Pro Hac Vice

I wrote a really long blog entry about how much I love my new 5-Quart bowl-lift KitchenAid mixer. And that entry got deleted. So now I'm bitter.

Law school is rapidly coming to an end and I'm struck by a thought - if I was one of those annoying old people that are in law school, by the time the third year rolled around I'd be really bummed, because they would also be totally fed up with professors that teach nothing practical, and stand around, spinning wheels and going off on time-wasting ramblings that distract the students from his main point, which wasn't going to give them anything practical to begin with. Sorry, tangent. Anyway, by the time third-year rolls around, we're totally jaded and bored with the entire, useless, means-to-an-end-hazing-ritual called law school, and at least us who came directly from college never really lost our apathy and ennui for the drivel we knew was going to ooze from our professors' mouths. The old people probably worked, and then, as time went on, glorified what school was in their head, romanticizing going back to school, with all the ready access to new, fascinating information, firey professors with a passion for teaching, eager study and dissection of case law and statutes, hitting a pile of musty venerated Southern Reporters, and feeling the wisdom of ages whispering in your ear, learning, learning, learning, and winter break!!! At their age, priorities have changed, and thoughts of booze and 'ludes and sex and tabs and sleep have given way to cats and American cars and sensible shoes and maybe a lunch of a leftover baked chicken thigh, some lima beans and a handful of bagel chips, with a cholesterol pill. They're probably in it for the information, thinking that upon going back, they're going to learn soooooooooo much, and the journey is going to be sooooooo "money's-worth" informative.

For all I miss college, and I'm sure I'm romanticizing it plenty, I know if I went back, I'd tear my hair out and beat my head against a wall, I would be so bored in lecture. And with "homework." At least in college I never had a laptop with wireless access. I'm an expert on blogs, and I go onto www.washingtonpost.com and www.friendster.com at least five times a day. In college while I was doodling geometric shapes, and calligraphy in my notebooks, perfecting a Times New Roman "T" or getting shading right on a still-life of cones with a ball-point pen, I was hearing the lecture - words were not going in one ear and out the other. Somehow I was absorbing, even while not paying attention. In law school I can't even do that. But I digress, as my roommate sneezes loudly and decides that 11:00 at night is the perfect time to re-organize his closet...

At least I never lost my apathy, and so I'm not as disappointed with what a waste law school turned out to be. I got no job, I got no practical skills. I got some more friends, a boyfriend, an intimate knowledge of Miami's drinking establishments, and 100K of new debt. It's just like original college, except with mandatory attendance policies and higher expectations, oh, and a really wicked long, wicked stressful, wicked test at the end. And you still come out absolutely ill-prepared to practice any skill. Honestly, what is that kid doing in there?! So LOUD!

Anyhoo, I'm just glad I really had no expectations to crush, looking back on it. I went to law school to delay reality for another three years, and I did just that. Granted, my reality changed; I now fear missing something like a statute of limitations and allowing simple human fallibility to expose me to liability for lawsuits. Sure, first year was amazing, but that's because that year was the only one in which we learned anything, and probably only because we had the fear of god drilled in us that the Socratic Method would weed out the chaff from the wheat, and there was no way we'd end up being chaff in front of everyone else...

If I had been one of those people who gave into their romantic notions of schooling, and went back to law school to fulfill the dream, and expand myself intellectually, I would be really fuckin' depressed. Cuz it's either gonna happen in the next two days of school, or it's never gonna happen... And my money's on the latter.