The Rules

Which rule of federal civil procedure are you? CLICK HERE TO FIND OUT!

This is the funniest thing. I wonder if one would enjoy it if they were not in law school. I find it particularly funny, because I’ve actually had to read a lot of these rules. As soon it came up with “You are rule 8(a)” I thought “short plain statement on pleading.” It was more right then it knew, because as well as being laid back, I am also short and plain. :) Here are my results – feel free to post yours in the comments!

YOU ARE RULE 8(a)!
You are Rule 8, the most laid back of all the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. While your forefather in the Federal Rules may have been a stickler for details and particularity, you have clearly rebelled by being pleasant and easy-going. Rule 8 only requires that a plaintiff provide a short and plain statement of a claim on which a court can grant relief. While there is much to be lauded in your approach, your good nature sometimes gets you in trouble, and you often have to rely on your good friend, Rule 56, to bail you out.
2293 other people got this result!This quiz has been taken 7932 times.29% of people had this result.

The Coat

Today I took out my winter coat and found in the pockets:

• Three one dollar bills


• two dum dum wrappers


• one dum dum stick


• two dice


• a unifex cube


• and a note from Monserrat’s grandma saying to keep her inside if it is cold outside. (Monserrat hasn’t been in my class in two years)

Do normal people clean out their pockets before they put their winter coats away? Because if they do, I think they are missing out. Nothing takes you back to last year like a unifex cube and a dum dum stick.

Last year I was getting ready to present at NCTE and I had just started studying for the LSAT. This year, I am counting the days until final exams at the end of my first semester of law school.

Either way, it is cold outside.

The Break

It’s so hard to work on Fridays. Michele took me to a free Korean buffet at the Baptist student center and any thought of working before contracts went out of my head. Now we are all gathered in the student lounge, each spending the moments before contracts in our own non-academic way. Ilene is pretending to read twenty thousand pages ahead, but either she has phenomenal concentration, or she’s getting nothing done. Patrick is playing fantasy baseball. Michele and Rebecca are watching movie trailers trying to decide what to rent tonight. Breck, Susie, and Carla are crowded around one computer, designing engagement rings on shaneco.com. Jennifer is perusing overstock.com and a few tables away Tyson is lost to his ipod. I personally was checking out Florida law schools, thinking of transfer before deciding to blog. At least blogging makes me feel somewhat accomplished. I’m not quite sure why. This is what happens in a law school when it’s Friday afternoon, we have one class left for the afternoon, and the memo to determine our whole grade in one class is due in seven days. You push and push and then you just sort of reach this point where you need to breathe. But you never know when that moment is going to come. I kind of wish it came later, when I would be able to play my banjo or read a book. Instead I will be working all evening to make up for these few hours of breathing.

The Swimming

Law school is kind of like teaching a child to swim.

You know when you get to that point that where the child can swim, but they don’t know it yet? You hold out your arms and tell them to just swim to your arms. But you deceptively back away as they are swimming so that they never quite reach you? And then suddenly you grasp them up and show them that they have swum across the entire pool! (A little review for those of you that thought you teach a child to swim by throwing them in a pool)

Well in law school, all your time is filled with law school. It is like the child who is immersed in the water during the time they are learning to swim. (Ok, I know that part was a reach). Well anyway, the rest of it is pretty good. Ok, so at the beginning of the semester you have a certain amount of work to do. And it pretty much takes up all your time. You are just learning how to read and brief cases, so short readings take forever. Then over time, you start to adjust and get faster at it. Only now, on top of doing the readings, you have two memo’s to write. Suddenly that extra time that you thought you would get if only you could read and brief faster is taken up by something else. Then you begin to schedule a sort of regular writing time into your schedule, and you are faster at that too. But, low and behold, now you have to start making outlines and studying them. At this point, I can finish what used to take me all night in about an hour. But after that hour is done, I still have enough writing and outlining to take me all night.

No matter how fast I swim, I still end of choking before I reach the outstretched arms that have moved to the other side of the pool.

The Soapbox

Yesterday I went to an elementary school for the first time since I left teaching.. I am now officially a school based big sister; except at the school they just call us mentors. My mentee is in first grade and six years old.

I was a little worried about going to the school, because these last few months I have many times regretted my decision of leaving teaching. But when I walked into that classroom and saw all that stuff on the walls and remembered how many things you have to do at once and how I never felt good at doing any of them and how I couldn’t keep up with the paperwork and how I had to stay after school until it was dark out and then take things home with me and how I had to be a teacher and a counselor and a friend and a parent, all while feeling like a failure because I didn’t care about the “standards”, only about children learning. . . . whew.

I remembered that I was good at being with kids, good at connecting with them, good at teaching them in the ways that our current government doesn’t value. When will people ever understand that they can’t have it both ways? You can’t teach children to be critically thinking beings and stick to some bureaucratic bullshit standardized schedule. You can’t value individuality but then expect everybody to be at the same place at the same time. You can’t hold all children to the same standard, because they have not all lived the same life. When you say that you are raising those who have not benefited from money and class, race and gender, you are speaking a lie. To ask those who are the farthest from the goal to race the hardest is not striving for greatness. To ask the least equipped children to climb mountains, while other children already rest on the plateau is not lifting them up. To place a bar where some children will never reach is not valued competition. These are all lies. Lies for what purpose? So that the same children will be left behind? Or so that textbook companies can get fat off the required standardized testing, while children who are poor and impoverished can pay the price through their lack of learning? Or so that political rhetoric can win races championing standards and goals that do not reflect the values of most parents?

I loved to teach. I loved to be with children. And I am good at connecting with children. I was underpaid and overworked, but I probably would have stayed if . . . if what? What would have to be different to make it work? So much more than I can write at this time on this night. And I must say, that I was in the best school in the world: a place where children and adults want to be and where children are valued and listened to. However, even with my own school and corporation holding an umbrella over our classrooms to protect us, “no child left behind” still crept uninvited into my classroom and destroyed children’s lives: children that I knew and cared about and children that the politicians have never truly known.

It’s mean of me to say all these things, because I know that other teachers are surviving it. I even know that there are teachers teaching new teachers to teach children to be thoughtful and reflective and critical. But it just ate me alive. I know that it eats at them to. Sometimes I think I am a quitter or a failure because I left. Other times I think of the greatness in them that lets them stay.

Fact or Fiction

I kid you not.

I was working diligently on my computer at a table in a common area of the law school. I sat alone. Thankfully, my concentration was broken by a warm hello as a fellow 1L walked towards me. The “hello” caused me to look up just as she stumbled over her feet and a paper cup filled with hot brown liquid came careening towards me. I snatched my computer into the air, sacrificing my Civ Pro book to the splattering liquid. Amidst her apologies, I convinced her to go go go for paper towels, as I watched the murky brown liquid drip down between the keys of my keyboard. Unknown hands reached out with paper towels and I dabbed gingerly at the keys. Using damp paper towels, I gingerly washed between the keys and cleaned the bottom of the computer. Two days later, the only long lasting effect seems to be a tea smudge on the bottom of my screen.

I am thankful that it was tea, with a low sugar content. I am thankful that I swung my computer into the air. I am thankful to my civ pro book for bravely taking the brunt of the attack, even if it does crinkle each time I open it to remind me of its chivalry. Most of all, I am thankful that Murphy’s law is not fully in effect and I did not lose many hours, days, and weeks of work right after my previous posting of my laptop concerns. QUICK – knock some wood – somewhere – anywhere!