| Aaaaaand I'm Spent |
[Nov. 7th, 2009|12:17 pm] |
Well, that's done it. The madness is ended, and the dust has settled. Job interview season is over.
The first year of law school is crazy and competitive. The pressure has broken some men greater than myself like a fistful of dry spaghettini. I remember particularly one guy in the library before the Criminal final that was clean-cut and on top of things all year, having wound up with terrible breath, chocolate stains (I hope) all around his mouth, and a neck beard like a crazy prospector, yelling at me: "Vaillancourt v. The Queen! Stigma and penalty --- are they disjunctive or conjunctive? Which matters more: that you're a murderer, or that you murdered someone?!"
Grizzled Prospector syndrome: put down the casebook and get to pannin'!
Whoa, homeboy. Take it down a notch. Everything is going to be all right.
He didn't think so, though, because of "the system".
( 'The System', continued... ) |
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[Sep. 2nd, 2009|07:39 pm] |
Ugh, the chaos.
All righty! So! The summer in brief!
Finished my exams, took off to Quebec with Beth for about a week. The food was incredible, the language was French. She threw out her hip and the GPS didn't work. Rest stops wound up leading through dairy villages and we listened to Huckleberry Finn on tape. Good times had by all.
Came back and found out my grades were pretty good! Smurter than the avrage biscuit. Started up my summer job researching the history of Canadian expropriation law and flew out to Winnipeg for research and the wedding. Did the research, the wedding was awesome.
Came home to Toronto, chaos. Landlord went nuts. Time to move. Packed up everything we own, looked at a million places at once, negotiated like mad with a new company, moved down the street. Set up, unpacked, bed bugs! Ants! Destroy, destroy, destroy. Paint, saw, wash, scrub, hang, mount, dust. Ahhhh, relief.
Time's up! Firm tours, schmooze cocktails. Job interviews. 20 unique cover letters and résumés. Sent them out today. Get a new suit. Grab textbooks and get financial aid. Finish off the research and write the paper. Be a mentor, buy your textbooks. Beth spins in a circle getting ready to teach and go back to class. Quits her job. Just another wacky Wednesday.
Aaaaaand we're caught up.
I seriously had a culture-shock moment last week at the Gowlings firm tour. I was walkin' around, doing my thing, asking questions about what kind of work they do and whether or not Beth's Vietnamese Spine-Ratchet adjustments will be covered, and we head up to the litigation department. They have this cool glass bullpen like on the West Wing, and the articling student giving the tour is like, "and if you're into advocacy, you'll be working up here on the 19th floor."
So I ask, "do we get our own cubicle?", pointing to the shiny tinted-glass cubicles covered in art and calendars and so forth. The dude gets this weird look in his eye, like, retard.
"No."
That was fine, I guessed. We'd probably have to be in the library doing research for real lawyers most of the time anyway, and we might have a little carrel or something in ther-
"Your secretary gets her own cubicle. You get one of these," and he shoves open the door to a Bay Street office the size of my bedroom with his butt. It seemed like everyone else on the tour was all like, "dang tootin'! That's what I'm talking about!", meanwhile I was thinking about Lionel Hutz telling the judge his shoes won't be ready until Thursday.
It hadn't really dawned on me until right then that actual, serious people are going to be asking me stuff about the way stuff goes, and they'll expect me to actually know some shit. I turned in a stack of resumés today, and if the numbers are any indication, I've got a good shot at working at one of those big shiny towers if I really wanted to.
So, sometime in the next month I'm going to have to figure out --- do I want to? It'll kill off my student debt pretty damn quick, but that might not be the only thing I lose. Decisions, decisions. I figure I won't worry about it until I actually get an offer. Until then, I'm just a broke student with two busted pairs of glasses and an especially pukey cat. |
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[Jun. 12th, 2009|03:20 pm] |
Who's with me for UFC 99? Saturday at nine.
Hardy v. Davis
Cro Cop v. Al-Turk
Franklin v. Silva
Can't miss! |
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[Apr. 6th, 2009|02:21 pm] |
Exams start tomorrow.
If anyone is looking for Martin in April, be advised: There is no Martin. There is only Schuul. |
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[Mar. 31st, 2009|03:50 pm] |
GOD DAMMIT
Martin got a summer job in Winnipeg.
THIS WON'T WORK OUT AT ALL |
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[Feb. 8th, 2009|11:32 pm] |
Quick update!
1) Well, exams have come and gone and there's news all over the damn place! I done good, it looks like. Not so much so for Contracts, where I froze and wrote one page instead of eight, but apart from that I'm ahead of the pack in the B+ zone. (Only about 5% of the class scores an "A" on any given assignment, so I am pretty okay with taking my top 25% B+.) So, not quite good enough to score one of the few private-sector first-year jobs (which are pretty much just summer camp that firms pay for so that you'll think of them in the future before you run off to New York), so I'll have to figure something else out. I've applied to do a Legal Aid rotation and to do some work for civil liberties, but if those fall through there's going to be some question about my plans for the summer.
I'm giving some thought to doing research for a professor if it's available, and I've also been thinking, since I've got two weddings in Winnipeg this summer, that it might be worth my while to apply to a couple of Winnipeg firms for a first-year spot. I doubt they'll take me because they won't see me as a great investment, likely to go back to Toronto and work there after my first year, but that really would be an ideal solution.
2) The library is kind of nice. This concludes everything that has happened since December 23rd.
3) I don't think I like Christmas. I've given it a lot of thought, and it can be downright lame. I enjoy the songs and the parties and such forth, but it usually just ends with me being really disappointed that I don't get to spend enough time with anyone. Flying out is just so expensive that you have to take the dates you can afford, and that usually means I'm only around long enough to see everyone, wave, and fly back. There were a lot of people I wanted to catch up with that I really didn't get the chance to, and it makes me wish there was another random holiday season two or three weeks long wherein you're expected to get out of your city for a while. I'd definitely prefer that one to Christmas; it'd have to be warmer, and I might be able to shake that huge-asshole feeling and sense of regret I always have on the flight back to Toronto.
4) Also I have a total plan for when I do come out to Winnipeg -- I'll have to, at some point prior to Leanne and Mike's über-shindig, and I'm going to wrangle whatever I can out of my summer job to let me come for as large a block of time as I can. Because I just got to a point in Fallout 3 that made me think of the greatest thing:
Imaginary. Private. Drive-in.
We go out to a campground somewhere, maybe even just rural Manitoba not far from Stonewall or Warren, set up a van or two, a couple of hibachis or barbecues, and we grill up food, throw a cloth over some hay bales and seriously have our own drive-in theatre. Yes, this is epic. I think it must be done.
Gotta skip -- Reading Week's coming up, though, so I might have a minute in between writing my fun fun four papers to squeeze in another post before we're back in the Bastogne of contract law. |
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[Dec. 8th, 2008|10:51 am] |
Exams so far:
Contracts - Boooooo
Criminal - Yaaaaaaay |
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[Oct. 23rd, 2008|07:59 pm] |
OH CRAP it was totally my birthday before
Man, I miss so many things when I don't have LJ access |
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[Oct. 23rd, 2008|07:45 pm] |
SO BUSY can't post much of anything. Why does the law gots to have so many WORDS in it?
- Belated happy birthday to Mike!
- Advance happy birthday to Brent, who I will also probably scorn by omission when another Law Review assignment comes out
- Also that video was awesome
-- Not the trolls and elves one, which made me sad
- I taught the cat to shut up at night without hitting it; I win nature
- There was an Omar Khadr back to Canada petition at school, but nothing for Jake Shields to the UFC. There's so much injustice in the world. (Yeah, that's the apt analogy I'm going with right there.)
- I might have to start being one of those video bloggers I hate so much in the future, just because this quick LJ post is taking more time than the Millie video
- Wow is Criminal Law ever depressing and horrible. Clinical examinations of the things people do to each other -- neato! I'm starting to get why there was a warning at the beginning of that class.
- I would hate to have been the judge in this one case where this lady drags her deformed daughter into court and sues the doctor because she should have been aborted. I mean, what, do you rule for specific performance and send her out back with the bailiff?
- I have no idea what's up for the holidays yet, but I should totally look into it. I think we might try to get in to Winnipeg as early as possible after exams (17th) and then get back BEFORE Christmas if possible so that we always have someone to look after the wild animal that's squatting in our joint.
- All day every day with the schooling stuff. I've seen Jono like twice since he moved to Toronto with all this madness. Nothing ever happens but all the crap I read, so I've gotten really boring! Yay! So, I'll end this here before I get even MORE boring! Woo!
All right then! Until I have another three minutes! |
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