Cryptic Notes

One thing that separates me from most of my classmates thus far in law school is that I take notes on paper with a pen during class. The issue with typing my notes is that I type rather quickly, and it's very easy for me to fall into a pattern of just transcribing the course instead of actually engaging in the material. In law school, the professors regularly call on people to engaging in a substantive conversation about the subject matter, so it's better to stay right with them than to drift off into taking dictation.

After class, I like to go back over my handwritten notes, both from my notebook and from the textbook, to type up a summary of what we discussed to solidify it all and make it easy to protect the data from loss.

As I sat in this sweltering library today, I pulled out my notes written in the margins of the case we were discussing today.

Written at the top of a page in the middle of the case:

"Key difference here: public officials engaging in official grocery store--essence of 1st amendment."

This case has nothing to do with a grocery store. We weren't discussing grocery stores.

Grocery stores have nothing to do with the first amendment.

I'm going to attribute that one to the heat...

Heat

I think that I've mentioned (repeatedly) that it is quite warm in New York right now. We had a few cool days where it rained, and I was so happy, but now it's hot again. After a basically sleepless night of tossing and turning, looking forward to heading to my frigid law school, I pulled my hair into a ponytail (no point in even trying to do the hair here--too hot) and jumped on the roasty-toasty subway.

I walked the rest of the way to school as I pondered how I may never adapt to the fact that it just doesn't cool down much at night here (the low and the high are very close to each other. It's odd for a girl from the mountains). Then, the sweet moment arrived when I entered the law school...

...only it wasn't sweet. It was sweat. The air conditioning is broken today. I spent my first class all cooped up in a room full of people where I thought I was going to suffocate.

The worst part? When all of this is over and I'm done with my studying for the day, I'll head back to my little sweatbox apartment.

Sigh. When is it going to be fall??

(It should be noted here that I am LOVING New York. I would love it even more if it were 20 degrees cooler...come on, fall! Really, there are only two or three things that I don't love about New York. This is one of them.)

Speedy Delivery

One of the perks to living in the greatest city in the world is having one's groceries delivered.

Today I got my first order, and I have to say, it was pretty fabulous. The prices are lower than what you find in the store (still higher than Utah, but I'm adapting).

You order whatever you want online, pick a delivery window, and then a guy shows up with carefully packaged groceries, including cleaning supplies, produce, frozen foods, meats, and basically whatever you want. He leaves the packages and tells you to have a nice day. He is not permitted by the company to ask for a tip, which is good because I have no money and that would've been awkward.

I live up a couple of flights of stairs, so it is really nice to have my groceries just arrive in my kitchen.

Brief Law School

As I checked my email before I started in on my heavy studying for the day, it occurred to me that I haven't updated the blog as to what my schoolwork is like, so here is a brief update.

First, I should establish some of the terminology that we'll be using over the next few years (more details about each course in a later series of delightful posts). More to follow, I'm sure, but here's a start:

• 1L - first-year law student (ME!) Next year, 2L, year after, 3L
• Elements - one of my first year courses. Full name: Elements of Law.
• Civ Pro - another first year course. Full name: Civil Procedure. 
• Torts - another first year course. Full name: Torts. (Tricky, I know...)
• Writing - yet another first year course. Full name: Legal Writing and Lawyering Skills.
• Contracts - you guessed it! Another first year course! Full name: Contracts
• Cardozo - my law school.
• Section - my group in law school. Our class is divided up into several sections, and each section has all of its courses together. They do this so it'll be easier to get to know each other and form study groups, I believe.

For the past week or so, we've been in orientation. Each morning, we go to Elements for a couple of hours, and then we have additional activities in the afternoon (lectures, panels, discussions, etc). Monday, all of my other classes will start as well, and Elements will continue through mid-October. Each day, I will spend about three hours in classes, and then have the rest of the day to work on homework and assignments. Since I worked full-time and then went to school for about three hours per day when I was in undergrad, I suspect I'll be able to find a good balance. Of course, I'll probably have to cut back on my blogging, which has already been lacking a bit, but you'll just have to take what you can get.

So far, law school is just fine. Most of the conversations are really interesting, and there's a lot of variety of activities. The people are all really different from each other, so there's a good diversity of views and backgrounds. I'm the only person in my class from Utah. In fact, today a guy couldn't remember my name, and after I told him what it was, he told me that he had wanted to just call me Utah but didn't know if that would be offensive. I told him that as the only person in our class (about 250 of us) from Utah, I'd probably turned around if he called me that, and that'd be okay. When I tell people I'm from Utah, they usually pause and say, "Oh." I'm not really sure what that means (haven't bothered to try to figure it out), but I suspect that they may have some interesting ideas about me. I'm not too worried about it though--I have some interesting ideas about some of them, so I suppose we're all just making assumptions all around!

I have only been in class with one of my professors, and he has been excellent. I've met another one who I think will probably be pretty interesting, and I've heard excellent things about two of the other professors, so I feel like I really got the best schedule. Our section doesn't start class until 10:00 or later every day, but we're always out pretty early as well, and we got some great professors. This probably means that in the spring, we'll have the mean, scary professors and have to go to class at 8:00 every day, but I'm enjoying this semester while it lasts.

I need to get back to my studying, but I'll leave you with one last thing you may not know about law school: they feed you here. All the time. It's great. For the past couple of days, bar review companies have been sponsoring lunches so that they can try to convince us to buy their products. They give us mugs, shirts, and a free meal, so they can try to convince me to buy anything they want. Joke's on them: I'm a broke student!

How Things Are

Lots of people have kindly been inquiring into the state of things here in the big city.

Hot.

Really, really hot.

Other than that, things are pretty good. I moved into my apartment on Tuesday afternoon. It was incredibly hot and difficult. I had my long-suffering parents and my baby brother with me, and they all worked like crazy to get all of my belonging into my apartment. They put my bed together and my table and chairs, and then they were off for the rest of their road trip back to Utah.

I've found the two big competing grocery stores near my house. Naturally, big is a very relative term. They're not super big, and the organization of them still baffles me. (Looking for cold cereals? On the aisle with diapers, naturally.) One seemed to have a few more things that I would normally use, but sadly, the prices are pretty comparable. Of course, it wouldn't be sad if the prices were even just a tad bit lower, but whatever. I'll adapt. People might suggest that I eat cold cereal and ramen noodles or something, but I have a moral opposition to ramen noodles, and cold cereal is shockingly expensive here. I'm still trying to figure out what I will be able to afford to eat. I can tell you one thing for sure: I'm headed to Utah for Christmas with an empty suitcase, and it's coming back to NYC full of groceries.

I've been to school for two days now. So far, so good. I'll write more about school in another posting.

Tomorrow I'll go to my ward for the whole block. Last week, I just went to sacrament meeting. The chapel in my building looks like a regular chapel that got whacked in half. It's pretty adorable. The best part about my ward is that it meets so, so close to my apartment! No subway ride required. It's very convenient, especially since church is at 9:00 am.

All in all, there's not too much to complain about. I haven't finished unpacking yet, but I'm getting closer each day. If all else fails, the piles of boxes everywhere could be construed as some sort of modern decor.

Invested

When I lived in Provo, people wore BYU football t-shirts all over town. They'd be at work, at school, at the grocery store, at the gym...you name it, people wore them there.

Each year, the school would produce a new shirt. Some time in the last couple of years (they all run together, shirt-wise), BYU's shirt had the slogan "Fully Invested" on it. I never bought the shirts, and that particular year, I had a long-running joke about how I couldn't purchase said shirt because I was, in fact, fully divested.

So here I am, beginning this law school journey.

I quit my job.

I sold my car.

I packed all of my worldly belongings.

Today, I spent an inordinate amount of money on books. (Perhaps the expense is due to some sin tax I've incurred for destroying all of those trees.)

Tomorrow I sign a much bigger lease than any I've ever signed.

Classes begin Thursday.

In basically every aspect, I'm now as invested as it gets.

An Update

Several of you have inquired about how things are going.

Here's a quick Q&A about things these days.

Readers: So, how's New York?

Liz: Hot. Big. Humid. Fast. Small. Tall. Rainy. Sunny.

Readers: (Long pause)

Liz: New York is lots of things, but mostly, it's great.

Readers: Have you found an apartment?

Liz: Yes. I should be signing all of the paperwork shortly. There was a little hiccup in the timeline for the apartment, but I seem to be on track for moving in this week. When I get a bit more time, I'll write out the whole story for you all.

Readers: So, is your rent expensive?

Liz: Yes. This is Manhattan.

Readers: But how expensive?

Liz: Plenty expensive, but I'll manage just fine, thanks.

Readers: You're not going to tell us how much?

Liz: Nope.

Readers: Are you still a tourist, or have you become a New Yorker?

Liz: Mostly still a tourist. I still count the times I've seen a rat on the subway (4 so far), I still come out of the wrong exit at the subway station (it's much trickier than it sounds to get it right), and I still sometimes stop to stare up at the buildings.

Readers: Anything else you can tell us so far?

Liz: I'm now operating in Eastern time zone, so please check your clocks before you phone or send me text messages.

Readers: Did you know that this post wasn't very entertaining? Are you going to step up your game soon?

Liz: That really remains to be seen. School starts on Thursday, so I hope I'll have something interesting happen there. I'll do my best.

Injury Quiz

Here's a simple, multiple-choice quiz for you all.

What heinous beast recently attacked Liz?

A: Closet door

B: Waffle iron

C: A wolverine

D: Hugh Jackman

Eye, Injured

Although I frequently injure myself, I never cease to be amazed by the new and interesting ways I find to injure myself.

Recently, I was sweeping the back porch of my parents' house with a standard household broom. As the broom swung back and forth with its pendular grace, for reasons I still cannot explain, my head somehow came into contact with the top of the broom.

Pause and imagine a sweeping action in your mind. You can see how the top of the broom moves in the opposite direction as the bottom of the broom, right? Now imagine what happens if your head is in slightly the wrong spot as the bottom of the broom swings forward and the top swings back toward you.

It hit me right at the corner of my eye, where the bone is right under the skin with nothing to shield it.

It hurt.

A lot.

For days.

And right when it happened, I couldn't figure out how on earth I had done that to myself.

But after a few hours of consideration, I can't for the life of me figure out how I haven't ever done it to myself before now.

I, Doctor

One of my new favorite ways to occupy my time is self-diagnosis on the internet.

Weirdly enough, I've become pretty accurate as to my diagnoses.

I try not to bring up my self-diagnosis prowess when I visit my healthcare providers.

I'd hate to make them feel like they wasted all of those years in medical school.

Eye Doctor

I've often said that it takes a large team of highly trained professionals to take care of my health. Thus, when I have something wrong with my eyes, I hasten to my regular eye doctor, who is actually also an eye surgeon. Like I said, I like to have a highly trained professional attend to my needs.

When I was visiting my adorable nephews in Wisconsin, something happened to my eye. Although I suspected that it was a scratch on my eye, I also thought that I could see something stuck on it. After endless rinsing and drops, I swallowed my pride and made an appointment with my eye doctor. (I like to have fancy people attend to my needs, but I am also cheap, so I try to avoid going to the doc when I can).

It turned out that I was correct--there was debris stuck to my eye. After much reassurance that there was no amount of rinsing that would've removed it, due to the nature and placement of the offending object, my eye doctor had his assistant hand him some forceps. Before I could really have time to object, he told me he'd take care of it.

And then, he took the forceps and peeled the debris out of my eye.

Yep.

Off of my eye ball.

Yes, I had had numbing drops first, but still, when you have to hold your eye open so that someone can come at you with gigantic tweezers and pluck things out of your eye, it's pretty scary.

Fortunately, it only lasted a moment, and the relief was instant.

All in all, it was a successful trip to the eye doctor, and well-worth the copay.

Unfortunately, this event cemented in my mind my preferences for seeing experts whenever possible. When I head to law school, I suspect that my student health insurance won't be nearly as accommodating to my desires.

I'm going to have to work really hard to not get any debris in my eye once I'm in New York. There's no way I'm letting anyone besides my fabulous eye doctor go anywhere near me with forceps.

Things People Say

Life's funny. When you tell people that you're making a major life change, EVERYONE seems to have an opinion about it. It's amazing how many law school "experts" I've met since I've become more open about my decision to attend.

Because my choice in law schools is taking me to another city, I also get to hear lots of very strong opinions about moving and about New York.

It occurred to me the other day that you might find some of these things interesting as well. So here they are, the good, bad, and ugly, in no particular order, and without attribution since, well, lots of these things have been spoken by my various blog readers. Love you all! Without you, I would laugh far less frequently, and my life would be the sorrier for it.

Things people say about law school:

• Don't you hate school?
• Didn't you just graduate?
• You're going to meet so many great guys! (ed.: uh...)
• My condolences.
• Congratulations!
• Huh.
• Really?
• Why?
• That's so exciting!

Things people say about New York City:

• Are you sure you made the right choice?
• Maybe you should start carrying some pepper spray.
• Don't take anything you don't want to have stolen.
• You're going to get to see so many fun things!
• How will you afford that?
• As long as you go home before dark...

Love you guys! Thanks for your adorable, hilarious support!

Sold!

I sold my car yesterday. It was very, very sad. I'll spare you the melancholy details, but I did sell the car. I suspect that my insurance company was baffled as to my sniffly nature when I called to cancel my policy, but they didn't say anything about it, which was nice.

I immediately took the cash from my sale down to my local financial institution to deposit it where it would be safe and sound. Since this local financial institution is where I was employed until recently, I know basically everyone who works there, and they all assured me that my car wasn't cool enough to be sad about. Hosers.

It's odd to not have my car sitting outside. One thing that I've mentioned to several people is that I've had to give up many things to go to law school, and selling my car was the last big, tangible thing that I had to give up. I told my mom that now I have no tangible property, and she assured me that I have a "couple of little things."

If I have to sell my TV, I may die of a broken heart.

For Sale

I'm selling a fabulous, wonderful, practically-perfect-in-every-way car. I had planned on owning this car for at least another five years. I honestly wouldn't be parting with it if I could afford to take it on my cross-country move with me. Dealers are selling cars not in nearly as wonderful shape as mine for upwards of $8,000.

The scoop:

2002 Toyota Corolla LE

• Silver
• Automatic transmission
• Power locks, power windows
• Cruise control
• Gets fabulous gas mileage - anywhere from 25-33 mpg in the city in my experience, even higher with highway driving
• Extremely low mileage - just under 65,000 miles
• Great condition
• Very, very low-maintenance car. Other than changing the oil regularly, tires once, and brake pads once, I've never had to do anything else with it. Runs like a dream, I tell you!

Asking price: $6,850

I would love to find a good home for my fabulous car, so if you know anyone who is in the market, send them my way!

Thanks!

Something Funny

Here's a little tidbit for your day. My sister shared it with me, and I've been giggling about it ever since. Be sure to click and read the whole thing, including part two.

Is That Your Signature?

The First Goodbye

First, my apologies for my recent lack of blogging. I've been on vacation, so all of my free time has been dedicated to living it up with my sister and her family.

Stories from this vacation to be posted here on this blog, as time, reader interest and ambition allow: (for your anticipatory pleasure)

• The boys learn how to swim
• LL gets domestic
• Big girl panties
• Nephews trick their pushover aunt into letting them do all kinds of things they don't normally do
• Javi prepares a family home evening lesson about the Sabbath day
• LL explains to her sons what a wedgie is

Since my sister has moved out of the state where I live, I've been fortunate to visit her on a pretty regular basis. I had a job where I made enough money to do some traveling, and I was blessed with a pretty flexible schedule, so I visited at least a couple of times a year. Each time I left, I always had an idea of I would be coming again.

This is the first time I left her with no real plans as to when we'll see each other again. She's hoping to come visit in New York, but that will really depend on her husband's work schedule (he'd have to take some days off to watch their little rugrats) and the issue of money. Although LL's husband makes a lot more money than I do (as I am an unemployed student, that's not hard to do, but...), she has three little guys and a house and all kinds of other expenses to deal with. When I take a break to go home for a visit from school, I anticipate that I will visit Utah, not Wisconsin, as most of my family lives in Utah.

LL dropped me off at the airport a few minutes ago, and other than holding it together to get through security (didn't want to be frisked for sobbing), I've been pretty upset. I hate being so far from my sister. When you've just got one sister left in this world, you tend to be pretty tight.

So here it is: the first goodbye. Over the next 40 days, I'll be saying goodbye to all of my friends and family as I embark on this law school journey alone.

I'd better invest in some tissues.

Go ahead and buy stock in whoever makes Kleenex. Their revenue is about to be increasing substantially.

My Apologies

Yesterday, as I read the live-blog coverage of the new iPhone, I was extremely excited. Giddy, even.

At one point, I exclaimed aloud, "That is the BEST PHONE EVER! I have to have one!"

It was at this moment that I noticed my current iPhone, sitting next to my computer.

It looked sad, somehow, and I then apologized to my phone for making it seem like I didn't love and appreciate it.

I really do love my current phone, and it was the best phone in the world, but now there's something better.

My phone is in my line of sight as I write this post. I still feel a tiny bit guilty.

Dear Insurance Company

Cash my check already. Just cash it. You make such a fuss about getting my check on time, and then you wait three weeks to cash it. It's complicating my life.

Cash them faster, or I'm going to stop sending them.

For people who are always pestering me about sending money, you sure are slow to go to the bank.

Questions You Haven't Asked

Although most of you have talked to me a least a little bit about moving to New York, we've all really talked very little about the school I will be attending.

So here's a first in an occasional series I'm calling, "Five Things You Didn't Know About Cardozo."

1. Full name: Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law
2. Founded in 1976
3. Part of Yeshiva University
4. As part of a Jewish university, all of the food on campus is kosher
5. Located near Union Square Park in Manhattan

Now you know. And knowing is half the battle...

Serious Rules

Yesterday, I went out to dinner with my family to celebrate Captain Awesome officially becoming an EMT.

We headed to his favorite all-you-can-eat sushi restaurant in town. He really, really got his money's worth.

However, this restaurant is unlike any place I've ever eaten. There was a list of rules on the menu. They will bring you all the sushi you want; however, you cannot waste anything. Order a gross sushi roll? Tough. Suck it up and eat that bad boy. Full? Too bad. Eat it anyway.

What are the consequences for not eating your food? They'll charge you for anything that's left on your plate. Seriously. You already paid for all-you-can-eat sushi, but if you cannot eat what they bring you, or if you choose to not eat it because it's yucky, you will have to pay an additional charge.

Apparently, they're totally serious about it, too. We had to rush out in a hurry to get my dad back for a meeting, so my brother asked for a box for his remaining sushi. They reluctantly granted him a box, but warned him that next time, they would charge him for that uneaten sushi.

Is it just me, or is this totally bizarre?