I'm still alive

I see that many of you are still faithfully checking my blog. Sorry about the lack of updating but law school was quite draining, and I'm now on a mountain relaxing. I will be back soon. All I have to say is that Denver has dropped very low on my list of favorite cities and that Denver International Airport has dropped very low on my list of favorite airports.

CVS, part dos

One more story: I broke my trusty Mach3 yesterday that I've had for a long time, as the handle just snapped off. So today I go to the drugstore (where I looked for everclear two days ago) looking for a new razor. I was going to buy another Mach3, but I see Gillette's latest offering--the 5-blade Fusion which was only marginally more expensive than the Mach3. So I get the battery operated Fusion Power, which promised the closet shave possible. If by closest shave possible means getting cut and bleeding and cursing like a sailor like there's no tomorrow, I guess they're right. Whoever decided to make a razor with 5 sharp vibrating blades has obviously never heard of strict liability.

I'm throwing it away and getting me another (nonvibrating) Mach3.

Haze

Right now is about 48 hours since I finished my last final. What transpired in those 48 hours is kind of fuzzy, but here is a incomplete recollection pieced together through my memories, photos, and through the call log and voicemail of my phone. Some of these moments are with law students, others are with TheLadyFriend and her friends.

-I drunk dialed many people.
-I drunk dialed many people I now regret, among them several ex-es.
-I was in no condition to drive the last two days, but I thought that I was going to die many times. Apparently when it is dark and I am drunk I think every pair of headlights coming in the opposite direction is going to crash into us.
-I apparently walked into a CVS and asked the cashier very loudly where the condoms were (aisle 3) and if they sold Everclear (no, they don't).
-I set my outlines, emanuels, and all the other papers I've collected during the semester on fire.
-But apparently I stubbornly refused to light my casebooks because I could get money back for them to buy alcohol with.
-I was inappropriately groped by and also inappropriately groped many law students at Circle Bar (where the main 1L party was held).
-Being the recipient of a drunk dial voicemail from a 1L girl asking me if I would like to "light her fire" makes me feel special.
-Telling LadyFriend about voicemail earns me a punch in the arm.
-Drunk law school guys like to get in fights and get thrown out of bars.
-Drunk law school girls like to get in fights claiming girl 1 is hitting on girl 2's boyfriend.
-Talking about 12(b)(4) notice requirements do not make interesting conversation pieces with non-law school people.
-Actors and struggling actors view law school students (i.e me) as the absolute bottom of the totem pole.
-Consuming mojitos, beer, wine, champagne, scotch, red bull, vodka, and doing tequila shots all within the course of a night makes you feel like death the next morning.
-I woke up Tuesday afternoon feeling like death.
-I woke up Wednesday afternoon feeling like death.
-In-N-Out double cheeseburgers make me feel less like death.

Okay, that's about it. I'm going to bid you guys adieu for a while. I'm going to spend my winter break on a mountain with lots of snow alternating between getting drunk and skiing down the mountain. Hasta 2007!

Announcement

Tomorrow at 9AM begins my last final. I am bringing with me a flask. Immediately after my exam is over, I will be downing that flask and then some. Hopefully no fire will start in the law school locker room tomorrow because with all the alcohol students are storing there, everything can go kaboomb pretty quickly. I hope to bring a new meaning to the terms trashed and debauchery tomorrow, so please don't expect a coherent Fox until the end of the week. Thanks.

Law school prom

I got the following email recently for the infamous law school prom that is happening in the end of January. Apparently, it is so important that the SBA needs to remind everyone of it during finals. I've also heard through the grapevine that the tickets are kind of expensive, even though they are subsidized by our dues. Here's a thought SBA: why not find one of the many white-shoe LA firms to sponsor it? I guarantee that a) lots of firms will be more than happy to shell out $20K and advertise its name on the UCLA law school prom (they already sponsor random useless conferences about Malaysian tort law reform here at school) and b) they will definitely want to see their future associates in their natural environment and also take some potentially scandalous photos for use as blackmail to get these aforementioned future associates to bill more hours when they come to the firm. And c) nudity is always fun.

Hi Everyone,

Barrister's Ball is just around the corner and we (the Barrister's committee people) need your photos from this year/last year for the slide show that will be running all night. We want photos from bar review, studying, hanging out, group events etc...Put them on powerpoint slides and of course, add captions if you want to. Send them to [redacted]. Try to get them to us by Jan 20th or so. (Remember, if you are planning on embarrassing anyone, be nice and get their permission first...oh, and while nudity is always fun, it's not appropriate for the slide show).

Tickets go on sale the Wednesday we get back...the sooner you buy, the cheaper they will be.

Have a great winter break!

Have you appeared in Girls/Guys Gone Wild?

The following ad appeared on the bulletin board at school:



Somehow, I don't think that this particular lawyer will find many potential class action members here at the law school. Just a guess.

Anyway, I've sent out holiday e-cards to everyone who's a) emailed me or b) left a comment with an email address attached. Enjoy.

2 down, 1 to go

One more next week and I'll be done. Going out now for a liquid refreshment (or several).

Today I was brushing up before my exam in the library and it was really crowded so I sat at this table with this random girl I didn't know. Time passes. She finishes and is packing up her stuff. I hear something fall out of her bag and I look over on the ground. What had fallen out was a man-made plastic object that runs on batteries. And no, it was not a cell phone. In my entire life, I have never seen a girl so embarrassed as she was today.

She must have had some serious pent-up exam tension.

end of story

1st Semester in Numbers

1st semester 1L at a glance:

Money spent on casebooks: $300
Money spent on commercial supplements to explain casebooks: $500
Number of alcoholic beverages drank: at least 320 and counting
Money spent on aforementioned alcohol: at least $1300
Number of legal memos written: 3
Number of classes missed: 5
Number of these classes missed because I was sick: 0
Number of these classes missed because I was hungover: 5
Number of times cold-called on in class: approximately 12
Number of times I sounded like a fool when called: 11 (I passed the other time)
Number of times I thought about dropping out of law school: 2,521 (give or take 500)
Number of games of spider solitaire played: 879 (according to the stats)
Average number of minutes spent online during each 65-minute class: 50
Number of times I’ve thought about being a law professor: 0
Number of times I’ve been totally lost in class: 468
Number of times I’ve cringed at bad law professor humor: 73
Number of times I’ve thought of strangling gunners: 87
Number of times I’ve been glad that gunners take the heat off me: 132
Number of times I check Facebook a day: 20
Number of blog posts: 104
Number of girls I’ve had sexy-time: 1≥ x ≤5 (a guy has to have some secrets)
Number of threesomes offered: 1
Number of threesomes partook: 0
Number of times I was thrown up on: 1
Money spent on gas: $600+
Money spent on parking, including school permit: $500+
Money spent eating out: $1,500+
Money spent on pasta (the only thing I know how to make): $20
Number of hours spent in the library: too many for my taste
Number of years law school has taken off my life due to stress, boredom, and alcohol consumption: 8

That’s about it. As you might have might been able to tell from these numbers, I am a very studious law student. I’m going now to attempt to pretend to look like I’m studying.

Distractions

Walking through the library today, I saw someone reading my blog on his laptop. I feel honored to know that this serves as a study distraction for some people.

Anonymous email I got today from a reader:
I'm a regular reader of your blog but don't comment. I just want you to know that I have the biggest e-crush on you, even though I don't know how you look like (a la your PG13 dream).

Thanks for making my day. Now I can go study while only mildly cursing law school.

Take off that red shirt...

I don’t naturally have a hatred like many here for that other school across town, but recently that school has been involved with a large piece of news (something other than losing to unranked UCLA in football) that I feel strongly about. The following could have happened at any other school and I would feel the same way.

Factual background: http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=516125
Organized reaction: http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=516180

Without repeating the facts, basically what happened at USC was that their student-run newspaper, the Daily Trojan, nominated someone for its top position. The choice, however, was blocked by an administrator at the school, because the editor-elect called for budget transparency and fiscal independence. Unlike a lot of other papers, the Daily Trojan receives funding from the school, and is not wholly editorially independent in that the editor needs to be vetted by school administrators.

I certainly understand why the university wants to maintain financial control over the newspaper: whoever controls the purse-strings exercises effective control, as a paper can’t publish without money, and the university is loath to let the paper be financially independent. If it were to be independent, it would then be free to criticize the school in whatever why it sees fit. By having a say over who is the editor and the paper’s funding, the school can indirectly control the content of what gets printed. (Another example: a few years ago, a USC student wrote a column about how he actually likes UCLA, and this column has since magically disappeared from the Daily Trojan’s online archives.)

Of course, my problem is that the whole process undermines role the student journalists serve on any campus and undermines the free-press role of student newspapers. However, if the paper is not truly independent and serves as an either mouthpiece for the administration and/or the university exercises control over its direction, that’s fine. But the real crime occurs when the school portrays such a paper as an independent student voice.

(The irony of the whole story is that USC is home to the Annenberg School of Communication, one of the best journalism schools in the country.)

1 down, 2 to go

I had my law school exam virginity taken from me today, and it went decently. Not as painful as I expected but I definitely did not enjoy it. The afternoon went by really fast, and now I understand how lots of people are rushed for time on law school exams, as I was scrambling to type everything that came to my mind. At the end, I literally forgot everything about the course the minute I left the test room, so I guess that's why people relearn law school when they take the bar.

Anyway, on to studying for the next exam in 6 days.

P.S. another reason I'm loving law school here: I hear about lots of my friends who go to schools where are taking four substantive finals. We only have three (the fourth was the writing class that had the memo due before Thanksgiving) and they are each spread out 5-6 days apart from each other.

100th post

Here's my centennial, and a fitting one.

It says something (I'm not sure what, so you draw your own conclusions) that at least 10 percent of the hits to my blog have arrived through web searches of "how not to fail out of law school" and "what happens if you fail 1L" or some variant thereof.

A signal

You know you have been blogging too much when you have a PG-13 rated dream about a certain never-to-be-named female blogger. Note that I do not know any other law school bloggers, male or female, in real life. I will take that to be a sign from the higher powers that be to stop blogging and actually study for finals.

WHAT A GAME!

UCLA 13, (formerly) #2 USC 9

Res ipsa loquitor. There's nothing I can say that others have not already said, so let's leave it at that.

This was my first ever live Bruin football game at the Rose Bowl, and what a game I chose to be my first. Easily among the top 5 moments of my life. If I fail out of law school this semester, it will have been totally worth it (though, as I established in my previous post, is unlikely to happen).

Excuse me while I engage in some serious debauchery tonight.

Sorry Lioness.

Inflate me

Here's about the time where 1Ls are getting stressed about exams and pre-laws are eagerly sending off their applications (like the great 1L mail merge that happens on December 1, except with the changing of the law school names: "I'm sure that a legal education at _______ Law School will develop my abilities to deal effectively with the multitude of social problems that face the disadvantaged, blah blah blah"). Things these pre-laws need to think about of course in deciding where to go are, inter alia, money and rankings. But here's another, dealing with my last post.

The higher ranked the law school, the better the grading system. Like colleges and their grade inflation, law school grade inflation has occurred in an effort both to keep the students happy and to keep up with the Law School Joneses. Students might get peeved about paying $40K to get Cs and Ds. Plus, as the top law schools around the country inflate, their peers and/or aspiring peers inflate as well, so that one school's graduates will not automatically have an advantage based on higher comparative grades.

As dealt with in my last post, UCLA's new revised grading curve for 1Ls is the following, roughly a 25/70/5 curve. In my nonscientific overview of law schools, I believe that this curve is one of the most generous, gradeless Boalt and Yale excepted, of its kind.
A+ to A-: 25% - 29%, Target 27%
B+ to B: 41% - 52%
B-: 18% - 22%, Target 20%
C+ or below: 5% - 8%
And the curve for 2Ls and 3Ls eliminate Cs.

A (taken out of context) proof of my contention that grade inflation rises as a school's ranking rises: UCLAW, founded in 1950, is by far the youngest of the top law schools (as ranked by a certain national weekly news magazine) and is the quickest to have achieved its ranking of any school in the country. The original curve as I understand was 20/40/40. About a dozen years ago, as part of the school's rise, the curve was changed to 20/60/20. Three years ago, a new Dean came to the school from NYU Law, and the current Dean's vision is to build UCLA into a legal powerhouse of the Northeast variety. And last year, he changed the curve to its current form, where basically everyone is guaranteed at least some kind of B. I believe that through more empirical research, one can find this correlation between rank and grade inflation at most, if not all, schools.

How this affects pre-laws is this: lower ranked schools might give out more money, but they also have harsher curves in their attempt to move up in the rankings and to gain legitimacy as being sufficiently intellectual rigorous and disciplined (some even automatically fail out a fixed portion of every 1Ls class). As you move up the rankings, curves become more generous, so a "B+" at a higher ranked school is a lot easier to get than a "B+" at a lower ranked school, a sort of double disadvantage.

Among the many reasons why law school at UCLA is a good deal. It is also currently 73 degrees while the rest of the country digs out of a snow storm.

P.S. Super-duper extra points for anyone who can articulate the connection between the phrase inter alia and the show Prison Break.