Tuesday, February 20, 2007

moments of clarity

today i remembered why i love to write. it's true... i absolutely love the writing process, everything about it. it may not be evident here on my blog, since i'm incredibly lazy about editing here. but i truly love it.

i've been working on briefs all semester--i have 3 different briefs due in 3 classes. for the non-lawyers out there, briefs are what you file with courts to tell them why they should decide something in your favor. so ordinarily i have loved writing briefs. it's basically all i did this summer, and i had a great time doing it. but since the beginning of this semester and i have struggled to force myself to write anything at all. the first draft of my first brief was truly horrible. it was like pulling teeth to sit down and write, and i only did it because i had to. this brief started out that way too... until today.

i wrestled with the material all day, after having a horrible writing day yesterday, not really feeling extremely motivated to write. i had written maybe a page after about 4 hours. and then it all suddenly started to flow. i wrote the next 3 pages within an hour, and as i finished it up, i just knew that it was the key to my whole brief. everything just came together in that hour.

and as i sat there typing the last sentence i remembered why i love to write. i love that one moment of clarity when everything that has been a complete mess suddenly becomes obvious--so obvious that it's hard to believe that i didn't see it before. i love it when the argument becomes solid and i can see counter-arguments and alternative arguments to my claims. i love the art of finding the words that paint the picture of the concepts flying around my brain.

i will admit that it's kind of odd. it's odd that i would claim to love something that is mostly work--indeed, the 40 hours i put into research & writing up to that moment of clarity, and the 25-30 i have left hardly seem worth the joy of the moment when it all comes together. and yet, it is worth it. maybe i just like the challenge--it's like solving a puzzle. and every case is a new puzzle to solve, so my mind must endlessly be working. i guess i just hate being bored.

so i'm sighing with relief because it seems that my brief experience with senioritis is finally past & i can get back to being efficient about my school work so i can go out & enjoy the rest of life as it comes to me.

Tuesday, February 13, 2007

and that's just life

i'm in the thick of my writing requirements for the semester. i finished up a draft of a brief today, and the rest of the week i have to start writing a second brief. tonight i worked on discovery requests for another class. it's just crazy. i've been taking nights & sundays mostly off--i've had time with people scheduled & have just been trying to have a life outside of school again. but i'm kind of paying for it now. i think i'm going to have to cut back for the next few weeks. i say that, but i've got stuff scheduled pretty much every night next week already. oh well... at least i'm not bored.

so i got some really good news--i get to teach some classes starting this summer at my school. yeah--they're setting me loose on the incoming students and the top writing students. i'm really excited to get my foot in the door there so soon. it'll make studying for the bar kind of challenging, but i'll have to be disciplined in order to do all that & still have time with my family. i guess that's good. if i don't feel any pressure then i won't be very motivated to study for the bar. i'm so ready to just be done with it all & get back to real life.

my old roommate has been visiting for a couple weeks & that's been nice. and i just ran into an old friend that i haven't seen for years. we were really close one summer while working at camp, and i'd completely lost track of him. so hopefully we'll be able to get together soon to catch up.

i finally broke down & bought a new laptop. i'd been trying to just use my old one while keeping it completely stationary, but the power connection is on its way out. i can't afford not to have one right now (for the 3 weeks it would take to get it fixed), and i'm going to need on this summer too, now that i'm teaching. so i just bought one online & it should be here by the end of the week. i'm so looking forward to being able to write somewhere other than my dining room table...

and that's my life for the last couple of weeks. i've only been thinking about school so i've got no interesting thoughts to share... maybe next time.

Friday, February 02, 2007

my dilemma

so i've really taken to heart the fact that i'm in school and am surrounded by people. i know that sounds strange. but for the first couple of years of law school i was in my own world. part of it was the commuting, part of it was the figuring out how to survive, and part of it was the fact that my life outside of law school was full.

so all those things have changed now, and i have classes with several people over and over, and i'm actually getting to know them. i've taken to hanging out after class with them at the bars. i'm not really a drinker, so i'm the girl that sits there with water or a coke, but i'm there all the same.

it's been really fun--it's fun to get to know people, to see them outside of class, to listen to their stories. but i find that i am really terrible about small talk. i don't do things that create small talk topics. i might watch movies & tv, but that's about it, and i don't really care to talk about it.

all i ever want to talk about are things that are important to me. i'd talk about school, i'd talk about spiritual things, i'd talk about justice. honestly i really like to problem-solve, so my favorite conversations are analytical conversations. but i think that only 2 percent of the world's population are really interested in conversations like that.

truth is, i really want to get to know my classmates, and to do that, i have to talk about shallow things for a while. because the normal person does not just open up about everything quickly--it just doesn't happen. somehow there's this period of time where you have to talk about nothing before you can start to talk about something.

so i've got to work on finding some more nothing-topics to talk about. there's got to be some intermediate topics out there--things that would be semi-interesting to me but that wouldn't freak people out. because right now i'm mainly just going and listening to people. and i don't mind that, except that then they aren't really getting to know me either.

so that's my dilemma.