In my application essays to law school, I said that I believed that the law is the most-human discipline.  The question about why I want to study I law came up again in my introductory course to the law and the legal profession.  I discovered that the more I study law, the more I believe it.

Conflict is inevitable in life; and the law is a codified, systematic way of resolving those conflicts.  In a real sense, laws derive from the essence of humanity: trying to achieve maximum individual utility in an inherently social system.  Everyone one fights and makes mistakes in trying to make the best place for oneself that one can; but, we need to be accountable for the wrongs we commit against others and their efforts to do the same thing.  Hence, the legal system.

Communication is essential for human dealings, and the law is a way of communicating across time.  Think of it: the laws that we have go back thousands of years.  It's like our ancestors are calling out to us from the past, "these things are good and helpful; pay attention to them!"  While times change, every generation leaves some vestige of itself in the law that affects their progeny.  Similarly, people pass down stories and knowledge--grandparents to grandchildren, older siblings to younger brothers or sisters, parents to children--in order to establish one's "roots."  And while we may be rooted in the past, it's just a beginning.  You can accept or change or leave behind what you've inherited.

Form matters in the law and in life. While the facts and rules of a case may clearly define a winner, a small, procedural error can send a suit back to the beginning. I don't know how many times I've said precisely what I intended, but my tone was inappropriate and so obscured my meaning.  The way one says and does things is often as at least as important as the message or action conveyed.

It's been quite a revelation that every crucial component of legal study has a neat counterpart in life more generally. While I could think of hundreds more examples, it has become increasingly clear to me that "the legal system" = "the human system."   The law embodies what we want and the steps we've taken to get there.  It's still a work in progress--but, hey, the same can be said of this species. : )

It was perhaps the most embarrassing moment of my life so far.

That's not true, that title goes to wetting myself when I was too old for it to be acceptable.  Still, it ranks up there.

Friday night, the spring starters invited us (the summer starters) to go out for drinks and get to know each other outside class.  It was a good idea.  And since I've promised myself to start attending events where I'll meet people, I went.  For a while things were typical of a mixer: I met some new people and learned the names of others who I'd seen in class but hadn't talked to yet, etc.

Then I had to pee.

I was on the patio of the bar and I walked inside to make my way to the bathroom.  On the way, I was stopped by an attractive young lady in a really cute dress.  She said, "Hey, how are you?"  I was confused....I didn't know what to do.  I actually asked her if I should know who she was.  That's when I was embarrassed...because I should have (not because I wet myself again, although that would have been a better story!).

I sit next to her in property...every day for four days a week...I even know her name!  We've chatted every day that we've been in class.

I don't know how to handle this from here.  In fourteen hours I'll have to see her and I don't know what to say about "the incident."  I can't even blame it on having too much to drink because I had only had like 1/2 a shot!  UGH!

So, what do I tell her tomorrow as we're unpacking our backpacks tomorrow before class starts?

She was contextually misplaced.

Sunday I prayed for the opportunity to practice humility.  It came.

In my legal writing class, they're teaching me about comma usage.  ME!  In my xanga profile, it clearly says that my expertise is punctuation.  Why, then, must I read 50 pages of rules about comma usage when I already know how to use a comma LIKE AN EXPERT!

When this arose in a class today before the lecture started, I made the comment that "commas have the effect of telling a reader where to stop and take a breath.  Too many and the reader can hyperventilate...too few and he'll pass out.**"  While the implications of unfortunately punctuated written works rarely cause health problems, the statement still makes a point about the importance of properly punctuated (legal) prose.

Alas, I must be humble about the reading assignment and assume that I just may learn something.  *Sigh*  Pride is a lot more fun...but infinitely more vicious.

**Someone else may have said this first, but I don't know for sure.  I was going to suggest that someone else may have said it; however, in the spirit of humility, I felt obligated to entertain the notion.

I didn't die!  Nor did I wet myself or pass out.  That means it must not have been too bad.

I was super nervous about the first day of law school.  Fortunately, neither professor called on me to answer (not that I wasn't ready...) so all I had to do was feel relief and slightly sympathetic for those who were required to respond.  There was more professor lecture than I thought (which was nice!)

All in all, it seems like this law school thing will be manageable...and dare I say, fun?  And that's a huge relief.

After Wednesday, I will have been to all my classes and will be in a better position to judge then.  But until then, I'm going to roll with this pleasant feeling. : )

I didn't realize how awesome the past four months had been without homework!

Alas, it starts again: more reading that I don't understand, new forms of citation that just look like strings of incoherently juxtaposed characters, stressing about whether I've studied (adequately) all the relevant material. *sigh* But I'll get through it, if I can keep the goal in mind.  At least, that was one important nugget of wisdom I gleaned from orientation over the past few days.

Orientation served two, important purposes: 1. to make you so scared about the workload and classes that you start working right away and 2. to introduce you to the group of others who are in the same boat you are.  The law school did a really good job with the first; and we, as a class, did a really good job with the second.  To the second end, I found myself being uncharacteristically sociable.  In fact, I was nothing less than charming! (If I do say so myself.)

Twice this past week I went to bars--before then, it had taken me 22 years to get to half that many!  And while I still didn't really enjoy going out, I saw that what was accomplished in that time did have some real merit despite not being an efficient means of realizing it.  For example, it will be intrinsically valuable to remember that classmates are people and not just competitors for the illustrious "high A."  While that understanding will likely keep us from murdering one another, it's not necessary to spend $20.00 on drinks in order to come to grips with another's humanity.  I think a less-intense conversation  could have achieved the same goal.

(Besides, are alcohol-enhanced people the same as their sober counterparts?  Do the relationships one forms while under the influence with those who are under the influence translate completely to an alcohol-free environment?  I tend to think "no.")

At any rate, classes start Monday and I have a formidable mountain of pages to read.  The only comfort is knowing that there are 25 others doing the same thing so my chances of being called in class are less than 4% for every question in class.  Still, that's a significant comfort.

Today I saw a whistling duck.  At least, I saw its silhouette.  It was perched just across the parking lot, roosting for the evening.  I think they're migratory because I've only ever seen them during Spring--and in coastal South Texas.  So it was a bit strange to find them here in Waco.  But his presence wasn't unwelcomed.  Whistling ducks' red bills and black and white wings lend them a very pleasant and clownish demeanor.

It's strange to find me here too as well for that matter.  I just moved in yesterday and still I'm arranging my tchotchkes about my room.  There's a lot of movement and displacement.  Moving and transitioning are always stressful and worrisome (just ask my GI tract!).  And try as I might to interfere, time keeps moving forward...and I have to keep pace.  As is typical of me, I got mildly panicky--especially about going to law school here as it wasn't my first choice.  But it appears that, much like my plucky avian amigo, my presence is warmly greeted.  In addition to the generous scholarship offer I received, I got a fancy leather(like?) note pad case as a gift to keep the law school in the running as I was making up my mind.  And y'all know how I feel about decisions.

Whistling ducks are an unusual sign of stability and growth in the duck world.  Unlike most fowl of the sort, they mate for periods that last several years, keeping true to their birdy beloveds for longer than expected.  Also, their numbers have continued to increase over the past decade or so.  I'll take this exotic visitor's presence as congenial omen of the stability and growth to come--and which I'll need to flourish in my scholarly excursions.

Despite my nervousness at the twin pressures of law school homework and having no money, I'm nonetheless guardedly optimistic about the whole thing.  Better said, my outlook on the upcoming challenges is "just ducky." : )

Correction: I don't mind decisions. I hate making them. Making decisions restricts one's "life paths." As time progresses, one has increasingly fewer options to maximize his or her payoff over the course of a lifetime. So, the stakes are higher earlier in one's life. (Side note: I still think it's very unfair that most major life decisions must be made before 25--before many people's brains are finished developing and before acquiring important life experience--the "live and learn"s, so to speak.) A mistake I make now at 22 can cause me huge problems at 50 or 60. I stress out during decision making--like this one.

I was accepted to a law school that ranks pretty well nationally--in the top tier, but not the tippy top. The bonus is that they gave me a full-tuition scholarship and they're on a quarter system, so I can start this Summer. I've already found an apartment, put down a deposit and will likely have a roommate. It's a pretty sweet deal.

Friday I found out that I was admitted to the school I prefer and it's certainly one of the best schools in the country and likely the best in the state. While I don't have any scholarship money, I could feasibly live with my grandfather who lives near enough the school that I can drive to and from there every day.

Like any reasonable person with an economics degree would, I opened Excel and started crunching numbers to see which path gives me the greatest present value of expected lifetime earnings. I realized that going to school for free for a year an then transferring to the better school yielded the highest results. The main problem with that is studying abroad.

I regret not having studied abroad earlier, and I really want to make it a part of my law-school adventure. The school I really want to go to has much better study abroad opportunities--more times, more places. The school that's given me the scholarship has basically one opportunity in Mexico. If I transfer, I basically eliminate all chances for studying abroad. Students may study abroad in the 2nd or 3rd year of law school. But, you can only transfer after one year of school. And at my preferred school, no transfer student is eligible for study abroad.

WHAT DO I DO?

My little spreadsheet is only so helpful. Does anyone have any good statistics for how study abroad affects income earning or another way to account for it?

So much for the blogathon...I didn't blog yesterday--mostly because I had stuff to do.  Rather, I had to make up stuff to do so I didn't have to do the stuff I actually had to do.  Ordinarily that would mean Xangacizing, but that didn't happen.  I must have found other, non-essential stuff to do.

Last night, though, I found an alarming scene in my bathroom sink: there was a dead spider.  Normally, I would appreciate the arachnid's mortal misfortune  This time, though, the spider was sitting kind of high up on the sink...and not in the traditional spider death curl.  I'm neither a CSI nor an entomologist, but the clues suggested that something had killed the spider.  But what?

We do have pesticides around the perimeter of our home, so maybe it crawled in and died slowly on its way in.  Or maybe, something else killed it--but if it were another tiny arthropod, why wasn't it eaten?  What sort of little monster doesn't eat what it kills?

There is the distinct possibility that a small, exoskeletoned fiend is roaming (or even flying?) around my house and killing for sport.  Who knows...I could be next.  Scorpions are common where I live--and they're very scary.  They usually look scarier than they are...er...they used to look scarier than they were.  Now who can tell?  I might have to deal with an insatiable killer disguised in familiar, yellowish, chitin armor.

Or maybe, it's another spider.  In some ways, spiders are worse than scorpions because they can ambush you from the air and get in your bed.  I've been bitten once or twice by spiders in my sleep.  They float gracefully down on their silent silk lines like so many ninjas repelling down the side of a building to exact tacit revenge.  Poisonous ninjas...with creepy faces...who try to lay traps in your bed and then startle when you adjust yourself during a dream or just to feel the cool side of the pillow.  They always leave their mark, though, two little pricks now sitting atop a hill of inflamed flesh.  Boo on spiders!  Boo!

Even worse, it could have been a wasp or something else that flies and stings.  There was a random yellow jacket trapped in my bathroom on Sunday.  I still don't know how it got there.  It might have stung that now-pathetic spider and just waited for it to die so it could feast on its arachnid carcass.  But I killed that yellow jacket.  There's so much slaughter in the world.  We live in a bad, senseless place.

Curses!  Now I'm scared to go to sleep.  When they outlawed DDT, it's like they outlawed peace of mind.  Just kidding.  DDT is bad and I in no way endorse it's continued use...still...it was pretty effective at getting rid of pests.

It turns out that I'm a planner.

I like to know how things are going to happen well in advance of their occurrence. This can create tension when the important others around me want to live life flying by the seats of their pants--living in "the moment." The family isn't inclined to establish a location for Thanksgiving dinner before Labor Day...and, it's March now and we still don't have a plan for the Easters!

Planning probably results from my extensive bad experience with spontaneity. Spontaneity depends on emotion and intuition. For me, neither of those has particularly strong reputations for leading to good results.

Of course, spontaneity can't be totally bad. If you eliminate all spontaneity, it's like knowing exactly how the future will play out. I don't think I want predictive powers. Still, I would like to schedule the time blocks for which spontaneity is required. It's about balance, I guess. And the relative proportions of spontaneity:scheduled time, for me, is relatively low.

I call this quality "plangineering"--wanting to plan out and engineer the activities in my life. It's important to approach everything circumspectly and play out multiple scenarios so that the infinitely factors that affect "the moment" don't overload one's mental processing power and lead to a bad decision.

Bottom line: don't expect me to be spontaneous without giving me ample notice.

It turns out that being an adult means not having time to do everything you need to do.

It's an interesting realization because it conflicts in some ways with my long-held belief that priorities are for people who can't get everything done.  My thinking in that regard is that if one can achieve all his or her plans and obligations, the order of accomplishment generally doesn't matter.  Of course, sometimes order is task specific, like needing to prime a wall before you paint it.  But there a need for order follows from the project, not from a sense of relative importance (prioritization).

Both premises seem reasonable.  If they coexist, though, it seems that the only logical outcome is that adults must prioritize and, therefore, not accomplish everything they need to do.  I don't like that.   I feel the need to reconcile these axioms in such a way that I can be an adult who gets everything done.  (Enter the blog.)

First, one must analyze the premises in isolation and then in the context of their togetherness.

1.  Being an adult means not having enough time to do everything you need to do.

2.  Prioritization is for people who can't get everything done.

Now, we need some way to relate these concepts together.  If t is a component of i, then let's change the definition of i to be the aggregate inputs to all projects except time.  That changes our decision rules to:

We can also say, then:

What do these expressions mean?  I don't know.  But I can tell you that there is at least one very good reason to never grow up: you don't have to do as much--and you can get it all done. : )