A Week's Worth of Blog
Apologies go out to my loyal readers who were deprived of prompt blog updates this week. I really have no excuse in particular so I'll try to just summarize the weeks highlights and do a better job updatig in the future.
Monday:
Had lunch with the bioethics club and discussed possible events for the year.
Also caught the end of a PILF brownbag lunch on working for public interest law firms.
Had a civil procedures assignment due and managed to submit it via email to save paper.
Went to a dinner at the Kraft sukkah at 8PM for Jewish grad students only to discover that half the attendees were law students. Very disappointing. I need to find some science people to hang out with.
Tuesday:
I had a very nice lunch break. First free pizza and a speaker on intellectual property from Brooklyn law school (he was lame by the way). Then a free massage outside lenfest cafe (once every week there are free massages). Then free ice cream in the law school sukkah and some lulav shaking with the chabad rabbi. In the evening there was an awesome panel of professors who went over the landmark supreme court cases and gave an analysis of what was decided and what the impact will be on the law. Very interesting and refreshing since it came from a liberal perspective. I grabbed some wine and cheese on my way out since the panel ended just as my articles meeting for JGL began. I picked up my sources at the social sciences library at the School for International and Public Affairs and also at the main university library and was somewhat dismayed to discover they were all in Spanish. The article I'm working on is about injustice against women in the Dominican Republic. I'm going to have to cite check in Spanish which will be extremely challenging but hopefully educational as well.
Wednesday:
For lunch I went to a Quanun meeting (the middle eastern students) since they were hosting a panel discussing the illegality of the "torture Israelis inflict on Palestinians." I actually had to miss a class to go but I felt I had a greater responsibility to go to the Quanun event. Those of you who know me can probably figure out I wasn't just going to let them slide since they sent out an email about their event to the whole school. I received lots of complaints about the email from other students and I lodged complaints with the administration and brought the matter before the student senate. The actual meeting wasn't anywhere near as bad as the email made it seem, nowhere close to the offensiveness of SJP back in Davis. I'd rate it as mildly upsetting and mostly just lacking in academic worth. That saga continues so more on it later. I went to a senate BBQ afterwards very briefly and managed to be late to contracts. Oh well. Not very good class attendance for the day. I chatted with some friends after class and consequetly missed an ACS meeting. I did manage to go to a slideshow on Alaska in the evening though. I went with very low expectations (slideshows usually suck) but the event was actually pretty amazing. The speaker was an incredible scholar and just all around erson and his photos were breathtakingly beautiful. I learned a lot about the political situation with oil drilling in Alaska and the environmental situation.
Thursday:
We had a senate meeting at lunch and I was all ready to bring up the 1L message board, the need for a new microwave in the cafe, and the inappropriate language of the Quanun email. We got to none of it. The parliamentary procedure of the meeting was terrible. Most of the senators have no familiarity with Robert's Rules of Order. We considered 2.5 clubs funding requests and ran out of time. The meeting took an hour and a half. Totally inefficient. Went to a contracts TA meeting and picked up my materials for the leal methods exam. In the evening I went to the simchat torah party at Barnard and danced all over campus with the torahs until 2AM. Fun times. Much better than studying for leal methods.
Friday:
Got up late. Threw together an outline and some briefs. Went to the computer lab to print them out. Tons of other 1Ls were doing the same thing. Took a gamble and went looking for a bank half an hour before the exam. I needed quarters for laundry. I walked 6 blocks, found one, waited in line, got quarters, and made it back to the law school just in time. The legal methods exam took me the better part of 4 hours. First time taking an exam on a computer. It wasn't that exciting. Got home, did the dishes my roomies allowed to pile up in the sink to have room to make ramen. Ran out of time for ramen by the time I finished doing dishes. Threw on some nice clothes and went to Kesher at Hillel for shabbat. There wasn't even a minyan. Maybe 8 of us. Then Kesher gave us free dinner, ordered from some veggie chinese place. It was only ok. Watched the debate in the piano lounge of the Columbia student center. Kerry whupped on Bush. It was rather satisfying. Now I'm doing laundry. What a week.