Good Car-ma

Back in 2005 I was broke. I had just started law school in San Francisco, and I was living with my parents in San Jose. I had no car.

My dad would drop me off at the train station on his way into work in the morning and pick me up at the station on his way home. The train wasn't too bad, except for the fact that my commute was 2 hours each way. After a few months of this, I decided I couldn't deal with it anymore. So I looked in the classified ads and found a car in my price range that looked decent.

The car was a 1990 Toyota Camry with 195,000 miles on it. The seller wanted $1200 for it. I took the car for a test drive and decided that I wanted to get it. My dad recommended against it because he said that it was too risky to buy a car that old and with mileage that high. I ignored his advice and bought the car anyway.

Back from Oblivion

I apologize for my long absence. It turns out that working full-time, studying for the bar exam, and teaching a college English class isn't really conducive to blogging. Now that the bar exam is over, I'm back in the game. The exam was two weeks ago, but I'm only now making up my sleep debt. (Just in time to incur a new one. Thanks, Daylight Saving Time!)

All the talk of sleep debt makes me wonder - what is the sleep interest rate? If I'm overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of it all, can I declare sleep bankruptcy? What will that do to my sleep credit score?

This reminds me of a verse of scripture. Among other things, Doctrine and Covenants 88:124 admonishes us to "cease to sleep longer than is needful." At the risk of getting struck by lightning, I'll have to admit that whenever I hear that phrase, I laugh a bit. Who has time to sleep longer than is needful? I would settle for even being able to sleep as long as is needful.

Surfacing for air

I'm still alive over here! I've been a bit busy with work, bar exam study, teaching, and general life. I'll be a bit absent for the next 3 weeks, but once the bar is over, I'll be back.

I crossed paths with one of my co-workers in the hall today. Our encounter went like this:

Co-worker: Hi. How are you today?
Me: Fine. You?
Co-worker: Great.

It was a pretty superficial conversation. In all honesty, I'm not doing fine. I'm tired, grouchy, and I have a headache from the lack of sleep. But I also know that "how are you?" isn't really a question. It's a greeting.

I wonder why that is. Was it always this way? Or was there a time when people asked and actually wanted to know the answer?

Resolved

Happy 2012, everyone! Only 355 days until the end of the world (or the end of the Mayan calendar, take your pick).



Last year, I made an ambitious list of resolutions, but I only managed to keep one of them. (Graduate from law school.) My graduation day was on May 21, 2011, which you may remember was supposed to be the end of the world as well. I guess, in true procrastination form, I wait until just the last minute to get anything important done! (What I figure is somebody should just predict every day as the end of the world. Then eventually they'll be right.)

So, here's my list of resolutions for 2012:

• Gain admission to the bar of at least one U.S. jurisdiction (preferrably California).
• Publish at least one law review article.
  
• Complete the Couch to 5K program.
• Make at least one food storage meal per week and blog about it.

This looks pretty doable.

The Night Before Christmas

Every Christmas Eve, we have a family tradition of ordering pizza for dinner and then lighting a fire in the fireplace, reading the Christmas story, and singing Christmas carols until we're hoarse.

This year, the city of San Jose banned the burning of wood fires, so we had to make due with candles. As my dad was reading the Christmas story, he started to trip over the words. (We were reading from the King James version, so the language, while beautiful, is a bit archaic.) There was a portion of the story where the baby Jesus was referred to as the "fruit of the womb". Well, my dad messed up and said "Fruit of the Loom". So we had to pause as we erupted in laughter. We then decided that the swadling clothes were Fruit of the Loom brand.

At least nobody accidentally called francincense "Frankenstein" this year.

Merry Christmas!

Christmas Card 2011

I didn't get a chance to send out Christmas cards this year, and I didn't find any e-cards that I liked. So, I designed my own.

Wishing you and yours a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Love,
Trudy (and Ebony and Tuffguy)

Still Here!

It's been busy lately, but I'm still here. In case I don't get back in the next few weeks, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Office Zeitgeist

As part of my position at work, I'm responsible for keeping my finger on the pulse of the office. I keep an eye on morale and try to address problems before they get out of hand. Ever since someone brought in a box of magnetic poetry for the break room fridge, this job has become easier.

This morning as I was toasting my bagel, I stopped to read some of the sentences people had created with the words. Here's what my co-workers are thinking today:

• My best cubicle strategy is a non work lunch.
• We want to retire and how.
• Market crash caused my career plans to change.
• Embrace overseas office.
  

Here, Kitty, Kitty

I've been a cat person since I was a child. When I was two, I convinced my parents to take in a stray cat that was begging for food at our door. He was an all black cat, and being a two year old, I named him Blackie. I loved that cat. Sadly, we couldn't take him with us when we moved to California when I was six.

Throughout the rest of my childhood, my parents wouldn't let me have pets. (Except for goldfish, but you can't pet a fish.) When I moved into my own apartment, stray cats started showing up. Naturally, I fed them. One of the strays was a gray tabby cat. I named him Herbert. I fed him for several months before he ran off.

Then a beautiful black cat showed up at my door. I chased her off because she was friendly and well-fed, so I assumed that she was someone's cat and didn't need the food for the strays. She kept coming back like it was some sort of game. I asked around and nobody claimed her, so I named her Ebony and took her in. When I took her to the vet for her shots, I found that she had already been spayed, so she used to be someone's cat. But in the four years I've had her, nobody has come looking for her.

Ebony doesn't like other cats very much, which is sad because I wanted to get another one so she wouldn't be home alone all day. Well, the universe granted me my wish last week.

Sine of the times (or off on a tangent)

When I was a kid, everyone thought I was going to be an engineer (like my father, and his father...). I was good at math and science. I even liked science. However, I didn't like math. The only thing I ever got detention for in school was a repeated failure to do my algebra homework. I simply didn't see the point. It seemed like a waste of my time to do 50 problems on the same topic when 5 would suffice.

When I was in 11th grade, calculus and French were the same period. I had already satisfied the graduation requirement of two years of math and two years of a foreign language. So, whichever class I took would be an elective. I wanted to take French. My dad wanted me to take calculus. I told him that I was going to be a lawyer, so I would never need to do any more math. He won, and I had to take calculus. (I ended up taking French at the local community college that summer, so all wasn't totally lost.)

I struggled in calculus. It was the first time that math was hard for me. This took my dislike for math and intensified it. By the time I finished, I was sure I never wanted anything more to do with math. Fortunately, I passed the AP test, so I didn't have to take any math in college.

I studied political science and philosophy. Although I didn't have to take any math, I had to take statistics and economics. While knowledge of calculus wasn't essential in those classes, it sped up my homework because I could take mathematical shortcuts that other people couldn't. Once I graduated, I was secure in the knowledge that I was totally done with math.

I took some time off from school, and then I went to law school. The only math I had to do there was arithmetic. I'm now done with law school. Instead of being a lawyer, I've decided that I want to be a professor. I had a job lined up that fell through.

Most people with graduate degrees have a chance to get some college level classroom teaching experience while in school. Unfortunately, that's not a part of the law school curriculum. So, in order to be competitive, I need to get some time in the classroom.

One of my professors told me about the Prison University Project, which is an organization that recruits volunteers to teach college classes so that the inmates at San Quentin can receive their degrees. I signed up to teach English or comparative religion, but they ended up having plenty of volunteers for those classes this semester. However, they have a desperate need for people to teach math.

Since the rest of the volunteers are liberal arts folks whose allergy to numbers is even greater than mine, I ended up getting myself into teaching pre-algebra. I start next week.

So, the philosopher with a law degree who got detention for not doing algebra homework and hasn't taken a math class in 12 years is now teaching math to college students. Go figure.

Back to School

Sort of.

I had a part-time (leading to full-time in a few semesters) non tenure track teaching position at an undergraduate university for the fall lined up. My plan was to stay there a few years to get some experience and then go on the market for a tenure track position at a law school. Unfortunately, the job fell through.

So, my plans have been accelerated. I hadn't planned on going on the market this year, but through a series of improbable events, about which I may blog later, things have fallen into place for me to go on the market. I'll be going to a conference in Phoenix next month designed for aspiring law professors, and I'm hoping I get some useful advice there.

I'm not the typical law prof candidate. The typical candidate went to Yale (I went to Santa Clara) graduated at the top of the class (I was somewhere other than the top), and was on law review (I was on a law journal, but not the law review). Additionally, the typical candidate is a few years out of school (I just graduated) and clerked for a federal appellate judge (I couldn't even manage to land an interview with a district court judge, despite sending out hundreds of applications). So, I have an uphill battle here.

But, there is one aspect of the process over which I have some control. The typical candidate also has a record of publication of law review articles. I can't out-Yale the competition, I can't out-GPA them, and I can't out-clerk them, but I can out-write them. This is where the back to school aspect comes in.

I have trouble getting work done at home. So, I'm going to spend my free time hanging out in Heafey (SCU's law library) taking advantage of the fact that alumni who haven't passed the bar yet get free access. (Come November, when bar results are released, I'll have to start paying. Hope springs eternal.) So, go to work all day, go to school all evening. Just like I never graduated. Except that I'll have to shepardize my cases using the books since I don't have Lexis or Westlaw.

It's way better than going back to school, though. I don't have to pay tuition, and I get to spend my time writing about things I find interesting instead of sitting in classes about subjects that I'll never need to know about again now that I've taken the bar exam. Seriously, if I need a will, I won't do it myself. I'll do the prudent thing and go get a lawyer.

So, if you're one of the people I left behind when I graduated, stop by and say hi. Apparently Heafey is like the Hotel California.

Bar Exam Diaries - Day 3

I'm done! Here's hoping that I don't have to repeat this ordeal in February.

My alarm went off at 6:00 because I had planned on doing my hair and wearing makeup for the confidence boost. (I had gone to the other days with no makeup and braided hair.) I was so tired that I reset my alarm for 6:30. I got up at 6:35 and showered and dressed. I managed to do my hair, but I didn't bother with the makeup. It's not like I'm trying to impress anyone there anyway.

I didn't eat any breakfast at home because I wasn't hungry yet. I turned on my computer to check my e-mail, and my cat decided she wanted to curl up on my lap and purr lovingly. I let her do that for a few minutes and then I had to leave. I drove to the BART station and got on the train. I brought a book today, so I buried my nose in it, in the international symbol for "please don't talk to me right now". Fortunately, everyone near me on the train was familiar with that symbol.

Bar Exam Diaries - Day 2

I'm now 2/3 of the way through the bar exam. The worst of it is over. Today was the multistate bar exam, which is the multiple choice section. I'm pretty good at essay exams, but multiple choice is my weakness, so today was the challenging day for me.

I woke up at 6:30, showered, dressed, and decided on breakfast. All I could stomach was a thing of yogurt, so I ate it and then drove to the BART station. I got on the train and headed on my way. Nobody felt chatty today, which is good, because I didn't really feel chatty, either. I got smart today and brought my ipod. I spent the train ride playing Angry Birds. When I arrived, I was hungry, so I stopped at a coffee shop and bought a pastry.

I ran into a few friends and we debriefed yesterday's exam. My impressions matched theirs, which was comforting. Then we headed in and took our seats. I brought pillows today, which helped. I could reach the table. The proctor came over and checked my ID. He was entirely too cheerful for the situation, but I appreciated it.

Bar Exam Diaries - Day 1

Last night, I got all of my stuff together because I didn't want to have to deal with it in the morning. I read over the list of stuff permitted in the exam room, and I laughed because one of the things listed was "two pillows without pillowcases". What? Do they think we have time for a nap or something? Anyway, I went to bed, and my alarm went off at 6:00 AM.

I got up feeling pretty refreshed, since I get up at 6 for work every morning anyway. I showered, dressed, then went to the kitchen to make breakfast. I had peanut butter toast for breakfast because I wanted something with protein, but I couldn't have any dairy because today was my last morning on an antibiotic where I can't eat dairy products within 3 hours. Sigh.

After breakfast, I drove to the BART station, bought my ticket, and got on the train. There was only one empty seat left, so I sat in it. The guy next to me was feeling chatty. We had a conversation that went like this:

Soylent Green Tea

Something funny (in a gallows humor sort of way) happened at work yesterday. One of my many responsibilities is stocking the break room so that the engineers are well-fed and appropriately caffeinated. A few weeks ago, at the request of our CFO, we switched brands of tea. The new brand of tea we use coincidentally has the same name as an employee who was asked to resign last month.

I was in the kitchen re-stocking the tea, and one of the engineers made a comment about the name of the tea brand. He joked that the timing was suspicious and that he was a little hesitant to drink it, wondering what was in it. We had a little laugh about it before returning to our respective cubicles.

(And for the record, the tea in question contains tea leaves and other plant-based spices. No former employees were harmed in the creation of the beverage. HR people may be evil, but we're not that evil.)