Your Ad Here -- a blog

More quiz fun

(I have way too much fun with these things. I mean really, I can't shop classes all the time, right...?)


What Intentional Tort Are You?

And (though I didn't find this one to be particularly accurate -- but I was accused of nerdiness the other day, so...):

Went to see Stomp last night, thanks to Someone (Very Very) Nice. :-) [Who, incidentally, should probably not bother reading what follows, as this discussion was already conducted at length!] Fabulous, and so impressive. It's somewhere between music and dance, the performers using their bodies and some fairly random objects (sticks, buckets, cigarette lighters, long rubber tubes, water bottles, basketballs...) to make a joyful noise. The technical proficiency alone was pretty incredible -- lots of amazingly precise timing involving tossing things, or jumping, or sliding. Most of the pieces were rhythm only (though the long rubber tubes and the water bottles had pitch), which made me notice a couple of things. First, the performers were incredibly good at creating melodic lines with flow and coherence, where each note was played by a different performer; that sort of thing is hard to do in any case, and the absence of pitch somehow makes it more amazing. Second, it's not clear to me what degree of improvisation there was, but essentially it's a 1.5-hour chamber piece in eight parts, which the players had entirely memorized. The common use of songs as memory aids suggests that pitch and melody somehow help us remember things -- so while memorization is not usually something that impresses me, memorization of an hour and a half of rhythm only certainly does. There is probably a lot of muscle memory involved -- but I know that when I memorize, it's the sound that I remember, not the way I play it (thus I can often sing things that I can't play because I've forgotten the bowings or fingerings). Anyway. It was very cool. And I was very pleased. :-D

Things so brave they require self-congratulation:
Just sent two e-mails to two profs on rather different topics, both things I had been putting off for the last semester or so (thus making them much, much more scary) and both things that needed to get done. Now I just have to be brave enough not to avoid checking my e-mail for the rest of the day...

On law school exams

Just finished one of the more stressful law school exam periods I've had so far. Silly really, given that I had only two exams -- but other circumstances made studying a bit difficult this time around, with the result that I set new records for myself in the lack-of-sleep-before-exam department. Was recently asked what law school exams are like, and thought I'd make a couple of remarks, for the uninitiated.

A typical law school exam, at least here, will have three questions of the following types:
1) The issue-spotter. This is a Rube-Goldberg-esque maze of transactions and interactions, often involving Hobbit names, a slew of skeezy characters, and someplace called Blackacre, at the culmination of which you will be asked: of the 17 people involved, who is liable to whom, for what? What are their chances of getting into court in the first place, and how much will they win if they get there? These questions provide a lot of fodder for page-spewing, but also make you feel suspiciously like an ambulance-chaser, scouring for sympathetic plaintiffs and deep-pocket defendants. And they wonder why we're litigious.
2) The focused, concrete question. This will generally pick out one of the dozen or so topics covered in the course -- either the one on which the professor spent the most time, or the one that you quickly glanced over at 8 am on the morning of your exam, having never done any of the assigned reading on it.
3) The Big Fuzzy question. These come in two varieties. The first, and more innocuous, will generally quote from some obscure law review article, then ask you to trace a particular theme -- a big broad theme -- throughout the course. In other words, please summarize all that has been discussed in the past semester, in the next 45 minutes. The second variety will identify some shortcoming in the law -- then ask you how you might reform the law in order to correct it. It strikes me that asking law students to come up with coherent and useful proposals for legal reform in incredibly short spans of time is perhaps wishful thinking, but that's just me.

In terms of preparation for the exam, the general tactic is to prepare (or find from last year) a course outline, summarizing the relevant cases, statutes, and professorial insights. These range from one-page overviews to 150-page monstrosities. But here at YLS, land of self-scheduled open-book unproctored exams, the outline is not only a preparation technique but also an exam-taking tool. This year I'd hoped to outline both of my exam courses myself, since this is the best way I've found to study. I ran out of time halfway through the second course, and so cut and paste from last year's outline for the last 1/4 of the class. Which made my outline double in size. Major peeve: "outlines" that are merely 3-page paraphrasings of the cases in the casebook, followed by bulleted, verbatim class notes. No repetitions omitted. No organizing principles added. Yuck. Note the key word here: "summarizing". Such an outline may help a student who has never been to class or done a page of reading -- but doesn't help when you don't know where to flip next to find the case you need!

But enough law school rant. Started classes today, not entirely happily, but much more relaxed due to happy weekend split between NH and NY. Am feeling very much in awe of how many amazing bathroom fixtures can fit in one NY apartment; glad I got a chance to meet up with T.C.-from-Greece whom I hadn't seen in far too long; full of admiration and appreciation for Someone Nice's amazing and much-utilized skills at blizzard driving... so, classes notwithstanding, looking forward to next term. :-)

[Slightly edited, for clarification.] Just had another one of those "do boys really have any idea of what we go through?" moments. I received the following hypothetical in an e-mail from a female friend today [N.B. -- you know you're a law student when you use the word "hypothetical" instead of just, say, "question"...]

Would you choose 1 or 2?
1. You’re just so cute, but you cannot for the life of you take care of yourself. You can’t afford to pay your bills, and you can’t even balance your checkbook. But you have a wonderful man (your dream man!!) who will take care of everything. He’ll buy you whatever you need, take care of all of the finances, and be completely faithful to you. He’ll love, respect, and adore you for the rest of your life – even if the rest of world doesn’t.
2. You are amazing. You have a fantastic job, and you’re about to get a promotion! You have a great wardrobe, you eat out at fabulous restaurants, your home is to-die-for, and your savings for retirement couldn’t be fatter. You’re a superwoman, some might say – except in the romance department. You don’t know if you’ll ever find a man. But who needs a man? You are amazing.

Now, apart from some details of style, and some exaggeration, this is a not-uncommon thought for the 20-to-30-something female mind. It bears some resemblance to the often-asked question of whether one would prefer a dream job with no pay, or a boring or even verging on unethical job with great compensation. But here the decision is not between good work and bad work, but between work or no work at all. The implication is that other people can create your happiness, even in the absence of career fulfillment. More disturbingly -- that you can be completely incompetent, with no self-respect, and still be happy. Oddly enough, we successful and self-respecting women find nothing odd in asking ourselves this question. What troubles me, I think, is that I think many such women would respond the way I did -- unsure about which they would choose. And maybe a bit upset at themselves for considering the first alternative so seriously.

I'm not usually one for drawing male-female bright-line distinctions [I get angry just thinking about a scholarly, feminist article I read last term on differences in how men and women approach negotiation, which implied that women tended not to be rational; as a mathematician in spirit, I get offended at anything that implies I can't be both rational and girly!]. But I have to wonder -- is this a question that men would even bother asking themselves?

Happy birthday N.L.! Glad I got to tell you in person, if a little on the early side. :-)

This is the part where the candid camera comes out, right?

Went into city to pick up laptop, after receiving call that it was ready and working. Get to repair place. Turn on laptop. Correction: attempt to turn on laptop. You see where this is going.
Apparently -- quoth computer guy -- Fujitsu (after 3 weeks for the back order) sent them a defective replacement motherboard. So now they are sending it to Fujitsu directly, sans hard drive (which I have reclaimed, to make sure at least that my data survives), and at my insistence have refunded me part of the money that I paid them for the pre-reinstated-warranty service. What a mess. As for exams, Someone Nice has been kind enough to lend a replacement...

Laptop saga: the final chapter (we hope!)

It's fixed, and apparently working just fine. So with a little luck, one more trip into NYC once I'm back east to pick it up, and Fujitsu and I will be reunited...

Had a meal worth blogging about the other night at Le Charm in SF. It started with a celeriac puff pastry tart topped with baby greens, the smooth mildness of the filling set off by the stronger flavors of anchovies, black olives, and crispy friend bitter herbs. Then there was duck confit over a warm lentil salad. And then, feeling like I was on a roll with my adventurous ordering, I had the ice cream sandwich with spice bread and banana -- which consisted of fragrant honey ice cream atop delicate slices of light spice bread, caramelized baby banana slices alongside, and just enough chocolate to taste. Add to this good bread, good wine, and absolutely impeccable service in a comfortable atmosphere -- mmm. (Check out the website -- has menu and even recipes in classic French vein.)

Happy birthday, N.P.! In my current time zone, you've still got a couple of hours to celebrate... :-)