On the Merits of Planning and Preparedness

I turned in my petition to the Associate Dean this morning to enroll in a summer school course. I didn’t speak to him, but to his secretary; she kept saying, “Do you have this?” and “Do you know this?” and (pursuant to my in-depth info-gathering session) I was able to answer everything in the affirmative by motioning to the info sheet I attached to my letter (how many credits, when, where...) She seemed quite surprised that I had accumulated all the required information on the first try; I suppose that’s the payoff for preparedness.

Well, the Beatles contend that “All you need is love,” but I would replace that final word with “Determination.” Last semester, I developed this intricate system for making exam notecards on my computer. It involved having four Microsoft Word windows open concurrently and the demise of about three San Francisco Redwoods as I figured out how to print them correctly... then I had to cut them all and glut them, and it was this whole boring, tedious, time-sucking, mind-numbing process. So I opened Word last night and tinkered and tinkered and tweaked and tweaked and, through trial-and-error, developed this Brilliant new system (in my humble opinion). I made a document template (when you open it, it opens blank and ready to save with new information rather than already written-on) that has four notecards to a page, like typing in address labels. I can cut and paste from my class notes into the document and then press “tab” to add the information for the back side of the notecard. When I print, all I have to do is fold the paper in half, slap on a little glue and make three cuts, because I have everything pre-measured and locked in place. It sounds so stupid, but it’s such a fantastic time saver, and seems like it will be terribly effective. Now I can make notecards as I progress through the semester, so when I reach crunch-time, I’ll have both my outlines and my notecards finished and thus have the means to focus exclusively on digesting the information. Yes!!

For Statutory Interpretation today, we read a case about illegal drugs that was actually remarkably interesting. The big debate was, do you measure LSD with its “carrier” or “mixture” or without, for purposes of determining sentencing? Apparently (the case informed us), LSD is remarkably light, so it’s diluted with a fluid and painted onto a piece of paper, which is then cut into tiny squares to constitute a “dose.” So, when we’re determining sentencing, do we measure the drug’s weight with the paper or without? If you measure with, then someone who drops a little bit of drug in a glass of orange juice would receive maximum sentencing, because the OJ (the carrier) would weigh a ton; on the other hand, someone with a fingerful of powder, which obviously is a much larger amount of drug, would receive a much smaller sentence due to the lack of additional “carrier” weight. So, the whole point of the class is Statutory Interpretation - do we interpret the statute’s language to include mixers and carriers, or exclude them? On what grounds? And is this really the type of thing we ought to be learning in law school?