First Week Back

I'm finished with our first week back to school. It was tough, not subject matter-wise, but motivationally. Just to give you an idea, I pushed the snooze button on the SECOND DAY of classes. Usually it takes me at least until the second MONTH before I hit snooze.

This semester I still have Walthall for Contracts, Royal for Civ Pro, and Baggett for LLR so those classes were the same. The only two new classes I have are Evidence with Goodwin (who is the new associate dean), and Property with Greene.

Walthall's first day of class was like any other day of class. There was no "cushion" day to get used to anything because we've already had him for a full semester, so we dove right in to express and implied warranties. Bleh. I love Walthall, but I can't say Contracts is my favorite class. We also got our exams back with comments on them which was helpful. I made SURE on this exam to go through EVERY possible issue that could come up in a Contract because I didn't in the last test and didn't do so well because of that. Well, just my luck, he decides that for the final he doesn't want us to do that and leaves me a comment (at least twice) on my exam saying

"This obviously isn't the issue. Don't waste your time or mine." (The second time the "or mine" was underlined)

Ouch. I knew the offer hadn't terminated, I knew that really wasn't the issue, and I wrote MAYBE two sentences about it in my answer JUST to make sure he couldn't say anything about me not addressing whether or not the offer had terminated. Well, that obviously backfired, but hopefully he didn't take OFF points for including too much information and I just got a rather unfriendly comment. And I get it, he has about 50 exams to grade JUST from our class, not to mention all the other exams he has from his other classes, and the tests are anonymous, but that's still not a fun comment to get on an exam.

We got an email sometime last week telling us that Royal is moving to Atlanta at the end of the semester because her husband got a teaching job at the medical school there. They're both SUPER intelligent people, and she's a very sweet woman, it will be sad to see her leave. Her class was pretty much the same as last semester. The only thing is that for the first few readings there was nothing in my supplement to supplement our book so I had to rely on just me. I think I did ok, and I'm determined to try to participate in class more this semester so I can get more credit for participation.

I think I like Goodwin (I'm not really sure, we've only had two classes with him), but I'm not sure how I feel about evidence. I've also heard that he wrote the big treatise on Evidence and that last year during his final two people had breakdowns in the middle of it. Talk about intimidation. It's the only class we have that we DON'T brief cases in, instead we do problems. That just means that our book doesn't have cases in it that we have to get up an recite, instead it has a lot of different problems concerning the rules of evidence that we have to answer in class. It doesn't seem so bad, but when you're the first person called on to answer one of these ridiculous hypotheticals that would never happen in real life, it's pretty miserable. So, not only was this class new and weird to us because it's formatted COMPLETELY differently from the rest of our classes, but I get called on to answer the first question. To be honest, I didn't read the rule as well as I probably should have, but he was also REALLY critical of EVERYTHING I said.

I know, I know, he's supposed to be, that's his job- but it would've been helpful if he had explained the rules to us before he asked me to. Anyway, I felt like a complete idiot when he told me that I was going to argue AGAINST HIM as to why my testimonial evidence should be allowed. Like I said, I could've read the rules better, but I'm still convinced that if I had known them inside and out he still would've made me feel like an idiot. At one point I made an argument (that actually turned out be correct) and his response was, "So?" It wasn't fun, and after class there were a lot of people talking about how much they were dreading getting called on in that class. But at least I got it out of the way early.

I can tell I'm really not going to care one way or the other about the subject of Property, but I like Professor Greene. He likes to tell stories and doesn't really ask for anyone to brief cases, he really just talks a whole lot, which is fine with me. I did make the mistake of raising my hand to a rhetorical question and now he's singled me out a few times. He was talking about having a "constructive Monday" which in the world of Cumberland means you have Monday classes on whatever day they decide to call a "constructive Monday" instead of whatever classes you were supposed to have. Why they don't just say "Monday classes this day", I don't know. Constructive Monday sounds really stupid and confusing to me. Anyway, so this is what happened:

Greene: "Do we have any Philosophy majors here..."

I raise my hand

Greene: "... that can explain what that means."

Well shoot, he wasn't actually asking for Philosophy majors, he was making a joke. But since I jumped the gun and raised my hand in the middle of the statement he looks at me and asks me if I know. I say I have no idea and he says, something to the extent that he's a PHL major too and has no idea. Then he makes a joke that only I get ("I can tell you how many angles can dance on the head of a pin, but not what a constructive Monday is") and refers to me as his PHL major for the rest of the week. Go me.

I promised I would post my favorite winter break recipes, so I'm going to do that next! I love you!

Grades!

Whew! Grades are FINALLY posted and I am VERY relieved and actually pretty proud of myself :-) So I'll let you know my grades and explain how I feel about them.

Torts: A-
I don't know how I pulled this off, but I'm EXTREMELY happy about it, especially since we pretty much had to teach ourselves everything. Not to mention when that 46 page long test landed in front of me I felt like this:

and this


Contracts: B
Not too happy, but definitely not upset about it either. I think the biggest thing that kept me from getting at least an A- was I missed an issue on our second mid-term and ended up not doing so well on that test. All in all though, I'm happy with this grade.

Civil Procedure: B
Very happy with this grade. Civ Pro was like a different language for me at the beginning of the year, and when we had about a month left of class I finally found a supplement that worked for me. Re-learning or learning everything for the first time in that short amount of time was tough, so I'm very happy with my B.

Criminal Law: A-
How can you be upset with an A? Plus I've heard Cochran is a super tough grader, so getting an A- is pretty awesome.

LLR: A-
I'm especially proud of this grade because our LLR professor is known as "B+ Baggett" and I managed to get an A-! Whoo go me!


Now I'm just waiting to get the email that says our class ranks are ready. Classes start back on Monday the 9th and I'm actually a little excited to get back now. Now I know I need to kick it up a notch in Civ Pro and Contracts which shouldn't really be a problem.

Today we got an email about the Williams Trial Competition which is only for 1Ls. Grace and I are hoping to be able to participate, but there's only 32 slots, so if we don't get our name down we'll be out of luck. It sounds like fun and a good way to reinforce everything we've learned so far.

I am also planning on doing a post for my favorite holiday recipes, which are actually just my favorite recipes that I've made over the holiday, but that will take more time and I want to post pictures so I'm going to do that one later!

I love you!

Winter Break

Ok, as promised, here is my update for the past month or so.

Last day of Crim and Professor Cochran
The last day of Crim was tough, we had to study the case of my friend's brother. He got shot a few years ago when he went into the wrong apartment. I didn't know him very well, but Meredith was one of my best friends in elementary school and I went Matt's visitation after it happened. I understand why we studied the case- studying the case of someone that went to our law school and was our age drives home the reality of criminal law to everyone that hasn't experienced it themselves. Understanding why we study Matt's case is important, but it doesn't make it any easier.

On a lighter note, our Crim professor is leaving at the end of next semester to be the Dean at Belmont's new law school. Leirin and I decided we should give him a picture of our section, because he's a pretty awesome professor. He was a federal prosecutor and a Green Beret in the military for a while, so we weren't really expecting much emotion-wise from him. When we gave him the picture of us he actually started crying! I know it wasn't JUST because of the picture, it also reminded him that he won't be coming back to this school and that this is last time to teach Crim Law to 1Ls at Cumberland, but I was still really happy that he cared that much about us.

Last day of Contracts and Professor Walthall
The last day of Contracts was probably the second scariest day of my life. Professor Walthall is about 80 years old but incredibly young for his age. He's at the gym every day, just married a woman in her 60's this summer, and has the most energy of any of my professors. He walks into class with a huge gash across his eye and told us that he had fallen earlier the day before and his glasses had broken on his face but that he was doing fine and that the school's student health services were pretty good. He starts teaching class and about half way through he pulls out a chair. Well, this is weird because he NEVER sits down, but I thought maybe he was going to act out what the defendants had done, because he's that kind of professor. All of a sudden he just STOPS talking, his head falls forward and his eyes roll back in his head. I think he's having a stroke and dying. Some people go running like mad down the hallways trying to find someone to help us since we don't have a nurse at the school. About 4 of us are on the phone calling 911, and Leirin runs up to him and tilts his head back. Leirin starts panicking and drops his head while she's frantically asking people what to do and he starts turning bright red and purple because his airways are cut off. Someone shouts at her to keep his head back and she does. It felt like forever, but it was probably only 2-3 minutes when he finally wakes up. There's a security guard with us, one of the Deans, and the woman that pretty much runs everything in the school in the room by now. A few minutes later the EMTs arrive and hook up an EKG and are taking his blood pressure and stuff like that. Dean Strickland is crouched down with him and says "Well, I guess it's safe to say that we can let the class go, right?" Professor Walthall IMMEDIATELY responds "Absolutely not! We're going to finish up here! Chicken!"

The chicken part is for real, but he wasn't going crazy- the case we were studying was about what a "chicken" meant. Oh the intricacies of contract law. Anyway, he sends us an email later telling us that he had a fainting spell the day before which caused him to fall and break his glasses, and that this is something that has been happening to him for a while and it generally means he needs to exercise more, eat better, and drink less alcohol and caffeine. He said he has a cardiologist that was doing some outpatient tests on him and he would let us know if anything changed.

I'm definitely glad he was and is ok, but it was terrifying thinking you were watching your professor die in the middle of class.

Last day of Torts
My torts professor was definitely not my favorite professor, but we did have A LOT of funny quotes from his class. I decided to type them up, get the class to sign them, frame them, and give them to him at the end of the semester. I did and put it on the podium in front of the class when he got there and he looked at it for a while and said "Oh wow. I've never gotten anything like this before. I will really cherish this."

I'm sure when you read that it sounded really sentimental and heartfelt, but Nelson talks in monotone ALL the time so I really had no idea whether or not he was being serious. The only way I was able to tell he was serious was the next day he came into class and told us that he had hung it up in his office under his invitation to Reagan's inauguration.

Crim Final
meh- not so bad. I felt like I aced the multiple choice questions, and that everything I wrote about was correct. The problem is that his essay questions are statutory analysis and there's no way to know whether or not I missed an element of the statute without getting my test back.

Torts Final
Holy cow, was I going to the right class???? Luckily I wasn't the only one that felt that way. When Grace and I first started studying we realized that we hadn't learned a SINGLE element to any tort other than battery. We pretty much had to teach ourselves everything in the little time we had to study for finals. The exam was 46 pages long. Pages, not questions, PAGES, and they were all issue-spotting. That means the professor gives you this great big long story about the most unfortunate people you have ever heard about before and you have to write about every possible charge they could bring against any possible defendant. It's not fun.

Contracts Final
Lulu had an upset stomach the night before the Contracts final, so even though I couldn't sleep I had to get up and take her out at 1:30 in the morning which did not make me a happy person.

I feel like I did pretty well on the Contracts final too, but there was some issue-spotting on it as well. It definitely wasn't as bad because we had actually been taught stuff in that class, but again, there isn't any way to know if I missed an issue until I get the test back.

Civ Pro Final
The most difficult topic in civ pro wasn't tested on which was frustrating and a relief at the same time. Frustrating because I spent all that time studying it and stressing over the intricacies and loopholes, but relieving because when the test actually came I didn't have to worry about going brain dumb on Erie.

I felt like the multiple choice questions were ok, but everyone else said they were ridiculous, so I'm a little nervous about that. That either means that I knew the material better than I thought I did, or I definitely DIDN'T know the material and I did something very wrong.

Christmas Shopping
I didn't have time to go Christmas shopping while I was studying for exams so I bought almost all my presents online. I'm really happy with everything I got though, and I really think everyone is going to love their presents- especially daddy. I keep trying to tell him about them, but then remember I'm not supposed to :-)

Christmas Dress
What Christmas dress? That's another thing I didn't have time to shop for. Kiyoshi and I did go to the mall once and I tried on 3 dresses but I didn't like any of them. I just brought home one of the dresses I bought for Patrick and Kara's wedding that I didn't even end up wearing there.

Champagne Friday
After the civ pro final, Grace, Megan, Scotty, and I all went to my place and popped our champagne. It was a wonderful way to celebrate champagne Friday and the end of our first semester of law school!!

Kiyoshi's Graduation
It was a little stressful in the beginning because he couldn't find his tassel. Luckily I somehow managed to NOT lose mine and got it to him before the ceremony. It had the wrong year on it, but I don't really think anyone other than us knew that. The graduation itself was long and boring like all graduations are. I was very proud of him, and I clapped really loudly when he walked across the stage, but near the end I got overheated and ended up throwing up in the arena's bathroom. Sport complex bathrooms are NOT the ideal place to be sick...

End of the year party
Grace and her roommate threw a party and so did the 1L class the day before Kiyoshi graduated. Mom called and asked what we were doing to celebrate the end of the semester and we didn't have any plans, so she told Kiyoshi and I to go out to dinner. We went to the Cheesecake Factory (surprise!) and it was wonderful. Then we stopped by Grace's party for a little bit. There were only a few people there and we didn't stay for long, but it was fun. I did not go to the 1L Christmas party. There are plenty of people in my class that I like, but I was in serious need of a break from them, and I didn't want to fight parking downtown and have to pay for drinks.

Going home for the break
After Kiyoshi graduated and I was finished being sick we went back to my apartment and packed up and headed home. My car is acting up again so daddy drove my car and we got home around wish (I think, I honestly could be making that time up). We had plans to go to the Mauldin's to celebrate Anna's graduation, but since I had been sick all that day we didn't. I'm super proud of her too! She's officially an OTR (I know OT stands for occupational therapy, and I think the R stands for resident).

Being home is great, but a little weird. This is the first time I actually feel like I don't live at home anymore. Last year I was moving out of my apartment, and every year before that I was in a dorm and switching from my summer to winter clothes. This year I'm living out of a suitcase. But that's what growing up is like.

On the plus side, I haven't slept this well in a VERY long time. It's wonderful not to have to worry about my readings or whether or not I studied everything and understand everything.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays everyone! I love you!

Sneak Peek

Just so I remember things to talk about, I'm going to jot down some stuff so I remember what to write about.

Last day of Crim
--Matt McClain
--Making Cochran cry
Last day of Contracts and Professor Walthall
--Chicken
--Fainting spell
Last day of Torts
--"I will really cherish this"
Crim Final
--meh- not so bad
Torts Final
--Holy cow, was I going to the right class
Contracts Final
--Lulu at 1:30 in the morning
--Time
Civ Pro Final
Christmas Shopping
--All online, but great presents for everyone
Christmas Dress
--What Christmas dress?
Champagne Friday
--I can't wait! It's calling my name!
Kiyoshi's Graduation
--So excited for him!
End of the year party
--What a way to celebrate
Going home for the break
--FINALLY!!! I CAN BREATHE!!!!


I love you all and I'll give you more details later!

Leave of Absence

Our last day of class was yesterday. Finals start Tuesday. I definitely won't be writing anything until finals are over on the 16th.

I love you!

Oh, November.

What a month. I'm exhausted and it's only the 16th!

My days are running together so much now that I don't remember what has happened when or if I've already written about some of this stuff, so bear with me please!

Finals start 3 weeks from yesterday. YIKES. Just so you get an understanding of how stressful that is, my eye twitch is back. My eye hasn't twitched since hell weeks back in high school. If you're unfamiliar with hell week, it's the week before a show opens where we do all the technical stuff. We would sometimes stay up at the school until 2am and then have to be in class at 8 in the morning.

Our open memo is finished, but this week is settlement week which is adding to the stress level. In theory (I think) it is supposed to be relatively simple. Since we're plaintiffs' attorney we ask for a number and we bargain back and forth to reach an agreement with the defense. In real life, if you can't reach a settlement you go to court, but we've been told we HAVE to settle.

So, like it said, it isn't supposed to be too difficult- the problem is that our professor told us ABSOLUTELY NOTHING about how this process works. Everyone else was talking about signing up with negotiation partners for settlement and our LLR group had NO idea what was going on. We got an email last weekend saying "Here is your partner and here's who you're negotiating with. Good luck!" No joke. Nothing more. He did give us a sample settlement agreement, but that is really just so we can copy and paste our terms into the same format and turn that in. We've had NO guidance about what we're supposed to do. It's frustrating.

Also, I am SO READY FOR THANKSGIVING!!!!!!!!!! I haven't had a break since we started school. I know that "real adults" don't really get breaks, but c'mon- if MED SCHOOL can get a fall break, I think we can get one too. Everyone is beyond exhausted, and you can really tell in class. The girls that used to show up every day in class with all their makeup on and put-together outfits are starting to look pretty ragged. That's one good thing about not looking picture perfect every day- no one really notices when you're having a bad day.

Kiyoshi and I went on a lunch date today, and that was nice. It did, however, put me behind on my readings for tomorrow and that's not making me any less stressed, especially since I have 3 classes tomorrow instead of just 2.

The UAB Ethics Team won the Regional Ethics Bowl again. Yay them! They go on to Nationals in January (I think) and hopefully they'll win nationals again!

Mom and Dad get to go to the beach on Saturday already (jealous), but they're going to stop in Birmingham and have brunch with Kiyoshi and me. I'm excited- free food is awesome. And so is seeing my parents :-)

I love you all!

A Wedding, A Birthday, A Funeral, and A Fall.

It's been a long time since I've posted, so there's probably a lot more that's gone on since then that I'll forget, but I'll give you a brief recap. The most important things are those listed in the heading of this post.

A Wedding.
My Uncle Patrick got married this past weekend, and it was quite a party. Granddad and Grandma Patty surprised him and Kara with a photo booth that all the guests could take pictures in. It was a lot of fun and there are a ton of really cute pictures. Unfortunately, I don't have a scanner and the pictures aren't up on the website yet so I can't show you any of those. I can however, show you a few of my favorites that I took :-)

Albey and Allison


Me and Chelsea


Me and Patrick


Mom being a flower girl.


Me and Albey

It was great to see everyone again. It wasn't so great that Bama lost to LSU, but I'm pretty sure I'll get over it ;-)

A Birthday.
One of my best friends EVER turned 22 yesterday! Can you guess who? I'll give you one hint: Snow White.
That's right! Katalyn's birthday was yesterday. I'm super sad that I didn't get to see her, but I did send her a message telling her that I love her! And for those of you others that miss her, she and her husband have a blog on here too that documents all their awesome escapades and their life ADORABLE son Owen. Go check it out here. I LOVE YOU KATALYN!!!

A Funeral.
So, it's not a funeral in the literal sense, but today symbolizes the death of any social life I may have had in the past semester. Exams start 4 WEEKS from TODAY!! I've decided to do 4 weeks of studying (one week for each class), but divide it up a little oddly. Grace and I are getting together on Wednesdays and Fridays to study together, and write our "super outlines" and then I'm sure we will do some super hard core studying the weeks of finals.

We had a practice exam in Civil Procedure last week and Grace and I both learned that we needed to devote some SERIOUS time to that subject. It was a little disheartening because she gave us a question that would be on a regular 3 hour exam to do in 50 minutes. On top of that, I personally had a problem because of how literal I am!! Her exam instructions said "only using rules 12(b)(1) and 12(b)(2)". The word ONLY was underlined. So what do I do? I turn to that rule in the book and it says that cases can be dismissed due to lack of 12(b)(1) subject matter jurisdiction 12(b)(2) personal jurisdiction. I thought she meant that was the ONLY rule or procedure we should look at. Not until I got to the second half of the question did I realize she meant that we were only supposed to ANALYZE the question in regards to those two rules, but STILL APPLY OTHER RULES in our answer. At least I made that mistake on a practice exam that only counted for participation and not on a real one that counts for my whole grade...

A Fall.
No one fell, don't worry. I'm talking about the season of Fall in Birmingham. It's absolutely GORGEOUS. Every year I tell myself I'm going to take pictures and I never do. This year I took some just walking around the apartment complex, but the don't do justice to some of the majestic colors you can see in other places of town. Here are two of my favorite pictures to make you jealous of Birmingham's Fall:





I'll take more in the coming days and add them to Facebook.

I am absolutely exhausted right now because I didn't sleep well this weekend and I haven't caught up on my sleep yet. I'm going to take a nap and then start working on studying for Criminal Law!

I love you!