Excuse the absence of blogs, and the continuing absence of anything actually interesting. My home internet is no more, which I would try harder to fix, but it's actually been something of a boone for the studying so far. But also, it's hard to be pithy - or even thoughtful - this close to finals. Sometimes, a little closer to finals, the repressed "other" non-study parts of my brain launch into full revolt and come geysering out like riled cola... but that's a little closer to the scheduled execution. This is more in that intermediary head-down-power-through-and-OMG-I-AM-GOING-TO-FAIL-!-!-!-!-!-breathe-return-head-to-geocentric-position-rinse-and-repeat mode. I've concluded two classes at this point, both of which were carry-overs from last quarter. Since one was a seminar and the other a clinic, they were small enough that it will be genuinely strange not to see these people on a regularly scheduled day. If I were a little less frenzied, I might wax sentimental. But of course there are two courses to go - both with tests I can't imagine doing well on. And of course the final wrap-up of my enormous (albeit judiciously and painfully shrinking) health law paper. It's going to be a bumpy seven or eight days and I thoroughly expect to go limp and wake up on the other side with no recollection of how I got there any day now.
On the bright side, I got my first paycheck for my research assistant gig (ok, first two as I forgot to pick up the last one that only paid for a few days of work)! I understood somewhere in the back of my head that I was in fact doing this for money, but actually receiving money for work is an entirely different thing. Not only is the work interesting, fun, and otherwise somewhat law-and-life affirming, but I get paid? I pay the school big bucks to wheedle down my existing self-esteem and overload my neural circuitry and all the sudden somebody is paying me? It's beyond amazing.
I also had an equally affirming final evaluation session with the head of my mediation clinic yesterday. She was really happy to hear how excited I was about continuing mediation in some contexts (acknowledging that it is very hard to find work in the field but hoping that I would volunteer and add it to my practice in the future) and offered to help keep an eye out for volunteer and externship opportunities, as well as possibly designing an advanced clinic next year. She opined that I had a natural talent for the process and my patience and confident and easy manner (at the table, that is - we all know I'm a frenetic lunatic in my personal life, but I pull it together in official situations amazingly well) were perfectly suited to the profession. I'm still feeling a tad adrift in my professional ambitions (partially because it's still pretty unclear what jobs are out there), but it's a comforting feeling to re-visit the whole "here's an area where I'm particularly competent and which I find immensely satisfying." Also, strangely enough, I ended up being the most frequent mediator from this clinic, which was something of a surprise, since I think I was the last person to actually get a real case and move on from mocks (timing, timing, timing). Earlier in the day, my med mal prof offered to inquire about governmental externships more related to healthlaw and referred me to a chance to attend the AHLA weekend for free in exchange for volunteering, which would be pretty amazing. I really love how passionate our teachers are about their jobs and how much they want to help the students. I have never had a teacher, no matter how little I've cared for their teaching style, who didn't genuinely want to find a way to help any and every student find a satisfying career in their chosen fields.
But back to the trenches. I have *a lot* of work to do and the incoming trials are exceedingly stressful. My criminal procedure test promises to be some of the most toilsome 4 hours of my life - and memorizing every contour and detail of the 100+ cases that we seem expected to know forwards and backwards just in case they're on the test shan't be fun. I've already worn out my first set of flashcards (they don't last very well in a backpack, let me say, and ink fades)
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