Adios!

I graduate from law school tomorrow. I've spent most of the past 2 weeks working on papers & organizing how I was going to haul my wordly possessions across the country. It's all finally coming together. Yesterday I got my stuff loaded into a storage cube. The movers were amazing! They managed to fit all my stuff into one small little 6x7x8 cube. When I saw the container, I started pointing out the stuff that didn't have to get loaded to allow for stuff that did. They told me to relax...they would fit it all in & they did!

Barbri classes start Mon & last till mid July. This includes Saturdays which is the most ridiculous thing ever. Now I'm trying to figure out whether I'll be attending the night or day classes which begin at 6pm & 9am respectively. Traffic is the ONLY reason why this is even a consideration. Cities without good metro systems are just the pits!!!

Graduation is on Friday. I received an invitation to the Honors Convocation - yay! I'm eagerly awaiting to know why cuz I know for damn sure it has nothing to do with my academic record :) This lasts from 8:45am-10am & then the main graduation ceremony starts at 11am & lasts a couple of hours.

Looking back, I thoroughly enjoyed living the student life. It was AMAZING! Expensive but amazing & I highly recommend it for those on the fence about it. My friends would beg to differ since they all seemed to hate every minute of being a student, but I kept telling them working in the real world was no joke. That's when life really began. But did they listen...nooo. They were high strung & miserable the entire 3 years. Wait until they start working. They'll really wish they'd stopped to smell the roses. So, I'm sad to be ending this care-free life I've been living but happy to be graduating. And it's on that note that I say goodbye to this blog. It's been real...

Last day of classes . . . EVER!

Yay! My legal education has finally come to an end. Today I attended my last class. It was very anti-climatic. I didn't even realize it until the prof asked if this was anyone's last class. I still have 3 papers to write but that should be relatively painless . . . except 2 of them are due this Mon.

I get to pick up my graduation attire tomorrow. We are having the class picture taken & then we all go out & bar crawl. Bar crawl is going from one bar to another every hour as a group. It starts at 5:30pm & ends at 11:30pm (7 bars!). Yours truly will probably hit just one or two bars. These papers have to get written & being inebriated is not going to accomplish this task. It should be a ton of fun though & I'm looking forward to it.

My last day of work is Mon. My boss says we're going to celebrate my departure with pizza :). I can't tell you how much pizza'd out I am but I still think it's really sweet of them. In one of my classes this week, my prof brought pizza & drinks for all of us & since we're only like 7 students in the class, I had to partake some of it. So more pizza next week is a little much but it is what it is. I love this job . . . especially my workmate who's such a riot. We get along splendidly & he tells me everyday how much he's going to miss me . . . aww.

Nothingness

My life will get miserable in a few weeks thanks to the barbri schedule that was posted yesterday. Registration begins a couple days after graduation & they've scheduled Saturday classes which is something I had not been expecting. Classes last from May 18-July 12. Then the bar exam lasts from July 28-30.

I got a prescription for eyeglasses yesterday. They're really only for reading objects at a distance especially when I'm driving. I'm no longer able to read street signs unless I am right on top of them. So I ventured into the eyeglass frames place to see if there was anything the piqued my interest. I really didn't have an opinion about anything. I kept asking the optician & the salesperson, "how do these look?" Anyway, they ended up liking 2 pairs but at $270 a piece, I decided to hold off on buying until I had gotten advice from my eyeglass-wearing friends. Will probably head back out to search sometime over the weekend.

Tax Prep

After years of paying someone to do my taxes, I decided to venture out & do them myself. My workmate told me he uses TaxCut (HR Block) and he said that he really liked it. So upon further research (word of mouth never suffices), it came down to TaxCut, TurboTax, and Tax Act. I ended up using TurboTax & it all came down to the price. Overall, Turbo Tax is the most pricey but for me it ended up being the cheapest. I only had a simple federal return (1040A) & a state return. So they had free federal tax preparation & e-filing plus $25.95 to prepare & e-file the state return. It was pretty straightforward & they really did try to find deductions that I may have qualified for. The only drawback to the free federal tax preparation is that it doesn't really hold your hand & walk you through it. You have to upgrade to a pricier program for hand-holding but I still thought it was very straightforward even for a rookie like me. Totally stoked since my tax prep guy probably uses the same software & turns around & charges me quadruple the price. Figured that even I could do some data entry. So, I'm officially a HUGE fan of TurboTax!

Sign of the Times

So today I was my favorite class. In this class, I participate alot because it seems like my fellow classmates do not do the assigned reading (on most days) but yours truly is always ontop of the material. So the professor decided to go into this long drawn out hypothetical and then he had some followup questions. When he got done, he turned towards me and asked, "so what are your thoughts?" I responded that I didn't really have any thoughts. He then responded, "you must have thoughts!" This pissed me off because I'm always participating & the one time I didn't respond to a question, he stayed on my back. So I responded, "I don't have anything to say and don't have any thoughts!" Then I turned to the rest of the class & asked, "do y'all have any thoughts?" What I really wanted to say was "WTF, when I say I don't have any thoughts, keep it moving."

Three years of cold-calling & having to come up with answers has become very old. The part of my brain that houses b.s. answers completely refuses to cooperate.

Movies

Liked these movies:
-Slumdog Millionaire
-Defiance (really liked it)
-Changeling
-Taken
-The Reader
-Underworld: Rise of the Lycans
-Pride & Glory (really liked it)
-Eagle Eye
-Righteous Kill

Avoid or wait till out on DVD:
-Revolutionary Road
-The International

I HATE THE REPUBLICAN PARTY & EVERYTHING IT STANDS FOR!!!

Just needed to get that off my chest

Yay!!!

No school today because of the horrid weather! I had such a hectic day ahead that I am practically giddy at this news.

The weather started getting crazy yesterday afternoon around 3:30pm. I had driven down to the courthouse & was scheduled to be there from about 1-3pm. In my infinite wisdom, I decided to drive even though I knew snow was coming - I usually take the bus - but I figured I'd be done before the snow started coming down. However, didn't get to leave until 5pm. By that time it was raining snow - you actually needed an umbrella to be able to withstand it. So, after taking 30 minutes to get out of the garage where I'd parked, I got on the downtown roads & only made it a block before deciding it was too treacherous to attempt to make it home. So I ditched my car in yet another garage & made my way to a bus stop. Will attempt to retrieve my car whenever this shitty weather eases up.

BTW, I did not fail my secured transactions exam like I had feared! Did much better than expected which makes me think I got someone else's grade - but let's keep that between us.

History is Here!!!

This has got to be the coldest week I've experienced in years. Temps are constantly sub zero & it has snowed daily to top it off. I took the bus all of last week (except Friday) since driving was very treacherous. On one of my bus trips, a foreign student I had a class with last semester came & sat next to me. We had never spoken before & since I was hooded up I didn't think he'd recognize me. Next thing you know, "excuse me were you in my class last semester?" That started off the conversation & soon we were chatting like old charms. Told me his life story. The gist being he'd been in Ohio for a year, didn't have any friends to hang out with, & didn't get to go anywhere since he didn't have a car. Being the nice person that I am, I offered to be his tour guide once the weather warmed up. I'm thinking if this lawyering thing doesn't pan out, I'll become a therapist. Can't tell you how much people like telling me their life stories to the point where I get uncomfortable.

I've had all my classes at least once & I like them all. Two classes are with professors I had last semester & the clinic has started off splendidly. I was afraid that I'd hate a class which would've meant dropping it & having to rework my schedule which is no small feat since it also affects my work schedule. Work also began decently. Just picked up where I left off last semester & my co-worker is also back which makes it even more fun. Will be working about 17 hrs/week.

OK - I probably shouldn't even be writing about this but I found a website that streams movies online for free (no downloads required)!!! I was googling something yesterday & mistakenly stumbled upon the site. So far I've watched: Slumdog Millionaire, Taken, & Defiance and they were all really good. Take that AMC theatres . . . at least for now till the website gets shut down for hosting copyrighted material.

Final Semester!!!!

Back to the grind tomorrow for my final semester in school. Sooo excited but not so excited at the same time. School sucks but law school sucks even more. The reading is horrendous, the exams are even more horrendous, but leading a student life simply cannot be beat - no serious job, getting home at 2pm, hanging out with friends, etc. So all that will be coming to an end in a quick 5 months. Semi-sad but such is life.

My hectic schedule last semester will benefit me this semester. I need 10 credits to graduate so I'll be taking only a clinic & 2 seminars then my journal credits will make up for the rest. Clinics are very labor intensive but seminars are not so hopefully they will balance out. Rest of the time I'll be working in the same position I was last semester.

The new season of "24" starts in a few minutes so let me get situated.