Hi!  Did ya miss me?

Yes, I’ve been terribly neglecting blogging lately.  Every day I would think, oh, I’ll write another post soon, but not today… and the next thing I knew, over a month had gone by.  No, I don’t really expect that anyone much missed my posts, but I’ll admit that, back when I was a prospective student, I really enjoyed reading Todd’s posts and I missed them when there weren’t new ones.  Which there haven’t been in awhile.  (What’s this, Todd, you don’t blog anymore just ’cause you’ve graduated or something?!)  So yeah.

School work really caught up with me (ha — as if I were ever ahead of it!).  Since my last post I completed the first of two major memorandum assignments in my writing class (last month) and have the second one due soon.  I’m glad we get another semester of writing in the spring, ’cause I like it.

My other class, Environmental Law, is good too.  I’ve noticed that Professor Firestone always starts at the right side of the chalkboard and works his way to the left.  That reminded me of… me.  Back when I was in college I noticed that I had this inexplicable habit of working from right to left sometimes.  On exams I would start around the middle of the page, go left to right and top to bottom, and then when I ran out of space at the bottom, I would find the space I needed… to the left of what I’d written.  It must have annoyed the graders, and I think at least once I lost a point for my work being so sloppy (or because the grader, to use his own words, “just had to take a point off for something” — I got a 99% on that exam).  I have no idea why I worked that way, but I did notice that I had that habit, for whatever reason.  I seemed to take notes that way, too.  But I don’t so much in law school.  Maybe because of the subject matter: in college I took mostly science, math, engineering, stuff like that, so most of my work involved equations and stuff.  For some reason, writing down English words instead of numbers and formulas inspires me to be more normal, or so it seems.  I don’t know what Professor Firestone’s excuse is. 

Actually he was an engineer before he went to law school, so maybe there’s just something about engineering that does that to people.  But still, engineering is not what he’s teaching us, and usually there isn’t a lot of math in his class.  But on Monday there was some — actual calculus!  That was fun.  (Now, any math-o-phobic prospective students out there: don’t be alarmed.  Prof. F. has assured me that we won’t need calculators on the environmental law exam.)

But getting back to the point: today is Thanksgiving.  Happy Thanksgiving!  Take a few moments to be grateful for the good things in your life — it’s healthful to do so.  Among other things, I am thankful for VLS.

Today VLS provided a traditional Thanksgiving dinner, free of charge, for members of the local community — those who are poor or alone or simply wanted to attend.  Even those who couldn’t leave home were provided food, as I understand it.  Isn’t it lovely of the school to do that?  It’s one thing to sit in an ivory tower and proclaim the virtues of community service, giving back, and so on, but it means so much more to actually do a good deed for people right there in your own backyard (practically).  VLS really “walks the talk,” so to speak. 

I especially liked the squash.  It was yummy.  I felt a little rude taking the last piece of chocolate pie (I am of the opinion that an item does not qualify as dessert if it’s not chocolate, and of course traditional Thanksgiving “desserts” don’t meet my exacting standard), but then I discovered that two more chocolate pies materialized afterward.  If only I’d saved room to sample three different chocolate desserts!  Ah, but gluttony is the name of the game on Thanksgiving Day.  Or is it?  Let’s not lose sight of the real point of this inspired holiday — thankfulness.

Thank you, VLS.