law school, week one -- behind me!

At the moment, I'm thinking that this will be a weekly opportunity for me to "pause and reflect" as suggested by someone during the orientation process. So, with apologies, I'm mostly doing this for me right now.

As it's late, I'll just plop things onto the page:

1. There is an enormous amount of work! I say this not in self-pity but in real amazement! You may have heard me say that I hoped my inability to read as fast as some (Eric!) and my likely reduced energy levels (as compared to my 20-something classmates) would be balanced by the fact that I don't need to drink and look for a boyfriend. Well, what I have to say now is that it's a seriously good thing that I don't need to do those things because I'm barely -- no, be honest -- not keeping up. It's terrifying at times to realize that I'm doing very little other than this -- not "wasting" much time on self-maintenance, relationships, etc. -- and it's not enough to feel that it's under control. And I've made a deliberate decision not to commit to the "feeding" stuff like pottery (although I have been to Quaker Meeting twice now) and allow myself the odd luxury of just focusing on this.

2. I am told that the only way through is through, so I do the best I can, and try to learn -- not just law, but how to learn, how to study, how to approach all this. They say just keep doing and it will all fall into place. At this point there's nothing to do but to trust that that's true. It's comforting to be surrounded by very smart people who are also in this state. I keep trying to step back and get some perspective now and then.

3. My profs are great. Our constitutional (con) law prof is also our faculty advisor. With him, we have our "small section" class (about 30 people). Also we've had that class a couple of extra times, due to scheduling stuff, so he's the one I feel I have the best sense of, and I feel very lucky to have him. He is very young -- younger than son Michael, which is a grin -- just out of Yale Law last year. This is his first year teaching. That we won't have last year's exams to prepare with will be balanced, I am convinced, by his genuine enthusiasm for the subject/job/class. This class has, by far, the most reading and the reading is very "dense" so it takes forever.

The other classes I have this semester are Property, Contracts, Civil Procedure and "Lawyering." More on them later, but the profs all seem good and have very different personalities.

4. For the first several days, every class required a re-boot of my brain. I went in thinking I was prepared and came out thinking that I had been completely unprepared -- but that I realized something about what I should have done to prepare. Very steep learning curve here.

5. The other students are fabulous. There is a real diversity of personality, if not the race/socio-economic spread one would wish for -- that latter seems to be true of law school in general, from what I can tell. At any rate, the students are more than I hoped for -- they are very smart and very welcoming toward me. It's fun. I'm back in that PK position where, because I stand out, everyone knows my name and I am only very slowly learning theirs, but hey, I've been here before, and I'm enjoying how quickly they begin to ignore my major difference and just treat me like one of the gang.

6, OK, so here are the questions I'm thinking of asking myself at the end of each week. Thanks to my wonderful Partner for help in coming up with them:

• How did the week go?
• What have I learned this week about how to do this?
• What's one thing I could do differently so that I could get more done with less effort?
• Am I allowing for possibilities I don't yet see?
• Is it time yet to add in some fun/feeding stuff?

My white board says "remember that you love this -- don't focus on the burden!"

I'm thinking often of Nate as he launches into college, and of Nick who has been such a cool trailblazer for me, and of Serine who's in my shoes at UT. I am so grateful to family, friends and various communities for all the continued cheerleading of this late blooming of mine -- you have no idea how much that matters. And most of all to Eric, of course, for everything. Thank you.

finding my place, stage 1

so here's what $938 worth of law textbooks looks like:


doesn't look like all that much, does it? they're pretty big books, but still. oh, well, whatever -- welcome to my book locker. required for one class is an "i-clicker" which looks like an early remote control and is a way to communicate electronically with the professor during class (just having an "i'm old" moment).

truth is i'm excited about it all. at orientation next week, one task will be to locate our "flexes" which make up the cornell mail system. i cheated and found mine today. there it was, right there, with my name on it, as if they are expecting me!

went and sat in the carrels today, just to see if i could find a favorite. did the goldilocks thing -- this one's too close to the stairs where people are talking, that one's too close to the whatever machine is running in that corner. but found one. then went up to the beautiful reading room and read there for a while. feels good. feels good enough that i was having a hard time reading, just excited to be claiming such a place.

i know all this is very uncool, but i am really loving it, and eager to get started. life is good and i'm grateful.

this is the way we walk to school

to catch up a bit:

i'm in ithaca, in my new place. eric's in boston in his. law school starts next week.

law school classes are typically divided into sections of students who take all of their classes together. here, these sections have letter designations. mine is the unfortunately-named "c - section". oh well.

funny: there's someone named eric johnson in my section; i wonder if i'll ever call him the right name.

i'm getting better at facebook, which is how i keep up with what's going on with my classmates as we all get ourselves here. i've gotten my netflix copy of the paper chase -- either alex & christina will come over here or maybe someone on facebook will offer up a bigger screen and we'll go there.

because i'm always more comfortable once i have some familiarity, i walked up to the school today, timed the walk, found my locker (yes, locker. actually, i get 1.5 lockers, one in the library for books, a shared one for my coat & boots), bought my books (ouch), just poked around the school. oh, and got yet another mmr shot -- keep your vaccination records, kids.

one of the best things: i took the pic above on the walk through the gorge on the way to school. as they say, ithaca is gorges.

one good way to meet other law students is to hang out in the law section of the book store.

ithaca is a lot like asheville -- crunchy-granola, massage therapists, the same bumper stickers on volvos and subarus -- but with this serious academic side. i went to the farmers' market yesterday and got good organic stuff. the co-op is good. wegman's is good. my upstairs neighbors are great. everyone walks everywhere.

i'm still getting the apartment settled. on my visit to boston i got some shelves and they are half-painted. i'll put up some pix of the apartment once i find the still-packed-somewhere battery charger and re-juice the camera batteries.

i have moments of panic about whether i can read fast enough for all this. this makes me want to get started on the already-posted homework assignments, the first of which is due in a week. eric thinks this is funny. he also thought it was funny to watch me obsess about which section i was in.

when i came home tonight i saw a sticky note which i'd used in organizing things during the move. it said "do -- less urgent" but when i saw it tonight i read it as "do less -- urgent." i'll take that as a sign for the next couple of days.

tonight i went to the french language meetup, which was fun. i love hearing the french language spoken by native speakers.

i'm tired and full of cheese and creme brulee, so i'll stop now. more soon.

mental retardation and death penalty

my home state of north carolina sure has sentenced a lot of mentally retarded people to death.

in 2002, the supreme court decided that we could no longer constitutionally execute mentally retarded people.

at my future alma mater, john blume has compiled a rough list of the number of people who have had their sentences reduced from death in light of this ruling. nationally, there are 83 on the list, and guess how many north carolina claims? 16! maybe that means nc is just busier getting them off the row than other states, but i kinda doubt it.

thanks, as always to karl keys for his faithful gathering and posting.

there are three executions scheduled for this week.

cornell it is

i've sent my first seat deposit and we have an apartment in ithaca beginning in early august. the tiny (we'll take turns breathing) apartment is in this funky building just four blocks from downtown and two blocks from a bus which runs every 10 minutes to the door of the law school.



the best part is that it is across the street from gimme coffee! yes, that's eric standing there.


orientation is august 25 and classes start august 28.

so now to sell the house we bought during our "delusions of stability" stage in 2006.

cornell

i'm in binghamton at the airport, heading back to nc. pretty exhausted.

here are some thoughts on cornell law, edited from an email i just sent to meg:

i really love the law school. compared to cardozo, all the other schools which accepted me were better for me in certain ways but not others, or were better but not enough better to justify the cost, or whatever. so cardozo remained my top choice until cornell said yes last week.

cornell has it all for me: good program, good students, the ivy tickets which may actually help in launching me, and people here who are actually doing capital defense work in all phases. this means that i can learn on actual cases but also make the human connections that will be so good once i'm out and working. in addition to the death penalty focus, there is a professor who is focused on the issue of race in capital work, and another who is doing empirical studies which might make use of the math way back there in my background. cornell's loan repayment assistance program will make it doable, even though i'll officially take on an impossible debt.

eric is being unbelievably supportive. he is so excited that i have the option of going to a great school that i have fallen in love with. we're not sure what this means for him -- whether he can make it work in ithaca or will need to spend some/all of his time in the city, with us both doing some back&forth. too soon to know yet.

there are lots of little bonus things: a pottery studio just across the way, a moosewood lunch cafe right inside anabel taylor, the chance to spend a semester or year elsewhere, which may help with the eric calculations -- they say lots of folks go to nyu, which was another school with which i fell in love. of course most surely go for the corporate stuff, but i don't see why i couldn't go for the death penalty stuff. of course, ithaca feels a lot like the parts of asheville i love, all crunchy-granola.

it's a relief to be allowed to put this process down, and get to work on the next phase!

there are still a few good schools which haven't responded, but i think i've sent my regrets to all but one of the schools which admitted me. that one deserves a thoughtful letter.