Thursday - Day 4

In my quest for a weekend at home, I spurred myself into action at an unholy hour this morning and scrambled to the library. I was first in line, parked outside the locked doors like a frantic dog with rabies frothing at the mouth. I just about mauled the guy opening the gates to ascertain the location of the State Statutes, and then pounced upon the lady at the Research desk when she arrived at 9.

But I got it done!

We had a brief lecture in class about hiding books – apparently at Big League schools, people will rip pages out of needed documents or stash books in the corner of the library in an unlikely location. How low do you have to be? The professor reminded us that we would be disbarred for such activity, and some smart alec in the back added, "Yeah, and if anyone does that, I'll smash their face like a walnut." Guess we don't have to worry about that one.

I didn’t sleep too well last night, but this morning I only had a moment's cold panic, wondering what had happened to the nonexistent other occupants of my residency, probably because I have a home venture this weekend. It’s strange to arise and not see Mom sleeping down the hall and walk downstairs to the smell of coffee and Dad rustling the paper and the dog prancing merrily at my feet.

It’s funny how I’ve turned into a different person. For instance, I noticed when shopping that the zucchini looked kind of wilted last Sunday, so I ferreted out the dude dealing with produce and asked what times they laid out the new vegetables so I could adjust my purchasing times accordingly. I guess that’s not THAT strange, particularly to people in Europe, but… never thought I’d get there. I think I'm going to circumvent the problem entirely in the future by sticking to an organic produce market I found on the internet. I'll probably die for lack of pesticides, but I guess that's neither here nor there.

Well, I witnessed my first game of Solitaire today, in Legal Research. Admittedly, the material was roughly comparable in mental provocation abilities to a History Channel lecture on the development of different kinds of paint. But I thought it would take longer than four days.

And on the social front... there’s one in every crowd. “When is assignment 1L due? Is it due Thursday?” The professor stood there for a long moment just staring at the guy, and then reached for his copy of the syllabus. He flipped to the back page and read, “Assignment 1L, due Friday, assigned Thursday. Was that not clear?” Ahhhhh. Impatience with stupidity. Life is good. It’s really funny – it’s only the fourth day of classes, and this dude has only has to shift his weight to ignite a restless impatience in the rest of the students. He raises his hand to a collective groan. I thought maybe I was being overly harsh, but between classes in the lounge area, he was the topic of many a monologue: "That guy's on my hit list already," "He takes the professor so far off topic we might as well be surfing in the Caribbean," "Someone ought to tell him we're here to learn things other than his opinion." Ahh, natural selection at its finest.

Quote of the day, week, and possibly month: "I don't expect you to understand this, or to know how to do it. But I do expect you to do it right the first time. Welcome to law school."