changes afoot

i have done a substantial amount of thinking about my future these past few weeks. i have come to several conclusions.

first, i want to change the world. with God's help, i intend to do so.

for me, the manner and means to this goal is the practice of law. law is a mission in itself as it allows me to help change lives in individual cases. it is the means because it provides me experience and gives me the knowledge and the platform to seek systemic changes. and ultimately, it is the systems i want to see changed.

i have been the mentor, the pastor, the cheerleader, the coach, and the advisor to many oppressed individuals. and while it made a difference, i could not hope to solve the problems that worked together to cause oppression.

and so i have a dream--or maybe it's a plan. i am going to build a law practice. i don't know that it will be entirely conventional, but i see it as essential to my overall goals. i will never advocate change which i do not believe to be inherently practical and workable in real life. with the rest of my time i will develop my non-profit and pour out my life and energy challenging the systems that oppress, and challenging and mentoring the coming generations to use their tremendous wealth, knowledge, and abilities to see these changes made.

i don't know that it will work. it is a risk. but the idealism of youth has stuck with me, and i will not be satisfied with less. and so i'm quitting my job with the venerable courts of my state, and i will begin this idealistic, but perhaps not totally unrealistic journey toward justice.

really delayed life update

i passed the bar exam... yay! last night i had a bonfire where i burned up all my old bar exam study materials. it was quite a sight to behold. there were a few times when i was afraid that some of the papers were going to blow away and start a forest on fire. it took at least 2 hours to burn all the paper. i had some great friends there to help me celebrate. so i'm done. i never have to go to school again. nice to know, though i'll probably study again eventually.

in other news, my heater's circuit board is shot. during the bar exam, you may recall that i was attempting to move and teach classes, etc. so as i was switching over my accounts, i signed up for an appliance service plan. you can't get out of it for a year. total rip-off.

or not. turns out for me, it will be quite a lot cheaper to pay the $20/month for 12 months than to pay for a service call on a Sunday & a new circuit board.

so my bar-exam stupor/stupidity has turned out to be a blessing, after all.

and tomorrow's Veteran's Day so i don't have to work. instead, i'll be meeting with a former professor attempting to get the non-profit's 501(c)(3) paperwork completed. one day at a time, i guess

unexpected blessings

today i believe that i am in exactly the right place at the right time. i found out last week that i will be able to write while i am at the courts after all-i thought i would have to wait until i no longer worked there.

then, today i found out that i will be allowed to use westlaw from school still to write law review articles because that relates to my job as an adjunct professor!l

so... i'm ready to get started...

one road ends

So 2 ½ years ago I started law school. It was a step of faith, and a huge one at that. Naturally I’m not much of a risk-taker, but I have taken very large risks at pivotal points in my life, where I’ve felt that was the right thing to do, where I’ve believed it is what God was leading me to do. And so on the recommendation of a friend, I took the LSAT, got a scholarship, quit my job, and came to law school. I really had nothing to go on but the hope that it was something that would be challenging enough that it could keep me interested for a number of years & something that I could actually practically use to change the world. I had no idea that I would finally grow into my personality in law school, or that I would learn to put words around the things that I have always known deep within my soul, or that in working my way through, I would create an organization that has the potential to allow me to be all of who I am at one time. I really believed that I would be a conflicted dichotomy for all time.

And so here I am, at the end of a road that I never saw myself getting on, looking toward a road with boundaries and destinations I can’t even begin to perceive. What a crazy journey this life is. There is such potential to do great things, to make great changes, to be of influence. And oh, how I long for my life to count for something—to be used by God, to bring justice to the oppressed, to bring healing to the hurting. So here’s hoping & trusting that that’s where this path is leading…

a little kindness

so a while back one of the girls that i used to teach in sunday school had a sibling die. so i showed up at the visitation. i told her to call me sometime & we could get together.

about 6 months later, she did call. and i just got off the phone with her again. i was amazed that she contacted me. and this time she talked to me for an hour.

i know that i probably shouldn't be surprised that a little kindness bears fruit sometimes, but i kind of am. this girl feels connected to me. and i think that she'll keep in touch. it kind of makes me happy.

in other news, i heard from the character & fitness examiners--they're recommending me for bar admission... so now i just have to pass that test!

out of the woodwork

they tell you in law school that as soon as you get your degree, people come out of the woodwork looking for legal help. i think they were right.

tonight i got my first call from a long-lost relative, looking for legal advice. mind you--i still haven't taken the bar exam yet, and i won't have my bar card until at least November... but i do know a little bit more about the law than the average person, i guess--at least that's what they think.

so welcome to the wide, wide, legal world. good times.

concrete dreams and my reality

yesterday i ran across an email i wrote last November. it was the email where i told my friends and family that i had decided to take a job in my city, instead of moving away. i was full of hope for the future, but had little vision of what it was going to look like.

it's amazing how fast things have clarified for me. i now have the articles of incorporation written for a non-profit organization. i am teaching classes at my law school, which dovetails nicely with what i ultimately want to do. and i bought a house, to be the venue out of which this purpose will be accomplished. (or i will have, on Friday).

i have settled into a vision and purpose that is somewhat concrete and defined. true, in reality it is totally up in the air and will only gain definition as time passes. but in my mind things have solidified. i know who i am and what i am supposed to do. it's amazing.

i never really thought that would happen for me. i had begun to believe that my kind of uncertainty was a fact of life, that my personality inherently conflicted with my values, and that the conflict could never be resolved. so i am happy to have found something to do that fits both my abilities and my values. i can hardly wait until the bar exam has passed and i have freedom to plan and dream about what will be.

property law--my favorite

some days things just come together & a light bulb goes off. it sort of happened for me today with one small area of the law. there are different kind of requirements for when you buy real estate about recording your interests to protect yourself from a seller who sells his land to more than one person. these statutes are written in the most distressing format, so that unless you've read them a bunch of times, it's nearly impossible to make heads or tails of what they are saying--and even if you do, to figure out how to apply them. i don't think i fully got it when we covered it in class. today we took a practice test in a class i'm doing with my school, and i finally understood how to tell the difference between the statutes and how to apply each of them.

so for your enjoyment, here are the two most common statutes:

"No conveyance, transfer or mortgage of real property shall be good and effectual in law or equity against creditors or subsequent purchasers for a valuable consideration and without notice, unless the same be recorded." (notice statute)

"Every conveyance of real estate which shall not be recorded shall be void as against any subsequent purchaser in good faith, and for a valuable consideration of the same estate or any portion thereof, whose conveyance shall be first duly recorded." (race-notice statute)

i won't bore you with the details of what they mean or how they're tested. just thought i'd share a snapshot of the wonderful experience that is studying for the bar exam. 4 weeks and counting...

oh, and property law is actually my favorite subject. it's the most antiquated, and therefore the most complex, and therefore the most interesting to me. i suppose some commercial transactions are far more complex, but there's just something so much more interesting about fighting over LAND than fighting over money.

aiming for 75%

it's amazing how perspective affects things. in undergrad, i was used to getting 95% & above on tests. that's what you had to get to get an A. that's how little material they were trying to get us to memorize at once. that's how easy it was.

not so with law. my first semester i got around 58% on my criminal law test, and i got an A, got the highest grade in the class, and got an award for it. totally different perspective. you've got to totally change the way you think to take a test & walk out of the room feeling good about what you've done.

so i just took my second practice multistate bar exam. there are 200 questions on the multistate. to "multistate out" in my state, you have to get a 150 scaled score. today i got a 147 raw, 159 scaled. they wouldn't even grade my essays if this were the real test--as long as i made a good faith effort, i would have passed the test.

but i got 53 questions wrong. 53. that's insane. i did terrible; i don't know enough. i've been trying really hard not to be perfectionistic about this test--to major on the major things, and leave the details for other people. you can't know everything--it's really impossible. in practice you have to look everything up anyway. so you've got to concentrate on the stuff they test on most often. but man, how do you leave a test missing 53 questions & feel good about it?

the funniest thing to me is that i do the worst in contracts. i spent 3 semesters as a TA for a contracts professor. mind you, the second semester of contracts is much more complex, and i never took sales, both of which are tested heavily in the contracts section. but i wonder how bad i'd be doing if i hadn't TA'd. more ironic still is that i consistently score the highest in evidence--the only subject i ever got a B in--the class that ruined my perfect gpa.

so yeah. fun stuff. my life is this test right now. wish there was something more exciting to share. only 4.5 more weeks, and then it's all over.

oh, and i've gone through 3 more pens since i last wrote...

of pens & ink

today my pen ran out of ink.

i have developed an affinity for a certain kind of pen. it's a papermate flexgrip ultra, fine point, blue ink. about a year ago i ordered 15 of them online, because they don't sell them in stores anymore--apparently they've moved on to the next generation of pen--papermate flexgrip elite (or something like that).

over the past 3 weeks or so, i've been handwriting a lot of things while studying for the bar. through law school i took all my essay exams on the computer. it's been forever since i've had to do a significant amount of hand writing. so i've been writing old bar exam issues and answers by hand, and this week i started writing out flash cards to get my hands used to all that writing. so i've been using up a lot of ink.

and today the first pen bit the dust. After that, i quickly went to count all the other ones i had left--i don't want to run out of ink before the exam. and after spending so much time getting used to the weight and style of the pen, i don't want to have to adjust to another kind. so i think i have about 6 left, and i'm hoping that will be enough to get through the bar.

ah, what minuscule and unimportant things gain such significance when you're spending hundreds of hours locked away in the house, studying for such a test. only about 7 weeks left before life returns to semi-normal. i'm so looking forward to that day.

losing my mind

it seems i'm losing my mind.

it's connected to having too many details in my mind, i think. i'm used to carrying a lot on my plate, but most of it has been much broader and more predictable. like i'd be taking 5 classes at a time, but they all had similar work, so i was able to keep all my tasks organized in my mind. but now i have tasks & thoughts flying in a hundred different directions, so i'm not really doing any of it well.

case in point. today i had to teach. on my way to school i decided to go to kinko's to shrink down my diploma. i need a copy of it to include with my loan application for the house i'm buying... b/c they're loaning me money based on a job i haven't started yet. so yeah. i went to kinko's & it took about a half an hour to get all the machines working properly to shrink down my ridiculously-sized diploma to a reasonable size to put in the application packet.

as i was leaving kinko's i realized i'd left the other half of the stuff i needed to copy at home. so i'll be making another trip at the end of the week.

so then i go to school to get prepped for class. only then did i realize that i didn't have my powerpoint presentation with me. it was saved on my laptop at home. so i spent about a half hour re-doing the powerpoint. it's now about 30 minutes before class, and i realize that i don't have the book i need for class. they only have it on reserve on the library, so i have to get what i need out of it in the library before going to class. yes... what fun. i brought only the things that i didn't actually need for class and left everything i needed at home.

but i did actually survive the day and the class. and someday i'll have all these tasks completed. i kinda wish i didn't have anything to think about other than studying, b/c i feel like i'd be able to give more attention to it. but that might backfire, b/c i'd be so bored with the stuff that i would be going out of my mind. there are only 62 days or so until the bar exam. i have much to do before then.

and yes, i do have a planner that i use. it seems i just have to be more explicit like "bring this book and don't forget powerpoint..." so i'm working on that.

thankful

i'm sitting in the living room of my new house. my graduation cap & gown are hanging in a closet, just waiting for me to try them on. there are boxes strewn around various places in the many rooms of the house. the books sit on bookshelves, but they have yet to be organized. and i'm sitting here, ready to fall asleep, writing & watching an old movie.

i have so much to be thankful for. my parents made it home for my graduation, the classes i'm teaching are going well, and i am now living in a beautiful house that has so much potential to be used for many different things. tomorrow i'll graduate from law school, and i never have to go back to school if i don't want to (i'll probably want to). and tomorrow i get to celebrate with my whole family the work i've done over the past few years. so i'm just taking a moment to be thankful to God for what i have and where i am, right this moment.

the close of one chapter

well, law school is over. it's hard to believe that it really is done. it went really fast. yet it feels like such a great accomplishment. i think it's because of how much work i put in. even though college was 4 years, i just didn't have to work as hard to succeed there.

i'm working hard to savor the accomplishment. if i don't, i'm going to just start studying for the bar hard-core, but i'm not going to have the energy to make it through the end. i'm so fatigued. i pushed myself really hard for the last couple of years. this semester was tough, because i didn't have the energy left to push myself anymore. so now i'm taking a break (for like 3 days) so that i'll be at least a little refreshed when i set up my study schedule. we'll see how that works.

so yeah. only one more big thing before i can get back to just living life like a normal person. ok, so that probably won't actually happen... but at least i'll have more freedom to build relationships & spend time with people.

4 more saturdays

i'm a mere 4 saturdays away from the end of law school. one month, and it's history. it's so hard to believe that it is already time to be done. truly it's flown by in such a blur. it was only a little over 2 years ago that i started law school. and now it's done.

but i am ready. i'm excited to be finishing up. i'm looking for a house to buy this summer. i'm planning on opening a non-profit. i'm planning on passing the bar exam, so i've started studying. i'll be teaching at my law school as an adjunct this summer, so i'm planning for that. and i'm looking forward to hanging out with my family and my best friend, who will be visiting this summer. and i've decided to take a week to go camping at the end of the summer, before i start my new job, so i can recover from all this excitement...

the sheer volume of responsibilities and changes are keeping me quite busy, which is why i haven't been writing much. but things are going well, i am doing more than well, and life is good.

paid to think?

one thing i noticed this week is how much time i actually have to think before i start writing. i can literally sit for 4-5 hours just thinking through all the implications of various arguments, counterarguments, and issues. then i have to re-read cases, do more research, and then think some more. i need a huge whiteboard, and plenty of time to scribble all over it.

i don't think i ever realized how much thinking time is required. and i always feel a little bit weird, just sitting there, thinking. i wonder if the people walking by think i'm slacking off. i think i'll feel especially bad about thinking when people are paying me too--because i'm not producing anything. but then i tell myself that people are going to be paying me to think.

so i feel like i've chosen the right profession. because i enjoy the process. i have fun thinking through the problems. good times...

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.

final finals

exam week is the most relaxed week of school for me. odd--i know. but true. i do all my reading in the first 10 weeks of school. then i spend the next 4-5 weeks just studying. by the time exams come, i just want someone to hand me the test so i can take it. i've studied so much i'm tired of the material. and i get the test it's like a game--how can i show off everything that i know within the context of the test?

this semester i wasn't able to get as much studying done in my normal sequence. so it was just today that i got to the point that i can't stand to spend another minute studying. it's much better timing than than normal because i have my first exam tomorrow night. the last exam will be friday night. and then i'm done with exams for the rest of law school. crazy.

so it's the night before the exam, and i'm sitting here not doing anything. i could start a book, but then i'd have to finish it before i go to sleep, and i don't think there's enough time. i could start on some of my after-exam projects, but i am supposed to be resting & reserving my energy for exams. so i'm not sure what i'm going to do tonight. i hate feeling like i'm wasting time.

early december update

well, i got a job for after i take the bar exam. yay! i'm going to be staying in my city & working for the state court of appeals. i'm excited about the job, and excited that i don't have to think about it anymore. now i can just concentrate on exams, the bar exam, and other things in life.

speaking of exams, next week i have my last 2 law school exams. next semester i have all practical classes--no exams there. i am so happy about this. i haven't particularly enjoyed my subjects this semester, and i'm looking forward to getting to the just plain writing and practical application of the law. i think my summer job spoiled me a little bit, because i got to see how the law actually works. that is much more interesting than just memorizing general legal concepts. so... all is well.

our new church service is in something like its 11th week. we've been having a good time. i can't say that it's exceptionally different from a normal, traditional service. i think we have more time & space for reflection. our communication style is to tell stories. we try not to be too presentational (as opposed to interactive). i think that we're forming a kind of community. we're living out the values that we speak as a group. we're working on getting people involved in the community. all really positive things. and i enjoy being a part of the leadership team.

but to tell you the truth, i'm not sure that i would go if i weren't in leadership. this has nothing to do with the service--if i was going to go to a service, i would definitely choose that one. it's just--i am not all that interested in the service time. i really just want to live life alongside other people. it's really hard to do that in a service because they're so big. and they tend to be focused on a speaker & what that speaker has to say.

many times in my life, God used speakers in services, camps, and special events to speak into my life. so i'm not discounting the value of those things. but it does me very little good to hear new information if i'm not putting it into practice. and it's easier to put it into practice among a group of people who are all walking the same direction.

so anyway... i don't know what to think about that. i don't know if it's a phase in my own life, a reaction to the organized/institutional church, or something else. but it's kind of where i'm at at the moment. that might explain why i'm a part of 2 different small groups at my church, and why i think of our times of teaching & fellowship of more like church to me. at any rate, i'm glad that i have so many great relationships with people there.

alright--i'm off to class. i'll try to post again soon.

and so it begins

i downloaded the dreaded bar exam application yesterday. i even started filling parts of it out. the part where you apply to take the exam is not the awful part--it's actually pretty simple. the difficult part is the character & fitness portion. you have to list where you've lived and worked back to the time you're 16. but you also have to list an address for any trip or vacation where you've spent more than 2 weeks--2 weeks! i can't even guarantee that i remember all the places where i've spent more than 2 weeks.

the good news is that working for the feds this summer required me to already compile most of this information. the bad news is that i have to get fingerprinted--again. and this time i also have to request information from police departments in places where i've been for more than 2 weeks--just a report saying whether or not they've investigated me for anything.

so anyway, thus begins the nightmare. and i thought i was actually going to get a break over break. it's not looking so good, now.

decisions

this process of deciding what to do with my law degree is a very interesting process.

since i started interviewing this fall i've been thinking a lot about what i actually want to do when i'm done. i've been taking inventories of my passions/gifts/desires. i've been praying a lot about how God might want to use the skill that i've learned. and i've attended the interviews.

and honestly, i think i'd be happiest working for myself, or working part time, and having the rest of my time & energy left over to do other things. i still want to be a part of ministry in the church--more specifically of assisting the church in its relationship with other cultures--including the greater secular culture or just cross-cultures within the church and community.

i didn't go to law school to get a career. i went because i wanted to find a way to support myself, to do something practical and concrete for the cause of justice, and to give myself the freedom and ability to give my time away.

it would be so easy to follow a particular path to a career. it's what everyone thinks is supposed to happen--you get a job, make lots of money, etc. it would be so easy to get sucked in to that. but that's not what i want. that's not why i came. i don't want prestige, and i don't even want power. if God puts me in a position of power, then i'll try to use it for justice, but if i never have it i won't be sad.

i want to write. i want to write about legal policies that need to be changed. but more than that i want to write for the church about culture and beliefs. i want to give my time to people--to the church, and also in the trenches so that i know what laws need to be changed and what would actually be helpful.

so i don't know. this all makes me think i should take the job in my city even if i get an offer to do policy/advocacy research. because long-term, i don't want to be committed to just one cause. i want to have the freedom to do a lot of different things. and staying here, paying off my bills, and getting contacts within the legal world here. i just think i'd have lots of options if i do that.

so i don't know, though. i don't want to choose the wrong thing or miss out on a career if that's what i'm supposed to do. i don't want to foreclose that option prematurely. i'll keep you posted on where i end up. it's a lot to think about.