OK so I let the blog thing go. Oh well. Will not make promises to blog when I don't know if I will, as most of my friends call me up when they want to see what's going on. Nevertheless, I have split my blog into a bunch of different blogs...each with a new style and each organized by what kind of entry. After all, mixing american idols with world of warcraft is like mixing pajama pants with a suit jacket. It just is all kinds of wrong. So here's my link to the new blogs:
Legal Geek (legalgeekfitz.blogspot.com) - My Legal Geek audio segments from the Current Geek podcast.
Character Insight (characterinsight.blogspot.com) - My Character Insight audio segments from the This Week in Trek podcast.
Healer Trek (healertrek.blogspot.com) - My blogging and emails about Gaming, including my days in World of Warcraft.
Sportswriting Archives of BuckeyeFitzy (sportsfitz.blogspot.com) - My college football sports writing articles republished from websites I no longer work for.
Others such as Idol Trek may still exist, they may not, but they have been discontinued and are not listed accordingly.
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Saturday, August 02, 2008
Vacation, or I SURVIVED!
Well after telling everyone I was going to the boondocks of North Carolina and being out of touch with society and the internet for over a week, here I sit in our rented house which has internet. Nice. Anyways, the trip down was quite long because of a short night beforehand, but we made it by around 5 PM and unloaded the four vehicles. There are 11 of us total: Angela, Stephanie and her twin boys, Aunt Hope, Kathy and Bruce, Zach and A.J. his friend, and Kelley and I. Yes, all but A.J. are in-laws. It's funny because Angela was asking Kelley if I could go take a surfing lesson with her and Kelley, knowing this vacation was right after the bar, said "sure if you can get him sober enough to go." Well Angela told her mom Hope and Hope asked Kathy (mother-in-law) about being worried that I have an alcohol problem. Heh. Thankfully not yet, and hopefully never. These vicious rumors...
Speaking of vicious rumors, apparently everybody at Moritz thought I was working all up through the bar exam and just studying in the evenings. Apparently that was the rumor because most of my friends I had not seen all summer asked me about it. Ummm, no. I've been off since June, and it SUCKED for the 3 weeks of overlap. But we are insured now and they are covering the birth in case something happens while we are away from Cincinnati. So that's awesome.
So the doomsday...the bar exam. As it turns out, not so much.
Tuesday morning I roll out of bed and go grab a very light breakfast at the hotel and show up at the Vet around 8:30. I knew being number 1224 would likely be towards the back of the room, but I did not anticipate being the next to last table in the back corner of the entire building. 1207 people took the exam total (numbers went to 1307), and I could see them all because I was on the side of the table facing them. Also right next to proctors so my papers were picked up basically out of my hands every time. Still feeling a bit nervous, we go through tons of instructions and finally it's time to go.
The Ohio essays were first, and the first one was on Criminal Law, specifically defenses and the burden of proof. I sat there kind of stunned for a bit because I could not come up with a defense to 2 of the 3 crims committed. But I remembered necessity in torts and since those subject overlap I just made it up, and turns out that was correct. Beyond that oh crap moment, the morning went very well. The second question was all about privileges in Evidence which are very broad in Ohio and easy to talk about. The next set of two were what I had nightmares about, a Constitutional Law question all on First Amendment and mostly speech and the hardest question of the bar exam coming from Civil Procedure. Still, the speech regulation was all content-based and so that was easy. Nobody knew what the heck to talk about in Civil Procedure, but I feel like I had a better handle than most on the question. The highlight of infamy was whether a Motion to Dismiss for failure to state a claim could be treated as a Rule 56 motion for summary judgment. Eh, didn't study that this past semester. The final two questions were home runs though, a Corporations question limited to duty of care and loyalty and a Real Property question on estates. The last hypo of the session in the Real Property question brought up the Doctrine of Worthier Title, and I came up with the name of the rule out of the darkest reaches of my brain. Thanks Morgan! Anyways, I felt like there were no questions I would score worse than a 3 on, and most likely all were 4's or higher. I took my hand off the pen to rest during the sixth question and my fingers started throbbing so bad and probably swelling, so I immediately put the pressure back on the pen and kept going. Silly bar exam.
After lunch I found out OSU was offering free food at a tent for breakfast and lunch each day and free massages, so I guess I can stop complaining about how lazy they are to not mail diplomas in June. On the power of lunchables for the first time in over a decade (yeah those Lunchables), I go back in there for the Tuesday afternoon session. This session was the MPT, which is a "practical skills" test. Basically you have a 15 page case file and library where all the law you need to know is located and facts from your client, then you have to write a memorandum or a will or jury instructions, etc. What's funny is that this is not practical at all...you are never going to have to pick up a case file and write a damn memo by hand in 90 minutes. But anyways...the first MPT was all about a child custody case and civil procedure jurisdiction laws determining which state can host the case when the parents are in neighboring states. The problem with that one was the second half of the objective memo to write was a SIX PART BALANCING TEST! Let's just say the last two factors got about one sentence and there was no real conclusion, just half a sentence. That's kind of diappointing, but oh well. The second MPT was a fraud case where you had to evaluate a few statements made in the course of an auto repair shop bending a guy over and screwing him for about $2000. That one I got through although it was close. I don't think I did perfectly and I know this was thre part of the test where I was at a big disadvantage compared to faster writers and all the laptop users. It's only worth 13% though.
Tuesday night I grabbed AK and Daniel and we escaped to Quaker Steak and Lube for cheap wing night. I tried the Buckeye BBQ and they are not all that hot. The Cajun wings were good and we talked the bar exam to death before relaxing and talking about lots of other stuff for two hours. It was a blast and we got back to our hotels/houses and hit the sack.
Wednesday morning I was up earlier and went to the OSU tent for breakfast. It was nice to chat with the friends before tackling Day 2. The MBE is all day Wednesday and every state and territory (except Louisiana and Washington) take this 200 multiple choice test on Contracts, Constitutional Law, Criminal Law and Procedure, Torts, Real Property, and Evidence. 100 questions per 3 hours, so you have about 1.8 minutes a question. Unfortunately the first 3-4 questions of my test form in the morning were killer, probably some of the toughest all day. Bad way to start and I had trouble staying on pace for thre first half. The back 50 went better and so the morning was probably average or a little below. The afternoon questions were much easier and I finished with over a half hour left to sit there and nap or do whatever. I certainly was not going back and changing answers, a sure way to failure. The guy who finished with 30 minutes left in the morning finished a little after me in the afternoon and glared at me for the remaining 30 minutes. Dude, sorry I finished before you, don't let it get to your manhood. Anyway, I think I did not improve on my BarBri practice test but I should be good to go. It's hard to really say, and if I were to fail it would probably be the MBE that would be the culprit.
Wednesday afternoon I met Tom on the Park of Roses tennis courts and sweat through my first two sets of the summer. He's usually a little better than me, but he's been in practice and beat me 6-2, 6-1. I was doing respectable but could not win a service game to save my behind. Eventually Kathy and Kelley showed up and we all drove to meet Heather at Applebee's for dinner. That was nice, and it was again time to get another restless night of sleep. This time with Kelley.
Thursday morning I was confident after rocking the first six essays and having my two strongest subjects lefts in Ethics and Wills. Questions 7-8 were an Ethics question where there were 8-9 issues and you could really excel, and then Commercial Transactions which was a mostly Commercial Paper question with some Secured Transactions details thrown in. I'm sure I did OK despite only having about 27 minutes after really espousing on Ethics. The second set included a pretty tough narrow Torts question on wrongful death standards and NIED, and an Agency question that I think I punted a little bit. The final two questions were Wills which I absolutely rocked and Contracts which was only about consideration and exceptions (not even promissory estoppel). So another pretty successful session and I think I've done more than well enough on the 53% alloted to the essays to carry any deficiencies on the MBE and MPT.
So that's it. I survived the bar exam, and I expect good news on October 31 at 7 AM (Trick or Treat bar examinees). We all went out for drinks at Eddie George's after picking up diplomas and that was good fun. Got sloshed there and some more at the in-laws Thursday night. Had a minor headache for not drinking enough water before bed, but not much else. Back to vacation now, but wanted to get that off my chest.
Speaking of vicious rumors, apparently everybody at Moritz thought I was working all up through the bar exam and just studying in the evenings. Apparently that was the rumor because most of my friends I had not seen all summer asked me about it. Ummm, no. I've been off since June, and it SUCKED for the 3 weeks of overlap. But we are insured now and they are covering the birth in case something happens while we are away from Cincinnati. So that's awesome.
So the doomsday...the bar exam. As it turns out, not so much.
Tuesday morning I roll out of bed and go grab a very light breakfast at the hotel and show up at the Vet around 8:30. I knew being number 1224 would likely be towards the back of the room, but I did not anticipate being the next to last table in the back corner of the entire building. 1207 people took the exam total (numbers went to 1307), and I could see them all because I was on the side of the table facing them. Also right next to proctors so my papers were picked up basically out of my hands every time. Still feeling a bit nervous, we go through tons of instructions and finally it's time to go.
The Ohio essays were first, and the first one was on Criminal Law, specifically defenses and the burden of proof. I sat there kind of stunned for a bit because I could not come up with a defense to 2 of the 3 crims committed. But I remembered necessity in torts and since those subject overlap I just made it up, and turns out that was correct. Beyond that oh crap moment, the morning went very well. The second question was all about privileges in Evidence which are very broad in Ohio and easy to talk about. The next set of two were what I had nightmares about, a Constitutional Law question all on First Amendment and mostly speech and the hardest question of the bar exam coming from Civil Procedure. Still, the speech regulation was all content-based and so that was easy. Nobody knew what the heck to talk about in Civil Procedure, but I feel like I had a better handle than most on the question. The highlight of infamy was whether a Motion to Dismiss for failure to state a claim could be treated as a Rule 56 motion for summary judgment. Eh, didn't study that this past semester. The final two questions were home runs though, a Corporations question limited to duty of care and loyalty and a Real Property question on estates. The last hypo of the session in the Real Property question brought up the Doctrine of Worthier Title, and I came up with the name of the rule out of the darkest reaches of my brain. Thanks Morgan! Anyways, I felt like there were no questions I would score worse than a 3 on, and most likely all were 4's or higher. I took my hand off the pen to rest during the sixth question and my fingers started throbbing so bad and probably swelling, so I immediately put the pressure back on the pen and kept going. Silly bar exam.
After lunch I found out OSU was offering free food at a tent for breakfast and lunch each day and free massages, so I guess I can stop complaining about how lazy they are to not mail diplomas in June. On the power of lunchables for the first time in over a decade (yeah those Lunchables), I go back in there for the Tuesday afternoon session. This session was the MPT, which is a "practical skills" test. Basically you have a 15 page case file and library where all the law you need to know is located and facts from your client, then you have to write a memorandum or a will or jury instructions, etc. What's funny is that this is not practical at all...you are never going to have to pick up a case file and write a damn memo by hand in 90 minutes. But anyways...the first MPT was all about a child custody case and civil procedure jurisdiction laws determining which state can host the case when the parents are in neighboring states. The problem with that one was the second half of the objective memo to write was a SIX PART BALANCING TEST! Let's just say the last two factors got about one sentence and there was no real conclusion, just half a sentence. That's kind of diappointing, but oh well. The second MPT was a fraud case where you had to evaluate a few statements made in the course of an auto repair shop bending a guy over and screwing him for about $2000. That one I got through although it was close. I don't think I did perfectly and I know this was thre part of the test where I was at a big disadvantage compared to faster writers and all the laptop users. It's only worth 13% though.
Tuesday night I grabbed AK and Daniel and we escaped to Quaker Steak and Lube for cheap wing night. I tried the Buckeye BBQ and they are not all that hot. The Cajun wings were good and we talked the bar exam to death before relaxing and talking about lots of other stuff for two hours. It was a blast and we got back to our hotels/houses and hit the sack.
Wednesday morning I was up earlier and went to the OSU tent for breakfast. It was nice to chat with the friends before tackling Day 2. The MBE is all day Wednesday and every state and territory (except Louisiana and Washington) take this 200 multiple choice test on Contracts, Constitutional Law, Criminal Law and Procedure, Torts, Real Property, and Evidence. 100 questions per 3 hours, so you have about 1.8 minutes a question. Unfortunately the first 3-4 questions of my test form in the morning were killer, probably some of the toughest all day. Bad way to start and I had trouble staying on pace for thre first half. The back 50 went better and so the morning was probably average or a little below. The afternoon questions were much easier and I finished with over a half hour left to sit there and nap or do whatever. I certainly was not going back and changing answers, a sure way to failure. The guy who finished with 30 minutes left in the morning finished a little after me in the afternoon and glared at me for the remaining 30 minutes. Dude, sorry I finished before you, don't let it get to your manhood. Anyway, I think I did not improve on my BarBri practice test but I should be good to go. It's hard to really say, and if I were to fail it would probably be the MBE that would be the culprit.
Wednesday afternoon I met Tom on the Park of Roses tennis courts and sweat through my first two sets of the summer. He's usually a little better than me, but he's been in practice and beat me 6-2, 6-1. I was doing respectable but could not win a service game to save my behind. Eventually Kathy and Kelley showed up and we all drove to meet Heather at Applebee's for dinner. That was nice, and it was again time to get another restless night of sleep. This time with Kelley.
Thursday morning I was confident after rocking the first six essays and having my two strongest subjects lefts in Ethics and Wills. Questions 7-8 were an Ethics question where there were 8-9 issues and you could really excel, and then Commercial Transactions which was a mostly Commercial Paper question with some Secured Transactions details thrown in. I'm sure I did OK despite only having about 27 minutes after really espousing on Ethics. The second set included a pretty tough narrow Torts question on wrongful death standards and NIED, and an Agency question that I think I punted a little bit. The final two questions were Wills which I absolutely rocked and Contracts which was only about consideration and exceptions (not even promissory estoppel). So another pretty successful session and I think I've done more than well enough on the 53% alloted to the essays to carry any deficiencies on the MBE and MPT.
So that's it. I survived the bar exam, and I expect good news on October 31 at 7 AM (Trick or Treat bar examinees). We all went out for drinks at Eddie George's after picking up diplomas and that was good fun. Got sloshed there and some more at the in-laws Thursday night. Had a minor headache for not drinking enough water before bed, but not much else. Back to vacation now, but wanted to get that off my chest.
Monday, July 28, 2008
Doomsday Cometh...
Here I sit, 10 PM on July 28, 2008. The next three days will determine if one of the worst summers of my life was effective. OK, so it was not that bad. I never had a chance to burn out because the way I study, I could only do 6-8 hours a day before quitting. I worked most of the days and took some reasonable time off, especially early in the 3 months. My breaks were:
Origins Weekend - spent all weekend in Columbus, 2.5 days at Origins (Sunday with Kelley and oh my did we buy a lot of new board games...come play with us!), 1 day and night at Villa's with Tom and Shep. It was really good to reconnect with Shep and see the guys, but it was time to get serious as the lectures were almost over for BarBri.
Fourth of July Weekend - My Mom finally came over to see the new house in Cinci and we went to Newport Aquarium (the season passes will be great to walk Paige around when we need to get out of the house), IKEA, and a Reds Game. Finally saw Griffey hit a home run, so that was awesome. And the Reds won, which sometimes is hard to catch.
July 19 Weekend - Lisa and Thomas came down from Cleveland to see the house and visit her grandparents. They stayed all weekend and while we did not do anything amazing, it was good times. I did work on one of the weekend days, taking the Simulated MBE.
So what was my study plan? No flashcards, no outlines, no listening to tapes over and over. Just my usual. Read, and then read again, and then read again. I could not handle the "big outlines," so I just memorized most of the Conviser Mini Review. And I did TONS of practice essays and a good number of practice MBE problems. At the end of my MBE prep, I was hitting 75-80% correct and my simulated MBE which is supposed to be hard ended up with 151/200. Anything close to that on Wednesday and I'll have lots of extra points to blow on essays if necessary. This last week was mostly essays and reading things over 2 more times. I was hitting 95+% of the issues presented and had a pretty good handle on presenting the law. Maybe not every exception to every rule or perfect legalese, but more than enough to pass. So I feel pretty good heading into it and hope that out of the 12 essays, we don't hit more than 2-3 I feel uncomfortable about. We will certainly see, as "doomsday" arrives. If nothing else, vacation is coming up and I'll be sipping some liquor on the beach all next week before having to go to work officially full-time. And then it will be over except for the waiting, until late October presumably.
As for the baby stuff (the only other major thing going on in life right now!), we got a scare today. Kelley has been measuring right around where she should based on our due date from her last period all this time, and even the ultrasounds were within a half a week. Well today we go in and she's at 33 or so weeks and she measures at 37. That means Paige in 3 weeks or so. Well they shcedule us in for an emergency ultrasound and it turns out while the growth spurt did happen, it's more of a 2 week jump. So maybe end of August instead of mid-September. In any event, doesn't look like we have a ton to worry about on vacation but Paige is measuring so that she will be "full term" and could be delivered normally this weekend. As it is Kelley's first, I highly doubt it. We will see. Everything else is OK with the baby.
So that's life, and after watching some Star Trek and the Mole, it's time to get as much shut-eye as I can manage in 8 hours. Hope I can funnel my good Magic-playing days at the Veterans Memorial and have another success this week.
To all my friends who will not read this until after the bar exam, best of luck! We'll see in October!
Origins Weekend - spent all weekend in Columbus, 2.5 days at Origins (Sunday with Kelley and oh my did we buy a lot of new board games...come play with us!), 1 day and night at Villa's with Tom and Shep. It was really good to reconnect with Shep and see the guys, but it was time to get serious as the lectures were almost over for BarBri.
Fourth of July Weekend - My Mom finally came over to see the new house in Cinci and we went to Newport Aquarium (the season passes will be great to walk Paige around when we need to get out of the house), IKEA, and a Reds Game. Finally saw Griffey hit a home run, so that was awesome. And the Reds won, which sometimes is hard to catch.
July 19 Weekend - Lisa and Thomas came down from Cleveland to see the house and visit her grandparents. They stayed all weekend and while we did not do anything amazing, it was good times. I did work on one of the weekend days, taking the Simulated MBE.
So what was my study plan? No flashcards, no outlines, no listening to tapes over and over. Just my usual. Read, and then read again, and then read again. I could not handle the "big outlines," so I just memorized most of the Conviser Mini Review. And I did TONS of practice essays and a good number of practice MBE problems. At the end of my MBE prep, I was hitting 75-80% correct and my simulated MBE which is supposed to be hard ended up with 151/200. Anything close to that on Wednesday and I'll have lots of extra points to blow on essays if necessary. This last week was mostly essays and reading things over 2 more times. I was hitting 95+% of the issues presented and had a pretty good handle on presenting the law. Maybe not every exception to every rule or perfect legalese, but more than enough to pass. So I feel pretty good heading into it and hope that out of the 12 essays, we don't hit more than 2-3 I feel uncomfortable about. We will certainly see, as "doomsday" arrives. If nothing else, vacation is coming up and I'll be sipping some liquor on the beach all next week before having to go to work officially full-time. And then it will be over except for the waiting, until late October presumably.
As for the baby stuff (the only other major thing going on in life right now!), we got a scare today. Kelley has been measuring right around where she should based on our due date from her last period all this time, and even the ultrasounds were within a half a week. Well today we go in and she's at 33 or so weeks and she measures at 37. That means Paige in 3 weeks or so. Well they shcedule us in for an emergency ultrasound and it turns out while the growth spurt did happen, it's more of a 2 week jump. So maybe end of August instead of mid-September. In any event, doesn't look like we have a ton to worry about on vacation but Paige is measuring so that she will be "full term" and could be delivered normally this weekend. As it is Kelley's first, I highly doubt it. We will see. Everything else is OK with the baby.
So that's life, and after watching some Star Trek and the Mole, it's time to get as much shut-eye as I can manage in 8 hours. Hope I can funnel my good Magic-playing days at the Veterans Memorial and have another success this week.
To all my friends who will not read this until after the bar exam, best of luck! We'll see in October!
Tuesday, June 03, 2008
Guitar Hero - The Correct Moves
Lots of good vibes today. First was the official 88th credit hour added to my law school career, officially graduating me (late last night, entry below).
Then I get to work and call Bexley Woods again. Got a manager finally and talked her through the situation. She finally admitted fault and dropped the June/security deposit charges. Yay!
Then I go get Disturbed's new album after work. Almost listened to it once through and more opinion later, but it seems much better than the last albums by my two other favorite bands Metallica and Linkin Park. Maybe not as good as Ten Thousand Fists, but close.
And the best news of all - when Guitar Hero: Aerosmith was announced, I immediately said "What the hell...why pick them when Metallica fits so much better?" But Activision said they would likely bring out at least 1-2 more artist-specific releases before or just after the next big Guitar Hero game (was GH IV, now called GH: World Tour). Well today it was announced that the next "expansion" game after GH: World Tour in November 2008 will be GH: Metallica in Q1 2009. Ever since experiencing the joy of playing One on GH:III, I've longed for this announcement. This could be my favorite video game of all time. Also GH:IV will have a pack-in drum set and will be pretty much a full competitor to Rock Band. No real surprise there, but I'm happy to see we'll be able to add the very fun drums to GH in the future. Plus, by waiting to bring out GH:Metallica until now...it will definitely benefit from developers learning from mistakes and feedback in making the original spinoff GH:Aerosmith, and it will almost certainly include all 4 instruments. Simply awesome.
So a great day. But now today is over, and we move onto hump day!
Then I get to work and call Bexley Woods again. Got a manager finally and talked her through the situation. She finally admitted fault and dropped the June/security deposit charges. Yay!
Then I go get Disturbed's new album after work. Almost listened to it once through and more opinion later, but it seems much better than the last albums by my two other favorite bands Metallica and Linkin Park. Maybe not as good as Ten Thousand Fists, but close.
And the best news of all - when Guitar Hero: Aerosmith was announced, I immediately said "What the hell...why pick them when Metallica fits so much better?" But Activision said they would likely bring out at least 1-2 more artist-specific releases before or just after the next big Guitar Hero game (was GH IV, now called GH: World Tour). Well today it was announced that the next "expansion" game after GH: World Tour in November 2008 will be GH: Metallica in Q1 2009. Ever since experiencing the joy of playing One on GH:III, I've longed for this announcement. This could be my favorite video game of all time. Also GH:IV will have a pack-in drum set and will be pretty much a full competitor to Rock Band. No real surprise there, but I'm happy to see we'll be able to add the very fun drums to GH in the future. Plus, by waiting to bring out GH:Metallica until now...it will definitely benefit from developers learning from mistakes and feedback in making the original spinoff GH:Aerosmith, and it will almost certainly include all 4 instruments. Simply awesome.
So a great day. But now today is over, and we move onto hump day!
Monday, June 02, 2008
It's Official Now - I Really Graduated
The final grades of law school are in, and I'm very happy with the results. The most important part is that I officially now have 88 credit hours to my name with grades, and that is enough to officially warrant a diploma to be picked up after the bar exam. When I stepped into the fine halls of Moritz College of Law, I had the same goals/expectations as I had when making similar transitions from Frontier district grade schools to Marietta High School, and again when starting at OSU for undergrad. That was, to do my best and hopefully stay within reach of the top of the class. In law school, that meant I wanted to avoid any C's. I feel like sometimes I could have given more effort, but that extra effort would not have provided much more than diminishing returns I think. I sort of struggled with the system first year and split about evenly between A's and B's (high point being Property and low point being Contracts), but after that I managed through a lot of work and a good bit of luck to run through second and third year with nothing lower than a 91 A-. I finished up with a 91 in Professional Responsibility, a 98 in Civil Procedure II, and a 99 in Wills, Trusts, and Estates. This puts me (apparently) at 3.75 GPA and a 94.7 average. Definitely in the Top 10%, might crack the very bottom of Top 5% if someone above me got 3L senioritis. That determination will come later, but it's finally over. No more grades, one more standardized test...and it's finally done!
Now back to that little standardized test prep...
Now back to that little standardized test prep...
Sunday, June 01, 2008
Moving and Switching Gears
So where did we leave off? I believe it was driving down with a truckload of stuff on Sunday and putting a bed together. We also put the big screen TV and the entertainment center/stand back together as well as they needed to be put together for the Dish guy. So Monday morning comes and the Dish Network guy shows up, looks around and determines that the previous tenants or cable guy were amateurs. There's cables just sort of hanging from the basement ceiling and nothing is securely tied down or hidden, the highlight being a 13:1 cable splitter hanging in the path of a door in our basement. These guys seriously had cable running to each room! He gets to working on that, which takes quite a while longer than I thought. Kelley and I were going to Moe's for lunch, but he stayed so long that she ended up just having to hit the road without Moe's. The packers from the moving company were coming into the apartment around 1 PM to pack the breakables. I end up just sitting in my camping chair (the only chair in the house) and making some more calls to cancel utilities in Columbus and change addresses on accounts, etc. Apparently Dish Network's front-line sales crew and their install crew are having some communication problems, as it takes multiple calls to their home office to set up the dish to receive...and they tried to install a regular box when we bought a DVR box with DVR service. Thankfully the guy had a spare DVR box in the truck, or it would have been more waiting. I finally got to take off for work in the afternoon, and spent over 3 hours doing administrative things like getting my stuff from the law clerk station moved down to my office, after finding out just where my office was. Turns out I'm moving down to our bottom floor, floor 22. The office is HUGE for an associate though, and the rumor was Adam got moved out of it because it was too big for an associate. Maybe they recanted on that idea, especially considering the seemingly more important consideration is getting associates and legal assistants together and that's the only office on 22 where my new legal assistant (and the other associate she works for) is located. We're the party floor, let me tell you. But the first day at work was a wash.
It was an interesting first week, as Monday and Tuesday nights I went to Home Depot after work. It's funny that once you have a house (albeit rented), you start going to Home Depot more than you ever have before in your lifetime. I bought lots of stuff including those expensive new mercury lightbulbs (I'm sick of those burning out so often and there are a ton of fixtures in the new house so they would burn out probably at least once a week), a lawnmower and weedwacker which would eventually go back thanks to more gifts from the in-laws, and tons and tons of curtain rods. On Monday evening I put the sound system together for the TV and did the small stuff like shovel out the back steps so our drain back there does not block. On Tuesday I put up countless curtain rods after purchasing a new cheap power drill to put them up and fighting with the old walls of the house. Meanwhile in Columbus Tuesday and Wednesday were spent finishing the packing and loading the semi-trailer. I guess Ms. Sweet Marcy from the rental office showed her other side when she came to tell the moving company they couldn't have the semi truck in the apartment complex. I hear she was a complete bitch, which just shows that some people are very two-faced depending on what you are doing. The moving company worked that out and got everything loaded up, then Kelley came down on Wednesday evening.
Although I hate being locked into a contract, the Dish setup is pretty nice. It also has the NFL Network and the Big Ten Network, so Time Warner can chalk up another lost customer to that. I'll still buy their Road Runner (and phone service so we can get an alarm system in a little while), but adios to cable. It all costs the same whether you get Dish or TWC, so it's really a wash. Subtle changes at work too evidence how big a change it is to go from "law clerk" or "summer associate" to "associate." You actually get quicker service from the staff or at least it seems that way. Partners definitely start expecting more of you, like the first week I get asked to call a client to check on them sending us more information. As I've rarely even been in the room for client conversations let alone doing one myself, that was kind of exciting. Even though I'm still learning the art of patent applications, partners seem more trusting and let me complete a full draft after prepping claims instead of doing each piece step by step. Instead of just doing research memos for the litigation partners, I'm drafting motions to the court. One partner who is a primarily electrical engineering partner randomly gave me an application to do, but he calls me into his office and goes on a 40 minute stream of consciousness conversation about the invention before telling me exactly what he wants me to do. I like a challenge though, and so I'll muddle my way through this one (plus it is in a new and interesting field, GPS). I had thought that it would be tough billing 1850 a year and work goes so slow sometimes, but now that I've gotten a short taste of being an associate...I can see that I'll quickly be buried with work like everyone else at the firm and that makes the days at work fly by. All in all, the transformation to associate is pretty neat.
The movers showed up earlier than expected on Thursday morning of that week, and Kathy and Bruce stopped by to surprise us and help us start the unpacking process. I escaped to work after most of the unloading was done, and Bruce worked in the yard while Kathy and Kelley worked inside. By the evening, most of the new bookshelves were assembled and the yardwork was caught up. We went to IKEA, the Swedish superstore sensation...and looked around for quite some time. On Friday Kathy and Bruce went home and Tim and Granny showed up to help. Once I got home Friday, it was time to work all weekend. Tim did lots of stuff outside like clean out the gutters and edge the walkways and driveway. Granny set up the kitchen and dining room before turning her attention to the living room. I tackled the basement which was quite an effort (there was no path between the storage space underneath the garage and the rest of the basement thanks to a half-basement full of boxes. Over that weekend we hammered out all the rooms except for the office, the upstairs, and other small details that will undoubtedly take quite a while to get all the way through.
So in the past 2 weeks, work has gotten busy as previously mentioned and we've kept working on the house little by little. Kelley's been doing OK, sleeping a lot due to being sick the past couple weeks. We've gone in for a second ultrasound and now they want to do a third. Hopefully the hospital doesn't screw us over financially on these extras, but I guess they have to be done. The previous landlord is trying to screw us out of our security deposit and an extra month's rent for failing to give them 30 days notice of moving out. We're fighting that one, but the manager apparently refuses to call me which is just so mature (as is completely lieing and claiming they did not give us an eviction notice or lose our rent check for May...which they did). Landlords are so scummy, and they really have no reason to be. I'm sure a place like Bexley Woods has serious problems with certain tenants, but that's no reason to try and screw the people who follow the rules and the people who are generally not trying to screw them over. We'll see where that goes, but I'm not going to hop up and send them a check for $1000 just because they say so. Even Patrice was not that much of a bitch, although she took out a good chunk of our security deposit making "necessary repairs." So the first weekend was unpacking from moving with the in-laws, and the next weekend we went up to Columbus to clean the old apartment and hang out with the Burtons and the Villas. We watched some UFC, and had a great time after working on the apartment most of the day to get it nice and clean. We're hoping to keep in close contact with the Columbus friends, either by going up for the occassional weekend or in the case of the guys, emailing each other at work all day (you should see some of the topics we get on...)
I've managed to not play a softball game yet. Every week it's been rained out, or lack of interest (which should stop now that we've got 3-4 summer people and myself back in the mix), or one week they changed the field and the person supposed to stay at the original field and tell us where to go did not stay long enough to tell me. I'll try to bring some stories once we have something to talk about. It's a nice Tuesday night diversion. We also had our partner-associate dinner for May and it was at Primavista, which as the name implies, sits on the hill overlooking Cincinnati and the river. Very lovely view, and the food was OK. It was good to catch up with some of my co-workers in an informal setting. This weekend Dave D. from work hosted all the associates and spouses/girlfriends over for dinner. That was fun, lasted far longer into the evening that I would have expected. Of course we showed up first, and we were 25 minutes late! Apparently that's how people roll on the weekend, just showing up 30-45 minutes late to come in fashionably late or whatever. Next up on the firm calendar is the Attorney-Spouse annual outing, this year it's a dinner cruise on a riverboat. That should be interesting.
It finally feels like things are settling down (financially as well as otherwise). Bar exam classes started this past week, and so I tried to go to the live class I signed up for. There's only like 5-6 people in there and all are from UC, so I'll just stick with the DVD's. Plus it saves me lots of money on parking at UC garages and eating dinner out every night. Let the diligent 8 weeks of studying begin this week, as I tackle Contracts and Torts. What fun!
If you don't watch Lost, you should really borrow or buy the DVD sets of the three seasons and the fourth when it comes out this fall and catch up. It is definitely the deepest show on TV right now, and this past season you could tell the writers have found their direction in storytelling again. In addition, House had a fantastic finale as well. Guess those writers had some good ideas percolating while they went on strike! Now it's on to summertime, where TV is terrible so we watch a lot of movies and Reds games.
So that's all for now. Don't know how often we'll update this blog, but hopefully some house pictures once everything is truly settled. Onto bar studying!
It was an interesting first week, as Monday and Tuesday nights I went to Home Depot after work. It's funny that once you have a house (albeit rented), you start going to Home Depot more than you ever have before in your lifetime. I bought lots of stuff including those expensive new mercury lightbulbs (I'm sick of those burning out so often and there are a ton of fixtures in the new house so they would burn out probably at least once a week), a lawnmower and weedwacker which would eventually go back thanks to more gifts from the in-laws, and tons and tons of curtain rods. On Monday evening I put the sound system together for the TV and did the small stuff like shovel out the back steps so our drain back there does not block. On Tuesday I put up countless curtain rods after purchasing a new cheap power drill to put them up and fighting with the old walls of the house. Meanwhile in Columbus Tuesday and Wednesday were spent finishing the packing and loading the semi-trailer. I guess Ms. Sweet Marcy from the rental office showed her other side when she came to tell the moving company they couldn't have the semi truck in the apartment complex. I hear she was a complete bitch, which just shows that some people are very two-faced depending on what you are doing. The moving company worked that out and got everything loaded up, then Kelley came down on Wednesday evening.
Although I hate being locked into a contract, the Dish setup is pretty nice. It also has the NFL Network and the Big Ten Network, so Time Warner can chalk up another lost customer to that. I'll still buy their Road Runner (and phone service so we can get an alarm system in a little while), but adios to cable. It all costs the same whether you get Dish or TWC, so it's really a wash. Subtle changes at work too evidence how big a change it is to go from "law clerk" or "summer associate" to "associate." You actually get quicker service from the staff or at least it seems that way. Partners definitely start expecting more of you, like the first week I get asked to call a client to check on them sending us more information. As I've rarely even been in the room for client conversations let alone doing one myself, that was kind of exciting. Even though I'm still learning the art of patent applications, partners seem more trusting and let me complete a full draft after prepping claims instead of doing each piece step by step. Instead of just doing research memos for the litigation partners, I'm drafting motions to the court. One partner who is a primarily electrical engineering partner randomly gave me an application to do, but he calls me into his office and goes on a 40 minute stream of consciousness conversation about the invention before telling me exactly what he wants me to do. I like a challenge though, and so I'll muddle my way through this one (plus it is in a new and interesting field, GPS). I had thought that it would be tough billing 1850 a year and work goes so slow sometimes, but now that I've gotten a short taste of being an associate...I can see that I'll quickly be buried with work like everyone else at the firm and that makes the days at work fly by. All in all, the transformation to associate is pretty neat.
The movers showed up earlier than expected on Thursday morning of that week, and Kathy and Bruce stopped by to surprise us and help us start the unpacking process. I escaped to work after most of the unloading was done, and Bruce worked in the yard while Kathy and Kelley worked inside. By the evening, most of the new bookshelves were assembled and the yardwork was caught up. We went to IKEA, the Swedish superstore sensation...and looked around for quite some time. On Friday Kathy and Bruce went home and Tim and Granny showed up to help. Once I got home Friday, it was time to work all weekend. Tim did lots of stuff outside like clean out the gutters and edge the walkways and driveway. Granny set up the kitchen and dining room before turning her attention to the living room. I tackled the basement which was quite an effort (there was no path between the storage space underneath the garage and the rest of the basement thanks to a half-basement full of boxes. Over that weekend we hammered out all the rooms except for the office, the upstairs, and other small details that will undoubtedly take quite a while to get all the way through.
So in the past 2 weeks, work has gotten busy as previously mentioned and we've kept working on the house little by little. Kelley's been doing OK, sleeping a lot due to being sick the past couple weeks. We've gone in for a second ultrasound and now they want to do a third. Hopefully the hospital doesn't screw us over financially on these extras, but I guess they have to be done. The previous landlord is trying to screw us out of our security deposit and an extra month's rent for failing to give them 30 days notice of moving out. We're fighting that one, but the manager apparently refuses to call me which is just so mature (as is completely lieing and claiming they did not give us an eviction notice or lose our rent check for May...which they did). Landlords are so scummy, and they really have no reason to be. I'm sure a place like Bexley Woods has serious problems with certain tenants, but that's no reason to try and screw the people who follow the rules and the people who are generally not trying to screw them over. We'll see where that goes, but I'm not going to hop up and send them a check for $1000 just because they say so. Even Patrice was not that much of a bitch, although she took out a good chunk of our security deposit making "necessary repairs." So the first weekend was unpacking from moving with the in-laws, and the next weekend we went up to Columbus to clean the old apartment and hang out with the Burtons and the Villas. We watched some UFC, and had a great time after working on the apartment most of the day to get it nice and clean. We're hoping to keep in close contact with the Columbus friends, either by going up for the occassional weekend or in the case of the guys, emailing each other at work all day (you should see some of the topics we get on...)
I've managed to not play a softball game yet. Every week it's been rained out, or lack of interest (which should stop now that we've got 3-4 summer people and myself back in the mix), or one week they changed the field and the person supposed to stay at the original field and tell us where to go did not stay long enough to tell me. I'll try to bring some stories once we have something to talk about. It's a nice Tuesday night diversion. We also had our partner-associate dinner for May and it was at Primavista, which as the name implies, sits on the hill overlooking Cincinnati and the river. Very lovely view, and the food was OK. It was good to catch up with some of my co-workers in an informal setting. This weekend Dave D. from work hosted all the associates and spouses/girlfriends over for dinner. That was fun, lasted far longer into the evening that I would have expected. Of course we showed up first, and we were 25 minutes late! Apparently that's how people roll on the weekend, just showing up 30-45 minutes late to come in fashionably late or whatever. Next up on the firm calendar is the Attorney-Spouse annual outing, this year it's a dinner cruise on a riverboat. That should be interesting.
It finally feels like things are settling down (financially as well as otherwise). Bar exam classes started this past week, and so I tried to go to the live class I signed up for. There's only like 5-6 people in there and all are from UC, so I'll just stick with the DVD's. Plus it saves me lots of money on parking at UC garages and eating dinner out every night. Let the diligent 8 weeks of studying begin this week, as I tackle Contracts and Torts. What fun!
If you don't watch Lost, you should really borrow or buy the DVD sets of the three seasons and the fourth when it comes out this fall and catch up. It is definitely the deepest show on TV right now, and this past season you could tell the writers have found their direction in storytelling again. In addition, House had a fantastic finale as well. Guess those writers had some good ideas percolating while they went on strike! Now it's on to summertime, where TV is terrible so we watch a lot of movies and Reds games.
So that's all for now. Don't know how often we'll update this blog, but hopefully some house pictures once everything is truly settled. Onto bar studying!
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
Hooding Weekend
And this ends a journey, from August 1989 (first day of Kindergarten) to 2001 (high school graduation) to 2005 (OSU graduation) to May 9, 2008. Nineteen full years of being a student all culminating in one ceremony where you change what you've done for the vast majority of your life and switch it to a productive career. It will be fulfilling to finally stop racking up huge bills and start paying them off, and to do what I enjoy every day as some class schedules are nothing but training. But in the end, graduation is a ceremony for families to enjoy and celebrate one of their own and their accomplishments.
Wednesday after my last final ever, Kelley and I went to Melting Pot. We had an awesome dinner and the special dessert of the month was Bananas Foster which was different and good, but not the same as their more chocolate-y dishes. So Thursday when Kathy got in, we finished our goodwill runs and then went to Melting Pot for chocolate. It was good stuff, and we had a server who was one year away from applying to OSU law school. Good luck buddy.
I actually had trouble sleeping due to a little excitement. Hard to believe, but you don't get many celebrations like this one. We wake up bright and early and get down to Palace Theatre for the Honors Convocation. Looking over the list of awards, I thought I was definitely getting a useless certificate for the top grade in Legal Writing (the better part of that award was the nice Black's Law Dictionary we got over a year ago), but I had no idea if anything else. I knew I was in the running for one of the top Appellate Advocacy briefs, and I thought I was almost a lock for the top student in Intellectual Property coursework. Then follows one of the longest 1.5 hours in my life, as countless awards and pieces of paper get handed out. As it turns out, I had forgotten my volunteer time for Moritz Ambassadors (admissions office) 1L-2L years, so I got a certificate for that as well as the Legal Writing. No AppAd award, but I was thrilled to see Larry take home a Top 3 finish. Also did not get the IP award, which went to Bart and Steve. I knew I was screwed when Professor Lee said the award was going to two people who survived all four of his IP classes (which means they did not take patent law 2L year and so I guess all of us who were truly interested in patent law got the shaft on that one). But let's face it, they are all cute little certificates that don't mean a ton and they should be spread around to the most people possible. the cutest moment was when Keener went up to accept an award and his little kid yelled out "Daddy!" when he was accepting the award midstage (Keener smiled and waved out to him). The best moment outside of Larry's award was definitely the big AK taking home a nice plaque for a prestigious award (the name of which escapes me now). We escaped the convocation and went over to a little pizza place to blow the brunch hour. The place was dead, which was just fine. Once we got closer to noon, we trekked back to the car to get the cap, gown, and hood.
Met up with Mom and Steve and Bruce at the Theatre, then walked around back to go to the graduation staging area. We then gathered over 200 people in the hottest little "hospitality suite." You can imagine what the biggest room in the back of a theatre looks like, and it's not that huge. Eventually we line up down a very long hallway leading to the ceremony, where we proceed to stand in alphabetical order for way too long. The highlight was greeting OSU President E. Gordon Gee on his way into the ceremony. That guy is amazing for the university (again) and is a vast improvement over that bitch Holbrook. More waiting, and then we got to finally go in. I couldn't find my family thanks to the ridiculous amount of waving families out there, so whatever. Got to the seat and in for the long haul.
To start us off, Brian Smith showed off some outstanding pipes in the National Anthem. He should really consider singing because those are his gifts, but whatever. The higlights of the ceremony were definitely the speeches. E. Gordon Gee gave a nice little rousing speech, and then at the end he says "you all have a great day" and walks off the stage. Exit stage left. I guess he had some more important things to attend to, but it was definitely funny watching him just leave the building. Professor Oesterle got best professor award, and he gave a nice speech making fun of a lot of the more interesting aspects of our class. He especially bashed on Alexis which was funny yet surprising. Then Phil Eckenrode gave the student speech and it was absolutely fantastic. I knew he would knock it out of the park. The LLM student wasn't that bad either. The only real downer was the infamous Brewer speech, which failed on its softer moments and ended with an unforgiveable disaster (NEVER EVER end a speech "Class of XXXX, We Did It!" at a law school graduation after Legally Blonde...that's just plain jane and overdone). Maybe I'm jaded, but you know what it's over and who cares at this point the exploits of Smith, Miller, Seifert, and Brewer. We are all moving into our careers and let the firms or government deal with the various personalities. The top 25% stood up for recognition, and a lot of surprises in that lot. Top 10% was pretty expected though, and I'm happy to have my name in the graduation booklet for that (even though that's only for 5 out of 6 semesters). Got the hood fro Oesterle and that was that. Took some pictures in the super-crowded theatre and alley outside before returning the cap and gown and running off for dinner.
The 8 of us (James, Dad, Mom, Steve, Kathy, Bruce, and Kelley and I) went to Logan's Steakhouse and I got a big steak for celebratory dinner. I received a nice OSU watch and an OSU clock for the office as well as other small nifty nick-nacks. My Dad is getting me some nice diploma and bar admission frames. The usual nice take for graduation. After going home and relaxing for a bit, Dad and James came over and we actually got some four-player Rock Band going. I never would have thought my Dad would play drums and sing, but we rocked it out for a couple hours. Then we finally got to bed and man was I exhausted. Between the finals and the prep for moving and graduation, I was already beat before the real moving began.
Sunday we packed up the big new TV and sound system as well as the spare bed and covered it all with plastic (it was raining of course) and finally hit the road for Cincinnati after 8 PM. We got in and unloaded in the rain and dark, then put the bed together. Another restless night of sleep and off to my first day of work the next day. This leads us to the move, but we must wrap up the law school entries here before getting into that (which will be later as there's much more to catch up on and not enough time tonight to write).
So law school. Over $100K in debt that I did not have, but I have a very lucrative job close enough to OSU football, right in town with my favorite baseball team, and close enough to family for them to reasonably visit and us to reciprocate. I think I will be tons happier as a patent lawyer than I ever would have been as an engineer...and I'll make a lot more money doing it (a nice bonus on top of the most important thing, happiness). I accomplished everything and more of what I set out to do as a student, including nothing lower than an A up through high school, high school valedictorian, summa cum laude in Mechanical Engineering, and top 10% in law school. Those things are nice and they sure make my Mom and Dad proud, you can just see it in their eyes as they were grinning more on the day of Hooding than I've ever remembered seeing them. But I just hope I can translate the successes of my past life (and make no mistake, it is now the past life) into professional success and success as a father and husband. That's where the road of life leads now, and I can only hope to have as good a time as I had the past three years, despite the hard grind that is law school.
Thanks to all the friends and sometimes foes who made law school entertaining and somewhat life-consuming. I'll miss most of you as only a handful are moving to Cincinnati, and we'll catch up whenever we can. Thanks also to all the readers, who have survived the much-too-long breaks and given supporting (or disagreeing and not-so-supporting) feedback. I will continue to write as the scary world of being an associate, passing the bar exam, and becoming a father come up on my horizon.
In all things there is an end and a beginning, and while we look back sadly at the days long lost, we must dwell on the bright future that those days in the past have paved the way for.
Or in the words of a character I admire, we journey through life "to boldly go where no one has gone before."
Wednesday after my last final ever, Kelley and I went to Melting Pot. We had an awesome dinner and the special dessert of the month was Bananas Foster which was different and good, but not the same as their more chocolate-y dishes. So Thursday when Kathy got in, we finished our goodwill runs and then went to Melting Pot for chocolate. It was good stuff, and we had a server who was one year away from applying to OSU law school. Good luck buddy.
I actually had trouble sleeping due to a little excitement. Hard to believe, but you don't get many celebrations like this one. We wake up bright and early and get down to Palace Theatre for the Honors Convocation. Looking over the list of awards, I thought I was definitely getting a useless certificate for the top grade in Legal Writing (the better part of that award was the nice Black's Law Dictionary we got over a year ago), but I had no idea if anything else. I knew I was in the running for one of the top Appellate Advocacy briefs, and I thought I was almost a lock for the top student in Intellectual Property coursework. Then follows one of the longest 1.5 hours in my life, as countless awards and pieces of paper get handed out. As it turns out, I had forgotten my volunteer time for Moritz Ambassadors (admissions office) 1L-2L years, so I got a certificate for that as well as the Legal Writing. No AppAd award, but I was thrilled to see Larry take home a Top 3 finish. Also did not get the IP award, which went to Bart and Steve. I knew I was screwed when Professor Lee said the award was going to two people who survived all four of his IP classes (which means they did not take patent law 2L year and so I guess all of us who were truly interested in patent law got the shaft on that one). But let's face it, they are all cute little certificates that don't mean a ton and they should be spread around to the most people possible. the cutest moment was when Keener went up to accept an award and his little kid yelled out "Daddy!" when he was accepting the award midstage (Keener smiled and waved out to him). The best moment outside of Larry's award was definitely the big AK taking home a nice plaque for a prestigious award (the name of which escapes me now). We escaped the convocation and went over to a little pizza place to blow the brunch hour. The place was dead, which was just fine. Once we got closer to noon, we trekked back to the car to get the cap, gown, and hood.
Met up with Mom and Steve and Bruce at the Theatre, then walked around back to go to the graduation staging area. We then gathered over 200 people in the hottest little "hospitality suite." You can imagine what the biggest room in the back of a theatre looks like, and it's not that huge. Eventually we line up down a very long hallway leading to the ceremony, where we proceed to stand in alphabetical order for way too long. The highlight was greeting OSU President E. Gordon Gee on his way into the ceremony. That guy is amazing for the university (again) and is a vast improvement over that bitch Holbrook. More waiting, and then we got to finally go in. I couldn't find my family thanks to the ridiculous amount of waving families out there, so whatever. Got to the seat and in for the long haul.
To start us off, Brian Smith showed off some outstanding pipes in the National Anthem. He should really consider singing because those are his gifts, but whatever. The higlights of the ceremony were definitely the speeches. E. Gordon Gee gave a nice little rousing speech, and then at the end he says "you all have a great day" and walks off the stage. Exit stage left. I guess he had some more important things to attend to, but it was definitely funny watching him just leave the building. Professor Oesterle got best professor award, and he gave a nice speech making fun of a lot of the more interesting aspects of our class. He especially bashed on Alexis which was funny yet surprising. Then Phil Eckenrode gave the student speech and it was absolutely fantastic. I knew he would knock it out of the park. The LLM student wasn't that bad either. The only real downer was the infamous Brewer speech, which failed on its softer moments and ended with an unforgiveable disaster (NEVER EVER end a speech "Class of XXXX, We Did It!" at a law school graduation after Legally Blonde...that's just plain jane and overdone). Maybe I'm jaded, but you know what it's over and who cares at this point the exploits of Smith, Miller, Seifert, and Brewer. We are all moving into our careers and let the firms or government deal with the various personalities. The top 25% stood up for recognition, and a lot of surprises in that lot. Top 10% was pretty expected though, and I'm happy to have my name in the graduation booklet for that (even though that's only for 5 out of 6 semesters). Got the hood fro Oesterle and that was that. Took some pictures in the super-crowded theatre and alley outside before returning the cap and gown and running off for dinner.
The 8 of us (James, Dad, Mom, Steve, Kathy, Bruce, and Kelley and I) went to Logan's Steakhouse and I got a big steak for celebratory dinner. I received a nice OSU watch and an OSU clock for the office as well as other small nifty nick-nacks. My Dad is getting me some nice diploma and bar admission frames. The usual nice take for graduation. After going home and relaxing for a bit, Dad and James came over and we actually got some four-player Rock Band going. I never would have thought my Dad would play drums and sing, but we rocked it out for a couple hours. Then we finally got to bed and man was I exhausted. Between the finals and the prep for moving and graduation, I was already beat before the real moving began.
Sunday we packed up the big new TV and sound system as well as the spare bed and covered it all with plastic (it was raining of course) and finally hit the road for Cincinnati after 8 PM. We got in and unloaded in the rain and dark, then put the bed together. Another restless night of sleep and off to my first day of work the next day. This leads us to the move, but we must wrap up the law school entries here before getting into that (which will be later as there's much more to catch up on and not enough time tonight to write).
So law school. Over $100K in debt that I did not have, but I have a very lucrative job close enough to OSU football, right in town with my favorite baseball team, and close enough to family for them to reasonably visit and us to reciprocate. I think I will be tons happier as a patent lawyer than I ever would have been as an engineer...and I'll make a lot more money doing it (a nice bonus on top of the most important thing, happiness). I accomplished everything and more of what I set out to do as a student, including nothing lower than an A up through high school, high school valedictorian, summa cum laude in Mechanical Engineering, and top 10% in law school. Those things are nice and they sure make my Mom and Dad proud, you can just see it in their eyes as they were grinning more on the day of Hooding than I've ever remembered seeing them. But I just hope I can translate the successes of my past life (and make no mistake, it is now the past life) into professional success and success as a father and husband. That's where the road of life leads now, and I can only hope to have as good a time as I had the past three years, despite the hard grind that is law school.
Thanks to all the friends and sometimes foes who made law school entertaining and somewhat life-consuming. I'll miss most of you as only a handful are moving to Cincinnati, and we'll catch up whenever we can. Thanks also to all the readers, who have survived the much-too-long breaks and given supporting (or disagreeing and not-so-supporting) feedback. I will continue to write as the scary world of being an associate, passing the bar exam, and becoming a father come up on my horizon.
In all things there is an end and a beginning, and while we look back sadly at the days long lost, we must dwell on the bright future that those days in the past have paved the way for.
Or in the words of a character I admire, we journey through life "to boldly go where no one has gone before."
The Finals Season
Well it's been since mid-April, and wow how things have changed since then. We will start with an entry on finals season, which flew by. I finished up the bibliography issue and turned my attention to three days of work before starting the focus on finals. On Saturday I sat down with some fellow JDR peeps Julie and Larry and I ripped through Larry's outline in 2 days, making fixes and changes along the way. Monday morning Larry and I met with Nick and Jeff at Caribou and I got another cup of the magic Earl Grey. We hammered out some fine points of law and went to Wendy's for another gastrointestinal-safe pre-finals meal of chicken nuggets and such. I honestly did not feel 100% prepared, but we had a great outline for the class.
So we get into the exam and the multiple choice section is an absolute nightmare. Professor Johnson puts a state code in the back where only parts of the Uniform Trust Code and Uniform Probate Code are adopted, and even those are changed in some circumstances just a little bit. Everything left out is common law. What this means is for every single stinking question, you are forced to double check the law in the back of the 40 page exam packet and then your outline before even thinking about answering. I spent too much time on this and rocked into the essays. The first was an in-depth trust question which I rocked I think. The second was a four-part wills question. I got through the first part, sped through the second, and wrote about a sentence total for the last two parts combined. Ick. So much for time management. I think maybe a solid B on this one, an A if I rocked the multiple choice (which is my strategy, but this multiple choice was a nightmare).
The next exam was on Friday and it was Professional Responsibility. With having to study for the MPRE twice thanks to snow and Greenbaum's exam being on the exact same subject material, I knew spending more than a day would be killer. So I went to work two more days to get away from it all, then came back and really just breezed through a JDR outline, changing it enough to fit my own needs and make it my own. This only took about 4 hours. So I definitely blew off this exam, but it was not that hard. We had at least a half hour too long on this one, but I wrote to the gun because that's what you do. I felt like I covered everything except reporting requirements in the essay (which literally covered about everything in the course, a real disaster of a fact pattern), and did OK in the multiple choice. I figured a solid A.
Now the final exam of my law school career I took more seriously than any other since I ripped through Business Associations in 4 grueling days. Again it was Larry and I, and this time I spent four days meticulously ripping through his outline while he stayed a little ahead of me each day outlining the course. After 4 days of rip-roaring discussion including a lively debate on supplemental jurisdiction and the limits imposed. It's funny how absolutely giggly and ridiculous your sense of humor gets after 4 days of intense studying. The bar exam is going to be a trip...but I was finding the funniest mis-spellings in my class notes. That makes sense, considering I spent more time in that class playing Tecmo Bowl and Scheherazade than taking notes. There's just a limit to some professors, and while I love Greenbaum...by the second session every day he did not really have enough to keep me interested. Plus Civil Procedure is pretty simple...there's just a hell of a lot of topics covered. I cannot imagine the old days a decade ago when Civil Procedure I and II were combined into a year-long 6 credit hour first year class. That would be a nightmare! Anyways, we were rocking longer than most as Civ Pro was on the last day of regular finals. It felt good just to finally get to the final exam.
I thought it would feel special or like an accomplishment to go to your last final, but we got in there and it felt like just doing business. By the time we got to this last one, as a 3L you just go in there and laugh at all the super-serious 2L's while rocking the exam out as best you can. More scantron multiple choice goodness, and these were much harder than his Professional Responsibility questions. Unlike PR, I thought our outline was key to rocking the essays as well. There were some gray areas, but this should be another A.
So the finals were over, in a blink of an eye. We had decided after a couple breakdowns that we should have the moving company pack the majority of our items once we found out the estimate was a couple hundred below what the firm was willing to shell out. We still spent the Thursday after finals going through boxes and getting rid of over a truckload to goodwill and half-price books as well as countless bags of trash. Moving is a big pain, but at least it gives you a chance to go through and cut down on the useless belongings, of which we probably still have too many but we got 80% of it out this time.
So on to Hooding weekend...
So we get into the exam and the multiple choice section is an absolute nightmare. Professor Johnson puts a state code in the back where only parts of the Uniform Trust Code and Uniform Probate Code are adopted, and even those are changed in some circumstances just a little bit. Everything left out is common law. What this means is for every single stinking question, you are forced to double check the law in the back of the 40 page exam packet and then your outline before even thinking about answering. I spent too much time on this and rocked into the essays. The first was an in-depth trust question which I rocked I think. The second was a four-part wills question. I got through the first part, sped through the second, and wrote about a sentence total for the last two parts combined. Ick. So much for time management. I think maybe a solid B on this one, an A if I rocked the multiple choice (which is my strategy, but this multiple choice was a nightmare).
The next exam was on Friday and it was Professional Responsibility. With having to study for the MPRE twice thanks to snow and Greenbaum's exam being on the exact same subject material, I knew spending more than a day would be killer. So I went to work two more days to get away from it all, then came back and really just breezed through a JDR outline, changing it enough to fit my own needs and make it my own. This only took about 4 hours. So I definitely blew off this exam, but it was not that hard. We had at least a half hour too long on this one, but I wrote to the gun because that's what you do. I felt like I covered everything except reporting requirements in the essay (which literally covered about everything in the course, a real disaster of a fact pattern), and did OK in the multiple choice. I figured a solid A.
Now the final exam of my law school career I took more seriously than any other since I ripped through Business Associations in 4 grueling days. Again it was Larry and I, and this time I spent four days meticulously ripping through his outline while he stayed a little ahead of me each day outlining the course. After 4 days of rip-roaring discussion including a lively debate on supplemental jurisdiction and the limits imposed. It's funny how absolutely giggly and ridiculous your sense of humor gets after 4 days of intense studying. The bar exam is going to be a trip...but I was finding the funniest mis-spellings in my class notes. That makes sense, considering I spent more time in that class playing Tecmo Bowl and Scheherazade than taking notes. There's just a limit to some professors, and while I love Greenbaum...by the second session every day he did not really have enough to keep me interested. Plus Civil Procedure is pretty simple...there's just a hell of a lot of topics covered. I cannot imagine the old days a decade ago when Civil Procedure I and II were combined into a year-long 6 credit hour first year class. That would be a nightmare! Anyways, we were rocking longer than most as Civ Pro was on the last day of regular finals. It felt good just to finally get to the final exam.
I thought it would feel special or like an accomplishment to go to your last final, but we got in there and it felt like just doing business. By the time we got to this last one, as a 3L you just go in there and laugh at all the super-serious 2L's while rocking the exam out as best you can. More scantron multiple choice goodness, and these were much harder than his Professional Responsibility questions. Unlike PR, I thought our outline was key to rocking the essays as well. There were some gray areas, but this should be another A.
So the finals were over, in a blink of an eye. We had decided after a couple breakdowns that we should have the moving company pack the majority of our items once we found out the estimate was a couple hundred below what the firm was willing to shell out. We still spent the Thursday after finals going through boxes and getting rid of over a truckload to goodwill and half-price books as well as countless bags of trash. Moving is a big pain, but at least it gives you a chance to go through and cut down on the useless belongings, of which we probably still have too many but we got 80% of it out this time.
So on to Hooding weekend...
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