my cover is blown
My boss came into my office today, sat down, and uttered the phrase that I have dreaded hearing for a long time:"You're not really getting this."I had to bite my tongue to keep from asking him why it took so long for him to figure out that I'm a moron.Labels: work
you know, now that i think about it, that grass was a little greener back there
I've spent a lot of time not blogging recently, mostly because I have very little to say about my job. But part of my lack-of-posting is attributable to my daily wondering what in the world I was on when I decided to move to Madison. I've decided to post a little then-and-now, so that maybe the thoughts get out of my head once and for all and I can start sleeping again. Then: spending my entire week's vacation in Texas on the remote network so that my project doesn't fall behind while I'm gone.
Now: work gets left at the office when I walk out the door at 5:15.Then: going out with friends 3-4 nights a week to watch baseball - an event that was fun until the beer started flowing, the voices became louder, and fights broke out. (Yes, fights broke out among us several times a week, and we kept coming back for more.)Now: (crickets chirping) .....does spending 3-4 nights a week with Mulder and Scully count?Then: monthly trips to the mall with my best friend and my substitute mommy.Now: thrice-weekly trips to Target by myself.Then: showing up for work between 10 and 10:30 every morning.Now: .......well, that hasn't exactly changed. But now I don't have to sign onto the remote network at 8:30am to make people think I'm in the office answering e-mail when I'm really in the shower answering e-mail.Then: counting down the days until I got out of RichmondNow: counting down the days until I get out of MadisonGranted, there was a lot of stuff back there that I wasn't happy about (i.e., bar fights referenced above). And I'm still a little upset about the fact that I let The One I Let Get Away last summer get away (and did it again a month ago). But that's the way things are looking from where I'm sitting tonight. It's definitely shocking, though, to sit here and think that maybe things weren't as bad as I thought - and it's bad when I sit here and wonder if I shouldn't have taken the advice of those who told me not to run with my impulse to leave.Labels: madison, richmond
yes, it is too difficult to get up and change the channel
I'm going to have to stop watching FOX.Why, you ask?Because they air that new Ford commercial featuring Taylor Hicks at least twice during The Simpsons hour every night, and a few more times if I decide to watch House. And if I see that commercial one more time, things are getting thrown at the TV.If I had a puppy, Taylor Hicks would make me want to kick it. Labels: fox network(s)
so little to say
Yeah, I got nothing. I finished The X-Files season 9 the other night, and so I've been kind of wandering around aimlessly for the last few days trying to figure out how I should occupy my ridiculous amount of free time. (Side note: I should never be allowed loose in the book section of Target again.)It's definitely difficult to come up with stuff to write about now that I'm not spending my days surrounded by douchebag law students. I mean, the utter lack of any human contact in my life is pretty pathetic...but then I think about the people with whom I could be spending my time, and suddenly sitting at home watching TV doesn't seem so bad. And tomorrow's Friday, which means that I don't have to go to work. (Reason #854 why my summer job is way better than the clinics.) Life is good.Labels: work, x-files
today's classifieds
For sale:1998 Starting Pitcher 34KW. 3.68 ERA, 71-56 record. Newly repaired shoulder. Needs work. Relief pitcher OBO. Contact Chicago Cubs front office. Serious offers only.[hangs head]Labels: cubs
feelin' like a criminal
I made the mistake of taking my trash out on the way to Whole Foods. I had a trash bag in each hand and my purse on my shoulder.My car keys? Safely locked inside my apartment. On the same ring as my apartment keys.I wander across the street to my landlord's house, only to discover that she wasn't home.I sat on my porch for about 20 minutes, then got my neighbor to let me into the entryway. She provided me with a few bobby pins, and I sat there for about 30 minutes trying to pick the lock. Needless to say, that didn't work so well. That's when I notice a lone nail sticking out of my door frame. That gets me thinking...there are tools in my basement...I know how to use pliers and hammers to pull out the nails...and I have a credit card to jimmy the lock open.And that's the story of how I broke into my own apartment.Labels: hilarity, madison
no really - i shoulda gone to med school instead
Would it be in poor taste for me to take the two pieces of writing we did for LR&W this semester to the head of the UW legal writing department (who was also my first semester professor) and ask if she can tell me why I dropped two full letter grades from the first semester to the second?Yeah, I know that I'm the world's biggest slacker. And I know that they curved the grades across the entire class (270 people) instead of by individual sections (17-18 people), which is completely unfair for a variety of reasons that I don't feel the need to get into at this late hour.* Maybe I'm just in denial of the fact that the entire first-year class magically improved by leaps and bounds between the fall and the spring, while I regressed due to the bird flu virus that attacked my brain. Maybe I'm full of it when I tell myself that my writing on my worst day is generally better than that of most others.Or maybe I'm just trying to find a way to make a statement about the lack of guidance given to me by the political science professor that taught me LR&W. I don't care if she has a law degree, and I don't care if she was editor of the law review ten years ago, or whenever it was that she went to law school. There's a reason she's not working as a lawyer right now, and ten bucks says it's because she has no clue about what constitutes decent writing (and the fact that she was "correcting" already-proper grammar in students' papers).**I'd send my former professor a thank you note for giving me one more thing to try to justify in job interviews, but let's face it - this bottom feeder isn't getting any interviews any time this century. Unless, of course, those interviews are for positions at Target. And not legal positions - I mean cashier positions. Maybe stock crew, if I'm lucky. Regardless, though, I think most of the credit for the destruction of my faith in my intelligence, my ability to write well, my ability to survive law school, and myself in general are attributable to this woman. Rant over.*** Now back to your regularly scheduled frivolity.*But seriously - there's no justification for curving the grades across the entire class. How can one professor tell me that I'm below average when there is no departmental consensus as to what "average" should look like, and the standard that is given isn't followed by most of the professors? I realize that, in the real world, there is no "standard" for good writing - but in the real world, there isn't a statistical model that demonstrates the competence level of writing samples either. And did I mention that my professor basically graded us by checking off cases and arguments on a list rather than actually reading the papers?**I've probably done more writing for the court in two weeks of my internship than my professor has done in her entire career. ***Okay, so that was a willful exchange of misinformation. So what? I'm mad, and rightly so. Labels: legal writing class is a joke
athletes are dumb
I've been sitting here for most of the day wondering what would make someone say to themselves, "You know, Self, you're 24 and you just won a Super Bowl. Why don't you go drive around on your motorcycle without a helmet?"And then I started to wonder what's worse... that, or saying to yourself, "Self, you're 24 and you just won a Super Bowl. Why don't you dump your clean-cut college girlfriend and start dating someone with every sexually transmitted disease known to man... someone like Tara Reid?"Yes, I still blame Tara Reid for the Patriots not making the playoffs in 2002.Labels: football, new england patriots
i'll get you next time, gadget! next time!
Last night, a bloody battle took place inside my apartment. After the dust settled, one entity reigned victorious, while another whimpered away in defeat.Vegetable peeler: 1, Me: 0.Yeah, you read that right. I entered into combat with my vegetable peeler and lost. It still hurts. I probably would've come out better if I had gotten into a swordfight with a monkey.Labels: cooking, my neverending medical issues
bugs are icky
I just remembered one of the main reasons why I hate summer so much.[scratches sixth mosquito bite that magically appeared yesterday]Labels: summertime
i'd like a grande mocha frappuccino leaded
The only thing worse than being a superstar athlete discovered to be using performance-enhancing drugs?Being a mediocre athlete discovered using performance-enhancing drugs (see Grimsley, Jason). As bad as it would be to be Barry Bonds, it must suck infinitely more to be this guy. Think of how you would feel - not only are your balls now the size of raisins, but that the best you can do while on the juice is a sub-.500 record and a lifetime ERA of 4.77. You'd be in the psych ward on 24-hour suicide watch.Labels: sports
when i think about the truth, i touch myself
I could blog about my new internship: how I'm completely underqualified to do anything there, how I wish I knew how criminal trials were supposed to work (instead of having to reference the LexisNexis Crim Pro outline every two hours), how I don't know the Federal Rules of Evidence, and how I wish that they knew that they have the Class Idiot working for them.But I'm not going to do that. Tonight, it's all about watching the last three seasons of "The X-Files"... partly because I need a refresher course on the truth, and partly because the only thing I've understood since coming to law school is television (even Chris Carter is more comprehensible than most of the crap I've read in school).Labels: work, x-files
this could be bad
Or it could be the most awesomest thing ever:I'm interning in an office that's literally around the corner from a Starbucks. Not only that, I have to walk past the Starbucks every morning to get to work.[glares at wallet]Shut up, bank account. I don't want to hear it. Labels: starbucks
dangerous mind the greek?
So the grades for my three main classes will be released tomorrow (not including LR&W, apparently, because it takes ten weeks for people who aren't qualified to teach us writing to tell us that we aren't qualified to write either). Since I've already had the mild heart attack that comes with the "These grades will be posted" e-mail, I decided to curb my panicking by setting some odds for where I'll end up - you know, so that I'll be prepared when the inevitable happens. It makes sense, trust me.If the grades all get curved around a 3.0... and taking into account the fact that:--I took less than 20 total pages of notes over the course of the semester in each class.--I spent most (okay, all) of Bernie's and Professor Death Eater's classes on the internet.--I studied less than 10 hours for each exam.--Two of those hours were spent tabbing the textbooks and outlines for each class.--I only finished one exam (the Civ Pro exam that no one else finished).--Three of the ten questions on the Death Eater's exam were answered with stream-of-consciousness outlines.--I had bird flu for two months.I'm going to say that my semester GPA will be a 2.3, +/- 0.3 points. You're more than welcome to wager, but the house always wins - and this house will use your wagers to pay for the credits for her summer internship.UPDATE: It's outside of the 0.3 range, but not by much. It's enough to make me say "I'm barely in the top 75% of my class...I should just quit while I'm only 80 grand in the hole instead of wasting money on an education that I'm never going to be qualified to use."Labels: finals, job search blues
ad nauseum
I saw a commercial earlier that disturbed me greatly. There's a new commercial for Off! mosquito repellent that actually states that Off! repels mosquitos "that carry the West Nile virus".I had to wait to see it a second time to make sure I heard that correctly. Turns out I did. What's next - ads for kitchen cleaners that say that the product kills salmonella and bird flu bacteria that could be living on your countertops?Labels: questions
