Weekly Law School Roundup #110

So the Roundup is starting to be a Tuesday thing! Ack!

With no further ado, here is this week’s slightly late but always fun roundup.

• Balancing. Deciding when and how to spend. Ostranenie
• Planning. And aiming for success (without too much debt). terra nullius
• Reading. A little funny (I laughed out loud). Fight the Hypo
• Healthy. For yourself, in all respects. Legally Numb
• Hunting. For jobs and ducks. Knocked Up (and in Law School)
• Translation. Not just a language problem; a culture one, too? A New Duck
• Hurt. Winter sucks, in so many ways. katlet
• Walking. Is it silly? Magic Cookie
• Noisy. And annoying, at least till you make friends. Thrown for a Loop
• Service. Or the exact opposite. Think Like a Woman. Act Like a Man.

And that’s it for this week! Look for the Roundup next week, on or around Sunday, at Evan Schaeffer’s Legal Underground. It’ll be back here in about two weeks.

late again

So I was out of town yesterday and today, so the Roundup will (again) be late. I’ll get it out tomorrow morning.

Friday latenightblogging

My favorite way to spend a Friday night is reviewing journal staffers’ work and discovering someone didn’t actually do their work ((And I know this because, hi, you didn’t note any problems at all with all those id.s that appeared to be to a document that had completely different page numbers than the page numbers being cited, on which there were supposed to be QUOTATIONS you were supposed to be checking, which do not just happen to appear in both, differently-paginated articles.)), all while not being at Law Prom. ((Note: Mr. Angst and I voluntarily skipped out on Law Prom for a number of reasons, and I don’t regret that decision. I’m just sayin’, it’s a little annoying that I’m fixing other people’s work while those people are almost certainly at Law Prom.))

Scheduling

I have never been good at organizing my time in any realistic fashion. I generally just sit down and do the work I have to do, in no particular order and without deliberately chunking tasks.

For the remainder of this semester—the remainder of my law school career—that is not going to fly. I have The Task to finish ((I know, I haven’t been writing much about The Task. Maybe I’ll start doing that as a way of organizing my thoughts. Maybe I won’t, since I’m still pretty sure I have no idea what I’m talking about.)) as well as some lingering journal duties, and the MPRE to prepare for, and clinic work, and class work for that last law school class.

The other day, Coleslaw posted a link to Study Hacks, about scheduling one’s writing. I needed that post So Much, it’s not even funny. The whole concept of not sitting down and trying to write for interminable amounts of time—of writing without an end in sight—was revelatory for me. I don’t know that that’s what Study Hacks was necessarily going for, but that’s what I took from it.

So I’ve started scheduling my day around my tasks in manageable chunks. Instead of looking at my day and saying, “I’m going to work on X till I’m done with it and then Y if I have time,” I’m saying, “I’m going to sit and write for three hours, from 9 to noon, and then I’m going to work on this other thing until 4, and then I’m going to the gym, no matter where I am in the progress of working on these things.”

Granted, sometimes that won’t work. Sometimes I’ll have to take the tail end of a project and just go finish it, no matter how long it takes. But there are very few projects on my plate right now for which I can’t accurately predict how long that finishing process will take. (Ew, that grammar is icky.) I’m feeling less stressed about working because I am less uncertain about how things will get done. They’ll get done in three- and four-hour chunks. That’s how.

With that, I’m off to walk the dog and have lunch before I jump into the afternoon.

9-finger typing

The semester has officially caught up with me. But I am seeing the light at the end of the tunnel—in the last few days I’ve finished or offloaded three major projects and made huge headway towards totally completing a fourth. I have two major things left to do, one which (sigh) I am already hugely behind on which has repercussions for other people (i.e., they’ve got work to do after I’m done), and one which I am also delayed on but that only affects me (i.e., if I don’t get it done, at least it means I’m the only one who will have to work on it after graduation).

But I am well underway on both of these projects, and I feel good about them. I also am going to be getting some help on one of them soon, so the light at the end of the tunnel is really shining brightly. Still, between now and mid-May I have to finish these two projects, one of them much sooner than the other, study for and take the MPRE, and . . . wait, that can’t be it, can it? I also have an exam to take as well as a clinic to keep participating in, but I am less concerned about those—that’s just the daily work, I guess. And there’s the law school musical, of course, but that’s just plain fun—diversion—so I don’t really count that. What it all means is that my plate is looking a little cleaner lately, which I appreciate.

It also means that I have to be a little more focused since I have fewer things to be distracted by and I admit that I am not the best at being focused on one or two things; I like to have a lot going on at once so that I can jump back and forth. But it will be good for me—finding the diversions in the monotony? (Not that there’s a lot of monotony in the work I’ve got ahead of me; it’s just that it is almost certain to seem neverending at some point.)

Meanwhile, I’ve got a burn on my left thumb, which makes it tough to type (I’m going between my keyboard and an ice cube wrapped in a paper towel) so I’m taking a bit of a Valentine’s Day break to watch a movie with Mr. Angst. I am sure I will regret this in the morning, but ah well.

Law School Roundup #108

Welcome to this week’s very delayed Law School Roundup, featuring posts by law students about, well, everything, but mostly about being law students and people. (Vague, yes.) Enjoy!

• Mean Girls They start so early. 2L Wannabe
• Prep Why bother? Law and Floss
• Admiralty It can come up when you least expect it. Mommy on the Floor
• Dance! Instead of working. Thanks, But No Thanks
• Clocked A different kind of timekeeping. Butterflyfish
• Football An interesting take, even if the season’s over. A New Duck
• Life Getting in the way of life. Cella Bellum
• Beer good. For when life bad. Lag Liv
• Writing A lot. Rambling Without Cause
• Shorts? But it’s still February! Think Like a Woman. Act Like a Man.
• Whimper Third year wasn’t supposed to be like this. Thrown for a Loop

And that’s it for this week’s Roundup! Look for it next week at Evan Schaeffer’s Legal Underground and then, back here in two weeks.

this is just to let you know

I will be out of pocket all day tomorrow (7 am to sometime in the late-night hours) so the Roundup will be posted on Monday.

Remember, you can submit links for posts you liked that you think should be featured in the Roundup. In fact, I encourage it!

See you Monday.

A new toy!

Because of continuing problems with my wrists, l bought a Wacom Bamboo, a tablet and pen (input device). I’m trying to see how well Apple’s handwriting recognition software works for sending text to various applications—like my browser for posting on Le Blog. It works OK, but not great. It likes to add two or three spaces between my words and it has problems with distinguishing my capital letters from my non-capitals, but otherwise, it’s pretty good.

Mind you, I’ve corrected all the mistakes in this post. And I won’t likely be doing much more of this—typing is MUCH easier. But it)’s still fun to play with.

Monday fogblogging

Last night’s Super Bowl gathering ended with people scattering into the unexpected snow and, this morning, that snow has turned into icky, drippy fog.

What better weather, then, for sitting at home in my sweats and getting work done? None, I tell you, none. I am back at my desk, after two weeks of working in front of the TV and at the dining room table. I’m not sure why I’ve been avoiding my desk, other than that it’s piled to the ceiling with books and Westlaw printouts, and that’s a bit depressing.

Of course, the two weeks on the couch and at the table have taken a toll on my wrist, so I’m back to wearing my splint and spending my breaks looking for a good ergonomic mouse that works with a Mac. (3M has a cool joystick-shaped one, but the scroll function is via a button that works with Windows but not with OS X. I can’t live without a scroll function, so I’m not getting that one.)

In any case, a day spent inside swaddled in fleece is just what my latest clinic assignment needs, so the fog could not have been better timed. I’m getting solid research done, I have a good outline, and I’m about to decamp to the living room with some printouts of seminal cases. I suppose I’ll have to take the dog out here in a bit but I doubt he’ll want to be outside any more than I do, so I’m sure to be back at work in a jiffy.

Productive Mondays always make me feel better.

in honor of football

Super Bowl Sunday is nothing without the right food. My necessary Super Bowl food is brisket. Here, my dears, is the recipe.

1 8-12 lb. brisket, trimmed but not too much (you need some fat for flavor!)
2 tbsp minced garlic or 2 tsp. garlic powder
Cavender’s Greek Seasoning
Season salt
Kosher salt
Fresh ground pepper
1 can of Coke (must be COKE, not Diet Coke or Dr. Pepper or any other brand)

If you can’t get a whole brisket that’s 8 lbs. you can do two 4 pounders. This will probably also work with a 5-7 lb. brisket, but you’ll want to adjust the cooking times a bit.

Place your brisket in a roasting pan and season liberally on both sides with kosher salt, pepper, Cavender’s, and season salt. Turn fat side up and, using a sharp knife, slice small pockets in the brisket through the fat. Fill the pockets with minced garlic. If you don’t want to take the time or effort, you can just season liberally with garlic powder.

Heat the oven to 450-500°. Let the brisket sit at room temperature while the oven heats. When the oven is hot, put the brisket in for half an hour. After that half hour, pull brisket out and reduce the oven temperature to 325-350°. Pour the can of Coke over the brisket, cover the roasting pan with a lid or with foil, and return to the oven. Cook for 2-1/2 to 3 hours or until very, very tender.

Pull out and let sit under the foil for half an hour or so before slicing the brisket thinly against the grain.

Serve with barbecue sauce, white bread, pickles, beans, or whatever else you want.