Obligatory finals post

So it seems like I should report back on finals while it's still the same year I took them, right? I apologize for taking so long already, but as you can imagine, I really needed a break. They were pretty brutal, since I hadn't taken so many in so short a time since 1L year.

The first one was Taxation, preparing for which could have been much worse, since our professor released model answers for several of her past exams to help check our work. I also had a friend in the class to meet and go over one of them. So the difficult part was balancing that with Environmental Law, which I had to study at the same time because the exam was only a day later.

The Tax exam was fair and not too long to complete in time, which is always my biggest fear with the three-hour, in-class format. I did have a minor heart attack when one of the questions centered around a term I didn't even remotely recognize. But after I skipped it and came back at the end, I was lucky enough to find it in the index of the case book, so I could quickly read up and write what I think was an adequate answer. It's hard to be sure, but I didn't feel too panicked as I submitted my exam and headed out to lunch with some classmates.

Environmental Law was a lot tougher, mostly because it lasted eight hours, every minute of which was needed to work out the answers and then cut them back to fit the extremely tight word limit. The professor hadn't released model answers, but to go over each past exam, I met with the most outrageously brilliant study group you could ever want: three members of this year's winning Ames Moot Court team and two Law Review editors, one of them the President. I went into the exam fairly confident, partly because I'd more or less held my own among those geniuses and partly because I'd learned so much each time they'd caught things I hadn't. The real challenge was just to keep going the whole time at enough of a pace to cover everything important.

I had two days off after that, and I made sure to spend the first one relaxing to avoid burnout. I did some Christmas shopping, watched some TV shows I had missed while studying, and tried to catch up on sleep and healthy food. Then I got started studying for Administrative Law.

That exam took three hours on a Friday morning, and I felt about as ready as I could be, although I never quite know how to prepare for that professor's exams. I think he makes the questions vague on purpose, which I can respect, since it must lead to more varied answers and less tedious grading. But between that and not having model answers, I couldn't be entirely sure what he'd want, so I just had to do my best and take my chances.

That was probably a good last exam to have, since it dialed down the intensity of my studying a little toward the end, and I was able just to write for three hours and walk away without much to dissect. I had a long lunch at Cambridge Common with friends, headed home to watch the original Tron online in preparation for a Tron Legacy showing downtown that night, and pretty much called it a semester.

Now, I don't want to jinx anything, but I'm hoping those were the last exams I'll ever take in law school. There might be one more, depending on my spring classes - all but one of which are currently seminars and obscure electives with paper assignments instead of exams - and how much finagling I'm willing to do to change that last one to match the rest. Either way, the prospect that this was my last jam-packed and stressful finals season is pretty incredible. Even at my most fearful about leaving school and entering the real world once and for all, that's one part I think I can happily do without.

Go west, young girl

I'm in El Paso at the moment, getting ready for a family visit to the historic village of Old Mesilla, New Mexico, and wondering at what a difference six months makes. My sister has changed from a toddler into a full-fledged little kid since I last saw her, which sadly was all the way back in June, around her second birthday, since all the time and money I've had for travel since then has gone into trips to Austin for job interviews and my mom's surgery.

She's still about as contrary, mischievous, and temperamental as anybody under age three, so of course I look forward to this phase being over. But I also can't believe how much is going on in terms of her cognition and verbal skills right now. She can sound out basic words with just a little help, and she recognizes some of her favorites, like the D-O-R-A of Dora the Explorer, on sight.

She's also downright conversational. Pointing at different parts of a toy bracelet she got for Christmas, she'll tell me, "I like the butterfly, I like the pink, and I like that, because that is light blue." Watching a TV show on her favorite channel, Sprout: "Did you see his girlfriend walking there? He has a girlfriend." Later, when the characters arrive at daycare: "They're gonna take a nap." Then again, her favorite words are "I don't want to," which I think we all wish we could go back and make sure she never learned.

It's crazy, as everyone in the family asks for updates about school and congratulates me on my upcoming graduation, to think that all this development in Mirella has happened since my first visit to Cambridge to pick out an apartment for law school. I once heard J.K. Rowling, the author of the Harry Potter series, refer to one of her books as her daughter's "ink-and-paper twin" because it was largely written during her pregnancy. I feel kind of the same way about my legal career and my sister, which were both in their infancy at the same time.

On a side note, Christmas was great, especially all the presents from my mom designed to help me develop a professional wardrobe. There's a particular ochre-colored top from J. Crew that I hope I have the restraint to keep in nice shape until my clerkship.

For now, I'm off to New Mexico, but I promise to post again soon with the promised updates about exams, classes, et cetera. Happy New Year, everyone!

Freedom!!!

There were times when I literally thought this would never happen, but it finally has: I am 100% FINISHED with final exams and free to enjoy TWO FULL WEEKS with almost no responsibilities whatsoever!!

The first two days since exams wrapped up have been surprisingly busy, since I put off several things for my journal until I'd finished testing, plus needed to get out and Christmas shop for anyone whose gift I wanted to buy before leaving Cambridge. We're also lending our apartment to some friends upstairs whose parents will be visiting while we're in Austin, so that requires some cleaning. They've asked us over for wine and egg nog tonight in gratitude (although I don't know why - they're looking after Ramona in this process, which is such a relief for us), so predictably I'm baking. Wish me luck getting the sugar crackle on top of my turnover recipe to turn red and green for the season.

I promise to post soon with a report on exams, my incredibly exciting, far-too-jam-packed, how-will-I-ever-decide-what-to-drop course schedule for next semester, and more. Right now, I have got to start packing for our flight tomorrow evening. Packing for a month-long trip the same day as the flight does not seem advisable, and since I ACTUALLY HAVE TIME TO DO OTHERWISE, I plan to take advantage!

Correction

"Crunch" doesn't even begin to cover it.

The entirety of my free time in the past week has consisted of:

• Watching the first 45 minutes of "The Lives of Others," our latest DVD from Netflix, while eating dinner Monday night. (I still haven't managed to watch the rest of it.)
• Letting The Biggest Loser play in the background while folding laundry and booking holiday travel on Tuesday night.
• Joining friends for trivia at a local pub for two whole hours last night.

I've spent literally every other moment of every day either in class or some other school function, reading or otherwise preparing for class or final exams, trying to wrap up TAP cases for the semester, or proofreading articles for my journal (by far the most time consuming of all.)

I guess I'm grateful to be getting enough sleep, but I also think it says something about the energy-intensiveness (and/or tediousness) of these tasks that I absolutely cannot drag myself out of bed before 8 a.m. or keep my eyes open past 1 a.m. each day.

I can't remember any other time quite like this, even during 1L year. Last night I couldn't shut up about how tired I am, not caring whether I bored my friends. I considered it a huge relief to take an hour out of yesterday afternoon and wash the dishes I'd been letting pile up in our sink all week. The dishes! My least favorite chore in the universe! I set my computer to play the most recent episode of "Glee" and barely noticed whether it was any good, my brain zoned out so completely.

I guess this is the deep, deep hole I dug for myself by taking charge of the technical editing department of a law journal, fully aware of my own extreme perfectionist tendencies. Doing it in the same semester when I'd need to take a week off school to tend to family didn't help, either.

So I apologize if my blogging suffers as I trudge through this. After I die of exhaustion, I promise to post more from beyond the grave.

Crunch 'n munch

Whew, what a crazy couple of weeks. On top of the usual academic struggles, a growing case load at TAP, and the beginning of the busiest time of the semester for my department at my journal, I had to get ready for two visits from relatives really deserving of a fun time in Cambridge.

Last week it was my cousin Marcella, a freshman with a ridiculously difficult major at a prestigious college that barely lets her out of the science lab. She came just in time for the premiere of the new Harry Potter movie and the Harvard-Yale football game, so we joined some friends for both of those, then checked out the Harvard Museum of Natural History, walked Boston Common and the historic Beacon Hill neighborhood, and window-shopped on Newbury Street before sending her home.

Three days later, we welcomed Russell's cousin Becca, who has the thankless job of teaching special education at an elementary school back in Texas. After bringing her to one of my law school classes and giving her the grand tour of Harvard, we took her to the Common and Newbury Street too (although we shopped a lot more than just windows.) Then she joined us for Thanksgiving dinner with friends, several culinary firsts from Mr. Bartley's hamburgers to tapas and Vietnamese coffee, and finally a tour of Fenway Park that we all agreed was downright magical.

Unfortunately, with the exception of a few delicious leftovers, the fun is pretty much over now. It's high time I buckled down and started preparing for exams, even though there is still plenty to distract me, from my journal (did I mention it's our busiest time of semester?) to my classes for next spring (for the 4+ available hours in my schedule, I can't for the life of me decide which combination of "Capital Punishment in America," "Law and Mind Sciences: Seminar," "Workshop on Law and Social Policy," and "Class Actions and Other Aggregate Litigation" to take!)

Luckily, my independent winter clinical proposal has been approved, so that hassle is finished as soon as I drop by the Clinicals office to sign some paperwork. But whether it's enough to make room for all the finals studying I need to do, we'll just have to see. Wish me luck, and happy belated Thanksgiving!

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.

Killer weekend

It's early evening on Sunday, and I haven't done one thing to prepare for Admin or Environmental Law tomorrow morning. What's more, I have no real intention of doing so with what's left of this evening. Instead, I've been doing things a whole lot more conducive to my general well-being than studying, like baking things from scratch and getting the apartment ready for some friends to come over for Halloween.

Are you asking what happened to the Type A personality that got me to Harvard in the first place? Do I have to turn in my credentials as The Girl Who Freaked Out More About Possible Academic Consequences of a Recent Family Emergency Than the Actual Emergency? Do you feel like my aunt, who commented on my Facebook post about all the baking I was doing, "Aren't you supposed to be studying?"

I guess the answer is that everyone needs a break sometimes. I was an absolute zombie this past week, no pun intended, and it was clearly because I didn't use last weekend to decompress after the intensity of catching up at school. And I'd rather be a bit unprepared tomorrow than let that happen again.

So the weekend looked like this: Russell and I went to Target on Friday evening, partly to stock up for Halloween and partly to wander the aisles looking at bedding, winter boots, and Legos. (Can you guess which one of us cared about which?) On Saturday, we bundled up and walked down to the Square for lunch at Clover, a new vegetarian food-truck-turned-cafe, before buying some groceries for all the cooking I had planned.

First, as dinner for myself, Russell, and a friend we invited over, there was my first-ever batch of homemade pasta (an enormous hassle I won't repeat until we have a Cuisinart mixer and pasta machine, but pretty awesome to have successfully made) with butternut squash filling and brussels sprouts. Then I helped our friend with the crust for a pumpkin pie he wanted to make for our party.

The whole evening was a lovely prelude to today, when we used the party as pretext to give every square inch of the apartment the thorough cleaning it desperately needed. We always grumble a lot while doing this, but when the place feels amazing afterward and won't need it again for weeks or months, we know it was completely worth it. We also decorated a little, brushed the cat several times in hopes of helping an allergic friend enjoy the party, and baked almost four dozen of my favorite chocolate chip cookies in the world.

Now it's almost time for our guests to start showing up, and I can hardly wait to carve pumpkins, play video games, drink beer and eat baked goods, and ultimately gather around the premiere of the new zombie TV drama The Walking Dead with them. As one friend of ours (who is coming tonight despite an 8 a.m. midterm tomorrow) puts it, sometimes bad life choices are the best.