M.S.E.L. Students Blog

So I am in finals mode finally, but am finding it really hard to concentrate on studying.  I have a final on Friday and another one on the next Tuesday along with a take home final.  I am pretty nervous about my Administrative Law final since it is my first closed book exam.  Plus I haven’t checked out my ExamSoft to make sure it works.  That is software that you use to complete your exams if you don’t want to use the bluebooks.  I used it last semester and had no problems, but some people have lost their entire exams.  So I am worried about losing my exam one of these days.  Well wish me luck!

Today we had our end-of-semester shindig. With a chocolate fountain. Chocolate fountains are always worthy of a mention. As is the sight of Dean J. dancing with a little girl. Dean J. is my hero. She rules.

Today we turned in our final assignment in our research and writing class. I hope ours seems adequately cohesive… not like totally separate things written by three different people and then lumped together. *Sigh*

Classes are over and I have no exams, but I’m not done yet. Still gotta write a paper for ADR. Ugh. Just shoot me now. See, the thing about ADR is, see, I don’t really know how to please the professor. We’ve turned in two short papers already and both times I got, shall I say, less than perfect grades, but not much of an idea of how to do better. On the last one, all the feedback I got was that I should have used a certain word instead of the word I chose for the purpose (although according to the dictionary my word wasn’t totally wrong, even if it wasn’t the best choice). That’s it. (Oh, and use 12 pt. font.) Not to mention that everyone in the class is terrified of being an unwitting plagiarist. Sometimes you have to put quote marks around a single word. Yes, really.

*Sigh* I would have preferred an exam….

This is my final week of spring semester classes.  Needless to say, this semester has flown by and I am not sure where it went.  Since last Friday, it has been in the mid-70s, the moon is shining bright, and the frogs are out all night.  It is finally spring and I can feel summer is coming.  This makes it hard to sit in a classroom or library all day reading, studying and outlining for finals.  I know I will get though this week and finals, but it is so hard with all the outside weather temptations. 

Okay so I’m a little behind on my blogging.  And I meant to keep up this semester.

Spring break caused me to get behind.  Or, should I say, further behind.  I lost all my momentum when I had a break!  Aurgh!

For spring break I took a trip, and when I returned to the airport in Manchester (”Manchvegas” as some call it) around –what– 10 or 11pm on the night before classes resumed, I discovered I had a flat tire.  *sigh*  So I pulled over and began rummaging through my trunk for my spare and jack, and started jacking up the car.  It had been a long day and I just wanted to go to bed, but was still a couple hours away from home (assuming I could actually drive).  A line from Robert Frost’s poem Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening kept running through my thoughts: “And miles to go before I sleep.”

That line haunts me still, as the end of the semester looms mere days away and yet I must complete some pretty major assignments before I am done.

Spring is in full swing in VT.  The bird are chripping, the rivers banks are full to the brim, and students are studying 24/7.  Since I live a little out of town, I get to see how the river has been progressively filling.  Last night driving home, the road was shut down to one lane becuase the other lane was covered with water!  I couldn’t believe it.  I have never seen so much water in my life, and the all the snow isn’t even gone yet.  So there is more flooding to come I am pretty sure.  I think this is why they call it “Mud Season,” but I haven’t had to bring out my mud boots just yet. 

apparently it really has been a long time since i’ve written.  is it april already? i had an epiphany in administrative law today that there is exactly a month (!!!!!) until that final.  eek! there is still ice on the ground and it snowed a bunch the other day.  this semester has been a bit crazy, and it’s already getting down to crunch time.  it doesn’t feel like it because of the weather but the locals i’ve run into at the soro market have assured me that this is the longest winter they’ve had in a while.  however, the big black bunnies that frequent campus have been hopping around and munching on the now exposed grass.  the really huge mounds of snow/ice are gone but now we have tons of mud. therefore, i am escaping back to atlanta for part of the summer and then returning back to exile here in soro.  soro is really gorgeous during the summer though and it got really hot in august.  it’s weird to already be thinking about summer when i am still wearing my coat and boots around though.  i feel like i have a million and a half papers to write and my administrative law final to worry about and my take home energy final…just one more month! that’s all for a quick update…for now : )

Being involved in NAELS and Solutions since September, it has finally come!  Everything is going on in Burlington today and then in South Royalton tomorrow.  I hope that it all goes well especially with the ‘white out’ traveling conditions.  I am sure it will.  Quite a few VLS students, almost half of the conference registrants, are not here yet, so we are hoping that as the classes down at VLS get finished that they start to trickle up to Burlington for the two afternoon panels.  Wish us luck with this large event! 

I am done with traveling at least for about the next two weeks.  I have noticed that I am in my usual routine, but my sleep schedule is really off.  I have been going to bed so early and waking up really early too, and it seems pretty lame for my age.  But I find myself, being this far into the winter, getting really tired early in the evening.  I think it is because Vermont, I heard, has the fewest amount of sunny days out of any of the states.  Therefore, by not having too many sunny days, I am getting tired and feeling deary and gloomy just like the weather usually is.  So I would recommend finding an outdoor or indoor hobby that just gets you pumped up and excited to be in Vermont.  I went to yoga last night at a studio in Pittsfield with a couple of friends.  We had a great ride to the studio and a great session that relieved all of our stress that we had built up.  I felt great afterwards and ended up staying up later getting more of my homework done.  So when you are in Vermont, get in the habit of getting out and about at all times of year to keep your mind clear, stress down, and to keep a smile on your face

(Now in case you’re thinking “you’re kidding, Sally — you say ’so yeah’ way too much in your blogs,” let me just claim that I do that on purpose to keep the blogging informal, even conversational, and I am actually capable of writing something relatively professional-sounding when necessary.  I think.  But for whatever reason I tend to think that blogging, by its nature, should be fairly colloquial.  That may be an unjustified opinion, but we all have our idiosyncrasies.  But I’m off on a tangent now.  So yeah.)

So I had my oral argument on Tuesday morning.  Oh my goodness.  I could have used an extra day or two to work on my brief, which was due last Friday and probably would have been better if, at the last minute, I’d suddenly been given an extension on the deadline (however, if the deadline had been later to start with, I would have just procrastinated longer to get to work on the brief and it would have ended up just as sucky).  So my brief wasn’t as good as I would have liked, and there were improvements I would have made if time permitted, but I’m still holding out some hope that my brief wasn’t totally horrible either (at least until it is returned to me with a grade that says otherwise).  I like to think that it was relatively coherent and somewhat logical and that I did an acceptably decent job of following the conclusion-rule-application-conclusion format.  I know it could have been better, but maybe it wasn’t bad enough to merit the word “NO” scribbled across the top as the professor’s feedback.  (As an undergraduate I once had a professor who graded some students’ exams that way.  But not mine, of course!  )

Oral argument is quite another matter.  At home, on my couch, thinking about the case and penciling notes on my opposing counsel’s brief and in my notebook, it all makes perfect sense in my mind.  But when I step up to the lectern to explain all this for the judge (professor), somehow my mind doesn’t repeat all the same brilliant (heh) things it told me in the days before.  Yes, I know, I should prepare really good notes, in large bold font for easy reference, in proper order, so I’ll know exactly what to say.  I should, really.  And I meant to.  But in the days leading up to the performance, I found myself unable to work it in due to extenuating factors, I guess.  Or something.  So yeah.  I wasn’t well prepared, and it showed.

Also I felt like a tool getting up to make basically the same arguments that were already written out in my brief.  And I’d never done this sort of thing before, so even if I’d been told what to expect, it was still a new experience.  I seemed to especially have trouble getting back on track after being asked a question.  I liked being asked questions, though.  I really did.  Some questions that I expected didn’t get asked, and some that I didn’t expect, did.  Some I couldn’t answer and I had to say that the information wasn’t in my facts.

So what all this boils down to is that I need to make a habit of preparing myself better before ever speaking in front of anyone about anything of importance, but at least now I have an idea of what the whole oral argument thing is really like — an idea from personal experience, rather than mere description from someone else.  There’s just no substitute for experience.

And my writing, for all its flaws, is much better than my speaking (which isn’t saying much).  So yeah.