I probably shouldn't be blogging.
I should probably be reading the 12,000 pages we have covered so far for my Fourteenth Amendment class. Or at least attempting to understand what the heck some of the words on the pages of the thick book mean. Maybe if I was doing that, I would be more prepared to sit in on yet another impossible-to-understand conversation on Monday with 50 of my closest friends and a professor who I'm pretty sure dislikes me, although I can't figure out why.
I should probably be working on my never-ending contracts paper that I started exactly one year ago with the intention of publishing with my professor but which has changed so much as it has basically switched topics every 12 minutes for the last 365 days. Maybe if I was working on that paper, I would finally get something published before I head off into the real world in just a few short months.
I should probably be working on the case that Jeff and I have to present in DC ten days from now. Or at least I should be reading through the materials so I can get an idea of what the heck we're going to be doing in some courtroom with incredibly well-prepared teams from all over the country. Maybe if I was doing that, I would actually start to feel confident about representing the school instead of how I'm feeling right now--overwhelmed.
I should probably be working on my moot court argument that I have to deliver in New York just two weeks after I return from DC in the national competition. Maybe if I was doing that, I wouldn't feel so guilty after talking up how much effort I was going to put into the competition for over year.
I should probably be working on my bar application; frantically trying to track down the address to every place I've ever lived or seen or thought about; digging through every single record of everything I've done and everything anyone I've ever know has ever done and meticulously documenting it on the 15 billion page bar application. Maybe if I was doing that, I would be less stressed about the looming March 1st bar application deadline which seems to require everything short of offering up my second-born in some cultish blood sacrifice (they do require the first-born), but instead I watch the ticking-clock and wonder when I'm going to have time to care about any of it in the next 30 days.
I should probably be working on my journal assignments, pouring over pages and pages of tedious editing. Maybe if I was doing that I would actually get a journal assignment done before midnight of the day it is due.
I should probably be reading for all of my Monday classes.
I should probably be answering overdue emails.
I should probably be working on a research assignment for work that I need to have done early Tuesday morning.
I should probably be out attempting to have a social life so my friends and family will stop feeling the need to pray for me.
I should probably be running because once again I've committed to a marathon just a few months from now without thinking about when I might train for it.
I should probably be trying to figure out what I'm going to do with the rest of my life, since graduation is approaching and clerkships don't last forever.
I should probably be cooking something for the event I'm about to head to as I promised a couple of weeks ago to cook something for the event I'm about to head to.
I should probably be sleeping, as there has been far too little of that in the last three years.
I should probably be figuring out what I should probably be doing the most right now.
But instead I'm blogging. Oh well. None of this has killed me yet.
~It Just Gets Stranger
Saturday, January 29, 2011
Monday, January 17, 2011
Public Transportation
Last September I had a new little addition come into my life: the regular use of the state's public transportation. I live in Provo and go to school full-time while trying to continue my job part-time in Salt Lake City, which entails about an hour long commute. Not wanting to make that drive two times per week, I got a heavily discounted student bus pass and decided I was going to finally start using public transportation.
This would not be the first time that I had ridden public transportation, but just the first time that I had done so with any regularity in Utah. When I lived in Ukraine and Russia, I practically gave a kidney to public transportation services (not because they were dangerous, but because we were so close). And I had an absolute love/hate relationship with public transportation in those two countries. On more than one occasion in Ukraine I climbed aboard a bus/van/metro that was so crowded that I could literally lift my feet off the ground while standing, and not fall. My friends and I used to play our favorite Eastern European game, "how many people am I touching" whenever public transport was especially crowded. I think the highest count I ever had was 11. If you happen to have 11 people in the room with you right now, smash your bodies together and see if you can comfortably touch all of them at the same time (this way you'll truly understand just how impressive my record is). Add to the amount of bodies pressed firmly against every angle of my own, standing on my feet, touching my face, crawling between my legs, etc., the smells of 1500 people all mixed together, and you've got a pretty accurate picture of a typical ride on Eastern European public transportation. (Smells included: vodka, body odor, vodka, leather, poop, borsch, vodka, cigarettes, halitosis, vodka, and dirt).
So purchasing a public transportation pass in Utah produced some anxiety for me, as I was somewhat convinced that my experiences would be much the same as in Eastern Europe. Not necessarily disappointed but somewhat underwhelmed in my never ending quest for strange experiences, I quickly found that my public transportation experience in Utah is full of annoying, but mostly sans bizarre. This is mostly because I seem to take the LDS church-office-building bus to and from Salt Lake which is full of relatively well-mannered and nicely-dressed older people who are all cross-stitching inspirational quotes onto pillows, writing in their journals, and talking with one another quietly about how to get grass stains out of pants. Compare that to somewhat similar experiences I've had on the Moscow metro where instead of inspirational quotes onto pillows the needle transcribed obscenities onto skin, instead of journals the writing went onto the side of the car, and the grass-stain conversation was actually about blood, and this seems like a relatively calm commute.
So calm, in fact, that I seem to have stopped paying attention to what is going on, which has unfortunately led to two transportation mishaps recently:
On New Years Eve my friend Jason and I decided to ride trax downtown to meet up with some friends and have the time of our lives despite the 6 degree Fahrenheit weather. Knowing that the last trax cars stopped running just after 1:00 AM, we quickly boarded the train after celebrating midnight and coming up with one or two New Years resolutions that we have no intention of keeping. Apparently we thought that there was only one train, going one way, and that that way was the way we needed to go, because we didn't bother checking the giant bright sign on the side of the car, electronically indicating that it was headed for the University, the exact opposite way we needed to go. And unfortunately, although both Salt Lake Valley natives, we didn't notice that the train was headed for the hills (literally) and not for our homes until WAY later than we should have. After getting dropped off in the middle of nowhere (and you would think that "the middle of nowhere" doesn't exist in the city; but it does. And we found it) we waited and wandered in the freezing weather, knowing it was quite possible that we could die in the middle of our home town because of the cold. This was HIGHLY disappointing to me as I have always pictured my death to be incredibly dramatic (like getting stoned to death in South America while leading a mult-million member revolution, NOT freezing to death in the middle of America's safest city because I'm too incompetent at age 26 to figure out how to use the world's least complicated public transport system). Eventually Jason called his parents who picked us up in front of a sketchy all-night diner. It was middle school all over again. Except with fewer hormones.
Then Thursday happened. I fell asleep on the bus and woke up riding around the middle of the city. As is usually the case when one wakes up from a deep sleep, everything seemed like a much bigger deal to me than it might in the middle of the day. So, naturally, when I opened my eyes and hadn't yet processed where I was or what had happened, something instinctively told me that everything was wrong and I (very unfortunately) yelled out a somewhat long and incredibly loud "NOOOOO!!!!" I was, of course, in the very back of the crowded bus, and got to watch all 75 heads turn from the cross-stitching to look at me. I hit the bus stop button without even knowing whether I had reached my stop yet, willing to walk up to 500 miles if I had to, just to get off that bus as soon as possible. Unfortunately it took over five minutes for the driver to get to a bus stop. And by the time he did stop and I had to make my walk up past the curious passengers, I had realized that my stop was several ago (having missed it during my sleep). I was slightly late to work that day. And I'm now thinking of wearing a disguise to keep anyone from recognizing me tomorrow.
~It Just Gets Stranger
This would not be the first time that I had ridden public transportation, but just the first time that I had done so with any regularity in Utah. When I lived in Ukraine and Russia, I practically gave a kidney to public transportation services (not because they were dangerous, but because we were so close). And I had an absolute love/hate relationship with public transportation in those two countries. On more than one occasion in Ukraine I climbed aboard a bus/van/metro that was so crowded that I could literally lift my feet off the ground while standing, and not fall. My friends and I used to play our favorite Eastern European game, "how many people am I touching" whenever public transport was especially crowded. I think the highest count I ever had was 11. If you happen to have 11 people in the room with you right now, smash your bodies together and see if you can comfortably touch all of them at the same time (this way you'll truly understand just how impressive my record is). Add to the amount of bodies pressed firmly against every angle of my own, standing on my feet, touching my face, crawling between my legs, etc., the smells of 1500 people all mixed together, and you've got a pretty accurate picture of a typical ride on Eastern European public transportation. (Smells included: vodka, body odor, vodka, leather, poop, borsch, vodka, cigarettes, halitosis, vodka, and dirt).
So purchasing a public transportation pass in Utah produced some anxiety for me, as I was somewhat convinced that my experiences would be much the same as in Eastern Europe. Not necessarily disappointed but somewhat underwhelmed in my never ending quest for strange experiences, I quickly found that my public transportation experience in Utah is full of annoying, but mostly sans bizarre. This is mostly because I seem to take the LDS church-office-building bus to and from Salt Lake which is full of relatively well-mannered and nicely-dressed older people who are all cross-stitching inspirational quotes onto pillows, writing in their journals, and talking with one another quietly about how to get grass stains out of pants. Compare that to somewhat similar experiences I've had on the Moscow metro where instead of inspirational quotes onto pillows the needle transcribed obscenities onto skin, instead of journals the writing went onto the side of the car, and the grass-stain conversation was actually about blood, and this seems like a relatively calm commute.
So calm, in fact, that I seem to have stopped paying attention to what is going on, which has unfortunately led to two transportation mishaps recently:
On New Years Eve my friend Jason and I decided to ride trax downtown to meet up with some friends and have the time of our lives despite the 6 degree Fahrenheit weather. Knowing that the last trax cars stopped running just after 1:00 AM, we quickly boarded the train after celebrating midnight and coming up with one or two New Years resolutions that we have no intention of keeping. Apparently we thought that there was only one train, going one way, and that that way was the way we needed to go, because we didn't bother checking the giant bright sign on the side of the car, electronically indicating that it was headed for the University, the exact opposite way we needed to go. And unfortunately, although both Salt Lake Valley natives, we didn't notice that the train was headed for the hills (literally) and not for our homes until WAY later than we should have. After getting dropped off in the middle of nowhere (and you would think that "the middle of nowhere" doesn't exist in the city; but it does. And we found it) we waited and wandered in the freezing weather, knowing it was quite possible that we could die in the middle of our home town because of the cold. This was HIGHLY disappointing to me as I have always pictured my death to be incredibly dramatic (like getting stoned to death in South America while leading a mult-million member revolution, NOT freezing to death in the middle of America's safest city because I'm too incompetent at age 26 to figure out how to use the world's least complicated public transport system). Eventually Jason called his parents who picked us up in front of a sketchy all-night diner. It was middle school all over again. Except with fewer hormones.
Then Thursday happened. I fell asleep on the bus and woke up riding around the middle of the city. As is usually the case when one wakes up from a deep sleep, everything seemed like a much bigger deal to me than it might in the middle of the day. So, naturally, when I opened my eyes and hadn't yet processed where I was or what had happened, something instinctively told me that everything was wrong and I (very unfortunately) yelled out a somewhat long and incredibly loud "NOOOOO!!!!" I was, of course, in the very back of the crowded bus, and got to watch all 75 heads turn from the cross-stitching to look at me. I hit the bus stop button without even knowing whether I had reached my stop yet, willing to walk up to 500 miles if I had to, just to get off that bus as soon as possible. Unfortunately it took over five minutes for the driver to get to a bus stop. And by the time he did stop and I had to make my walk up past the curious passengers, I had realized that my stop was several ago (having missed it during my sleep). I was slightly late to work that day. And I'm now thinking of wearing a disguise to keep anyone from recognizing me tomorrow.
~It Just Gets Stranger
Sunday, January 9, 2011
Why I'm Not A:
Doctor:
When I was in Mr. Landeen's seventh grade science class, we started talking about diseases (because that's what you do in seventh grade science class). I sat on the front row next to my friend Aaron Ludwig who had broken his leg and got to use crutches, so naturally I spent the whole of 1997 jumping from the top of stairs unnecessarily to try to fracture any bone that could also allow me to use crutches and garner at least as much attention as he had been receiving. Fortunately, I was never quite brave enough to fully commit to said venture and so never ended up with so much as a bruise. Some things never change. Anyway, during Mr. Landeen's lecture on the common cold, I found myself suddenly extremely light-headed. After a minute or two, Aaron Ludwig raised his hand and said, "I think Eli is about to hurl." I did not hurl, but rather passed out cold onto the tile floor. So there's that. Ever since I've avoided any detailed conversation concerning any physical ailment, whatsoever. Also I'm generally terrified of the human body. And catheters.
Police Officer:
When I was eight my dad took me fishing. I saw the small buoys bouncing up and down on the water and asked him what they were. Having learned a few parenting tricks from my mother over the years, he found the most disturbing explanation he could imagine, conveyed that explanation to me with a straight face, and then turned it into a lesson: "obviously, that's where the police put children when they are misbehaving, and the more misbehaving children there are, the more crowded those become." (In Bob and Cathie's defense, I was apparently the spawn of Satan until at least age 12. And apparently their somewhat morbid practices worked to some degree as I'm now a relatively well-behaved adult, although one with many irrational fears). Rather than become concerned that I might be stuffed in there with the undoubtedly hundreds of suffocating children (and yes, these buoys were about the size of a basketball; I believed in many impossible things at age eight, including one creature my older sisters invented called "The First Eye" which was a giant eyeball with 1,000 toes all the way around the perimeter. It lived in every cave on Earth and terrified children. I still get the chills when I drive through southern Utah and see dark holes in the red rock), I thought to myself how horrible it must be for the police officers to have to swim out to the middle of the lake to stuff children into the bouncing buoys. This was a terrifying thought mostly because I was sure that lake was full of giant vengeful fish with razor sharp teeth (who were apparently smart enough not to fall for our bait as I'm sure we caught nothing that day). I think somewhere in the back of my mind I firmly resolved that I would never have a job that required me to do anything like that. And by the time I was 23 and realized that that story was probably not true, I was already unpersuaded-ly comfortable that I would make a terrible police officer.
Veterinarian:
I hate animals.
Hairdresser:
At age six I cut Micalyne's hair. She was four. I did an amazing job. I took out half of her bangs and cut out a couple of chunks from the back that I didn't think needed to be there. I thought it made her look "real" and approachable. Cathie, on the other hand, did not feel the same way at all. Fortunately for six-year-old Eli, the whole thing got blamed on Libby from down the street, which Micalyne verified was the true perpetrator of the massacred hair, because evidently Bob and Cathie hadn't yet figured out that child-Micalyne just answered "yes" to every question asked of her, and they just happened to ask first whether Libby had cut her hair. It is also possible that child-Micalyne just had a terrible memory (this came in handy once again two years later when I scratched her misspelled name into the bumper of Bob's car, to which she admitted guilt (I intentionally misspelled it to make it look more authentic. She was only six years old after all)). In any event, I have now gone two full decades without fessing up to the hair-cutting incident. So there it is mom and dad: it was me. I hope my punishment didn't accrue interest.
~It Just Gets Stranger
When I was in Mr. Landeen's seventh grade science class, we started talking about diseases (because that's what you do in seventh grade science class). I sat on the front row next to my friend Aaron Ludwig who had broken his leg and got to use crutches, so naturally I spent the whole of 1997 jumping from the top of stairs unnecessarily to try to fracture any bone that could also allow me to use crutches and garner at least as much attention as he had been receiving. Fortunately, I was never quite brave enough to fully commit to said venture and so never ended up with so much as a bruise. Some things never change. Anyway, during Mr. Landeen's lecture on the common cold, I found myself suddenly extremely light-headed. After a minute or two, Aaron Ludwig raised his hand and said, "I think Eli is about to hurl." I did not hurl, but rather passed out cold onto the tile floor. So there's that. Ever since I've avoided any detailed conversation concerning any physical ailment, whatsoever. Also I'm generally terrified of the human body. And catheters.
Police Officer:
When I was eight my dad took me fishing. I saw the small buoys bouncing up and down on the water and asked him what they were. Having learned a few parenting tricks from my mother over the years, he found the most disturbing explanation he could imagine, conveyed that explanation to me with a straight face, and then turned it into a lesson: "obviously, that's where the police put children when they are misbehaving, and the more misbehaving children there are, the more crowded those become." (In Bob and Cathie's defense, I was apparently the spawn of Satan until at least age 12. And apparently their somewhat morbid practices worked to some degree as I'm now a relatively well-behaved adult, although one with many irrational fears). Rather than become concerned that I might be stuffed in there with the undoubtedly hundreds of suffocating children (and yes, these buoys were about the size of a basketball; I believed in many impossible things at age eight, including one creature my older sisters invented called "The First Eye" which was a giant eyeball with 1,000 toes all the way around the perimeter. It lived in every cave on Earth and terrified children. I still get the chills when I drive through southern Utah and see dark holes in the red rock), I thought to myself how horrible it must be for the police officers to have to swim out to the middle of the lake to stuff children into the bouncing buoys. This was a terrifying thought mostly because I was sure that lake was full of giant vengeful fish with razor sharp teeth (who were apparently smart enough not to fall for our bait as I'm sure we caught nothing that day). I think somewhere in the back of my mind I firmly resolved that I would never have a job that required me to do anything like that. And by the time I was 23 and realized that that story was probably not true, I was already unpersuaded-ly comfortable that I would make a terrible police officer.
Veterinarian:
I hate animals.
Hairdresser:
At age six I cut Micalyne's hair. She was four. I did an amazing job. I took out half of her bangs and cut out a couple of chunks from the back that I didn't think needed to be there. I thought it made her look "real" and approachable. Cathie, on the other hand, did not feel the same way at all. Fortunately for six-year-old Eli, the whole thing got blamed on Libby from down the street, which Micalyne verified was the true perpetrator of the massacred hair, because evidently Bob and Cathie hadn't yet figured out that child-Micalyne just answered "yes" to every question asked of her, and they just happened to ask first whether Libby had cut her hair. It is also possible that child-Micalyne just had a terrible memory (this came in handy once again two years later when I scratched her misspelled name into the bumper of Bob's car, to which she admitted guilt (I intentionally misspelled it to make it look more authentic. She was only six years old after all)). In any event, I have now gone two full decades without fessing up to the hair-cutting incident. So there it is mom and dad: it was me. I hope my punishment didn't accrue interest.
~It Just Gets Stranger
Sunday, January 2, 2011
2010
Another year has come and gone. I can't believe it's time for the annual sum-up post already.
2010 was a good year. It wore me out like any good year should.
In 2010 I started eating salmon regularly. I read exactly four more pages of Crime and Punishment (well, three and a half). I ran a marathon. I got severely sunburned in a third world country. I attended a reggae concert on a beach and subsequently got stuck in a hurricane-like storm. I won a competition. I competed in Boston and DC. I attended a temple dedication in Ukraine. I got my first ever speeding ticket. I got in my first ever car accident. I started a new job and continued an old one. I staged a half-effective sit-in. I experienced a total computer crash two weeks before finals. I moved twice. I finished year two of law school. I crashed into Uncle Will’s garage with my car. I visited Mexico a couple of times. I went cave tubing in Belize. I stayed in a "hotel" that cost $4 a night for two people. I lost my bathing suit in the ocean. I met a famous Russian actor in the Moscow airport during my 20 hour layover. I made lots of borsch. I impromptu taught Sunday school half a dozen times. I ran the mud run and cleaned mud out of my ears for the next week. I started riding the bus. I landed a clerkship. I finally broke down and got a gym membership. I almost learned how to swim. I blogged and wondered how many people were actually reading. I successfully went on a four month shopping fast. I had Thanksgiving in Brawley. I recovered from the hand surgery. I purchased two old icons from a woman sitting on a stool in L'viv. I rode on two sleeper trains in eastern Europe. I visited New York City for the first time. A cat jumped on my lap on a red-eye flight. I helped work on a 400 page brief. I watched Breakfast at Tiffany’s and thought it was sad. I ate at “Shigella’s” in San Felipe. I passed the MPRE. I took third in a pretty un-competitive Halloween 5k wearing very little clothing despite the freezing temperatures. I fought several battles at school and lost many of them. I taught contracts to 75 1Ls for a few days. I started sleeping without taking sleeping pills. I unexpectedly reconnected with long lost friends who I thought had disappeared forever. I gained a new niece. I found heaven on Earth on San Pedro Island ("Paris . . . dice".). I found Hell on Earth in Belize City. I went to midnight mass. Of course, I visited Salvation Mountain, again. I was the man of honor at Kimbally’s wedding. I went ice-blocking and then wondered why. I went body surfing and then wondered why. I went through several more terrible Blackberry Pearls. I danced for four straight hours at a Halloween party. I helped advocate for points I didn't fully believe just to make sure all sides were considered. I fell even more in love with my friends and family. I drove for two days looking for the Grand Canyon before finding it. I enjoyed life.
It’s amazing to me that I’m already reflecting on 2010. 2010 was my best year. It was different than any year I've had, full of strange events that have shaped me into a person that I appreciate more in my never-ending quest for infinite strange experiences to fill my repertoire of stories. I talk about a lot of strange moments on this blog, always in the most positive light possible, because, really, the strange experiences are what we live for. They represent the moments in our lives where we dared to feel something unique, learn something new, and pick up a new story along the way. So while we appreciate the common day-to-day experiences that keep us grounded, we savor the strange ones that keep us interesting.
Farewell 2010. Here's to a great 2011; may it just get stranger for us all~
2010 was a good year. It wore me out like any good year should.
In 2010 I started eating salmon regularly. I read exactly four more pages of Crime and Punishment (well, three and a half). I ran a marathon. I got severely sunburned in a third world country. I attended a reggae concert on a beach and subsequently got stuck in a hurricane-like storm. I won a competition. I competed in Boston and DC. I attended a temple dedication in Ukraine. I got my first ever speeding ticket. I got in my first ever car accident. I started a new job and continued an old one. I staged a half-effective sit-in. I experienced a total computer crash two weeks before finals. I moved twice. I finished year two of law school. I crashed into Uncle Will’s garage with my car. I visited Mexico a couple of times. I went cave tubing in Belize. I stayed in a "hotel" that cost $4 a night for two people. I lost my bathing suit in the ocean. I met a famous Russian actor in the Moscow airport during my 20 hour layover. I made lots of borsch. I impromptu taught Sunday school half a dozen times. I ran the mud run and cleaned mud out of my ears for the next week. I started riding the bus. I landed a clerkship. I finally broke down and got a gym membership. I almost learned how to swim. I blogged and wondered how many people were actually reading. I successfully went on a four month shopping fast. I had Thanksgiving in Brawley. I recovered from the hand surgery. I purchased two old icons from a woman sitting on a stool in L'viv. I rode on two sleeper trains in eastern Europe. I visited New York City for the first time. A cat jumped on my lap on a red-eye flight. I helped work on a 400 page brief. I watched Breakfast at Tiffany’s and thought it was sad. I ate at “Shigella’s” in San Felipe. I passed the MPRE. I took third in a pretty un-competitive Halloween 5k wearing very little clothing despite the freezing temperatures. I fought several battles at school and lost many of them. I taught contracts to 75 1Ls for a few days. I started sleeping without taking sleeping pills. I unexpectedly reconnected with long lost friends who I thought had disappeared forever. I gained a new niece. I found heaven on Earth on San Pedro Island ("Paris . . . dice".). I found Hell on Earth in Belize City. I went to midnight mass. Of course, I visited Salvation Mountain, again. I was the man of honor at Kimbally’s wedding. I went ice-blocking and then wondered why. I went body surfing and then wondered why. I went through several more terrible Blackberry Pearls. I danced for four straight hours at a Halloween party. I helped advocate for points I didn't fully believe just to make sure all sides were considered. I fell even more in love with my friends and family. I drove for two days looking for the Grand Canyon before finding it. I enjoyed life.
It’s amazing to me that I’m already reflecting on 2010. 2010 was my best year. It was different than any year I've had, full of strange events that have shaped me into a person that I appreciate more in my never-ending quest for infinite strange experiences to fill my repertoire of stories. I talk about a lot of strange moments on this blog, always in the most positive light possible, because, really, the strange experiences are what we live for. They represent the moments in our lives where we dared to feel something unique, learn something new, and pick up a new story along the way. So while we appreciate the common day-to-day experiences that keep us grounded, we savor the strange ones that keep us interesting.
Farewell 2010. Here's to a great 2011; may it just get stranger for us all~
Saturday, December 18, 2010
The Death of a Semester
It is finished.
After completing my second final last week and blog-updating you on the progress, it was back to the grind for yet another fun filled adventure--this one was called Public International Law. Fortunately I had a whole week to prepare for this one. And boy did I ever need it. Day after day passed and I would roll into my bed sometime past midnight, calm in what I thought was a realistic anticipation of everything magically coming together at some point before my Thursday morning final, because, frankly, it always seems to come together in time. That optimism suddenly turned to panic on Wednesday afternoon at exactly 1:47 PM when I sat in a last minute Q & A with 50 of my closest friends and the professor of the course where it finally occurred to me that for exactly 47 minutes people had been discussing the material for a test that could make or break my entire life the next morning and I truly had no clue what was going on. For several minutes at a time I wondered whether people were speaking Hebrew. I just made sure to generally mimic the collective emotion of the class (laugh when they were laughing) so as not to blow my cover over obliviousness. This is a common occurrence for law-school-Eli during the semester but not for day-before-final-Eli who seems to have magically pulled it together by then.
So, despite the great entertainment going on in the row in front of me (Annette, one of my biggest idols and in my top 10 list of smartest people I know, was typing away on her laptop and in true Annette fashion repeating every 14th word that escaped the professor's lips, out loud and in an inquisitive tone, usually followed by a fragment of a joke related to that word; a joke that I can only imagine is utterly brilliant when connected with her thoughts), I quickly gathered my things and sprinted to the fourth floor study area that my friends and I have completely taken over and have recently named "CTU" (we have every intention of renaming it "the clubhouse" when finals are over and we are all allowed to start having fun). I slammed my 600 page case-book on a table and frantically started reading, positive that I was going to get through every page by 8:30 the next morning, or die trying.
My friends must have gotten worried about me because Corey brought me both chocolate and some drink injected with caffeine and then spent the rest of the day periodically walking into the room just to say things like, "you are SO smart! You are going to be great tomorrow. You've gone up against worse." On a side note, I always know when Corey is worried about me because she is willing to part with chocolate, a gesture that indicates that she believes I need it more than she does (and anyone who knows Corey, knows that things have to be pretty bad for her to think someone might need chocolate more than her). Additionally, Annette returned from the review and gave me a high school football coach locker room speech that you only hear in movies (the ones where a bunch of misfits form a sports team that fails until someone believes in them, thus granting them the magical power to defeat the rival team full of quasi-professional athletes (that cannot possibly be in high school based on their size and general facial maturity), which inevitably solves all of the life problems of each of the once-misfits). Her speech started out with something like, "look at me. I'm telling you right now, we are going to be fine." And it ended with her making me promise that I believed her when she swore on her life we were going to survive.
We used every precious minute until deep into the night when we all decided to get some sleep. Miraculously it did seem to come together at the last possible minute. What can I say--I like a suspenseful ending.
Two months ago Annette and I wrote in our planners that as soon as that final was finished, we were going to go to Cafe Rio, and then leisurely wander around the mall all afternoon to do our Christmas shopping. The leisurely wander was total torture after a shockingly long and hard-in-a-lot-of-ways semester, so after 2 hours of not buying anything, we went home and took naps.
Maybe this all sounds a little dramatic. I have been known to dramatize things a bit (or so I'm told). But what I've gone through on this academic roller coaster for two and a half years, and specifically, for the past few months, has really felt dramatic. So drama in my writing only seems fitting, although underwhelming from my perspective. But the challenging experiences have been unique. And I'm really grateful for every minute of it. Law school is making me better than I was. It's been really challenging. Much more so than I thought it would be. Some days it really has been hard to hang on. But I'm so happy that I have. Everyone has their own challenges--some of them are chosen, some of them are not, and some are sort of hand-picked at first but then end up being totally different than expected yet entirely nonreturnable once in their hand. I guess all of the experiences that have made up my law school career have felt like a good blend of all three of those things. Law school has shown me what my strengths and weaknesses are; it has shown me that some of what I thought were strengths are actually weaknesses; it has shown me that my limits are different than I thought they were; it has made me sometimes lose perspective, but has given me the ability to much more easily gain perspective when it sometimes gets lost. I love my law school experience, and wouldn't trade it for anything in the world (except for maybe some good cheesecake and a good permanent tan).
So goodbye semester number five. I'm glad that you are dead. But may you forever live on in spirit.
~It Just Gets Stranger
After completing my second final last week and blog-updating you on the progress, it was back to the grind for yet another fun filled adventure--this one was called Public International Law. Fortunately I had a whole week to prepare for this one. And boy did I ever need it. Day after day passed and I would roll into my bed sometime past midnight, calm in what I thought was a realistic anticipation of everything magically coming together at some point before my Thursday morning final, because, frankly, it always seems to come together in time. That optimism suddenly turned to panic on Wednesday afternoon at exactly 1:47 PM when I sat in a last minute Q & A with 50 of my closest friends and the professor of the course where it finally occurred to me that for exactly 47 minutes people had been discussing the material for a test that could make or break my entire life the next morning and I truly had no clue what was going on. For several minutes at a time I wondered whether people were speaking Hebrew. I just made sure to generally mimic the collective emotion of the class (laugh when they were laughing) so as not to blow my cover over obliviousness. This is a common occurrence for law-school-Eli during the semester but not for day-before-final-Eli who seems to have magically pulled it together by then.
So, despite the great entertainment going on in the row in front of me (Annette, one of my biggest idols and in my top 10 list of smartest people I know, was typing away on her laptop and in true Annette fashion repeating every 14th word that escaped the professor's lips, out loud and in an inquisitive tone, usually followed by a fragment of a joke related to that word; a joke that I can only imagine is utterly brilliant when connected with her thoughts), I quickly gathered my things and sprinted to the fourth floor study area that my friends and I have completely taken over and have recently named "CTU" (we have every intention of renaming it "the clubhouse" when finals are over and we are all allowed to start having fun). I slammed my 600 page case-book on a table and frantically started reading, positive that I was going to get through every page by 8:30 the next morning, or die trying.
My friends must have gotten worried about me because Corey brought me both chocolate and some drink injected with caffeine and then spent the rest of the day periodically walking into the room just to say things like, "you are SO smart! You are going to be great tomorrow. You've gone up against worse." On a side note, I always know when Corey is worried about me because she is willing to part with chocolate, a gesture that indicates that she believes I need it more than she does (and anyone who knows Corey, knows that things have to be pretty bad for her to think someone might need chocolate more than her). Additionally, Annette returned from the review and gave me a high school football coach locker room speech that you only hear in movies (the ones where a bunch of misfits form a sports team that fails until someone believes in them, thus granting them the magical power to defeat the rival team full of quasi-professional athletes (that cannot possibly be in high school based on their size and general facial maturity), which inevitably solves all of the life problems of each of the once-misfits). Her speech started out with something like, "look at me. I'm telling you right now, we are going to be fine." And it ended with her making me promise that I believed her when she swore on her life we were going to survive.
We used every precious minute until deep into the night when we all decided to get some sleep. Miraculously it did seem to come together at the last possible minute. What can I say--I like a suspenseful ending.
Two months ago Annette and I wrote in our planners that as soon as that final was finished, we were going to go to Cafe Rio, and then leisurely wander around the mall all afternoon to do our Christmas shopping. The leisurely wander was total torture after a shockingly long and hard-in-a-lot-of-ways semester, so after 2 hours of not buying anything, we went home and took naps.
Maybe this all sounds a little dramatic. I have been known to dramatize things a bit (or so I'm told). But what I've gone through on this academic roller coaster for two and a half years, and specifically, for the past few months, has really felt dramatic. So drama in my writing only seems fitting, although underwhelming from my perspective. But the challenging experiences have been unique. And I'm really grateful for every minute of it. Law school is making me better than I was. It's been really challenging. Much more so than I thought it would be. Some days it really has been hard to hang on. But I'm so happy that I have. Everyone has their own challenges--some of them are chosen, some of them are not, and some are sort of hand-picked at first but then end up being totally different than expected yet entirely nonreturnable once in their hand. I guess all of the experiences that have made up my law school career have felt like a good blend of all three of those things. Law school has shown me what my strengths and weaknesses are; it has shown me that some of what I thought were strengths are actually weaknesses; it has shown me that my limits are different than I thought they were; it has made me sometimes lose perspective, but has given me the ability to much more easily gain perspective when it sometimes gets lost. I love my law school experience, and wouldn't trade it for anything in the world (except for maybe some good cheesecake and a good permanent tan).
So goodbye semester number five. I'm glad that you are dead. But may you forever live on in spirit.
~It Just Gets Stranger
Saturday, December 11, 2010
Two Down: Fed Courts and the First Amendment
Week one of my 5th set of law school finals has concluded and I'm alive.
My first final was for a class that left me in a crying bloody heap of madness after three and half months of intellectual torture. Never in my life have I felt so dumb (and that includes the time I hit a button in my car when I was bored during a slowly moving traffic jam on state street because I didn't know what it was, only to find out it was the trunk button, which then flew open and stayed that way for the next hour as I couldn't pull over). This was a smaller class (only about 20 people in it) and it was full of people whose names you have to say with a British accent because any other way doesn't adequately describe who they are. These are people who will all end up solving all of the world's problems by 2015 using nothing more than scotch tape and a five function calculator. It matters in law school to some degree who ends up taking the same classes as you because each class is graded on a curve and whether your class is full of the leaders of tomorrow or the partiers of today, the middle grade is set in stone at the exact same place and exactly half can be above that and half below it. And then that grade is taken and added to your gpa which is then ranked against the other 149 gpa's in the 3L class which then determines whether or not your dreams are actually a possibility. And each semester there is a chance to rise or fall, and it all comes down to what happens during these two weeks of finals, sometimes in classes like the one I've just described. And we all felt that on Tuesday morning. Two hours of typing took place in one of the most highly pressurized settings I've ever seen until time was called and 20 shaky people who had just spent every waking second (which happens to be about 18-20 hours a day lately) frantically struggling to grasp incredibly complicated concepts at least slightly better than the others in class, who, both fortunately and unfortunately, are each other's best friends, walked out of the room trying to feel accomplished but probably feeling something more like defeated despite having really done something quite impressive and having really learned a lot.
Then we walked outside, made sure the sun had come up, punched walls, did push ups and whatever else we needed to (for one friend of mine this involved walking to nearby gas station and buying a bag of beef jerky. To each his or her own) to get out the anxious adrenaline that seems to be controlling most of us lately, only to climb back into our holes to prepare for the next one. My next one happened to come less than 48 hours later. Thankfully I had Corey to help me study for that one and the two of us shut ourselves into a small study room (that started looking more like a dorm room after a while) and frantically typed dozens of pages of notes and absorbed every detail we could from about 7:00 AM to past midnight for two days to prepare for our early morning Thursday exam. This one was three hours of typing.
I woke up before the exam pretty early and took a "comfort" shower. Let's just take a quick detour here for some nice blog fodder: I recently found out that showering experiences are very different for the genders. There are two types of showers I take: 1. Comfort shower, and 2. Utility shower. There are no other options. The first is to clean my spirit, so to speak, and requires no effort on my part. The second, however, is a lot of hard work and serves only the purpose of getting me physically clean. My female friends recently informed me that women are not able to take noncommittal comfort showers the same way men can. That is, I can take my comfort shower, climb out, do a 12 second dry off with a towel, throw on a set of clothes, and bounce out the door looking good as new. Apparently for women the shower recovery time is a force to be reckoned with because (so I'm told) woman hair takes somewhere between 7 and 36 weeks to dry (calculated by assuming an automatic 7 and then increasing it by one week for each additional inch beyond one, and then capped at 36). This combined with an array of other problems, mostly involving makeup, is the actual unspoken source of contention between the genders in any conversation in which any of the following phrases are heard: "of course you don't understand! You're a man!"; "you have no idea what it's like!"; "psh! You would say that you heartless [fill-in-the-blank]"; and my personal favorite, "YOU have a baby and then come and tell me I'm being emotional!"
So after my comfort shower I put on my shirt and tie (I dress for success for every final. I have one friend who thinks something is wrong with me because of this as she chooses to dress down as much as possible for test day. Coincidentally this is the beef jerky friend described above). The final happened and I spent the rest of my day getting bombarded with emails and phone calls from frantic 1L's who had less than 24 hours until their contracts final for a class which I am the TA for (for my second and (sadly) final year). I heard the panic and desperation in their voices and emails and I did what I could to provide the last minute support, partly because I remember exactly how that fear of the unknown feels (largely because I still feel it to some degree, although a different one, today). I remember how a totally mysterious process and highly pressurized 1L semester can feel, which seems at the time to be the process and semester that really does determine whether your dreams are possible, for the very first time. I remember coming to school day after day and wondering whether I was really smart enough to be with all of those people who seemed to have it all figured out.
It's strange that the experience never really gets familiar. Each semester my friends and I decide about a month before finals how we're going to tackle the beast this go around. It never really goes exactly according to plan. Too many last minute parties. Too many last minute problems. Too much temptation on Thanksgiving to act like a normal person and just want to hang out with family rather than lock ourselves away in a room at grandma's house for three days while the rest do what they're supposed to do on holidays: spend time together and make memories. And so there is a little give and take and nothing given or taken on either end really seems that satisfying because all of it is either too much or too little, but in any event it's not really ever good enough.
But amid all of the discouragement and, often, exhaustion, there is always that group of friends who don't think something is wrong with me for sometimes being at the library on a Friday night at 11:15 because the only way they know I'm there is because they are too. There is always that group of friends who is willing to explain something to me over and over again to help me understand, even though they have their own work to do. Always that group of friends who are a source of comfort when I catch them out of the corner of my eye during one of these 3 hour typing contests. Friends that remind me every time we're together why they appreciate me and, in being who they are, in turn remind me why I appreciate them. They drop whatever important thing they have going on to drive me to the hospital when I break my hand, even if it's 5:00 in the morning. They humor me by putting on a homemade 9-headed monster costume and marching around the school growling, just because I ask them to. They throw me birthday parties and get genuinely excited when something good happens in my life. And no matter how stressed and tired I sometimes get, all I have to do is think about these people to remember one of the biggest reasons why this is all so worth it.
~It Just Gets Stranger
My first final was for a class that left me in a crying bloody heap of madness after three and half months of intellectual torture. Never in my life have I felt so dumb (and that includes the time I hit a button in my car when I was bored during a slowly moving traffic jam on state street because I didn't know what it was, only to find out it was the trunk button, which then flew open and stayed that way for the next hour as I couldn't pull over). This was a smaller class (only about 20 people in it) and it was full of people whose names you have to say with a British accent because any other way doesn't adequately describe who they are. These are people who will all end up solving all of the world's problems by 2015 using nothing more than scotch tape and a five function calculator. It matters in law school to some degree who ends up taking the same classes as you because each class is graded on a curve and whether your class is full of the leaders of tomorrow or the partiers of today, the middle grade is set in stone at the exact same place and exactly half can be above that and half below it. And then that grade is taken and added to your gpa which is then ranked against the other 149 gpa's in the 3L class which then determines whether or not your dreams are actually a possibility. And each semester there is a chance to rise or fall, and it all comes down to what happens during these two weeks of finals, sometimes in classes like the one I've just described. And we all felt that on Tuesday morning. Two hours of typing took place in one of the most highly pressurized settings I've ever seen until time was called and 20 shaky people who had just spent every waking second (which happens to be about 18-20 hours a day lately) frantically struggling to grasp incredibly complicated concepts at least slightly better than the others in class, who, both fortunately and unfortunately, are each other's best friends, walked out of the room trying to feel accomplished but probably feeling something more like defeated despite having really done something quite impressive and having really learned a lot.
Then we walked outside, made sure the sun had come up, punched walls, did push ups and whatever else we needed to (for one friend of mine this involved walking to nearby gas station and buying a bag of beef jerky. To each his or her own) to get out the anxious adrenaline that seems to be controlling most of us lately, only to climb back into our holes to prepare for the next one. My next one happened to come less than 48 hours later. Thankfully I had Corey to help me study for that one and the two of us shut ourselves into a small study room (that started looking more like a dorm room after a while) and frantically typed dozens of pages of notes and absorbed every detail we could from about 7:00 AM to past midnight for two days to prepare for our early morning Thursday exam. This one was three hours of typing.
I woke up before the exam pretty early and took a "comfort" shower. Let's just take a quick detour here for some nice blog fodder: I recently found out that showering experiences are very different for the genders. There are two types of showers I take: 1. Comfort shower, and 2. Utility shower. There are no other options. The first is to clean my spirit, so to speak, and requires no effort on my part. The second, however, is a lot of hard work and serves only the purpose of getting me physically clean. My female friends recently informed me that women are not able to take noncommittal comfort showers the same way men can. That is, I can take my comfort shower, climb out, do a 12 second dry off with a towel, throw on a set of clothes, and bounce out the door looking good as new. Apparently for women the shower recovery time is a force to be reckoned with because (so I'm told) woman hair takes somewhere between 7 and 36 weeks to dry (calculated by assuming an automatic 7 and then increasing it by one week for each additional inch beyond one, and then capped at 36). This combined with an array of other problems, mostly involving makeup, is the actual unspoken source of contention between the genders in any conversation in which any of the following phrases are heard: "of course you don't understand! You're a man!"; "you have no idea what it's like!"; "psh! You would say that you heartless [fill-in-the-blank]"; and my personal favorite, "YOU have a baby and then come and tell me I'm being emotional!"
So after my comfort shower I put on my shirt and tie (I dress for success for every final. I have one friend who thinks something is wrong with me because of this as she chooses to dress down as much as possible for test day. Coincidentally this is the beef jerky friend described above). The final happened and I spent the rest of my day getting bombarded with emails and phone calls from frantic 1L's who had less than 24 hours until their contracts final for a class which I am the TA for (for my second and (sadly) final year). I heard the panic and desperation in their voices and emails and I did what I could to provide the last minute support, partly because I remember exactly how that fear of the unknown feels (largely because I still feel it to some degree, although a different one, today). I remember how a totally mysterious process and highly pressurized 1L semester can feel, which seems at the time to be the process and semester that really does determine whether your dreams are possible, for the very first time. I remember coming to school day after day and wondering whether I was really smart enough to be with all of those people who seemed to have it all figured out.
It's strange that the experience never really gets familiar. Each semester my friends and I decide about a month before finals how we're going to tackle the beast this go around. It never really goes exactly according to plan. Too many last minute parties. Too many last minute problems. Too much temptation on Thanksgiving to act like a normal person and just want to hang out with family rather than lock ourselves away in a room at grandma's house for three days while the rest do what they're supposed to do on holidays: spend time together and make memories. And so there is a little give and take and nothing given or taken on either end really seems that satisfying because all of it is either too much or too little, but in any event it's not really ever good enough.
But amid all of the discouragement and, often, exhaustion, there is always that group of friends who don't think something is wrong with me for sometimes being at the library on a Friday night at 11:15 because the only way they know I'm there is because they are too. There is always that group of friends who is willing to explain something to me over and over again to help me understand, even though they have their own work to do. Always that group of friends who are a source of comfort when I catch them out of the corner of my eye during one of these 3 hour typing contests. Friends that remind me every time we're together why they appreciate me and, in being who they are, in turn remind me why I appreciate them. They drop whatever important thing they have going on to drive me to the hospital when I break my hand, even if it's 5:00 in the morning. They humor me by putting on a homemade 9-headed monster costume and marching around the school growling, just because I ask them to. They throw me birthday parties and get genuinely excited when something good happens in my life. And no matter how stressed and tired I sometimes get, all I have to do is think about these people to remember one of the biggest reasons why this is all so worth it.
~It Just Gets Stranger
Friday, November 19, 2010
Victory!
The Bears won, 16-0.
http://www.nationalfootballpost.com/Game-notes-BearsDolphins.html
See previous post for context.
~It Just Gets Stranger
http://www.nationalfootballpost.com/Game-notes-BearsDolphins.html
See previous post for context.
~It Just Gets Stranger
Thursday, November 18, 2010
Eli Cares About the NFL?
Let it be written--this is the first time in my life I have ever cared about an NFL game (and that includes the Superbowl).
I haven't blog-announced this yet so I should give you an update before I explain my sudden interest in the NFL: I was recently offered a clerkship with a judge on the Utah State Court of Appeals. This is VERY exciting news for me and something I had been keeping my fingers crossed for for a while. I will tell you the following not to brag or pat myself on the back but just so you can get a sense of how excited I am about this: clerkships with judges are often very competitive to get, particularly clerkships at the appeals level. This year they are even more competitive than usual (I had some judges email me to say they received around 2,000 resumes for 1 or 2 positions). I have been wanting to do a post-graduation clerkship for a while as they are great experience, look wonderful on resumes, open a lot of doors, and seem very interesting. A court clerk works directly with a judge in his or her chambers and helps research, write, and generally get a good view of how a court works and how a judge makes decisions. I applied with many different judges and the judge that ended up offering me this clerkship was actually the one appeals judge that I wanted to clerk for the most from the very beginning of this process so it really is an absolute miracle that it worked out (due credit should be given to the professors at BYU and the attorneys I work with at the AG's office who gave me some great advice, encouragement and wrote wonderful letters of recommendation).
Now, this judge has two clerks working for him at any given time. He has a new clerk start every January and September and clerkships go for one year. So this judge hired myself and one girl (the professor I work for gets mad at me whenever I refer to any adult as "boy" or "girl" and tells me I need to take her "becoming aware" class, which is taught once a year and apparently covers the words "man" and "woman") who is attending a law school in California. He left it up to us to decide which one of us will start next September and which one of us will start the following January (2012). We connected via email and initially neither of us had strong feelings one way or another so we've sort of stewed over it for a few weeks. After getting advice from various trustworthy sources (included Bob and Cathie, who have never led me astray yet, except for one time when I was 7 and Cathie told me that it's important to write in your journal because that way if you ever get accused of murdering someone, you can open your journal to that page and show someone that you have an alibi, thus leading me to a lifetime of consistent journal writing which from ages 7 to 12 contained many very calculated and detailed accounts of where I was at certain times of the day in case the motherly advice I was given ever came to fruition. She also used to tell me that she had an eye on the back of her neck but I still don't know whether that one is true. There was also the whole Santa Clause thing. But in my adult life, they've been 100% reliable), I decided that September would be a better option for me. The other clerk also decided that September would be better for her.
So to resolve it, I proposed that the outcome of our decision be based on tonight's game between the Miami Dolphins and the Chicago Bears (after having my sports savvy friend help me figure out what upcoming game might be close--this is something I never could have figured out on my own). She responded and chose Miami. So there you have it: if Chicago wins tonight, I will start my clerkship next September. My life's fate comes down to a football game.
~It Just Gets Stranger
I haven't blog-announced this yet so I should give you an update before I explain my sudden interest in the NFL: I was recently offered a clerkship with a judge on the Utah State Court of Appeals. This is VERY exciting news for me and something I had been keeping my fingers crossed for for a while. I will tell you the following not to brag or pat myself on the back but just so you can get a sense of how excited I am about this: clerkships with judges are often very competitive to get, particularly clerkships at the appeals level. This year they are even more competitive than usual (I had some judges email me to say they received around 2,000 resumes for 1 or 2 positions). I have been wanting to do a post-graduation clerkship for a while as they are great experience, look wonderful on resumes, open a lot of doors, and seem very interesting. A court clerk works directly with a judge in his or her chambers and helps research, write, and generally get a good view of how a court works and how a judge makes decisions. I applied with many different judges and the judge that ended up offering me this clerkship was actually the one appeals judge that I wanted to clerk for the most from the very beginning of this process so it really is an absolute miracle that it worked out (due credit should be given to the professors at BYU and the attorneys I work with at the AG's office who gave me some great advice, encouragement and wrote wonderful letters of recommendation).
Now, this judge has two clerks working for him at any given time. He has a new clerk start every January and September and clerkships go for one year. So this judge hired myself and one girl (the professor I work for gets mad at me whenever I refer to any adult as "boy" or "girl" and tells me I need to take her "becoming aware" class, which is taught once a year and apparently covers the words "man" and "woman") who is attending a law school in California. He left it up to us to decide which one of us will start next September and which one of us will start the following January (2012). We connected via email and initially neither of us had strong feelings one way or another so we've sort of stewed over it for a few weeks. After getting advice from various trustworthy sources (included Bob and Cathie, who have never led me astray yet, except for one time when I was 7 and Cathie told me that it's important to write in your journal because that way if you ever get accused of murdering someone, you can open your journal to that page and show someone that you have an alibi, thus leading me to a lifetime of consistent journal writing which from ages 7 to 12 contained many very calculated and detailed accounts of where I was at certain times of the day in case the motherly advice I was given ever came to fruition. She also used to tell me that she had an eye on the back of her neck but I still don't know whether that one is true. There was also the whole Santa Clause thing. But in my adult life, they've been 100% reliable), I decided that September would be a better option for me. The other clerk also decided that September would be better for her.
So to resolve it, I proposed that the outcome of our decision be based on tonight's game between the Miami Dolphins and the Chicago Bears (after having my sports savvy friend help me figure out what upcoming game might be close--this is something I never could have figured out on my own). She responded and chose Miami. So there you have it: if Chicago wins tonight, I will start my clerkship next September. My life's fate comes down to a football game.
~It Just Gets Stranger
Sunday, November 14, 2010
It's Happening Again
Bad things are happening with my mind.
We all know that this is normal--law school tends to do this to me as the semesters progress (flashback to infamous incidents such as putting soap and laundry in the washer and never starting it as a 1L, undressing in a study room thinking I was at home as a 1L, losing my shoes at school on multiple occasions without ever remembering taking them off, etc.).
Two weeks ago I got a call that my car was fixed since the big traumatic accident. I had been driving a rental car for about 10 days (and I still don't know what kind of car it was, much to the disappointed shock of one friend of mine who could identify model, make, year, and interior accessories by glancing at any one square inch of any vehicle from 100 yards away). Corey came with me to drop off the rental and then hitch a ride with those people to the auto body shop. Simple project. Unfortunately it didn't all go as well as one might hope.
I told the car rental people where my car was located and some guy gave us a ride to that place. We went in and the following conversation took place with the girl working at the front desk:
Girl: Hi, can I help you?
Eli: Yes, I'm here to pick up my car.
Girl: Ok, last name?
Eli: McCann, two c's, two n's.
Girl: [type, type, type] alright and you have the Honda Civic?
Eli: Yup!
[silence for a moment while she pulls up my records]
Corey: Um . . . no you don't.
Eli: No I don't what?
Corey: You don't drive a Honda Civic. You drive a Nissan.
Eli: Um . . . oh yeah. I don't drive a Honda.
Girl: Um . . . I don't have a Nissan here.
One phone call later I discovered that my car was at a completely different place on the other end of town; a place with a name that was in NO WAY similar to the name of this auto body shop that I had originally instructed the rental guy to take us to. I thought for a moment about a way to explain to the rental guy that my vehicle had been moved, but he looked more intelligent than an animal so I gave up on that plan.
Eventually we made it and I retrieved my vehicle, only to discover the next day that there were a couple of things wrong with it that weren't wrong before. So I drove back to the auto body shop (the correct one this time) and explained my two very disconcerting problems to the owner.
The result:
1. The light failing to turn on automatically is not actually a tragic "electrical problem" (as I had termed when I walked in) but simply a failure to flip the switch from "off" to "on" on the light itself.
2. The automatic locks making a slightly louder sound than usual is not indication that my car is about to blow up, but indication that new power locks were placed in the door and simply have a little more power than the old ones.
I nodded and gave them a knowing "just as I suspected" look as I quickly backed out of the door, only to avoid driving anywhere near that end of town for the rest of my life (or until I undergo enough plastic surgery to be unrecognizable by anyone).
Then this week happened, where, other than making from scratch mac and cheese for 400 people for 5 hours on Wednesday night where I was the only one of the 6 of us who seemed to think we needed to be in a hurry and got really bossy after a while, barking out orders while my arm was stuck in a tall bucket, stirring 70 pounds of noodles and hot cheese sauce (another story for another day), I had the most miserable experience of my life trying to get my fingerprinting done and mailed off for the Utah bar application on Friday.
Before actually taking the fingerprints, a nice police officer with a moustache typed in my personal information into a computer. Unfortunately, this happened:
Cop: Address?
Eli: Um . . . [gives an address that is a mix of the last 3 places I've lived]
Cop: Social Security number?
Eli: [first gives his BYU ID number and then has to stand silently for 15 seconds while the pressure mounts to remember the social]
Cop: What year were you born?
Eli: 2004 (said confidently and without hesitation).
Cop: Um . . . ?
Eli: Oh! Sorry! I mean 1998.
Cop: Um . . . 1998?
Eli: Yeah. I don't know why I said 2004.
Cop: So, you're 12 years old?
Eli: ?
Cop: 1998? That would make you 12.
Eli: Oh, I mean 1984.
Cop: Are you sure about that.
Eli: Well I'm 25 now.
Cop: Ok.
Eli: No! I'm 26! But 1984 is correct.
I then spent the rest of the day wondering why 2004 and 1998 were so significant in my mind that I would declare each as my year of birth. And I'll tell you right now, NOTHING significant happened in either of those years for me. In fact, they are probably the two least significant years of my life in terms of mile-stones or other life-changing events.
Do they make medication for this kind of stuff?
~It Just Gets Stranger
We all know that this is normal--law school tends to do this to me as the semesters progress (flashback to infamous incidents such as putting soap and laundry in the washer and never starting it as a 1L, undressing in a study room thinking I was at home as a 1L, losing my shoes at school on multiple occasions without ever remembering taking them off, etc.).
Two weeks ago I got a call that my car was fixed since the big traumatic accident. I had been driving a rental car for about 10 days (and I still don't know what kind of car it was, much to the disappointed shock of one friend of mine who could identify model, make, year, and interior accessories by glancing at any one square inch of any vehicle from 100 yards away). Corey came with me to drop off the rental and then hitch a ride with those people to the auto body shop. Simple project. Unfortunately it didn't all go as well as one might hope.
I told the car rental people where my car was located and some guy gave us a ride to that place. We went in and the following conversation took place with the girl working at the front desk:
Girl: Hi, can I help you?
Eli: Yes, I'm here to pick up my car.
Girl: Ok, last name?
Eli: McCann, two c's, two n's.
Girl: [type, type, type] alright and you have the Honda Civic?
Eli: Yup!
[silence for a moment while she pulls up my records]
Corey: Um . . . no you don't.
Eli: No I don't what?
Corey: You don't drive a Honda Civic. You drive a Nissan.
Eli: Um . . . oh yeah. I don't drive a Honda.
Girl: Um . . . I don't have a Nissan here.
One phone call later I discovered that my car was at a completely different place on the other end of town; a place with a name that was in NO WAY similar to the name of this auto body shop that I had originally instructed the rental guy to take us to. I thought for a moment about a way to explain to the rental guy that my vehicle had been moved, but he looked more intelligent than an animal so I gave up on that plan.
Eventually we made it and I retrieved my vehicle, only to discover the next day that there were a couple of things wrong with it that weren't wrong before. So I drove back to the auto body shop (the correct one this time) and explained my two very disconcerting problems to the owner.
The result:
1. The light failing to turn on automatically is not actually a tragic "electrical problem" (as I had termed when I walked in) but simply a failure to flip the switch from "off" to "on" on the light itself.
2. The automatic locks making a slightly louder sound than usual is not indication that my car is about to blow up, but indication that new power locks were placed in the door and simply have a little more power than the old ones.
I nodded and gave them a knowing "just as I suspected" look as I quickly backed out of the door, only to avoid driving anywhere near that end of town for the rest of my life (or until I undergo enough plastic surgery to be unrecognizable by anyone).
Then this week happened, where, other than making from scratch mac and cheese for 400 people for 5 hours on Wednesday night where I was the only one of the 6 of us who seemed to think we needed to be in a hurry and got really bossy after a while, barking out orders while my arm was stuck in a tall bucket, stirring 70 pounds of noodles and hot cheese sauce (another story for another day), I had the most miserable experience of my life trying to get my fingerprinting done and mailed off for the Utah bar application on Friday.
Before actually taking the fingerprints, a nice police officer with a moustache typed in my personal information into a computer. Unfortunately, this happened:
Cop: Address?
Eli: Um . . . [gives an address that is a mix of the last 3 places I've lived]
Cop: Social Security number?
Eli: [first gives his BYU ID number and then has to stand silently for 15 seconds while the pressure mounts to remember the social]
Cop: What year were you born?
Eli: 2004 (said confidently and without hesitation).
Cop: Um . . . ?
Eli: Oh! Sorry! I mean 1998.
Cop: Um . . . 1998?
Eli: Yeah. I don't know why I said 2004.
Cop: So, you're 12 years old?
Eli: ?
Cop: 1998? That would make you 12.
Eli: Oh, I mean 1984.
Cop: Are you sure about that.
Eli: Well I'm 25 now.
Cop: Ok.
Eli: No! I'm 26! But 1984 is correct.
I then spent the rest of the day wondering why 2004 and 1998 were so significant in my mind that I would declare each as my year of birth. And I'll tell you right now, NOTHING significant happened in either of those years for me. In fact, they are probably the two least significant years of my life in terms of mile-stones or other life-changing events.
Do they make medication for this kind of stuff?
~It Just Gets Stranger
Sunday, October 31, 2010
Accidents, Politics, and Multi-Headed Monsters
There is much to say.
1. The car accident: Last week I climbed into my vehicle with 30% of everything I own (a normal day for me--I always find some reason to pack enough stuff to sustain me on a 6 month backpacking trip every morning when I go to school--this particular morning I had with me: a suit, a gym bag, a change of clothes, my school bag, a sleek extra bag to go with the suit, 3 pairs of shoes, an extra jacket, and my lunch). After pulling out of my neighborhood and preparing to turn onto the main road I take to get to school in the mornings, I was hit from behind. My initial reaction probably should have been a mix between startlement and gratitude (startled because a couple thousand pounds of vehicle just slammed into me and thus grateful that I was still alive) but instead I was annoyed and inconvenienced (mostly because I was already late for a class AND because all of my stuff had fallen all over the car). I climbed out and realized that the crash was much worse than I thought (the back of my vehicle looked like a recent participant in a monster truck show). I suddenly thought through everything Bob and Cathie have ever told me about what to do in case of an accident and then I followed each step as though I was reading a script. A very strange couple of guys sat in their vehicle behind us while we waited for the police to arrive, trying to convince me that they believed the other driver did not hit me intentionally. I'm not sure what of my demeanor made them think I needed to be convinced but in any event, their extreme interest was a little unnerving. Eventually I started piling all of my things onto the sidewalk, sure that my vehicle was not going to be going to school with me that day. As the mound of necessaries grew, odd looks were exchanged by nosey passer-bys. Once the police had arrived and after I had called Bob and Cathie to confirm all of my actions, Corey showed up to take me to school as my car was towed away, pieces of it dramatically falling off and onto the road. The cops gave the other driver three citations, which I thought was a little much (and really awkward for me since I was standing there with them while the cop scolded him for driving negligently). Since the accident I have had a rental car and have tried not to let myself falsely think that I'm on vacation (because it sort of feels that way when you have a rental car).
2. The competition: 2 hours after the car accident, I competed in the final round of the Linda Anderson Trial Advocacy Competition at BYU. Jeff was my partner for the third year in a row and for the third year in a row we made it into finals which was extremely exciting. We competed against 2 of our very good friends and we came out victorious. And I didn't even tell them that I was almost mangled in a horrible accident mere moments before in an attempt to garner judge sympathy. Not a bad day. All except for the accident I guess.
3. The vote: I'm on the board for moot court at the law school and this week we voted on a very divided and sensitive issue. There was lots and lots of campaigning, politicking, and email sending with attachments, some of which I now refer to as "epistles breathing hellfire and damnation upon us all if we didn't vote a certain way." The vote took place on Thursday and my side lost by one vote. It was very disappointing but a good learning experience for us anyway.
4. Law school Halloween: The party takes place every year. And every year it's weird. As part of the party, we have a law school parade where children and adults walk across the stage in costume. This year I hand made a two-headed monster costume which was a huge hit, and an eight-headed monster costume which ended up being a big ol' mess, but very funny for those of us who were part of it. Inside the 8 headed monster costume you could find: a mime, someone with roller-skates, high heels, a devil outfit, green face paint leftover from the 2 headed monster, and lots and lots of screaming (mostly due to suffocation).
5. Halloween 5k: Annette, Elsa, and I ran it yesterday morning. We were dressed up in horrific '80s clothes (I was mostly nude for the whole morning--I just wore what they gave me, and they didn't give me much). I took 3rd overall which was pretty surprising and exciting, although I probably can't brag too much because I was racing against people who were dressed up as cows, clowns, and all the characters from whatever movie is supposed to be popular this year.
3L has been good to me so far.
1. The car accident: Last week I climbed into my vehicle with 30% of everything I own (a normal day for me--I always find some reason to pack enough stuff to sustain me on a 6 month backpacking trip every morning when I go to school--this particular morning I had with me: a suit, a gym bag, a change of clothes, my school bag, a sleek extra bag to go with the suit, 3 pairs of shoes, an extra jacket, and my lunch). After pulling out of my neighborhood and preparing to turn onto the main road I take to get to school in the mornings, I was hit from behind. My initial reaction probably should have been a mix between startlement and gratitude (startled because a couple thousand pounds of vehicle just slammed into me and thus grateful that I was still alive) but instead I was annoyed and inconvenienced (mostly because I was already late for a class AND because all of my stuff had fallen all over the car). I climbed out and realized that the crash was much worse than I thought (the back of my vehicle looked like a recent participant in a monster truck show). I suddenly thought through everything Bob and Cathie have ever told me about what to do in case of an accident and then I followed each step as though I was reading a script. A very strange couple of guys sat in their vehicle behind us while we waited for the police to arrive, trying to convince me that they believed the other driver did not hit me intentionally. I'm not sure what of my demeanor made them think I needed to be convinced but in any event, their extreme interest was a little unnerving. Eventually I started piling all of my things onto the sidewalk, sure that my vehicle was not going to be going to school with me that day. As the mound of necessaries grew, odd looks were exchanged by nosey passer-bys. Once the police had arrived and after I had called Bob and Cathie to confirm all of my actions, Corey showed up to take me to school as my car was towed away, pieces of it dramatically falling off and onto the road. The cops gave the other driver three citations, which I thought was a little much (and really awkward for me since I was standing there with them while the cop scolded him for driving negligently). Since the accident I have had a rental car and have tried not to let myself falsely think that I'm on vacation (because it sort of feels that way when you have a rental car).
2. The competition: 2 hours after the car accident, I competed in the final round of the Linda Anderson Trial Advocacy Competition at BYU. Jeff was my partner for the third year in a row and for the third year in a row we made it into finals which was extremely exciting. We competed against 2 of our very good friends and we came out victorious. And I didn't even tell them that I was almost mangled in a horrible accident mere moments before in an attempt to garner judge sympathy. Not a bad day. All except for the accident I guess.
3. The vote: I'm on the board for moot court at the law school and this week we voted on a very divided and sensitive issue. There was lots and lots of campaigning, politicking, and email sending with attachments, some of which I now refer to as "epistles breathing hellfire and damnation upon us all if we didn't vote a certain way." The vote took place on Thursday and my side lost by one vote. It was very disappointing but a good learning experience for us anyway.
4. Law school Halloween: The party takes place every year. And every year it's weird. As part of the party, we have a law school parade where children and adults walk across the stage in costume. This year I hand made a two-headed monster costume which was a huge hit, and an eight-headed monster costume which ended up being a big ol' mess, but very funny for those of us who were part of it. Inside the 8 headed monster costume you could find: a mime, someone with roller-skates, high heels, a devil outfit, green face paint leftover from the 2 headed monster, and lots and lots of screaming (mostly due to suffocation).
5. Halloween 5k: Annette, Elsa, and I ran it yesterday morning. We were dressed up in horrific '80s clothes (I was mostly nude for the whole morning--I just wore what they gave me, and they didn't give me much). I took 3rd overall which was pretty surprising and exciting, although I probably can't brag too much because I was racing against people who were dressed up as cows, clowns, and all the characters from whatever movie is supposed to be popular this year.
3L has been good to me so far.
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| Climbing into the 8 headed monster costume |
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| 8 headed monster getting ready to go on stage |
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| 8 headed monster from behind--note Elsa's devil horns |
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| 8 headed monster FAILING to look menacing as I directed |
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| More 8 headed monster |
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| Trying to figure out the 2 headed monster costume |
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| Joe and I looking menacing as a 2 headed monster |
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| Micalyne and Emrie came for the trick-or-treating at the carrels (I wonder how much of that candy her 7 month old baby ate . . .) |
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| Annette and I at our carrels on Halloween day. This was far and away the cleanest our carrel area was all day. ~It Just Gets Stranger |
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