Is that warm toasty feeling coming from the rum in my egg nog, or the nuclear warhead stockpile 20 miles from my house!!!

I was feeling all warm and cozy last night. I was in an old college sweatshirt, slippers on my feet, a little bit of the Yule tide ‘nog in my belly, and the warm feeling that comes from having only 1 test left before Christmas break, and I was feeling pretty good about things. But then, I read this article. I have known about the submarine base located not far from Seattle, but I've never really thought of the implication of it being so close to Seattle. Imagine, nearly a 1/4 of our nuclear arsenal is located stone's throw from downtown and one of the largest population center in the west. I am normally a pretty rational person, and I know that the base is extremely safe. The subs are well guarded and the chance of an accident is remote, but still...it does give me pause. Anyway, back to studying.

Don't Let the Door Hit You on the Way Out and other tidbits from the law school library!!!

Well, I'm halfway through my first set of finals for this, my first semester in law school. I've come to the conclusion that law school final are not designed to test how much you've learned, or how smart you are, but how is your mental endurance.

On the surface, it would seem the most difficult thing about law school would be the fact that you get 1 test, 1 test only to earn your grade for the semester. That means you have just one or two questions to prove what you've learned over the course of class. But that's not really the tough part, the tough part is trying to stay focused and engaged day after day in the library; reviewing stuff you've haven't looked at for months, trying to predict what they'll ask you, and not remember exactly how the professor explained something so you can try to duplicate it in an essay.

Anyway, at the moment I'm highly distract able. It doesn't take much to divert me from my studies and the drama over the question of if Dennis Erickson will stay and U Idaho, or will he take the ASU job, etc...it is enough to keep my searching the internet for blogs and stories rather than studying the intricacies of adverse possession (a legal concept that should have gone the way of the dodo a long time ago, but that's another post). So, if I don't get an A on my next two finals, I'm holding the big D personally responsible, not that he would care mind you, but just because it would make me feel better.




Here are a couple photo shop tributes from a fellow Vandal! I-D-A-H-O, Idaho, Idaho, GO-GO-GO!!! (at least we still have BSU gettin their arses handed to them by Okalahoma to look forward to!!)

Law School 101

My first semester of class is officially over and only the final exams stand between me and a couple weeks off. Hoo-fucking-ray!!

Anyway, I now feel qualified to make a couple of observations that will hopefully be of value to any blurking potential law students out there on what to prepare for as you enter law school.

1) Law professors are technology retards. Really, I swear most of these profs. wouldn’t know how to put together a power point presentation if their life depended upon it. One day, we had a guest speaker who was an innovative leader in the area of medical malpractice lawsuits. What was her brilliant innovation that was shocking the legal world? PowerPoint. Yes, I said it, PowerPoint, and yes it is the end of 2006. She figured that if you put images into a PowerPoint slide show and let a jury see that it would be much more effective than just bloviating to the jury all day. Brilliant. Too bad the business world figured stuff like this out 10 yrs ago.

If you came from an undergrad program like business where you were accustomed to seeing slideshows, graphs, diagrams, etc…get over it, there is nothing to see in law school except the back of your fellow student heads and your teacher pacing in front of the class room as they cast about questions hoping that some hapless student will furnish them the answer they are hoping for. Law school is merely reading, writing, speaking, and listening; if you are lucky your property book might have picture in it, but don’t get your hopes up.

2) Last summer, I ran into a 2L (second year law student) at SU and asked him how he liked law school. His response: “It great, the professors are good and the staff is really looking out for you. It would be fantastic if it weren’t for all the other students.” I looked at him with a puzzled expression, so he expounded, “The other students, they suck.” I asked him to explain, but he just shrugged and said, ‘You’ll see.”

Shortly before the fall term started, a friend came up to Seattle to visit. She had recently graduated from Pepperdine’s law school so I wanted her opinion of school as well. Her response, “It’s okay, except for the fact that it’s like reliving high school.”

Get the idea, if you liked high school you’ll probably like law school, if not, it might be a long three years. Unlike other graduate programs, law school classes are big. There might be 100-300 1Ls starting out each year. Compare that to a graduate program in engineering or biology where the first year class might be 25-50 students, maybe 75 if it’s a large program at a big school, but that’s a stretch. So, who do you think is a tighter group, the 20 people starting an advanced degree in Electrical Engineering or the 250 people fighting to be in the top 10% of their law class? Anyway, put that many people together and let them fight amongst themselves for supremacy and see what happens, it is the basic ingredients for high school redux.


There are probably more stuff that I could post here, but I need to get back to studying. As I said, I still have exams between me and a few weeks of freedom.