I love Cali. No, no, not that Cali (been there, done that). I love this CALI.
And once it's all over (in two days!), I will be like this. Sort of, anyway. Maybe I'll be a less crude, more mature, girl version of it. In any event, it's keeping me amused during the studying. I really like the dance moves around 2:10. And, props to Bruno for working "snuggie" into the lyrics. My new goal: work "snuggie" into Evidence final exam.
Showing posts with label mushy brain. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mushy brain. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
Friday, November 12, 2010
Shabbat Shalom
Shabbat Shalom!
I love how in Judaism Friday night is the beginning of the holy day each week - for me, it always truly is a day to celebrate! Speaking of Jews, check this out.
I'm totally beat this week. It took me 2 hours to putz around and get ready/make it into school this morning. Now that I'm here, I can't pull myself together to get real work done. Serious case of mushy brain syndrome. I think I'm going to roll with it -- do some easy work, print some stuff off to read later, and get out of here to take the afternoon off. I feel a wee bit guilty, but if I'm going to be uselessly inefficient, I might as well just rejuvenate myself and have good work days tomorrow and Sunday. All in all, I'd rather not fall apart in life, if it means I have to do less in well in law school. If taking an afternoon off is what I need to do to be happy, that seems worth it.
Dinner tonight at a prof's house. Very exciting! I feel like this sort of thing happened all the time in undergrad, but not in law school. I made mini cheesecakes - photo and recipe to follow!
A song to get you excited for the weekend.
I love how in Judaism Friday night is the beginning of the holy day each week - for me, it always truly is a day to celebrate! Speaking of Jews, check this out.
I'm totally beat this week. It took me 2 hours to putz around and get ready/make it into school this morning. Now that I'm here, I can't pull myself together to get real work done. Serious case of mushy brain syndrome. I think I'm going to roll with it -- do some easy work, print some stuff off to read later, and get out of here to take the afternoon off. I feel a wee bit guilty, but if I'm going to be uselessly inefficient, I might as well just rejuvenate myself and have good work days tomorrow and Sunday. All in all, I'd rather not fall apart in life, if it means I have to do less in well in law school. If taking an afternoon off is what I need to do to be happy, that seems worth it.
Dinner tonight at a prof's house. Very exciting! I feel like this sort of thing happened all the time in undergrad, but not in law school. I made mini cheesecakes - photo and recipe to follow!
A song to get you excited for the weekend.
Friday, March 12, 2010
It's official
I am halfway through my graduate degrees! It's 1:52 a.m. I just finished my last paper of this quarter. I'm home, safe and sound. Wish I could sleep late tomorrow, but I have class at 9 (a mere formality, no?).
I have now completed:
3/5 law semesters
2/3 masters quarters.
Woo! I'm doin' it. Making my way...
Me sleepy, time for bed.
I have now completed:
3/5 law semesters
2/3 masters quarters.
Woo! I'm doin' it. Making my way...
Me sleepy, time for bed.
Friday, March 5, 2010
Made it to Friday
Quick updates --
I have been laying off the running this week (and next) because my heel is sore. I'm afraid it's plantar fasciitis. This means lots of elliptical. I miss running and being outside. :( I think riding should be okay, so I'm going to head out for a ride this weekend.
I was offered my dream internship in DC! Very excited about it for so many reasons. More on that later. The jobs, the friends, the family, the new (diverse! international!) city -- cannot wait!
I went to PILG Auction last night. Open bar (which I can never seen to get my money's worth), fun mingling, dressed up fancy, and had a good 80s cover band. I thought I was going to get pulled over when I was driving home because I was so tired I was driving terribly.
The quarter ends next week. I have 1 15 page paper; 1 10 page paper/final exam; 1 25 page paper; 1 presentation; 1 20 page paper. I'm sleep deprived and my head is spinning. Spring break is coming up!
Um, hi. It's March. Can't believe that.
I have been laying off the running this week (and next) because my heel is sore. I'm afraid it's plantar fasciitis. This means lots of elliptical. I miss running and being outside. :( I think riding should be okay, so I'm going to head out for a ride this weekend.
I was offered my dream internship in DC! Very excited about it for so many reasons. More on that later. The jobs, the friends, the family, the new (diverse! international!) city -- cannot wait!
I went to PILG Auction last night. Open bar (which I can never seen to get my money's worth), fun mingling, dressed up fancy, and had a good 80s cover band. I thought I was going to get pulled over when I was driving home because I was so tired I was driving terribly.
The quarter ends next week. I have 1 15 page paper; 1 10 page paper/final exam; 1 25 page paper; 1 presentation; 1 20 page paper. I'm sleep deprived and my head is spinning. Spring break is coming up!
Um, hi. It's March. Can't believe that.
Monday, February 8, 2010
Made it through
Monday.
What a doozy.
My brain is pretty mushy right now, but I wanted to reflect on something (anything). Stagnant blogs are boring.
I went to a cool cafe here in Denver last weekend. Illegal Grounds. They had H&H bagels (!), good egg and cheese, Italian Illy coffee, empanadas and quiches. De-licious. Good atmosphere with open space, comfy chairs and couches. Free wireless. A friend and I sat, shared food, chatted and watched the snow fall before getting some homework done. The owner is a Peruvian-Jew! How crazy is that? It made me so happy that - for once - he didn't think my Spanish accent was from Spain. He knew exactly where I learned Spanish, "Ah! Tu hablas como los serranos!" You speak like the mountain people! My friend and I are going back sometime for some homemade ceviche. Mmmm! Buena onda...
Anyway, a quick update, but better than nothing. Off to bed for me, snow falling softly through the street lights.
What a doozy.
My brain is pretty mushy right now, but I wanted to reflect on something (anything). Stagnant blogs are boring.
I went to a cool cafe here in Denver last weekend. Illegal Grounds. They had H&H bagels (!), good egg and cheese, Italian Illy coffee, empanadas and quiches. De-licious. Good atmosphere with open space, comfy chairs and couches. Free wireless. A friend and I sat, shared food, chatted and watched the snow fall before getting some homework done. The owner is a Peruvian-Jew! How crazy is that? It made me so happy that - for once - he didn't think my Spanish accent was from Spain. He knew exactly where I learned Spanish, "Ah! Tu hablas como los serranos!" You speak like the mountain people! My friend and I are going back sometime for some homemade ceviche. Mmmm! Buena onda...
Anyway, a quick update, but better than nothing. Off to bed for me, snow falling softly through the street lights.
Thursday, August 20, 2009
First week update
I'm doing reading for class that starts in two hours, but here's a quick update of the first week.
Classes:
1. Administrative Law (federal agencies - kind of overlaps with a lot of constitutional law)
2. Intermediate Legal Analysis (writing and putting together a good logical argument)
3. Urban Planning Law, Growth and Sustainable Development (self-explanatory)
4. Federal Indian Law (cool-ass professor, 10 people in the class, no final, incredibly interesting, etc.)
5. Alternative Dispute Resolution (negotiation, mediation, arbitration, etc.)
Admin is stereotypically "the worst" of the bunch, but it's useful. The professor is Meh. Perhaps he's just getting settled. He pretty much just follows the book exactly, only explaining things less clearly.
I have good professors for ILA, Federal Indian and Urban Planning. Those 3 classes are my favorite.
ADR is amusing, so far. It's pretty fluffy, as far as law classes go. My professor is a little scatter-brained and, surprising, doesn't have fabulous people skills. She says awkward things like, "Oh, I'm sorry. I can't meet with you on Friday because my good friend DIED. And, so I'll be going to her funeral." and "It's just like pornography, you can't explain it, but you know it when you see it." I had to restrain myself from dying laughing, though no one else seemed to find it either as hilarious or shockingly inappropriate as I did. Tee hee. Oh, to have my sense of humor.
A few other things:
-My new baby ACER computer is great! A little kink with my bad USB, but that's solved.
-I am not buying 2 of my expensive books because they are in the library - hurrah!
-I'm still a little sad grad school is over, sigh.
-I've been figuring out the best time to run, but no matter when I do, I pretty much end up exhausted and wish I could go to bed at about 7:00 p.m.
-Back to yoga class! I had 2 awesome classes this week AND she's adding a 1 1/2 hour class on Saturdays. One day, when I have a life again I will go to yoga 3 days a week.
Must get back to reading.
Classes:
1. Administrative Law (federal agencies - kind of overlaps with a lot of constitutional law)
2. Intermediate Legal Analysis (writing and putting together a good logical argument)
3. Urban Planning Law, Growth and Sustainable Development (self-explanatory)
4. Federal Indian Law (cool-ass professor, 10 people in the class, no final, incredibly interesting, etc.)
5. Alternative Dispute Resolution (negotiation, mediation, arbitration, etc.)
Admin is stereotypically "the worst" of the bunch, but it's useful. The professor is Meh. Perhaps he's just getting settled. He pretty much just follows the book exactly, only explaining things less clearly.
I have good professors for ILA, Federal Indian and Urban Planning. Those 3 classes are my favorite.
ADR is amusing, so far. It's pretty fluffy, as far as law classes go. My professor is a little scatter-brained and, surprising, doesn't have fabulous people skills. She says awkward things like, "Oh, I'm sorry. I can't meet with you on Friday because my good friend DIED. And, so I'll be going to her funeral." and "It's just like pornography, you can't explain it, but you know it when you see it." I had to restrain myself from dying laughing, though no one else seemed to find it either as hilarious or shockingly inappropriate as I did. Tee hee. Oh, to have my sense of humor.
A few other things:
-My new baby ACER computer is great! A little kink with my bad USB, but that's solved.
-I am not buying 2 of my expensive books because they are in the library - hurrah!
-I'm still a little sad grad school is over, sigh.
-I've been figuring out the best time to run, but no matter when I do, I pretty much end up exhausted and wish I could go to bed at about 7:00 p.m.
-Back to yoga class! I had 2 awesome classes this week AND she's adding a 1 1/2 hour class on Saturdays. One day, when I have a life again I will go to yoga 3 days a week.
Must get back to reading.
Thursday, July 16, 2009
Onward and upward
Hurrah!
In the past few days I was accepted onto the Denver Journal for International Law and Policy. Technical law-loser talk is "I wrote on the journal." This is great news for me after the hassle and complete agony of the Candidacy process. The whole process felt like self-induced anxiety, bewilderment and always feeling like I didn't know what on earth I was doing or supposed to be doing. Stumbling through the legal way to cite and teaching myself from The Bluebook for hours on end was not exactly fun. Then, I wrote a "survey" paper that had an argument. Again, not my best work. I once laughed aloud while writing when thinking about how badly I felt for the poor soul who had to read my paper. I was a goner, sure not to pass. I had already convinced myself that I was just happy to have had the willpower to get through it without giving up. (It's not required to do a journal and it's easy to push off until the next round of Candidacy.)
I really liked my topic, though, and I hope to develop it more in the fall. I chose to write about protecting traditional medicinal knowledge of indigenous people. The issue is that big pharmaceutical companies are going to third world countries and getting patents on things indigenous people have known/been using for hundreds of years. Once the pharm companies get patents, the indigenous people no longer have rights to keep doing their own cultural, every-day-knowledge practices. More than that, though, the pharm companies are making a big profit with no benefits to the indigenous people who told them about the medicinal uses of plants.
As I had such limited time to write the paper and the paper was no more than 12 pages including footnotes, I had to drastically limit my argument. So, I argued that the legal framework for protecting traditional medicinal knowledge is a bad way to try to protect it. Right now, people consider TMK as a form of intellectual property. So international lawsuits over rights are over property rights. I suggested in my paper two alternatives. First, stronger domestic law would avoid some conflicts because there would be state-backing for indigenous people, rather than pitting indigenous people against big 1st world corporations. The second suggestion was that instead of thinking of TMK as property, think of it as some sort of human right or indigenous people's right. This would solve a lot of problems because TMK doesn't have a lot of the characteristics of regular property. It's hard to protect something as property when it doesn't fit into the accepted legal definition of property. Anyway, it was pretty cool to read about different plants and herbs that indigenous people have been using for medicine for hundreds of years. It's kind of the fusion of my interest in indigenous rights, international things, love of knowledge (philosophy!), health and law.
The other big thing this week is that I finished my first grad class toward my masters! I took a 9 hour (2 question) essay exam today and e-mailed it in. Hurrah! It was International Political Theory and I gobbled that stuff right up. I loved it. Hope the exam turns out well. It's amazing how much less stressful exams at grad school are than law school exams. And, I had so much more confidence that I could do well. Law school is such a downer - always feeling like you have no idea what to expect, purposefully unreachable standards ("It's impossible for anyone to get near a perfect score on my exams"), and stupid curved grading. Loving grad school. :)
Oh yeah, AND, I did my first Side Crow in yoga. I've been trying to do it since January!
Onward and upward...
In the past few days I was accepted onto the Denver Journal for International Law and Policy. Technical law-loser talk is "I wrote on the journal." This is great news for me after the hassle and complete agony of the Candidacy process. The whole process felt like self-induced anxiety, bewilderment and always feeling like I didn't know what on earth I was doing or supposed to be doing. Stumbling through the legal way to cite and teaching myself from The Bluebook for hours on end was not exactly fun. Then, I wrote a "survey" paper that had an argument. Again, not my best work. I once laughed aloud while writing when thinking about how badly I felt for the poor soul who had to read my paper. I was a goner, sure not to pass. I had already convinced myself that I was just happy to have had the willpower to get through it without giving up. (It's not required to do a journal and it's easy to push off until the next round of Candidacy.)
I really liked my topic, though, and I hope to develop it more in the fall. I chose to write about protecting traditional medicinal knowledge of indigenous people. The issue is that big pharmaceutical companies are going to third world countries and getting patents on things indigenous people have known/been using for hundreds of years. Once the pharm companies get patents, the indigenous people no longer have rights to keep doing their own cultural, every-day-knowledge practices. More than that, though, the pharm companies are making a big profit with no benefits to the indigenous people who told them about the medicinal uses of plants.
As I had such limited time to write the paper and the paper was no more than 12 pages including footnotes, I had to drastically limit my argument. So, I argued that the legal framework for protecting traditional medicinal knowledge is a bad way to try to protect it. Right now, people consider TMK as a form of intellectual property. So international lawsuits over rights are over property rights. I suggested in my paper two alternatives. First, stronger domestic law would avoid some conflicts because there would be state-backing for indigenous people, rather than pitting indigenous people against big 1st world corporations. The second suggestion was that instead of thinking of TMK as property, think of it as some sort of human right or indigenous people's right. This would solve a lot of problems because TMK doesn't have a lot of the characteristics of regular property. It's hard to protect something as property when it doesn't fit into the accepted legal definition of property. Anyway, it was pretty cool to read about different plants and herbs that indigenous people have been using for medicine for hundreds of years. It's kind of the fusion of my interest in indigenous rights, international things, love of knowledge (philosophy!), health and law.
The other big thing this week is that I finished my first grad class toward my masters! I took a 9 hour (2 question) essay exam today and e-mailed it in. Hurrah! It was International Political Theory and I gobbled that stuff right up. I loved it. Hope the exam turns out well. It's amazing how much less stressful exams at grad school are than law school exams. And, I had so much more confidence that I could do well. Law school is such a downer - always feeling like you have no idea what to expect, purposefully unreachable standards ("It's impossible for anyone to get near a perfect score on my exams"), and stupid curved grading. Loving grad school. :)
Oh yeah, AND, I did my first Side Crow in yoga. I've been trying to do it since January!
Onward and upward...
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
"Lazy" days of summer
I am quickly settling into a routine with this summer class and internship business. Monday and Wednesday are the busiest. Tuesday and Thursday are the reading-est. For example, today I read about 400 pages for class tomorrow. Ouch. Monday and Wednesday look like this:
5:00 a.m - run
6:15 - smoothie for breakfast
6:30 - bike to school
7-8 - yoga.
9-12 - international political theory class
12-1 - bike home, shower, take the bus to internship downtown.
1-5 - internship
7 - dark - bike to park/pick up frisbee in the park
after dark - crash.
A few clarifications -- Smoothies are my newest obsession. There's just so much cheap fruit and it's a really fast way to get lots in my belly. The usual smoothie includes milk, yogurt, dollop of honey, vanilla protein powder and fruit (banana, bluebellies, strawbellies, etc.) Any suggestions for combos I must try?
Yoga! I am so happy my usual teacher Natasha is back. I definitely have a girl crush on her. No more psycho, slave-driver "I love making you guys do abs" teachers. Phew.
International Political theory class - this deserves a post (with a video impersonation) all to itself. But, yes, I'm taking grad classes this summer. Woo!
Internship - also deserves its own post. I'm working at one of the Colorado State government offices. Up on the 27th floor of the World Trade Center. Swank.
5:00 a.m - run
6:15 - smoothie for breakfast
6:30 - bike to school
7-8 - yoga.
9-12 - international political theory class
12-1 - bike home, shower, take the bus to internship downtown.
1-5 - internship
7 - dark - bike to park/pick up frisbee in the park
after dark - crash.
A few clarifications -- Smoothies are my newest obsession. There's just so much cheap fruit and it's a really fast way to get lots in my belly. The usual smoothie includes milk, yogurt, dollop of honey, vanilla protein powder and fruit (banana, bluebellies, strawbellies, etc.) Any suggestions for combos I must try?
Yoga! I am so happy my usual teacher Natasha is back. I definitely have a girl crush on her. No more psycho, slave-driver "I love making you guys do abs" teachers. Phew.
International Political theory class - this deserves a post (with a video impersonation) all to itself. But, yes, I'm taking grad classes this summer. Woo!
Internship - also deserves its own post. I'm working at one of the Colorado State government offices. Up on the 27th floor of the World Trade Center. Swank.
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
Wait, I'm in law school?
1L year is over. That's first year law school, in nerd-talk legalese. I still can't quite believe I'm even in law school. I've been thinking a lot about it and trying to understand how I fit in (or don't, for that matter). Law school grades are 1 exam, all or nothing, at the end of the semester. I've always struggled with exams, standardized tests, and the traditional evaluation methods in our education system. My struggles and frustrations have only gotten worse as I get older; and, the law school system does not seem to agree with me. As I've wondered before, it makes me ask this question over and over: is something wrong with my brain? This is an analogy my understanding of how my brain processes information in law school. Maybe it's why I struggle to prove I have learned, maybe not. Comments welcome!
For a Cognitive Science class, I once wrote a research paper on pidgin languages, studying an overlapping area of linguistics, psychology, and philosophy. I was interested in seeing if and what part of language is innate human instinct. The traditional view was that 2 languages mashed together to form a third language. ("Mashed" may or may not be the technical term.) But, this isn't true. What happens is that the native population and the immigrant population (e.g. native Haitians and French) simplify their languages so much that essentially they communicate non-verbally and with a shared vocabulary of maybe as little as 400 words. This isn't a "language," but, really, it's getting by with a totality of expressions. The first generation of children born AFTER the immigrants arrive are the ones who "sui generis" create a new language, apart from either the natives' or immigrants' languages. The parents don't teach it to the children, because they don't speak it. The older generation doesn't understand it, because it's communication between the children. So, I learned that the innate part of language are the things that make the children understand each other (syntax, grammatical structures, etc.) The "nature" part of language that is learned or experiential are the sounds and the semantics. Haitian creole sounds a bit like French not because they take words from French, but because the children heard those sounds and plugged them into/used them in the language structure they innately had in their brains. Now, what's really interesting, I think, is that if you look at the grammatical/verbal mistakes that children who speak modern languages that have been socially-evolved over hundreds of years, e.g. English, French, etc., then those mistakes match the grammatical structure of the pidgin languages that children create. What is "wrong" today in language is what is innately "right." So, to me, that means that the hardwired, innate language has changed so much from its natural original state, that now we shun the intuitive and "true" or "universal" part of language.
....
How does this connect to how I feel about law school? Well, what is "wrong" today in law/social functioning is innately "right" in my brain. Where most people just accept the current laws and socially-evolved functioning, I do not. I cannot help but see the world as the originally intuitive way. I don't make assumptions and I can't easily accept or understand the socially-evolved rules by which society lives. So, everything I learn at school is a shock to me. The laws we learn are not intuitive to me. I have to struggle to see what is obvious to other people.
That was admittedly long, and probably confusing, but that's the best I can do to make sense of how I feel right now about law school, grades and that thing inside me I like to call my mushy brain.
For a Cognitive Science class, I once wrote a research paper on pidgin languages, studying an overlapping area of linguistics, psychology, and philosophy. I was interested in seeing if and what part of language is innate human instinct. The traditional view was that 2 languages mashed together to form a third language. ("Mashed" may or may not be the technical term.) But, this isn't true. What happens is that the native population and the immigrant population (e.g. native Haitians and French) simplify their languages so much that essentially they communicate non-verbally and with a shared vocabulary of maybe as little as 400 words. This isn't a "language," but, really, it's getting by with a totality of expressions. The first generation of children born AFTER the immigrants arrive are the ones who "sui generis" create a new language, apart from either the natives' or immigrants' languages. The parents don't teach it to the children, because they don't speak it. The older generation doesn't understand it, because it's communication between the children. So, I learned that the innate part of language are the things that make the children understand each other (syntax, grammatical structures, etc.) The "nature" part of language that is learned or experiential are the sounds and the semantics. Haitian creole sounds a bit like French not because they take words from French, but because the children heard those sounds and plugged them into/used them in the language structure they innately had in their brains. Now, what's really interesting, I think, is that if you look at the grammatical/verbal mistakes that children who speak modern languages that have been socially-evolved over hundreds of years, e.g. English, French, etc., then those mistakes match the grammatical structure of the pidgin languages that children create. What is "wrong" today in language is what is innately "right." So, to me, that means that the hardwired, innate language has changed so much from its natural original state, that now we shun the intuitive and "true" or "universal" part of language.
....
How does this connect to how I feel about law school? Well, what is "wrong" today in law/social functioning is innately "right" in my brain. Where most people just accept the current laws and socially-evolved functioning, I do not. I cannot help but see the world as the originally intuitive way. I don't make assumptions and I can't easily accept or understand the socially-evolved rules by which society lives. So, everything I learn at school is a shock to me. The laws we learn are not intuitive to me. I have to struggle to see what is obvious to other people.
That was admittedly long, and probably confusing, but that's the best I can do to make sense of how I feel right now about law school, grades and that thing inside me I like to call my mushy brain.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)