Thanksgiving, Part II + Winter Breakdown
"Yes, yes I am. All that loud music and the police sirens."
"I see. I thought you were having trouble in law school."
Jake sighed. It was that conversation. The one where she asks if Jake is having trouble in law school as he only is getting B's and B-pluses in law school courses. Most students in law school are happy if they can consistently pull out a B average every semester with the effort Jake put into law school, which wasn't too excessive. He just read the cases, attended classes, and took notes. During finals, he might study a little more, but he didn't pull all-nighters and make casebook-thick outlines. He went into his finals with his casebook and his notes. Jake was pretty efficient with his study habits.
Grades in law school, Jake believed, were infuriatingly subjective. His conversations with other law school students and the professors validated when he suspected. A hundred people in a course could write down essentially the same answer for a question and the professor will assign a hundred different scores for the answers. Once you've read through pages and pages of essay answers, everything looks the same and careful scrutiny is abandoned faster than a torpedoed ship. The professor will need to rank them in some manner and make sure the average grade of the class falls within a mandatory curve. In sum, there will be two or three A's, a large number of B's and a few C's, just for balance. Essentially, you have a good chance you will get a B, unless you mess up miserably, and even then, you got a C.
Jake said with some irritation, "I'm doing fine. I have a 3.37 GPA at this moment. That's a good, no, very good GPA for a law school student. I've explained this to you before."
"But you always got A's, even in college. What's wrong right now?"
"Nothing is wrong. Law school is just different. Just leave it at that. No one, and I repeat, no one leaves law school with a 4.0 GPA. It never happened and it never will happen."
"Fine. I still think something is wrong. Maybe you should talk with your professors more. Let them know who you are."
"OK, can we leave this topic." Jake sniffed the air and smelled something funny. He squinted in disgust. It smelled like something was burning. After a moment, he recognized that something really was burning. "Hey, something is burning."
"What? Something is burning?" His mother jumped up in surprise and ran into the kitchen. Jake followed her. She probably did burn something, most likely the stuffing in the oven.
Jake saw a thick stream of smoke stream out of the oven. He turned the oven off and saw that the temperature dial was set on 450. Jake knew he set the oven to 350 and not 450. He put on oven mitts and pulled out the stuffing. It was charred on top, with some parts extremely black and resembling charcoal lumps. The other parts were quickly approaching that level.
"Uh, mom, did you touch the temperature dial on the oven?"
"I did."
"Didn't I tell you not to touch the temperature dial? Remember the last time you touched the dial? Something got burned."
"You did."
"Given that, why did you touch the dial given your past history of burning food?"
"I don't know. I guess I forgot."
Jake sighed. He looked at the stuffing. It wasn't as bad as it could have been considering the circumstances. There would be less stuffing than he planned, but he could make up for the lost stuffing somehow. Jake would have to cook something else.
After a hectic morning of cooking, events passed by a lot smoother. Nothing else got burned. Well, there was the issue of the gravy igniting into a massive fireball. Apparently, while making a feeble attempt to help Jake make gravy, she accidentally tipped over a bottle of wine. The resulting flood of wine happened to make contact with an open flame on the stove. The saucepan containing the gravy disappeared in a massive fireball with a bright-blue center and crimson-red fringes. He had to remake the gravy. Oh, and she tipped over a salt shaker and the contents landed into a batch of freshly made cranberry sauce. He had to remake the cranberry sauce. Wait, there was one more incident. She miraculously burned a pot of boiling water. She forget to turn the stove off and well...the results were not pretty. Jake banned her from the kitchen for the rest of the day. The food would be much safer.
At dinner, Jake believed nothing else could go wrong. As the title of a book by Chinua Achebe goes, things fell apart. Mr. Murphy, the harbinger of doom, the nemesis of best laid plans, decided he would make his presence known. His father managed to break four plates and drop three glasses. His mother, in addition to forgetting things, burning food, and causing havoc in the kitchen, decided to use her skills in other realms. She managed to spill cranberry sauce everywhere. It was as if she were possessed by one of the Three Stooges. If things couldn't get any worse, which they inevitably did on occasions like these, the neighbors (those who were playing rap music at window-rattling levels) got into a domestic disturbance which resulted in the police coming back to the neighborhood.
Jake was back at home. Home with his family, the dysfunctional neighbors, and the constant blare of police sirens all accompanied by the window-rattling bass of rap music. His Thanksgiving there made his time at law school look a whole lot nicer than it really was. The boring classes didn't seem so boring. The confinement inside a concrete box didn't seem so confining. It's odd how things change when you look at them from a different perspective.
Chapter Nine: Is That Your Final Answer?
"The difference between school and life? In school, you're taught a lesson and then given a test. In life, you're given a test that teaches you a lesson."
-Tom Bodett
"Only a fool is sure of anything, a wise man keeps on guessing."
-Angus MacGyver, "The Stringer," MacGyver
During the first few weeks of December, law school students spend more time at law school. A visitor to a typical law school will see lights on until midnight, sometimes later. A peek into windows will show people sitting in little cubicles, heads bent over a book or several books. The next morning, one will see the same scene repeated again, but one will see the pile of detrius left on the floor and on the desks--the candy wrappers, coffee cups, and plastic bottles fueling a law school student for the dreaded event called law school finals.
The typical law school final is a three-hour ordeal generally consisting of fact-pattern essay questions that will tax the minds of future lawyers. Some professors will spice things up by tossing in multiple choice questions and short answer questions, but the de-facto standard is heinous essay questions. Multiple choice questions are not used that often as law school professors think of them as not academically rigorous. They don't afford the "analytical and critical thinking" skills that a rambling fact-pattern essay question provides. These professors, Jake thought, did not take a LaRusso Property I exam. That was a fiendish exam and it certainly taxed everyone who took it. Jake never saw so many Rule Against Perpetuities questions in one exam. Most of them were complicated and detailed questions with multiple contingent and vested remainders embedded into them. After he took that exam, Jake concluded that multiple-choice exams were thorougly rigorous. Jake definitely thought critically and analytically. If his mind begged for mercy after LaRusso's multiple-choice exam, he dreaded what a LaRusso essay exam would be like. Most likely, the experience would have driven most people permanently insane, way beyond the hope of recovery with drugs and other forms of therapy.
After checking his schedule during finals week, Jake began to realize how crazy his finals schedule was. Each of his five courses were tough by themselves, but put together, a veritable academic minefield of statutes and esoteric theories and concepts. His friends called him crazy and Jake laughed, thinking they were joking. When he told his schedule to a professor, the professor whistled and said, "Good luck. You're going to need it." Jake asked why and the professor replied, "Con Law and Commercial Law in one semester is hard enough. You're adding in Evidence, Estates and Trusts, and Business Associations. That's why you're going to need lots of luck."
"I see. I thought you were having trouble in law school."
Jake sighed. It was that conversation. The one where she asks if Jake is having trouble in law school as he only is getting B's and B-pluses in law school courses. Most students in law school are happy if they can consistently pull out a B average every semester with the effort Jake put into law school, which wasn't too excessive. He just read the cases, attended classes, and took notes. During finals, he might study a little more, but he didn't pull all-nighters and make casebook-thick outlines. He went into his finals with his casebook and his notes. Jake was pretty efficient with his study habits.
Grades in law school, Jake believed, were infuriatingly subjective. His conversations with other law school students and the professors validated when he suspected. A hundred people in a course could write down essentially the same answer for a question and the professor will assign a hundred different scores for the answers. Once you've read through pages and pages of essay answers, everything looks the same and careful scrutiny is abandoned faster than a torpedoed ship. The professor will need to rank them in some manner and make sure the average grade of the class falls within a mandatory curve. In sum, there will be two or three A's, a large number of B's and a few C's, just for balance. Essentially, you have a good chance you will get a B, unless you mess up miserably, and even then, you got a C.
Jake said with some irritation, "I'm doing fine. I have a 3.37 GPA at this moment. That's a good, no, very good GPA for a law school student. I've explained this to you before."
"But you always got A's, even in college. What's wrong right now?"
"Nothing is wrong. Law school is just different. Just leave it at that. No one, and I repeat, no one leaves law school with a 4.0 GPA. It never happened and it never will happen."
"Fine. I still think something is wrong. Maybe you should talk with your professors more. Let them know who you are."
"OK, can we leave this topic." Jake sniffed the air and smelled something funny. He squinted in disgust. It smelled like something was burning. After a moment, he recognized that something really was burning. "Hey, something is burning."
"What? Something is burning?" His mother jumped up in surprise and ran into the kitchen. Jake followed her. She probably did burn something, most likely the stuffing in the oven.
Jake saw a thick stream of smoke stream out of the oven. He turned the oven off and saw that the temperature dial was set on 450. Jake knew he set the oven to 350 and not 450. He put on oven mitts and pulled out the stuffing. It was charred on top, with some parts extremely black and resembling charcoal lumps. The other parts were quickly approaching that level.
"Uh, mom, did you touch the temperature dial on the oven?"
"I did."
"Didn't I tell you not to touch the temperature dial? Remember the last time you touched the dial? Something got burned."
"You did."
"Given that, why did you touch the dial given your past history of burning food?"
"I don't know. I guess I forgot."
Jake sighed. He looked at the stuffing. It wasn't as bad as it could have been considering the circumstances. There would be less stuffing than he planned, but he could make up for the lost stuffing somehow. Jake would have to cook something else.
After a hectic morning of cooking, events passed by a lot smoother. Nothing else got burned. Well, there was the issue of the gravy igniting into a massive fireball. Apparently, while making a feeble attempt to help Jake make gravy, she accidentally tipped over a bottle of wine. The resulting flood of wine happened to make contact with an open flame on the stove. The saucepan containing the gravy disappeared in a massive fireball with a bright-blue center and crimson-red fringes. He had to remake the gravy. Oh, and she tipped over a salt shaker and the contents landed into a batch of freshly made cranberry sauce. He had to remake the cranberry sauce. Wait, there was one more incident. She miraculously burned a pot of boiling water. She forget to turn the stove off and well...the results were not pretty. Jake banned her from the kitchen for the rest of the day. The food would be much safer.
At dinner, Jake believed nothing else could go wrong. As the title of a book by Chinua Achebe goes, things fell apart. Mr. Murphy, the harbinger of doom, the nemesis of best laid plans, decided he would make his presence known. His father managed to break four plates and drop three glasses. His mother, in addition to forgetting things, burning food, and causing havoc in the kitchen, decided to use her skills in other realms. She managed to spill cranberry sauce everywhere. It was as if she were possessed by one of the Three Stooges. If things couldn't get any worse, which they inevitably did on occasions like these, the neighbors (those who were playing rap music at window-rattling levels) got into a domestic disturbance which resulted in the police coming back to the neighborhood.
Jake was back at home. Home with his family, the dysfunctional neighbors, and the constant blare of police sirens all accompanied by the window-rattling bass of rap music. His Thanksgiving there made his time at law school look a whole lot nicer than it really was. The boring classes didn't seem so boring. The confinement inside a concrete box didn't seem so confining. It's odd how things change when you look at them from a different perspective.
Chapter Nine: Is That Your Final Answer?
"The difference between school and life? In school, you're taught a lesson and then given a test. In life, you're given a test that teaches you a lesson."
-Tom Bodett
"Only a fool is sure of anything, a wise man keeps on guessing."
-Angus MacGyver, "The Stringer," MacGyver
During the first few weeks of December, law school students spend more time at law school. A visitor to a typical law school will see lights on until midnight, sometimes later. A peek into windows will show people sitting in little cubicles, heads bent over a book or several books. The next morning, one will see the same scene repeated again, but one will see the pile of detrius left on the floor and on the desks--the candy wrappers, coffee cups, and plastic bottles fueling a law school student for the dreaded event called law school finals.
The typical law school final is a three-hour ordeal generally consisting of fact-pattern essay questions that will tax the minds of future lawyers. Some professors will spice things up by tossing in multiple choice questions and short answer questions, but the de-facto standard is heinous essay questions. Multiple choice questions are not used that often as law school professors think of them as not academically rigorous. They don't afford the "analytical and critical thinking" skills that a rambling fact-pattern essay question provides. These professors, Jake thought, did not take a LaRusso Property I exam. That was a fiendish exam and it certainly taxed everyone who took it. Jake never saw so many Rule Against Perpetuities questions in one exam. Most of them were complicated and detailed questions with multiple contingent and vested remainders embedded into them. After he took that exam, Jake concluded that multiple-choice exams were thorougly rigorous. Jake definitely thought critically and analytically. If his mind begged for mercy after LaRusso's multiple-choice exam, he dreaded what a LaRusso essay exam would be like. Most likely, the experience would have driven most people permanently insane, way beyond the hope of recovery with drugs and other forms of therapy.
After checking his schedule during finals week, Jake began to realize how crazy his finals schedule was. Each of his five courses were tough by themselves, but put together, a veritable academic minefield of statutes and esoteric theories and concepts. His friends called him crazy and Jake laughed, thinking they were joking. When he told his schedule to a professor, the professor whistled and said, "Good luck. You're going to need it." Jake asked why and the professor replied, "Con Law and Commercial Law in one semester is hard enough. You're adding in Evidence, Estates and Trusts, and Business Associations. That's why you're going to need lots of luck."
posted by J.U. at 11/16/2005 05:45:00 AM
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