Exams almost over

Well, what can I say?! I am screwed!!!

I feel like a shit

Sorry for using such words, but I feel like a shit. In a week exams will begin but I feel I know nothing. And I am the one who told that plan to get at least 2 As this semester. I hardly believe I can do it. I really really freak out. I feel like school made me even more stupid than I was.

Maybe I need to find some links on how-not-to-feel-stupid???!! :-))

Death in Wal-Mart

I didn't expect to get this

Family of man trampled to death sues Wal-Mart

so fast, but I was waiting for it. I wonder, how is it so that a family of a 34-years old employee could afford a family attorney? :) or it would be more politically correct to call him "recently acquired family attorney"?

So what do they claim? The wrongful death

The lawsuit alleges that Damour's death was caused by the "wanton disregard for
public safety and gross negligence of the defendants."

. . . Hecht [attorney] also filed a notice of claim against Nassau County to preserve the family's right to file a lawsuit against its police department.

. . . On Tuesday, lawyers said two Nassau County men who claim they were injured at the store also are suing Wal-Mart. Their lawyers also filed a notice of a $2 million claim against the Nassau County Police Department.

I think before Christmas we will see articles "Family of man trampled to death in a Wal-Mart sale settled for undisclosed amount."

Acid attacks

Westerners associate terrorism in Pakistan with suicide bombers, but the real emerging terrorist threat for Pakistani women is being disfigured by acid attacks, often by their own husbands, Nicholas D.

Watch video (the video contains graphic images).

Procrastination

While procrastinating I have found this article:

PROCRASTINATING AGAIN? HOW TO KICK THE HABIT.
ALTHOUGH BIOLOGY IS PARTLY TO BLAME FOR FOOT-DRAGGING, ANYONE CAN LEARN TO QUIT.

Raymond, a high-powered attorney, habitually put off returning important business calls and penning legal briefs, behaviors that seriously threatened his career. Raymond (not his real name) sought help from clinical psychologist William Knaus, who practices in Longmeadow, Mass. As a first step, Knaus gave Raymond a two-page synopsis of procrastination and asked him to read it “and see if the description applied.” Raymond agreed to do so on a flight to Europe. Instead he watched a movie. He next vowed to read it the first night at his hotel, but he fell asleep early. After that, each day brought something more compelling to do. In the end, Knaus calculated that the lawyer had spent 40 hours delaying a task that would have taken about two minutes to complete.

The article is really long but the end I found most useful:

In Raymond’s case, getting to the task was, indeed, the hard part. Knaus helped him to do that by first determining the reason for his instinct to delay: Raymond feared being tested on the synopsis and looking foolish. So Knaus asked him to pick the lesser of two evils, doing his work—and risking imperfection—or avoiding difficult tasks and losing his job. When Knaus put it that way, the lawyer was able to “just grind it out.” Instead of being fired, Raymond became a “superstar” at his firm.

In other words, when I have that great desire to procrastinate a little, what I need is to think about my finals and that if I do not study, I will fail.

It WORKS now!!! I go to study!

Timing is everything

I knew I will get that call from AG's office when I have already committed for summer. Yes, imagine, my summer is booked with internships in two places. All of them for free. I doubt somebody will agree to endure my silly head for more than a month and for pay.

Baking with Splenda: A Healthy ... - Google Book Search

Baking with Splenda: A Healthy ... - Google Book Search

P.S. I did not know I can do this on Wista - just click "post to your blog" and here it is... this is awesome!!!

The end of November

Today I have missed two classes. They were first missed classes for a whole semester. I am awfully ashamed. The reason is not excusable - I have to finish my note of 25 pages before this Friday 5 p.m. What did I do during a semester I do not know. I seemed to me I was a very busy student. But despite this I am behind in this damn note and some reading. Bless God I have a week of the rest or will it be a rest? If I call outlining, studying and reading missed assignment a rest, then, sure, I will have a rest :-))

Flow

Today I have got some good feedback, but for some reason it does not make me feel right. Why? I do not know. perhaps, because now I have raise a bar of expectation too high and I am afraid I will not be able to jump over it again :-( God help me and give more confidence.

Yesterday I was called on in Agency class. I did answer but not the questions given. I do not feel bad, but I wish I could have done better.

Bottom line - I feel weird, like something is going to happen and I will not like it. Maybe it is election thing? Who knows?

Back to the same theme

Just in my last post I have talked about immigration law issues. Then I have checked discussion board for my class and found this link to the New York Time's pictures Friendships at the border. I was "touched" by this

. . . a Democrat who represents the area, has urged the Department of Homeland Sceurity not to build in the park. "It's harmful to the kind of family culture we have at the border," he said. "It is one place, certainly, in San Diego, where we talk about friendship at the border."

"[H]armful to the kind of family culture"?? but what culture? Apparently he meant the culture of the country-neighbor, Mexico. I understand that the US at this time has more Mexican aliens than of any other national origins. But, why for this reason, we should be more pitiful to them than to other aliens. Why do not Americans worry as much about those who came, for example, from Europe? They also have families, some of them also cry when they leave their relatives. I do not like this "discrimination." If you want to take care of aliens from neighboring countries, then do not make others "equal but separate." If Democrat representative worries about "harmful" fenses between families, then he should pay for big cruise ships and allow other aliens at least once a year see their relatives like those on the pictures do through the fense.

P.S. yes, I am too harsh today, but those pictures of crying aliens near fence annoy me.

Immigration law

it is another class I am taking - Immigration law. I think students in that class hate me :-( and I feel uncomfortable about it. You know why they hate me? We talked about rights of aliens in this country, in the US. Everybody said that rules of immigration law are harsh (we were discussing deportation rules). Judges in assignment cases and students in class say that long term living in the US creates strong ties between an immigrant and this country, and, therefore, Congress should not deport without Due Process, without strong grounds and etc.

I said (what a joke, because I am an immigrant), that if a person has an opportunity to get a citizenship then he/she should get a citizenship showing by this the devotion that a person has to the country and the appreciation to this country for what it gives a person: a right to live, to prosper. If you decided to be a legal permanent resident for years and years and you do not want to strip yourself of rights and obligations you have before another country, then it is your problem that you committed a crime and now the government wants to deport you to the place where you, in fact, belong. Yes, I think this way. If you live here, then do not mess around between two countries, decide and live or leave.

Contra arguments were
1) many aliens cannot get a citizenship because they do not have money and time to learn English. - I do not accept this one. It is silly. If you want to speak English you will learn, you will find job with English speaking personal, you will learn it by sitting in toilet during your breaks with flashcards of words. Just try to have a wish. Money? Of course, you will not have money if you do not speak English, then you are on low-paid jobs. Moreover, you may save if you really want it.

2) another contra argument was that the US is the country that accepts even those ho do not want to follow the US Constitution, it is the country where a person can live in a shack and burn an American flag every day.
I find here some point, I admit it. So glorious freedom that Americans like to be proud of. But what came first into my mind were Americans who live in this country, enjoy protection and benefits and say that they hate the US. I do not want this country to be such a rotten place. and I do not think it is right (or I might say correct, obviously not politically correct) to further such behaviour of our citizens, and of course we should not allow aliens to do that. Why? Because a country survives due to loyalty to the country. Look at Ukraine and Russia. There is no loyalty left, everybody pulls benefit for himself without thinking about others. Those countries are almost destroyed. BTW, this freedom is so symbolic. In general, the US is really policing country, not so many things are allowed here. Of course, you may live in shack, do nothing, ask for money, and get free food stamps. I do not think Americans must be proud of this example.

Perhaps, I was brought up in conditions where people were proud of their country and believed they do best for it. Therefore, I want the US, it is my country now, had citizens who like it, who respects it, but not who wants to destroy, to break.

This is my word and I am not stepping back. I might stop talking in class, because I feel I ask for hateredd form others. I do not want to have this image. I am not bad. Really!

Life is full of .... [fill a blank]

So what did I do today? I had a midterm on Income Tax class... yeahhh ... I was behind in studying and therefore I was nervous like never booooo... I did not sleep. Actually, I slept 3-4 hours at night... I studied and after I could not fall asleep. What a life! Consequently today I was exhausted and tired. Exam was easy. The problem is that I have realized that after I wrote an exam and left a classroom. What do I think of the exam? I failed ... [cursing]. I forgot to answer third question - yes forgot, even though I might have known the answer, and I messed up parties (as always) of the transactions (no suprise for me). as a result I applied wrong rules. I am miserable now and I want to cry but I do not have tears. The point of this giberish is not complaining (enough of it I had on these pages), but to discuss the fact of life - I study for exam and do not sleep at night, because I want to have a good result, and then I come to exam and almost fall asleep there, at least my mind did this. As a result I will have result not better than if I slept at night instead of snoozing above a textbook. Conclusion? study smart! do this step by step. I avoided that and here is the result :-(((

My pain

I am working on my memo for judge now. What a pain. Imagine, what a horor to know that you are really bad writer, and then, after you wrote some shit, that lacks grammar and sense will be read by a person who was for a decade on the bench. I freak out. In addition my unskillful writing, I am behind my due date and this freaks me out even more.

An interesting fact is that I've done my research, I know what I want to say, but when I try to put this on paper, nonsense comes out or just non-writing mood. I guess I do not have to tell you much if you have read my blog (or at least a couple of posts).

How is my law school life? Every day I tell myself - "My life SUCKS" and there are no other thoughts excepts during nights when I am troubled by lack of sleep. Indeed, you should believe a person who says 2L is easier. It is, just because you know what you are doing. You understand that you have no idea what Justice wanted to say in a case, not because you are stupid, but because the writer of an opinion was (or is) stupid and vague and ambiguous. It might appear to you that he wrote his opinion in one night being drunk after dozens of glasses of whisky. BUT... 2L is much busier and this sucks. I have 4 classes, I have a journal, a judicial internship. All this is hanging above my head and I see it as nothing more but an old stinky rope rubbed with even stinkier soap. You know what I want to do? Hang myself. Then I forgot about my misery of 2L life and misery of fear finals.
rrrrr....

Now I know why I like Dobermans so much...

... I like taxes and doberman is the IRS dog :-)))

The IRS Dog: Doberman Pinscher
Fun tax fact of the day: The first Doberman Pinscher was bred in 1890 by Karl Friedrich Louis Dobermann -- "a tax collector who frequently traveled through many bandit-infested areas, and needed a protection dog to guard him in any situation that might arise. He set out to breed a new type of dog that, in his opinion, would be the perfect combination of strength, loyalty, intelligence, and ferocity." Ben Cunningham.

Source: TaxProf Blog
More about Doberman Pinschers here

Don't you love it???

"A test that everyone passes is not a test at all."
Commissioner v. Groetzinger, 480 U.S. 23 (1987)(Justice Blackman)

I also would add that it should be easy to understand and of course feasible to apply. How often do you see those???

6 weeks behind

What can I say? I enjoy 2L much more than I enjoyed 1L. I have classes I want and I like. I chose good professors. But reading is much higher in volume. Now I looked into my immigration law and see that I have to read 30 pages. What a bummer! I was going to write my memo for my externship.

Last week and this week I am really stressed out because till this time I was on time in everything, I was fine with my reading, a little bit behind with outlining. But now this is a crisis. I did not do anything for my note for a journal. Today I did not read for my Income tax. I still work on that memo. I am frustraited that my efficiency is so low. I am really frustraited. For the worst part this frustration takes away my sleep, and, consequently, I am sleepy all day; I am a dangerous driver, because I move from one side of the line to another, and I am just mad at every person around me.

After two weeks of the third semester

This semester plunged into my life quite rapidly. I have found a judicial externship. I was happy than ever till last Friday, during which I had a Journal meeting and heard about all horrors of how much work I will have to do for the journal. I am scared and worried that I will not make it: 4 classes (some of them with tough professors), externship (2 days a week) and 25 minimum pages for the journal. If I knew that there is so much work for the journal, I might have not looked for the externship. Well, I began all this and there is no way back - what a pity.

I am back

I have disappeared from this blog for the whole summer. wow... that was a long time. The thing is that it was not laziness or just a bad memory, because I kept writing another blog I have but which is not dedicated to the law school as much as this one. But I sensed that this phenomena was not nothing more than a longing to forget a law school for whole summer. When I opened this blog, my purpose was to reflect my life as an immigrant but not as a law student. After I began my 1L it turned out to be stories about my studying and not much else. May I say that I disgraced my blog by diverging from its original purpose? Partialll yes. But I will not continue on this theme, as I am back, and I have a feeling that this blog will continue to be the blog of a law student - 2L at this point.

About my summer. It was SUPER great!!! I visited my parents for a month, met my friends, relatives. I went to Mediterranean for 10 days. Then I spent a couple of days on Hawaii (I love you Hawaii, it is the paradise), and just recently I came back from Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. Actually I took one summer class - Evidence. It was not so bad. Professor was very funny, and it gave some color to a boredom of the class.

I must confess my GPA got worse than it was after 1st semester. I do not cry, I am tough now to the bad grades. But I want (dream, plan, long to) get better. For some reason 1L passed by like a horrible dream with my laziness and denial to do a homework. I noticed same thing in my previous studyings, but this year was the absolute pick. What was wrong? Do not ask me. I can only guess, and one of my guesses is that I just got scared of being a loser, I got scared of horror stories about 1L and its competitiveness. I was an IDIOT to follow all that crap. I had just study and think about my knowledge and nothing more else, and to kill all the doubts in my own capabilities. Anyway, I do not want to write more about my damn bad experiences in 1L, at least in this post. I would better get clip and paste some advice about how to succeed in law school which I, unfortunately, did not follow at all, and I think that was another reason why I did not succeed - I did nothing during my weekends but watching stupid TV shows and surfing Web. If you are 1L - read and do not do what I did.

One of my favorite clients from this year who is packing up to attend George Mason School of Law sent me this e-mail yesterday:
"about what kind of time commitment *is* law school, in practice, to succeed (by my definition, "succeed" meaning be in the top 15 or 10% of the class)?"

My answer was: Take off Friday afternoons and evenings to see a movie and relax. At all other times when not in class, eating, or sleeping, then study. I also gave him the secret to my own success in law school (top 8% of my class, magna cum laude, Order of the Coif, blah, blah, blah) - spend every weekend reviewing and outlining your class notes from the week before. That way, your outlines are done and you can just study them while everyone else is scrambling to outline tons of material. This means, of course, keeping up with your class reading during the week.And it does get easier as a 2L and 3L - the work is harder but you know what you're doing by then and get a system down.

Taken from How to Succeed in Law School

Holiday break

For a week I do not do anything. Suprisingly I have just got my grade for ConLaw. Ummm... I thought I will get a better one at least by 3 points. Well, I did get one. It is good I feel much easier about bad grades than I have felt a semester ago. A semester ago I was crying, I was in hysterics. Today I do not care. I am not going to kill myself because of grades. Maybe I will think differently when I am looking for job, as all employers want good grades. Whatever. So if you read this blog, and you are a student with bad grades, and you think you will not be able to get over your grades and worry all your life about it, talk to me. I will tell you how to get used to BAD grades. :-)))

Taking exams in a law school.

Another good article for exam taking in a law school.

Copied from this page

The Seven C’s of Exam Success
Are you finding yourself confused about the professor’s expectations regarding exams? Tired of IRAC, or IREAC, or CREAC – or any other set of similar type
initials? Perhaps the seven C’s can give you a better sense of how you should
approach exams.

1. Call of the question. The call is really two things – knowing who you are supposed to represent (Court? Lawyer? Policymaker?); and having a sense of what the professor wants (A ruling? A remedy? An argument?) Knowing these points really helps you.

2. Cast of characters.is more than simply dividing up your issues. You also need to think about the purpose of their presence. So you need a plan of action as to how to view your people in the exam question. Ask yourself:

Are they players?
Are they background (in the sense that their presence is in support of someone else)?
Are there a number of pairs arguing against each other?
Knowing the answers to these questions can help you group the issues better and see where the professor finds issues. In a complex, multi-issue problem with a large cast of characters, it is important to know each player’s function – and how they line up against each other.

3. Context. Here is the stuff everyone forgets. Before you get to the specifics, it’s a good idea to give the reader a sense of where you are going. So, if talking about applying an exception – tell the reader the general rule of law. If applying a rule, explain it so that the reader knows the “rules of the game.” Moreover, you ultimately need to get started and giving context to your answer helps organize your answer. Remember, the professor is not going to assume you understand the purpose of summary judgment or the definition of murder in the first degree unless you tell her. If the type of contract it is will color what you do – explain that it is/is not covered by the UCC. If you are deciding to take away the rights of the jury by a directed verdict – or move one case to another place because of a change of venue – give the rationale of what each is supposed to accomplish. The bottom line is that you should not assume anything with respect to what the reader (aka the professor) knows – you must be specific and tell him or her.

4. Conflict. Once you give the context information that you need, you will then need to focus on what the specific problem is. Now your goal is to examine and explain the sides of the conflict. In doing so, it is important to always keep in mind what the diverging parties would argue, even if the call of the question will result in a court decision. Unless you know what each side wants or could want, how can you figure out which position is better? “Bottom line” analysis is not sufficient! Remember the professor is going to grade the process, so show the problems, the conflicts and the maybes! Generally, these conflicts involve four general types of problems:

The pick one (or more) from a series of similar type rules (Could the defendant be charged with murder one? Two? Manslaughter? All? Some?)
Decide whether rule applies (Can the court use parole evidence in this contract situation?)
Assess if what was done was right with respect to the rule, or, the converse of the above. (Was summary judgment properly granted?)
Argue your best position (If you are the defendant’s attorney, how can you get in parole evidence?)
But, no matter what type of question, you will always need to know how to present a thorough discussion of the conflicts that are involved in the question. One way of checking yourself is to use phrases such as:

So, this is the first possible rule because…
It is important to consider this rule because…
It is important to remember that this rule is different from this (other) rule because…
5. Consequences.So if you have applied this rule - so what? What do we get for our troubles? Need to explain the effect of applying the selected rule under these examination facts. So beyond just telling the professor the rules and what they mean, you also need to tell her what happens because of the set of facts in the specific problem. The goal in good exam writing is not to make the professor guess what would happen in the facts that she crafted. So use phrases like, “Here, under these facts of …, the court would determine that this rule would apply because…” to get you started in applying rules to facts (and yes, this is the A in IREAC!)

6. Charms of the professors.Professors are not cookie cutters, which is why study aids are not perfect. So, if available, you should always look at past exams of that professor. And that’s why you need to spend time actually practicing those problems or hypotheticals. You want to do this because you want to be very familiar with anticipating what a professor wants in his answer. So, if they like references to cases, do it. If they like references to the Restatement or the UCC or other code, give it to them. If they like policy, theories, philosophy, alternative dispute resolutions, why not give them what they want? To quote Nike – just do it!

7. Conclusions.Finally, as with all things, you must come to the end of the answer. So, tell the professor your version of “happily ever after,” even if the result is not actually happy. So, what will happen? Who should win? What were the concerns that you took care of? By actually reviewing the question asked, you can guarantee that you gave that professor her answer. So don’t assume the professor can figure out what will happen because of your analysis – tell him!