getting sick for a week

I got sick last Thursday evening. I rode my bike home, sat down on the couch, and I knew something was wrong. My temperature was between 99 and 101. I had an overnight century ride on Saturday and obviously that didn't happen for me but on Friday I encouraged my fiance to go and told her I would be fine.

So wrong.

Welcome to h1n1 hell.

Thursday though to Saturday evening was just a horrible preamble to this vicious disease's magnum opus: my near total destruction.

Saturday evening the fever started spiking up and down between 100 and 103. When it reached 104 I made that first post. I didn't think I could get worse than that but I stood corrected. 105 was the peak and at that point I became pretty dysfunctional. 3am-6am is kind of a blur. I vomited and got dizzy and had severe diarrhea which made it almost impossible to stay hydrated.

I couldn't control myself very well. I started hearing things I knew weren't there. I could hear my mom in the kitchen for a little while. I could hear my fiance at the door struggling with her keys coming to help me.

After that I slowly trended upwards. I sent a text message at 6am asking for help. My uncle is a doctor and he called me up and talked me through what I needed to do. I had to take a cool shower. The shower was brutal but it did help me bring my temperature down.

I did my best to follow what Professor Stiglitz told us in case we caught the flu. He told us to stay on top of the reading. It was hard to do. I did some pretty bad soft tissue damage to my insides during the violent heaving. I couldn't take my knees away from my chest much longer than 15 minutes at a time for a few days. I had to eat soft foods like bananas and applesauce till they healed.

I said in that previous post that my fever went away. It did, but not for very long. It kept coming back around 101 on and off until today.

Class by class damage report:

Property:

I am behind in the reading. I missed three classes. I'm going to get caught up tomorrow and make an appointment for office hours.

Criminal Law:

I am behind in the reading. I missed one class session. The class only meets twice and it was cancelled once.

Contracts:

I am up to date on the reading but behind in my understanding of the material. damages/ remedies are difficult and the professor likes everything done a particular way. if i can't figure out the important stuff from the tutoring handout key then I'm going to go to office hours.

Civil Procedure:

I am up to date on the reading and the professor cancelled class this week. I have to email the tutor and get the handout I missed but other than that I am fine in this class.

Legal Skills:

I went to this class on Thursday and had my paper peer edited. I need the peer edit for the final paper. My memo is written for the most part but it needed blue book cites and because I wrote the thing in pieces it needed some serious work to get it to flow. I worked on it with a fever and it certainly fell short of my usual standard. I got what I needed though even if it set my fever off again and I immediately went home to collapse in exhaustion.

Overall impact:

Pros: A number of my classes were cancelled this week so if I had to pick a week to get sick it would be this one.

Cons: Everyone else is healthy and cranking away at outlines and practice exams while I've been laid out for a week.

My classmates:

my study buddy is a huge help and offered me notes and someone else who I hardly talk to just offered to send me his class notes out of the blue just to help out.

the one person I asked for notes from wants to trade for my outlines. i don't mind this because i will understand my outlines better than anyone else will but its weird running into people who always insist on their 'cut'.

I was planning on visiting my folks for Thanksgiving, but that might not be possible anymore. :(

still @ home

the fever is gone. I'm really weak. I'm stuck drinking powerade and eating bananas, rice and applesauce until my guts heal. I can't sit in one place for more than 40 minutes without feeling like someone is stabbing me. I tried to read but my brain/ eyes get tired after about 2 cases.

After I made the last post things went downhill fast. Being alone and that sick is pretty scary. I'm glad it didn't happen during finals.

Screw the student health plan

I have the flu. Not just a small one either. As I write this I feel dizzy and I have fever of 104. Student health website (aetna) does not function and neither does their customer service number.

Reporting the flu to the school did nothing either. I've gotten no response from the school.

I'm alone, vomiting, and can barley stand up.

get your own health care.

finals month.

I started grinding for finals. It is, for lack of a better word, a bitch.

Status:

-2 of my outlines are behind, but they are my strongest classes.

-2 of my outlines are up to date, but they are my weakest classes.

-I am attempting to finish all the course work for legal skills today and still get civ pro reading/ briefing done for tomorrow.

I took a few practice tests last week. The practice tests are a rough experience. I have to get my minimum contacts test down to a science. Contracts seems like a race to the finish. You have to write like crazy and always argue both sides even if the other side is a poor argument.

Some people are reading ahead to the finish so they can start studying. I've opted out of this. I'm better at learning the material by reading/ briefing, going to class for the corresponding lecture, and then incorporating it into my notes. I learn the concepts best by reading, writing and listening to them back to back.

This Thursday-Sunday are going to be exam days.

I am very anxious about all this. I've never really worried about grades because I've always done pretty well. I went to a really competitive undergrad too and I didn't even worry this much about my thesis. I think the nervousness stems from three parts. 1) I've never done this before. Summer enrichment helped but it definitely has nothing on the pressure presented by fall finals. 2) I see three or four people that are consistently outworking me. They are in the library from 7am to 9 or 10pm. You're not supposed to worry about what others are doing and just focus on making sure you can apply the concepts but I can't help but end up slightly intimidated. 3) The exams are all or nothing. It feels like the fall semester really sets the tone for the rest of law school and summer job prospects.

Anyway, wish me luck.

'I have more questions than you have answers.'

I answered questions for about 30 minutes in class the other day. The professor for civil procedure is probably the toughest on the students and the class has more of an 'academic boot camp' feel to it than the others. I handled the questions pretty well. At one point the professor attempted to create a hypothetical to elicit a certain response from me. I answered all his questions correctly. He just didn't ask the question the right way to get the answer he wanted. He finally laughed, phrased the question correctly and as I was thinking about the answer he said 'See, I have more questions than you have answers.'

I laughed because it was painfully true as my mind raced to find an appropriate answer.

After rephrases and the scribbled out drawings on the board about who lived where during whatever time period and what state the parties all lived in I got a little confused and fumbled on the last answer. I did my best to work through it and I think I did alright.

Next weekend is Halloween. For whatever reason California Western students take this holiday really, really seriously. They treat it like a Catholic treats Fat Tuesday before lent. I guess there is a parallel (admittedly not the best analog, but I like it so shut up) there in that after Halloween everyone gives up their freedom to go out and starts putting in 8-12 hours a day, every day, until finals.

Some students haven't caught on quite yet to how hard this work load is. You can get away with not reading or not briefing once or twice but its painful to catch back up. If you don't read or brief for a class and do nothing to learn the material otherwise you have effectively put it off for another day. It takes about 50-60 hours per week of going to class and studying outside of class to learn and know the material cold. To learn it well enough to answer any kind of questions you could get away with 40. So lets just say 50 hours/ week. If you only put in 30 hours for a week you've backlogged 20 hours of learning for yourself. If you do that two weeks in a row you have a 40 hour backlog.

Thats not to say it isn't irrecoverable. Its just going to be an excruciating experience.

I played soccer all through high school pretty competitively. Our coach, who we not so affectionately called, 'the soccer Nazi', would make us run 60-50-40s. You have 60 seconds to run a lap around the field and without stopping you have 50 seconds to run the next lap and without stopping you have 40 seconds to run the last lap which leaves you breathless, dead tired and wondering why you ever thought soccer was fun.

The fall semester feels about the same. The beginning is 40 hours/week, the middle is 50 hours/week and the end is 60 hours/week to the finish. I think the school recommends 70 hours/ week for the whole semester or something ungodly like that but that would probably leave you with the social and networking skills of a turnip.

My outlines are looking good. My tutors like them and have given me their input. I'm going to start taking practice tests this weekend.

One last sprint to the finish.

Y'all be hatin' and I see why

cause you don't know me.

Love ATL.

Sleepless in San Diego

I'm usually lights out and asleep before midnight but for whatever reason I'm wide awake and figured I'd make a post.

I had a few bad days last week. Monday and Tuesday it felt like my brain went on an involuntary mental vacation. I tried to grind through it but just came home retaining nothing. Wednesday onward went fine.

I've started working with other classmates. Up until now I've been working on my own and going to the tutoring sessions. I like working with others but its only good for outlining and reinforcing old material or clearing up questions or ambiguities in the classes or the readings. I'm definitely at a point where I need to review and memorize the material from the start of the semester up to this point so I can start working on hypotheticals in November.

Here is my break down class by class:

Legal skills -

This class is still lame. We've only really learned bluebook citations. Beyond that we work on IREAC. Its a particular structure for writing memos and essays for law school exams. Its nothing you couldn't learn on your own in a whopping 15 minutes. Its worth less than the other classes. Unfortunately that doesn't make it entirely worthless to GPA and maybe getting a summer internship or clerkship.

My biggest motivating factor for this class is that the professor recently came from a pretty nice firm and knows what employers want in a writing sample. Hopefully I can pull an A and get a writing sample out of it.

Contracts -

This class is a lot of black letter law.

Criminal Law -

I think our professor made a mistake. He hurried through 'attempt' and made it seem unimportant. It took talking to the tutor and pouring over the reading to figure out that this will probably be worth big points on the exam.

Property -

It is the easiest class but after reading ahead I think it might become one of the most difficult. I got called on the other day to answer questions. I did pretty well. I inadvertently used a common word that has a legal definition. The professor corrected me. One of the disadvantages to reading ahead a few classes is that you forget what you read when the class rolls around. It didn't matter. I had my brief and the case highlighted and color coded in a way that gave me all the answers and refreshed my memory.

Civil Procedure -

I answered all the questions in my Glannons study aid and it helps a lot to answer questions in class. I have a question for the professor that I'll probably ask him about when class is over.

Some random thoughts:

I'm not nearly social enough. I have friends and I get invited out I just choose not to go anywhere. I like working on law school problems with people but when it comes to going out for drinks or whatever I'd rather not spend the money. I've made some cycling and surfing friends around the city but its not quite the same as the law school social scene which can have a distinct 'high school' feel to it. I am pretty certain every law school has that same feel after talking to my friends at other schools.

I guess the hot 'blawg' topic has been whether or not to trust school sponsored blogs. Several law schools have these now and California Western is no exception. Most potential law students want an accurate view of what a law school is like so here is my take on internet resources and developing an authentic view of a law school.

School sponsored blogs-

School sponsored blogs are probably an OK source to get a preliminary idea of what attending a law school is like. Take it with a grain of salt. The authors aren't going to say anything to shake the boat about the professors, administration, career services or whatever or they likely wouldn't be asked to blog in the first place.

Independent non-anonymous blogs-

These are likely to have some good information and have impartial opinions about the school. Some of them have the same issue that the school sponsored blogs have though in that their authors might not share negative experiences they have to avoid real life road bumps.

Anonymous blogs-

Some are great and some are just rumor mills.

Blogs in general are pretty bad. They are usually a single view point with no alternative perspectives. This one is probably no exception. At least I'm honest about it. Heh.

Message boards-

These are an excellent way to get to know students at any law school in the country. A lot of the users are anonymous but will reveal themselves if you integrate with the community. They'll give honest opinions. The downside is that on any massive law school message board you'll run into 'if you're not top 14 you're worthless' trolls.

Epinions, Yahoo! Answers, Yelp, whatever your favorite ratings site is-

Yahoo! Answers is usually a cesspit of stupid. Epinions I know very little about. Yelp is generally pretty good for restaurants and getting my haircut but I don't know if I would go there for advice about law school. The ratings on these kinds of cites seem to be either one star or five. I suspect that the only people to actually go out of their way to fill out a rating and write something about their school are those that are either overjoyed with their law school choice or are super disgruntled that they failed out or that they hate studying law.

Law school numbers, US News and World Report, Princeton Review-

These are very useful. They are written by competent individuals who know the law school geography intimately. I wouldn't get too caught up in law school rankings. USNWR does not weight bar passage very highly and thats definitely a crucial part of becoming a lawyer. Always look at the different metrics these kinds of organizations use and make sure it fits with what you are looking for. Princeton review costs money but its not hard to find a free password. Law school numbers last I checked just gave a statistics only representation of a law school's make-up.

The above mostly just states the obvious. The potential law school student is really their own best filter.

Time for bed.