(1)  VLS is in the most beautiful place in the whole world.  It’s surrounded by forested mountains and quaint New England villages and pastures, right on the bank of a river.  It’s beautiful enough at any time of year; now imagine it with the fall colors that Vermont is famous for.  Autumn began officially yesterday, but it has been gradually manifesting in the local trees for the past month or so.  The past couple of days have been sunny, and it’s so beautiful already (and not even peak season yet!) that I can hardly stand it.

Even night is pretty.  Yesterday around 8pm or so I was driving home from a meeting of the VLS group BASIC (Brothers and Sisters in Christ) — a wonderful group of lovely people that I’m glad to have joined — and there was an almost full moon reflected in the river below.  I’m not sure I’ve ever made the drive at night before, but I know it will be a regular occurrence before the semester’s end.  Up here in the Arctic Circle the sun sets pretty early in the winter, and the mountains probably make it seem even earlier than it would be otherwise.  (Okay, so we’re not really in the Arctic Circle, and I hope that comment didn’t scare anyone off!  In fact, South Royalton is closer to the Equator than to the North Pole, at a balmy latitude of only 43.82 degrees north.)  My latest class doesn’t let out until about 5:30.  By then it will have been dark for a long time come December.  It may even be dark by the time my first class ends, around 2pm.

I don’t mind, though (of course, I say that now when we still have ~12 hours of daylight every day!).  This truly is the most beautiful spot on earth, and the people of VLS are so nice and so supportive, I can’t imagine being anyplace else.  I could even imagine making the decision to go to law school solely for the opportunity to be at VLS.  (And for the record, nobody’s paying me to say that.  It’s my honest-to-goodness opinion.)

(2)  My writing professor is awesome.  I love her.  (Please don’t read anything inappropriate into the word “love.”  I don’t even swing that way, although sometimes I wish I did, but now I’m digressing again.)  She seems to be rather resistant to grading our assignments.  I think I heard her say that she doesn’t believe in grading or judging people’s writing, and I really appreciate that attitude.  But she does give us lots of helpful feedback.  So it’s totally non-intimidating, being able to submit an assignment and receive feedback without having to worry about it ruining our grade.  I understand that she is going to grade our major assignments (two memos, neither of which has been completed yet) — I guess she has to grade us somehow, on something — but it’s really great to be able to learn legal writing in such a non-threatening way as we prepare to write those major assignments.  And she’s really helpful and even gave us her home phone number so we can call her whenever we have questions.  Now if you’re not yet sold on how cool she is, get this:  Today she brought us apple cider and doughnut holes.  And she thanked us for all our hard work.  (In my opinion we should be thanking her for her hard work teaching us.)  As one of the students pointed out, that’s not what they told us law professors would be like!  (I hope the professor doesn’t read this post that I’ve written about her… how embarrassing would that be… I’m not trying to butter her up, really, I’m not, it’s just… you know… part of life at VLS that I thought I’d mention in writing a blog post.  Or something.  But yeah.  She’s great.)

Well, it’s almost time for my next class, so I’d better scoot.

Cheers,
Sally