Chapter Thirteen
"God, as some cynic has said, is always on the side which has the best football coach."
-Heywood Broun
"Predicting the future is easy. It's trying to figure out what's going on now that's hard."
-Fritz R. S. Dressler
"Take all the fools out of this world and there wouldn't be any fun living in it, or profit."
-Josh Billings
There are several unofficial national holidays in the United States. These were days when a significant portion of the population stopped working and productivity went to a halt.
The first major unofficial holiday was Super Bowl Sunday. On this day, nearly 80 million Americans on average sit in front of a television and watch two teams fight for the Vince Lombardi trophy. Even if you weren't a casual football fan, you probably went to or held a Superbowl party and watched the commercials, which on most years, were the best part of the game. Second was Mardi Gras. Yes, it's a religious day, but most people turned it into a massive alcohol-fueled day of excess. This wasn't so far from the true meaning of the holy day. Originally, before it became what it became, Mardi Gras was the Tuesday before Lent, a time of denial and fasting for good Roman Catholics. Therefore, you tried to fill your Tuesday before Lent with as much excess as possible. Most people associate the really good celebration as only occuring in New Orleans, but even then, geography never prevented the "let the good times roll" philosophy of the Big Easy spread to other less-liberal areas. The third unofficial holiday was March Madness.
March Madness? The NCAA basketball tournament? The three weeks of college basketball where one Division One university has their one shining moment, where a Cinderella team makes a miracle run, where games can be decided with a last second heave at the buzzer? How can that be a holiday?
Think about it. Millions, if not billions of dollars are spent--well, that was a nice word for what actually occurred with the money. The oddsmakers and moneymakers in Las Vegas and in other lesser places like the office copy room had a holiday. They had great amounts of fun with the sheer mountains of money that passed hands every second of every day during this time period. Fans of college basketball had their eyes glued to the television. If they couldn't catch the game on television, they listened to the radio or surreptitiously got results on their cell phone or the Internet. The next day, particularly after a really close game or a buzzer beater, morning conversations took longer than usual. Work stopped. And the cycle began again. All that time wasted. All that time being unproductive. And it lasted for nearly three weeks, three weeks of nearly non-stop basketball.
This lack of productivity didn't stop in the workplace. It pervaded the millions of homes in America. It seeped into church and houses of worship. It leaked into businesses and other places where goods and services are sold. But where March Madness struck the hardest were the colleges and universities. The same places where those sixty-five teams came from. Those teams that gave their all to have their one shining moment and win a national championship. Davis University was one of those places. Though they didn't field a team in the tournament, students at Davis University were not immune to the March Madness sickness.
The day after the tournament brackets were announced, a large number of law school students started forming bracket pools. According to the NCAA, any sort of gambling by students and faculty in NCAA institutions was considered unethical. Did this stop anyone from contributing a comparably small amount like, for instance, five dollars, for a chance at a comparably large payoff like a hundred dollars? Did you ever hear anyone say, "I really shouldn't join this pool. The NCAA says it's unethical to gamble on the outcome of tournament games." No, not really. Ethical questions never prevented anyone from participating in such activities. If people stopped joining office pools just solely on ethical reasons, how else would the more crafty gamblers make their profits? In addition, it wouldn't be as fun laughing at the people who inevitably chose some low seeded school from some small town in Ohio to make it to the Elite Eight. Then again, the people who won the pool were the ones who had no clue about college basketball. Those people chose teams based on odd reasons like the mascot name or if their team colors were more coordinated than the other team. Bracketology, or the science of choosing of teams to win the tournament, was a very fickle thing.
Jake predicted Duke to win. They were a perennial choice to win it all. The Blue Devils won the ACC regular season title and the ACC conference tournament. Duke had two pre-season All Americans on their team and they were loaded with a whole bunch of young talent. J.J. Reddick was one of the best guards in the nation. And their coach? Mike Krzyzewski. Enough said. They were going to be tough to beat.
As usual, Missouri failed to reach the NCAA tournament for the fifth straight year. Despite Coach Quin "Pretty Boy Hair" Snyder's efforts and his Duke pedigree, Missouri was underwhelming in the Big Twelve. What else would you expect from a team that lost in the first round of the pre-season NIT to Sam Houston State? They lost their final game in the old Hearn Center to Kansas. Their brand new basketball complex was named after an academic fraud. The administrators at Missouri smartly renamed it after a real basketball coach--Norm Stewart. At least he didn't lose to two-bit teams in the NIT. The only good thing about Coach Snyder--if you could call it a good thing--was his hair. Unlike the Missouri basketball team, it stayed in the right position, it didn't collapse when it really counted, and when things got hot, it didn't melt down. Always perfect. Always reliable. If only his players were as consistent and reliable as his hair. They might have made for a mildly acceptable team.
When Jake arrived on campus, he picked up his usual newspapers. Jake read the sports sections and all of them had stories on the basketball games being played that day. The sports editor of the Davis University Daily, Maury Clayton, had some amazingly stupid predictions on who would win that day (think #1 losing to a #16). He predicted that there would be quite a few upsets that day. Given the caliber of the top seeds and the sheer talent on those teams, it would take a long domino series of miracles for even one team to perform an upset, one of the Cinderella shockers in the same vein as Valporaiso in the championship game held in New Mexico's home arena, The Pit. Jake sometimes wondered how he became the sports editor. Some of the regular staff writers in the sports section seemed more knowledgeable than Maury Clayton on a good day. While reading Maury's article, Jake tried his best not to laugh.
Games didn't officially begin for another three hours and his classes didn't begin for another two hours, so Jake decided to study. This was an activity Jake tried to keep at a minimum while inside Gray Hall. It wasn't because Jake was a lazy student; it was because he studied while he was at home. While in Gray Hall, Jake spent just enough time to read the assignments, maybe make a few notes in the margins at most. That was assuming he forgot to read an assigment at home. For an exceptionally difficult class, he might do a little more. No matter the class, Jake would spend ten or fifteen minutes every day to review class notes. It added up during a semester so Jake, at the end of the semester, was relatively well prepared to take finals. The real studying--the long stretches where he did more intense review (at least for his standards) for several hours at a time--Jake performed during finals period.
Jake opened his Professional Responsibility book. He tried reading today's assignment last night, but he spent a little too much time reviewing statistics for the teams playing today. Jake went on the Internet to get a case on LexisNexis, but since he was on the Internet, he could go to ESPN and look at the stories. Then he read the messages on the forums and posted a couple disparaging messages about the sorry state of Missouri basketball. This led to analyzing statistics on the teams playing on Thursday. By the time he was done, it was 11:20 and well, sad to say, he could have spent ten minutes to read the case, but Jake decided to fall asleep early. It wasn't the best effort made by Jake.
Jake forced himself to read the Professional Responsibility assignment. The cases weren't very long, but they were pretty tedious and boring. Once you took out all the little details in the cases, the basic fact patterns were the same. Well, there wasn't multiple fact patterns. There was only one and it went like this:
OK, the description of the fact pattern was pretty cynical and sarcastic, but sadly, it was the truth. All the Professional Responsibility cases followed this basic fact pattern. No exceptions. Whether it was an illegal kickback or an inappropriate sexual relationship with clients, all the cases followed this basic fact pattern. The lawyer always claimed that he didn't know his actions were wrong. They would have done better claiming "rules were meant to be broken." Politicians used this argument a lot and they got away with stuff normal people couldn't get away with. Most of the lawyers who did these illegal acts were male. Females, for some reason, were less likely to do such acts.
Today's cases--ones he should have read last night instead of looking at the basketball statistics--were all about good lawyers going bad. The cases were about lawyers who caused havoc with the lawyer-attorney relationship. All the normal stuff like forgetting to return calls, forgetting to do actual research, forgetting to accurately bill the client the correct amount, and other forms of forgetting every single canon of professional legal ethics. To be totally honest, the lawyers didn't forget everything. They did remember how to overcharge clients. They did remember how to be lazy and incompetent. They did remember to lie, cheat, and steal. They did remember how to screw over clients every which way from A to Z. You had to give them some credit. Violating rules and getting away with it for so long was hard work.
Jake finished reading the Professional Responsibility cases. It took him longer than normal, but by God, he read them. It was now time to do something more interesting. It was time to look at today's matchups for the first round of March Madness. The people at ESPN were very good at predicting who would win and lose using their Bracketology scheme. After scanning their articles, Jake got the following predictions:
During Professional Responsibilty, Jake had problems focusing on the lecture. The games had started an hour ago. Every so often, he switched from Microsoft Word to the SportsLine website. Thanks to the joys of modern technology, this site automatically updated sports scores every thirty seconds. He could keep track of games without a television, although the idea of sitting in front of a television with some chips sounded good right now. The #1 seed, despite ESPN's punditry, was manhandling #16. So much for their experts. The #4 seed was down by 13 points. The #5 team looked horrible. The #12 team was whipping them by 21 points.
Jake closed his web browser. He had to focus. Every time he looked at the computer screen, he saw his hand moving the pointer towards his web browser icon. He forced himself to resume typing notes. He couldn't. OK, do something else. Focus on something else. OK, play a game of Freecell. That was a fun game. It made you focus on making the right moves. Yes, a few games of Freecell would be good for Jake. He wouldn't focus so much on basketball scores.
His abstention from basketball scores lasted about twenty minutes. For any college basketball fan, twenty minutes away from basketball was a long time, a very long time. Jake checked the basketball scores on SportsLine and the #1 seed only had a two point lead over the #16 seed. The #4 seed was still behind, but by a larger amount. The #5 seed was still getting whipped by the #12 seed. As time passed by, the #4 seed went on an impressive 18-2 run and cut their deficit down to three points. The #5 seed, well, they were doing badly on offense and defense. Their March Madness experience was over.
By the time class ended, the #1 seed barely won by one point. The shooting guard for the #16 seed had a chance to win it with a last second buzzer-beater shot. The basketball made a smooth arc towards the basket and it clanked off the back section of the rim. It bounced into the air, rebounded off the rim twice, rolled around a few times, and at the buzzer, rolled off. Game over. The game between #4 and #13 was in the final ten seconds. The #13 seed was ahead by three points and had the basketball. If they could hold onto the ball for the last ten seconds, it would be the biggest upset in the tournament. In a minor miracle, the best player on the #4 seed stole the ball and made a three-pointer with two seconds left. Overtime. The #12 seed won handily.
**********
Jake's final class for today was International Economic Development Law. Originally, Jake wanted to enroll in Trial Advocacy, a class where law school students got the chance to participate in a mock trial. When it was time to enroll, he logged onto the online enrollment site at 7:20 AM, assuming this was early enough to snag a position in that class. Jake was wrong. The class was full at 7:15 AM. Apparently, you had to enroll at 7:00 AM if you were a 2L to get the remote possibility to get into that class. In addition to enrolling at exactly 7:00 AM, it also helped if you were a 3L, as they got to enroll a day earlier than the 2Ls.
Therefore, due to the circumstances, Jake had to choose a different class. It was a battle between International Economic Develpment Law or Family Law. Having two classes taught by Professor Porter in one day was something Jake wasn't looking forward to. The International law class sounded pretty interesting and the person teaching it, Professor Hearnes, had a reputation for being interesting as well as competent in the subject material. Given those factors, Jake decided to enroll in the international law class. He didn't regret making that decision, unlike some other times when he had enrolled in classes that turned out to be awful.
Jake arrived to class early. He sat in his seat and got into a discussion about the double overtime game with one of many rabid basketball fans at Davis Law School. During their conversation, Jake noticed something seemed a little odd. He checked his watch. It was 1:30. The professor should have been here by now.
Jake said, "That's odd. It's 1:30 and the professor isn't here. I wonder what's happening."
The door opened and someone from the main office said, "International Economic Development Law is cancelled today. The professor unexpectedly became ill during lunch. Sorry for the inconvenience."
That was an unexpected surprise. Jake packed up his stuff and exited the room. His day was over. Should he read cases like an industrious student or watch basketball? Jake decided that he would go home and get his priorities straight. Reading cases would come first and watching basketball would come later. This seemed sensible, but Jake realized there was an entire evening of basketball that promised to be very entertaining. After realizing this, reading cases slowly drifted down the priority list. It was now the last thing on his mind. After all, Jake reasoned, he had time to read tomorrow.
-Heywood Broun
"Predicting the future is easy. It's trying to figure out what's going on now that's hard."
-Fritz R. S. Dressler
"Take all the fools out of this world and there wouldn't be any fun living in it, or profit."
-Josh Billings
There are several unofficial national holidays in the United States. These were days when a significant portion of the population stopped working and productivity went to a halt.
The first major unofficial holiday was Super Bowl Sunday. On this day, nearly 80 million Americans on average sit in front of a television and watch two teams fight for the Vince Lombardi trophy. Even if you weren't a casual football fan, you probably went to or held a Superbowl party and watched the commercials, which on most years, were the best part of the game. Second was Mardi Gras. Yes, it's a religious day, but most people turned it into a massive alcohol-fueled day of excess. This wasn't so far from the true meaning of the holy day. Originally, before it became what it became, Mardi Gras was the Tuesday before Lent, a time of denial and fasting for good Roman Catholics. Therefore, you tried to fill your Tuesday before Lent with as much excess as possible. Most people associate the really good celebration as only occuring in New Orleans, but even then, geography never prevented the "let the good times roll" philosophy of the Big Easy spread to other less-liberal areas. The third unofficial holiday was March Madness.
March Madness? The NCAA basketball tournament? The three weeks of college basketball where one Division One university has their one shining moment, where a Cinderella team makes a miracle run, where games can be decided with a last second heave at the buzzer? How can that be a holiday?
Think about it. Millions, if not billions of dollars are spent--well, that was a nice word for what actually occurred with the money. The oddsmakers and moneymakers in Las Vegas and in other lesser places like the office copy room had a holiday. They had great amounts of fun with the sheer mountains of money that passed hands every second of every day during this time period. Fans of college basketball had their eyes glued to the television. If they couldn't catch the game on television, they listened to the radio or surreptitiously got results on their cell phone or the Internet. The next day, particularly after a really close game or a buzzer beater, morning conversations took longer than usual. Work stopped. And the cycle began again. All that time wasted. All that time being unproductive. And it lasted for nearly three weeks, three weeks of nearly non-stop basketball.
This lack of productivity didn't stop in the workplace. It pervaded the millions of homes in America. It seeped into church and houses of worship. It leaked into businesses and other places where goods and services are sold. But where March Madness struck the hardest were the colleges and universities. The same places where those sixty-five teams came from. Those teams that gave their all to have their one shining moment and win a national championship. Davis University was one of those places. Though they didn't field a team in the tournament, students at Davis University were not immune to the March Madness sickness.
The day after the tournament brackets were announced, a large number of law school students started forming bracket pools. According to the NCAA, any sort of gambling by students and faculty in NCAA institutions was considered unethical. Did this stop anyone from contributing a comparably small amount like, for instance, five dollars, for a chance at a comparably large payoff like a hundred dollars? Did you ever hear anyone say, "I really shouldn't join this pool. The NCAA says it's unethical to gamble on the outcome of tournament games." No, not really. Ethical questions never prevented anyone from participating in such activities. If people stopped joining office pools just solely on ethical reasons, how else would the more crafty gamblers make their profits? In addition, it wouldn't be as fun laughing at the people who inevitably chose some low seeded school from some small town in Ohio to make it to the Elite Eight. Then again, the people who won the pool were the ones who had no clue about college basketball. Those people chose teams based on odd reasons like the mascot name or if their team colors were more coordinated than the other team. Bracketology, or the science of choosing of teams to win the tournament, was a very fickle thing.
Jake predicted Duke to win. They were a perennial choice to win it all. The Blue Devils won the ACC regular season title and the ACC conference tournament. Duke had two pre-season All Americans on their team and they were loaded with a whole bunch of young talent. J.J. Reddick was one of the best guards in the nation. And their coach? Mike Krzyzewski. Enough said. They were going to be tough to beat.
As usual, Missouri failed to reach the NCAA tournament for the fifth straight year. Despite Coach Quin "Pretty Boy Hair" Snyder's efforts and his Duke pedigree, Missouri was underwhelming in the Big Twelve. What else would you expect from a team that lost in the first round of the pre-season NIT to Sam Houston State? They lost their final game in the old Hearn Center to Kansas. Their brand new basketball complex was named after an academic fraud. The administrators at Missouri smartly renamed it after a real basketball coach--Norm Stewart. At least he didn't lose to two-bit teams in the NIT. The only good thing about Coach Snyder--if you could call it a good thing--was his hair. Unlike the Missouri basketball team, it stayed in the right position, it didn't collapse when it really counted, and when things got hot, it didn't melt down. Always perfect. Always reliable. If only his players were as consistent and reliable as his hair. They might have made for a mildly acceptable team.
When Jake arrived on campus, he picked up his usual newspapers. Jake read the sports sections and all of them had stories on the basketball games being played that day. The sports editor of the Davis University Daily, Maury Clayton, had some amazingly stupid predictions on who would win that day (think #1 losing to a #16). He predicted that there would be quite a few upsets that day. Given the caliber of the top seeds and the sheer talent on those teams, it would take a long domino series of miracles for even one team to perform an upset, one of the Cinderella shockers in the same vein as Valporaiso in the championship game held in New Mexico's home arena, The Pit. Jake sometimes wondered how he became the sports editor. Some of the regular staff writers in the sports section seemed more knowledgeable than Maury Clayton on a good day. While reading Maury's article, Jake tried his best not to laugh.
Games didn't officially begin for another three hours and his classes didn't begin for another two hours, so Jake decided to study. This was an activity Jake tried to keep at a minimum while inside Gray Hall. It wasn't because Jake was a lazy student; it was because he studied while he was at home. While in Gray Hall, Jake spent just enough time to read the assignments, maybe make a few notes in the margins at most. That was assuming he forgot to read an assigment at home. For an exceptionally difficult class, he might do a little more. No matter the class, Jake would spend ten or fifteen minutes every day to review class notes. It added up during a semester so Jake, at the end of the semester, was relatively well prepared to take finals. The real studying--the long stretches where he did more intense review (at least for his standards) for several hours at a time--Jake performed during finals period.
Jake opened his Professional Responsibility book. He tried reading today's assignment last night, but he spent a little too much time reviewing statistics for the teams playing today. Jake went on the Internet to get a case on LexisNexis, but since he was on the Internet, he could go to ESPN and look at the stories. Then he read the messages on the forums and posted a couple disparaging messages about the sorry state of Missouri basketball. This led to analyzing statistics on the teams playing on Thursday. By the time he was done, it was 11:20 and well, sad to say, he could have spent ten minutes to read the case, but Jake decided to fall asleep early. It wasn't the best effort made by Jake.
Jake forced himself to read the Professional Responsibility assignment. The cases weren't very long, but they were pretty tedious and boring. Once you took out all the little details in the cases, the basic fact patterns were the same. Well, there wasn't multiple fact patterns. There was only one and it went like this:
1. Lawyer gets client.
2. Lawyer does something unethical or illegal.
3. Lawyer gets caught.
4. Lawyer claims he didn't know it was wrong.
5. Lawyer gets slapped with relatively minor punishment.
OK, the description of the fact pattern was pretty cynical and sarcastic, but sadly, it was the truth. All the Professional Responsibility cases followed this basic fact pattern. No exceptions. Whether it was an illegal kickback or an inappropriate sexual relationship with clients, all the cases followed this basic fact pattern. The lawyer always claimed that he didn't know his actions were wrong. They would have done better claiming "rules were meant to be broken." Politicians used this argument a lot and they got away with stuff normal people couldn't get away with. Most of the lawyers who did these illegal acts were male. Females, for some reason, were less likely to do such acts.
Today's cases--ones he should have read last night instead of looking at the basketball statistics--were all about good lawyers going bad. The cases were about lawyers who caused havoc with the lawyer-attorney relationship. All the normal stuff like forgetting to return calls, forgetting to do actual research, forgetting to accurately bill the client the correct amount, and other forms of forgetting every single canon of professional legal ethics. To be totally honest, the lawyers didn't forget everything. They did remember how to overcharge clients. They did remember how to be lazy and incompetent. They did remember to lie, cheat, and steal. They did remember how to screw over clients every which way from A to Z. You had to give them some credit. Violating rules and getting away with it for so long was hard work.
Jake finished reading the Professional Responsibility cases. It took him longer than normal, but by God, he read them. It was now time to do something more interesting. It was time to look at today's matchups for the first round of March Madness. The people at ESPN were very good at predicting who would win and lose using their Bracketology scheme. After scanning their articles, Jake got the following predictions:
1. There would be a #12 seed upsetting a #5 seed, but it would happen today. This was unexpected, as the #5 seed was an unusually good #5 seed. Then again, the #5 seed had a history of not meeting very high expectations--choking-- when it was given a high seed in the tournament. The school performed much better when it was a Cinderella team.**********
2. The best game was not going to be an #8 seed versus #9 seed. It was going to be--surprise--a #1 seed versus #16 seed. The pundits at ESPN claimed that due to injuries to key players, the #1 seed would have some problems scoring points. This #16 seed played a tough, physical, and scrappy defensive scheme similar to the style played by Princeton during its heydays. ESPN predicted a close game and not the traditional blowout game that occurred every year.
3. Today would be a big day of big upsets. In addition to a #12 beating a #5, there would be a #10 beating a #7 and in a major upset, the high probability of a #13 beating a #4. The #10 team, according to the gurus at ESPN, could be the surprise Cinderella team this year.
4. Dick Vitale loved Duke. He also loved Texas. But, predictably, he thought that "that this was the year for the Cameron Crazies at Duke to celebrate big time--baby!"
5. It was going to be a good day of basketball. You've got to love March Madness.
During Professional Responsibilty, Jake had problems focusing on the lecture. The games had started an hour ago. Every so often, he switched from Microsoft Word to the SportsLine website. Thanks to the joys of modern technology, this site automatically updated sports scores every thirty seconds. He could keep track of games without a television, although the idea of sitting in front of a television with some chips sounded good right now. The #1 seed, despite ESPN's punditry, was manhandling #16. So much for their experts. The #4 seed was down by 13 points. The #5 team looked horrible. The #12 team was whipping them by 21 points.
Jake closed his web browser. He had to focus. Every time he looked at the computer screen, he saw his hand moving the pointer towards his web browser icon. He forced himself to resume typing notes. He couldn't. OK, do something else. Focus on something else. OK, play a game of Freecell. That was a fun game. It made you focus on making the right moves. Yes, a few games of Freecell would be good for Jake. He wouldn't focus so much on basketball scores.
His abstention from basketball scores lasted about twenty minutes. For any college basketball fan, twenty minutes away from basketball was a long time, a very long time. Jake checked the basketball scores on SportsLine and the #1 seed only had a two point lead over the #16 seed. The #4 seed was still behind, but by a larger amount. The #5 seed was still getting whipped by the #12 seed. As time passed by, the #4 seed went on an impressive 18-2 run and cut their deficit down to three points. The #5 seed, well, they were doing badly on offense and defense. Their March Madness experience was over.
By the time class ended, the #1 seed barely won by one point. The shooting guard for the #16 seed had a chance to win it with a last second buzzer-beater shot. The basketball made a smooth arc towards the basket and it clanked off the back section of the rim. It bounced into the air, rebounded off the rim twice, rolled around a few times, and at the buzzer, rolled off. Game over. The game between #4 and #13 was in the final ten seconds. The #13 seed was ahead by three points and had the basketball. If they could hold onto the ball for the last ten seconds, it would be the biggest upset in the tournament. In a minor miracle, the best player on the #4 seed stole the ball and made a three-pointer with two seconds left. Overtime. The #12 seed won handily.
**********
Jake's final class for today was International Economic Development Law. Originally, Jake wanted to enroll in Trial Advocacy, a class where law school students got the chance to participate in a mock trial. When it was time to enroll, he logged onto the online enrollment site at 7:20 AM, assuming this was early enough to snag a position in that class. Jake was wrong. The class was full at 7:15 AM. Apparently, you had to enroll at 7:00 AM if you were a 2L to get the remote possibility to get into that class. In addition to enrolling at exactly 7:00 AM, it also helped if you were a 3L, as they got to enroll a day earlier than the 2Ls.
Therefore, due to the circumstances, Jake had to choose a different class. It was a battle between International Economic Develpment Law or Family Law. Having two classes taught by Professor Porter in one day was something Jake wasn't looking forward to. The International law class sounded pretty interesting and the person teaching it, Professor Hearnes, had a reputation for being interesting as well as competent in the subject material. Given those factors, Jake decided to enroll in the international law class. He didn't regret making that decision, unlike some other times when he had enrolled in classes that turned out to be awful.
Jake arrived to class early. He sat in his seat and got into a discussion about the double overtime game with one of many rabid basketball fans at Davis Law School. During their conversation, Jake noticed something seemed a little odd. He checked his watch. It was 1:30. The professor should have been here by now.
Jake said, "That's odd. It's 1:30 and the professor isn't here. I wonder what's happening."
The door opened and someone from the main office said, "International Economic Development Law is cancelled today. The professor unexpectedly became ill during lunch. Sorry for the inconvenience."
That was an unexpected surprise. Jake packed up his stuff and exited the room. His day was over. Should he read cases like an industrious student or watch basketball? Jake decided that he would go home and get his priorities straight. Reading cases would come first and watching basketball would come later. This seemed sensible, but Jake realized there was an entire evening of basketball that promised to be very entertaining. After realizing this, reading cases slowly drifted down the priority list. It was now the last thing on his mind. After all, Jake reasoned, he had time to read tomorrow.
posted by J.U. at 11/25/2005 08:36:00 AM
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