I traveled out of town this weekend to spend Christmas with my family. (Merry slightly belated Christmas. Mine was great. How was yours?) I had no trouble getting there. One thing I will say about the Oakland airport - they know how to do inoffensive, efficient security. I headed to the airport after work on Wednesday night, and I got to Salt Lake City a few hours later. The most adventure came when I was packed like sardines on BART.
Of course, on Christmas day, a would-be terrorist decided to try to blow up an airplane. (Fortunately, he failed.) Predictably, this means extra inconveniences for law-abiding citizens. First, as a result of the new security measures, I could only have one carry-on instead of the standard carry on and personal item. This meant that I had to jam the contents of my purse into my laptop bag.
Since TSA won't actually tell us what the new security regulations are, I didn't quite know what to do do prepare. I got to the Salt Lake airport about 90 minutes prior to my flight. (Since I don't check luggage, I usually get there 45 minutes before.) I went to security and got in line. I was pleased that the line was moving quickly, and I figured maybe the blogosphere overreacted.
When I got to the place where I had to take off my shoes and unpack my carefully packed luggage to prove that I brush with Crest, use Dove face wash, and wear Cover Girl Creamy Natural Fragrance Free makeup, I saw something strange.
Sunday, December 27, 2009
Thursday, December 17, 2009
The Bill of Rights as It Relates to Cake
This little bit of weirdness grew out of a silly Facebook conversation. In honor of the birthday (yes, I know technically it's an anniversary, not a birthday, but work with me here) of the Bill of Rights, I was asked if there would be cake. I responded with how that piece of cake relates to the first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution. Here's a more detailed version.*
First Amendment:
Congress can't make you say grace before eating your cake, but it also can't prohibit you from doing so. If you want to tell people about your cake, you may do so. This includes, but is not limited to: speaking about it, writing about it, doing interpretive dance about it, making statues, photos or other artistic representations of it, or burning it. If you don't have cake, or you are displeased with your cake, you may protest about it.
Second Amendment:
If you wish to defend your cake using arms, you may do so.
Third Amendment:
In times of peace, you do not have to feed your cake to soldiers. In times of war, you only have to in the manner prescribed by law.
Fourth Amendment:
Your cake is free from unreasonable search and seizure.
Fifth Amendment:
If you are accused of stealing cake, or committing some other crime in relation to the cake, you can't be prosecuted unless you've been indicted by a grand jury, and you can't be forced to testify against yourself. If you have been acquitted, you can't be prosecuted again for the same crime. You can't be deprived of your cake without due process of law, and the government can't take your cake for public use without paying you for it.
Sixth Amendment:
You have a right to a lawyer if you're accused of stealing cake. [editor's note: There's other stuff in the Sixth Amendment, but it doesn't relate to cake.]
Seventh Amendment:
If you have one of those fancy bakery cakes that's worth more than $20, you have a right to a jury trial if you sue someone regarding the cake.
Eighth Amendment:
You can't be excessively fined in relation to your cake.
Ninth Amendment:
The prior eight amendments are not an exclusive list of your rights relating to your cake. You may have more, but we're not really sure how to figure out what they are.
Tenth Amendment:
If the federal government doesn't have the power to regulate your cake, and the state government hasn't been prohibited from regulating your cake, then the state government may regulate your cake.
---
*Even this doesn't capture the full nuances of constitutional law. Proceed at your own risk. When in doubt, remember that the French solution for cake is available and noncontroversial. Marie Antoinette will let you eat it. (No word on whether you can have it, too. Law review commentary on the subject is welcome.)
First Amendment:
Congress can't make you say grace before eating your cake, but it also can't prohibit you from doing so. If you want to tell people about your cake, you may do so. This includes, but is not limited to: speaking about it, writing about it, doing interpretive dance about it, making statues, photos or other artistic representations of it, or burning it. If you don't have cake, or you are displeased with your cake, you may protest about it.
Second Amendment:
If you wish to defend your cake using arms, you may do so.
Third Amendment:
In times of peace, you do not have to feed your cake to soldiers. In times of war, you only have to in the manner prescribed by law.
Fourth Amendment:
Your cake is free from unreasonable search and seizure.
Fifth Amendment:
If you are accused of stealing cake, or committing some other crime in relation to the cake, you can't be prosecuted unless you've been indicted by a grand jury, and you can't be forced to testify against yourself. If you have been acquitted, you can't be prosecuted again for the same crime. You can't be deprived of your cake without due process of law, and the government can't take your cake for public use without paying you for it.
Sixth Amendment:
You have a right to a lawyer if you're accused of stealing cake. [editor's note: There's other stuff in the Sixth Amendment, but it doesn't relate to cake.]
Seventh Amendment:
If you have one of those fancy bakery cakes that's worth more than $20, you have a right to a jury trial if you sue someone regarding the cake.
Eighth Amendment:
You can't be excessively fined in relation to your cake.
Ninth Amendment:
The prior eight amendments are not an exclusive list of your rights relating to your cake. You may have more, but we're not really sure how to figure out what they are.
Tenth Amendment:
If the federal government doesn't have the power to regulate your cake, and the state government hasn't been prohibited from regulating your cake, then the state government may regulate your cake.
---
*Even this doesn't capture the full nuances of constitutional law. Proceed at your own risk. When in doubt, remember that the French solution for cake is available and noncontroversial. Marie Antoinette will let you eat it. (No word on whether you can have it, too. Law review commentary on the subject is welcome.)
Sunday, December 13, 2009
Still Alive Over Here
It's been a crazy few weeks. I had finals, and I'm back working full-time until school starts up again in January. On my "vacation", I have to finish up my seminar paper and prepare my note for the high-tech law journal. (The two overlap significantly, so it's more like writing 1 1/2 papers, not two.) Then I need to get the paper ready for publication so I can start sending it to law reviews in February. My goal is to publish one paper per semester for the rest of law school so that when I graduate, I can be ready to go on the teaching market with four articles published. That will put me significantly ahead of the competition in publications, which should make up for not having gone to Yale.
Friday, December 4, 2009
Business Writing Help!
As I'm sure anyone who has read my blog knows, I love to write. I mostly enjoy academic writing, such as essays and journal articles, but I've dabbled in blogging and journalism, and I've even tried my hand at creative writing. (NaNoWriMo fell victim to real life this year, though. Better luck next time.) Business writing is an area where I'm weak, however.
I got my start in the working world in 2000, when the dot-com bubble was at its bubbliest. I was a green 18-year old with no college education and no experience. They don't teach business writing in high school. [1] There was a huge labor shortage at the time, so qualifications for getting a job were: 1) Do you have a pulse? 2) Do you have a social security number?. Seeing as I was in possession of both of those qualifications, I got hired by a temp agency.
There's no training at most temp agencies, so I just got thrown into the world of business. I was expected to sink or swim. Fortunately, I learned to swim pretty quickly. Then college happened, then my mission happened, and then law school happened. During college, I worked as a teaching assistant, so I didn't have to worry about office skills. In law school, I worked in the library, where I shelved books and helped students with legal research.
Then The Great and Dreadful Interruption of Life (TM) happened. I suddenly found myself with half a law degree, no job, no money, and no marketable skills. I called up a different temp agency (that I had used over summers in law school when I wasn't shelving books) and I got placed in the rotation again. Business was slow, so I took a part-time job doing home health care on the weekends to pay the bills. (This health care job, which I intended to take for a few months to get back on my feet ended up becoming a full-time job that lasted for 3 years.) Once again, no need for business writing.
I went to paralegal school, but because of my 3 semesters of law school (which included a rather worthless legal writing and research class, as I've mentioned before), my writing class was waived. I graduated with honors, giving me a nice shiny marketable degree, but because of the economy, there wasn't really a market for paralegals at the time.
Back in February, I landed a position through my temp agency that was supposed to last for 3 months, covering the front desk. Once the 3 months was up, I was promoted to HR, where I still am today. (I got hired as a permanent employee in August.) So, I have a ton of work experience, I managed to go back to law school after TGaDIoL, but I still feel like my skills are deficient in a few key areas. (I had a much better legal writing class this time around, but I know business writing is different from legal writing, and I'm not even that good at non-academic legal writing anyway. Just ask my professor...)
My roommate recently graduated with a certificate in administrative assisting. I didn't even know that there were schools for that. She learned all sorts of useful stuff like how to write a memo. Anyway, so now I'm juggling law school (at the end of this semester, I will have completed 3 years, which is as much as most lawyers, but I digress) and working in HR, where I have no experience. I'm sort of learning as I go.
My boss asked me today to write a specific type of memo, and I'll admit that I had to google it to get an example. I'm a good writer, but there's so much in the business world that I don't know because I've spent most of my adult life in school, and I've spent much of my working life working for universities. This is a sort of long-winded way of getting to the point, but does anyone have any suggestions for a good business writing textbook or style guide? I want to have a good reference and a way to teach myself all the stuff that I probably should have picked up along the way over the past 10 years. [2]
---
[1] There may have been business writing courses available, but if there were, I never heard about them. I was tracked into high-end math and science classes because the guidance counselors, teachers, and many of my family members figured I would go on to become an engineer. Imagine everyone's surprise when I decided to study political science and philosophy in college and then go to law school. Of course, I do work for a software company, and I'm studying intellectual property law, so I'm sort of the most engineer-like legal person around.
[2] I don't need help with grammar, etc. Mainly, I need help with tone and formatting. Everything I write sounds like it was written by a lawyer, albeit a lawyer who refuses to use the words "heretofore" or "whereas". (But who apparently has no objection to the use of "albeit".)
I got my start in the working world in 2000, when the dot-com bubble was at its bubbliest. I was a green 18-year old with no college education and no experience. They don't teach business writing in high school. [1] There was a huge labor shortage at the time, so qualifications for getting a job were: 1) Do you have a pulse? 2) Do you have a social security number?. Seeing as I was in possession of both of those qualifications, I got hired by a temp agency.
There's no training at most temp agencies, so I just got thrown into the world of business. I was expected to sink or swim. Fortunately, I learned to swim pretty quickly. Then college happened, then my mission happened, and then law school happened. During college, I worked as a teaching assistant, so I didn't have to worry about office skills. In law school, I worked in the library, where I shelved books and helped students with legal research.
Then The Great and Dreadful Interruption of Life (TM) happened. I suddenly found myself with half a law degree, no job, no money, and no marketable skills. I called up a different temp agency (that I had used over summers in law school when I wasn't shelving books) and I got placed in the rotation again. Business was slow, so I took a part-time job doing home health care on the weekends to pay the bills. (This health care job, which I intended to take for a few months to get back on my feet ended up becoming a full-time job that lasted for 3 years.) Once again, no need for business writing.
I went to paralegal school, but because of my 3 semesters of law school (which included a rather worthless legal writing and research class, as I've mentioned before), my writing class was waived. I graduated with honors, giving me a nice shiny marketable degree, but because of the economy, there wasn't really a market for paralegals at the time.
Back in February, I landed a position through my temp agency that was supposed to last for 3 months, covering the front desk. Once the 3 months was up, I was promoted to HR, where I still am today. (I got hired as a permanent employee in August.) So, I have a ton of work experience, I managed to go back to law school after TGaDIoL, but I still feel like my skills are deficient in a few key areas. (I had a much better legal writing class this time around, but I know business writing is different from legal writing, and I'm not even that good at non-academic legal writing anyway. Just ask my professor...)
My roommate recently graduated with a certificate in administrative assisting. I didn't even know that there were schools for that. She learned all sorts of useful stuff like how to write a memo. Anyway, so now I'm juggling law school (at the end of this semester, I will have completed 3 years, which is as much as most lawyers, but I digress) and working in HR, where I have no experience. I'm sort of learning as I go.
My boss asked me today to write a specific type of memo, and I'll admit that I had to google it to get an example. I'm a good writer, but there's so much in the business world that I don't know because I've spent most of my adult life in school, and I've spent much of my working life working for universities. This is a sort of long-winded way of getting to the point, but does anyone have any suggestions for a good business writing textbook or style guide? I want to have a good reference and a way to teach myself all the stuff that I probably should have picked up along the way over the past 10 years. [2]
---
[1] There may have been business writing courses available, but if there were, I never heard about them. I was tracked into high-end math and science classes because the guidance counselors, teachers, and many of my family members figured I would go on to become an engineer. Imagine everyone's surprise when I decided to study political science and philosophy in college and then go to law school. Of course, I do work for a software company, and I'm studying intellectual property law, so I'm sort of the most engineer-like legal person around.
[2] I don't need help with grammar, etc. Mainly, I need help with tone and formatting. Everything I write sounds like it was written by a lawyer, albeit a lawyer who refuses to use the words "heretofore" or "whereas". (But who apparently has no objection to the use of "albeit".)
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