Wednesday - Day 8

I have my second computer training session this afternoon. Rah! The one cool thing about last night’s training session was that they gave us free water bottles on the way out. Nothing like free merchandise to attract the attention of sleepy students. We’re trained to use these two different types of online programs, called Westlaw and Lexis. Both are online databases of state and federal statutes and common law cases that can be searched and preened for class and professional legal use… and, lucky for us, they’re in head-to-head competition for our business. Basically, they’re sucking up to us as law students so that when we go out and work for a firm, we’ll pay to use their service as opposed to their competitor’s. They have to continue expanding and feathering their online databases to attract the fickle little ferrets of law school.

As a point of trivia, my favorite professor is for Property. He’s quite entertaining, with a dry, deadpan sense of humor that Python fans like me find appealing. For example: “No, no, read what it says. You’re just – flat – WRONG here.” (Class laughs.) “And – I love it.” (Class laughs again.) And I like his accent. I don’t know where he’s from, but it’s a fantastic relief compared to all the ya-dere-hey's I endured at Marquette.

Speaking of Marquette, when I stopped at Borders to pick up “The Top Ten Ways to Combat Panic,” I flipped through the US News rankings of undergraduate institutions and there’s a one-page feature on Marquette as one of the top schools that foster community service. Maybe that’s why I hated it. Interesting how their investigative report on Harvard (which is, naturally, #1), reveals that their academics are on the downslide, protected by the hard armor of the university’s longstanding gilt-edged reputation. Yale is #2, just for trivia… but Yale has the #1 law school in the graduate rankings, and Harvard is only #3, behind Stanford.

Before Property today, one of my A2 section-mates (classmates) stood up before class and hollered, “Did everyone hear me? The hot word today is ‘franchise.’ Whoever raises their hand in class and uses the word ‘franchise’ the most gets a free pitcher of beer from me tonight at Beer Darts! You can use the word however you want, disenfranchise, whatever.” Ahh, that’s what’s happens when we’re sentenced to whittle away on the inside of the same class room for extended periods of time.

For whatever reason, for two days in a row my eyes have opened of their own accord around four in the morning, and prohibited sleep thereafter. I can’t complain, though, because any time spent not panicking is time well spent; I’ll take insomnia any way. One potential contribution to this issue might be that the bulb in one of my lava lamps burned out – I used to fall asleep watching them. Probably not; it’s a small thing. But I have to haul my butt out and buy a replacement bulb instead of shopping at the hardware store in the basement, which is a total bummer.

Because I’ve been keeping MTV and VH1 on in the background as company in my apartment, I’m actually paying more attention to what’s going on in the music world, and becoming familiar with a large portion of the bands I’ve only written about on the web site… granted, I only see flashes of them as I walk to the bathroom and etc., but all the same… So. The best songs of the moment… “Feel Good, Inc.” by the Gorillaz, “All These Things That I’ve Done” by the Killers, “No” by Shakira (even though it’s all in Spanish, which is kind of a creepy and imposing indicator of the increasing percentage of Mexican immigrants in our country), “Real Good Place To Start” by Sara Evans, “Does He Love You” by Carrie Underwood and Jamie O’Neal, and “Probably Wouldn’t Be This Way” by one of my favorites, LeAnn Rimes. Pretty much everything else on country radio absolutely sucks. I mean, in an hour of CMT I’ll probably hear two songs I like. It’s just disgusting. Not that this has any relevance whatsoever to my law school experience.