. So I picked a table outside the deserted Harkness Commons, put up my feet, and waited in sunshiny peace.

Not too much later, my friends had turned in their competition packets too, and it hit all of us how long it had been since we last ate. So we headed for lunch at Cambridge Common, a good nearby pub with great outdoor seating. Three hours, one beer, and two glasses of sangria later, I was sitting in the grass of Harvard Yard with Phil, the one who'd used my USB, talking through the competition and our summer plans, when his excellent wife showed up with more beer and a frisbee. We threw it around for a while in JFK park, where we figured Harvard Police were less on the lookout for public drinking. When they needed to leave for a friend's graduation party, I headed home for a movie, late dinner, and much-needed early bedtime. The things you can do with an afternoon of honest-to-god freedom.

Since then, I've had one day in Cambridge- mostly spent entertaining some visiting friends from undergrad, which was great- and one in transit to Austin, with tex-mex and an Alamo Drafthouse movie on arrival. And presently, I'm sitting in the sun on my mom's gorgeous patio, waiting for my laundry to finish, making plans by text message with a couple of friends I'm attempting to see on this visit. The freedom to do these things is so unfamiliar (literally, the last time I was in Austin without bringing work along from Cambridge, this blog didn't exist) that I'm not even sure I'm completely enjoying it yet. When is the other shoe going to drop?

The answer, probably, is next Monday. That's when my internship starts, and I'll only have Sunday back in Cambridge to prepare for it. But even that- a normal, nine-to-five job with real weekends and no fifty-page reading assignments cutting into dinner- is going to be so different from the last nine months that I barely know what to think about it. Except that I think it'll be pretty great.

Best. Spring break. Ever.

It's Tuesday morning, and here I am, reminiscing about my wonderful spring break rather than doing the mountain of work I have due in the next few days. Along with napping, this seems to be my activity of choice lately- I always have such a hard time readjusting to life after Texas! As one friend put it on Facebook, "Work? Pffft... where are my chips and salsa?"

Of course, it hasn't all been chips and salsa since I last wrote. For one thing, I accepted a summer internship! It seems best not to tell you which one, since confidentiality eventually comes into almost anything legal, and I don't want to be kept mum all summer by something I disclosed now. I'll just say that I'm very relieved to have chosen and very excited about my prospects for summer- the work seems both interesting and important.

I also spent a chunk of spring break poring over my application to the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau (HLAB), our big student-run clinic for people who can't afford needed legal services. Alumni of the group include such rock stars as Michelle Obama, Supreme Court Justice Brennan, and Governor Deval Patrick, so I think it would be very exciting to join. But I'll also apply for the Law Review in May (you can't do both) and see where I come out.

Finally, our moot court competition is really heating up: my opponents' briefs were due this morning and (to mimic the way real court documents are filed) our side's response is due next Monday. My partner and I spent a lot of time tweaking our draft over break, trying to slim the page number down to the limit, but we're still about a quarter-page over and really hope our opponents leave out some argument so we can do the same! I'll find out when I pick up a copy in just a few hours- wish us luck.

All this activity is such a change from spring break, which I mostly spent hanging out with mom, catching up with friends and enjoying my wonderful baby sister. Don't worry- I remembered to take plenty of video and wouldn't dare hold out on you!

Perfect, I know! I already can't wait to be back there. But for now, it's back to the daily grind. At least I have my dreams of summer, my birthday this Friday night, and the ice cream at this afternoon's Law Review info session to get me through.

A shot in the arm

Well, I've been intending to follow that last, very sad post with a happier one almost since the moment I wrote it. I apologize for taking so long to get around to it! Even now, I only have about 15 minutes before class. But I wanted to let you all know that I'm feeling much better.

One reason is that my lovely friend Anush, whom I mentioned a few posts back when she had just been admitted to HLS, was in town the past few days for Admitted Students Weekend. She was a delightful houseguest, and Russell and I had a grand time convincing her to come here (mostly by showing her our favorite places to eat and shop- Harvard itself took care of the rest!) 

Better yet, seeing HLS through Anush's eyes for a few days put me through a kind of law school renaissance. Her enjoyment of my Leadership in the Public Sector class, which she visited Monday, made me feel newly lucky to be in such a fun, engaging course. And her nervous questions about the Socratic method reminded me what a rush it was to speak up in class or get an answer right for the first time. Remembering that has made these past few days almost as fun as my first week here.

This feeling couldn't have come at a better time, because classes have gone on just a little too long without a break, and everyone here is beginning to burn out. I remember thinking early last week, "I am never going to make it to spring break if I'm this checked-out already!" Yet here I am, just three days away from a nonstop flight to Austin, and El Paso after that. 

I'll have plenty of work to bring with me, of course. (Would this be Harvard if I didn't?) But the freedom to schedule it around plenty of sleep, warm weather, Alamo Drafthouse trips, tex-mex, and quality time with my mom, dad, and baby sister sounds downright miraculous right about now. 

Until then, the afterglow of a wonderful visit from a friend ought to carry me through. The tulips blooming in my neighbor's flower bed aren't bad either- perhaps spring is finally coming to Boston, and by the time I return from break, I'll be able to put the winter coats away! 

There's a cheery thought.

Bad week for new classes

Well, it finally happened: school days are here again.

Time for a new schedule, new professors, and four new courses: Property, Criminal Law, Public International Law, and Leadership in the Public Sector. Unfortunately, it's been a pretty bad week for starting new things.

The other night, I got a call from Mom saying that my dog back home, Tucker, is sick again and won't be getting better. I won't dwell on this too long, because it's too sad- I'll just say that it's cancer in her lungs this time, and they aren't pursuing treatment, but it seems to be growing slowly and in locations that are only causing a dry cough, no pain or discomfort so far. So we think a few months should pass before the worst happens. If you could shoot a prayer or two our way in the meantime, I'd sure appreciate it.

To make matters worse, we got hit with an ugly storm this week that made me hate New England weather for the first time since moving here. It snowed copiously all Wednesday morning, which was fine until it switched to rain in the afternoon, so everything was covered in mud, slush, and ice as slick as glass. So, you guessed it- I slipped and took a big, nasty fall on my way home from school, coming up drenched and crying. Russell had to come rescue me with an umbrella- it was awful, and the sidewalks have only gotten a little less treacherous since.

Finally, I had kind of a mishap with the start of my Public International Law class. The website where Harvard posts our schedules had it listed as starting next week, with our other electives, but I found out (after class Thursday morning had started without me) that this was a mistake, and it actually started this week. So I was absent the first day of class- way to make a lousy impression!

Fortunately, that seems to have been the end of my bad luck. The sun came out today, and I started hearing stories of other students who took bad spills or missed their first international elective just like me. I caught up on the really copious reading for mine just in time, and the professor was very gracious when I spoke to him today about my mistake. Great guy, I can already tell.

I'm just as excited about my Criminal Law professor, who according to my WLA Big Sis is one of the foremost experts in the field. He's also a charming and dynamic lecturer, so his course should be a perfect replacement for my beloved Torts. I even stayed after class today, listening for nearly 40 minutes while he fielded questions and shared his ideas about race and crime. It made an excellent end to a tough week, reminding me why I'm glad to be at Harvard.

I guess that's a good place to leave off for now, especially since Battlestar Galactica is about to come on! I'll write again soon to fill you in on my other classes. So far Property just seems like a dry, but not miserable cross between Torts and Contracts (whoops, I may have just told you everything there is to say about it!) but Leadership in the Public Sector should be more exciting. I hope you're all having a better week than me, and that you enjoy your weekend as much as I plan to!

The last week

I'm sitting in the basement of Austin Hall, where the TAP office is, waiting to see if my partner wants to make a quick phone call to our client. We finally visited the Boston Housing Authority yesterday, where sadly we found nothing we could use to revive his application for a transfer. Hopefully we can help him to start a new one, though, and avoid the mistakes that caused the last one to fail.

They say if you don't like Massachusetts weather, you can just wait 10 minutes. That has definitely held true over the past week. We made yesterday's trek to the BHA in pouring rain and bizarrely high temperatures- over 60 degrees- when just this Monday it was 15 degrees on my way to school, and Sunday it was snowing. That was beautiful, but it feels like a year ago- we've had spring and autumn all over again since! Today it's still raining, but back down to about 30. Forecasts are mixed on whether we'll see snow again before I leave for home, and I'm really hoping so- I could use some more practice to help avoid a nasty shock when I get back!

I'm trying to cope well with this being the last week of classes, but I'm not having much success. At any given moment, I'm at one of two polar extremes: either checked-out and slacking off entirely, or studious in a "for old times' sake" kind of way and downright emotional about leaving my first-semester professors and coursework behind. I suspect this feeling will last until I get back to Austin and the steady toil of exam preparation begins. For now, I'm just not ready to let go- or move on to the next task, either.

Meanwhile, the atmosphere around school has gotten really nice. The tension has gone down in the library as 2nd and 3rd-years are wrapping up their exams and 1st-years aren't yet getting started. Egg nog and holiday cookies circulated during our last session of Legal Research and Writing. And all our professors have had wise and wonderful advice to impart at the end of their last lectures; my favorite was probably our Leg Reg professor/section leader, who said the two best tests of whether your life has meaning are how you feel about your work when you first wake up in the morning, and how you feel about the people you're with during dinner.

Together the section put together a thank-you gift for him: a framed statute filled with punny legal jargon and memories from the semester. It's mostly inside jokes, but I thought I'd share it anyway so you can see what legal/comic geniuses we are:


The Legislation and Regulation Act of 2008
An Act
To Recognize Administration of §7 by Professor Todd D. Rakoff

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of §7 in Harvard Law School assembled,

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE; TABLE OF CONTENTS
(a) SHORT TITLE--This Act may be cited as the "Rakoff Act.”
(b) TABLE OF CONTENTS--
Sec. 1. Short title; Table of Contents
Sec. 2. Findings and Purposes
TITLE I—GENERAL AUTHORITY
Sec. 101. Definitions
Sec. 102. Administrator
TITLE II—CLASSROOM ADMINISTRATION
Sec. 201. Timing of Class
Sec. 202. Other Powers and Duties
TITLE III—CASEBOOK
Sec. 301. Drafting
Sec. 302. Promulgation

SECTION 2. FINDINGS AND PURPOSES
(a) FINDINGS. §7 finds that—
(1) There is in fact A Time For Every Purpose, and there must be both Law and a Balance of Life.
(2) Professor Todd Rakoff (Harvard University B.A. 1967, Social Studies; Oxford University B.Phil. 1969, Political Philosophy; University of Pennsylvania M.S.Ed. 1971, Urban Education; Harvard Law School J.D. 1975) has provided excellent guidance to the students of §7.
(b) PURPOSES. The purpose of this act is to give official recognition to said guidance by Professor Rakoff and to cement his authority as fearless leader of §7.

TITLE I—GENERAL AUTHORITY
SEC. 101. DEFINITIONS
As used in this title:
(1) KNIT TIES.—The term "knit tie" means neckwear, made by interlacing yarn in a series of connected loops, forming a narrow piece of material worn under a collar and knotted at the front.
(2) JAWBONING.—The term "to jawbone" means to perform any act or to foreclose any inaction upon a geegaw.
(3) GEEGAW.—The term "geegaw" refers to any object that has been lawfully jawboned according to paragraph (2).
(4) MILKSHAKE.—The term "milkshake" means a blended beverage made with ice cream.
(5) ICE CREAM.—The term "ice cream" shall not be construed to mean a jug of milk frozen solid.
(6) THE ADMINISTRATOR.—The term "administrator" means the administrator of administrative administrations.
(7) LATE.—The term "late" is defined as any moment in time on or after that chosen by the Administrator to be the time of commencement for class, pursuant to §201(a).
(8) UMPIRE'S STANCE.—The term "Umpire's Stance" refers to a gentle forward-leaning posture, preferably assumed near an unsuspecting student, with hands placed on the knees or lifted to cup behind the ears.

SEC. 102. THE ADMINISTRATOR
(a) The Administrator shall have the authority to alter, revise, or completely redefine any term listed in Definitions section. In making such modifications, he may consider:
(1) Local jargon/dialect unknown to students, such as "frappe."
(2) Any other factors the Administrator considers appropriate.

TITLE II—CLASSROOM OVERSIGHT
SEC. 201. TIMING OF CLASS
(a) IN GENERAL—The Administrator may freely alter the time that class commences and concludes, provided that—
(1) Such an alteration is not arbitrary and capricious, the determination of which shall not receive judicial review.
(2) Notice is provided (of the alteration of commencement only.)
(b) There is no private right of action for students to challenge the Administrator’s determination on this matter.
(c) REMEDIES— Should students arrive late:
(1) Late students are entitled, at Administrator's discretion, to an off-the-record informal adjudication before the Administrator but may not be accorded due process or judicial review in a court of the United States or of the states or territories therein.
(2) Remedies available to the Administrator to address incidences of lateness shall include the opportunity to notice and comment.

SEC. 202. OTHER POWERS AND DUTIES
(a) IN GENERAL— The Administrator shall have the power to take additional actions at his discretion, such as:
(1) Declaring, irrespective of student opinion, that certain foods such as pomegranates are not sweet.
(2) Dividing the class into opposing counsel and justices at will.
(b) LIMITATIONS— The Administrator shall also be subject to and legally bound by the following provisions:
(1) The Administrator shall not have the power to prevent students from imitating his style of dress on Halloween.
(2) All notice and comment sessions require assumption of the Umpire's Stance.
(3) Any ties worn by the Administrator that are not knit must be in a paisley print that appears to be leopard print from a distance.

TITLE III—CASEBOOK
SEC. 301. DRAFTING.
(a) The Administrator shall promulgate and publish a casebook to contain a brief and concise statement on the state of administrative law and the basis and purpose thereof.
(b) The Administrator shall, at stated times and upon his discretion, publish subsequent editions and supplements thereof.

SEC. 302. PROMULGATON.
(a) The Administrator may charge students a nominal fee in exchange for the casebook, editions, and supplements as described in §301(a) and §301(b), provided that—
(1) Such a transaction not occur directly between the Administrator and students, but rather through The Commission of Onerous and Obligatory Payments (The COOP).
(2) No newly printed copies of the casebook are ever furnished, sold, or transferred to any student.


Yep, we're pretty impressive. I guess I'll leave you with that for today, but expect another update before I head home- I've got to fill you in once I figure out what to do with my time in the absence of classes! Love to all, and I'll see many of you very soon!