stream of unconciousness

i hate this semester.

yeah, i know what your thinking, coz i’d be thinking it too:  "stop being a bitch, kung ayaw mo eh di drop out."

that’s not the thing.  i’ve totally committed myself to staying in school, in fact, i’m appreciating it more and more with each semester that goes by, the thing is, this particular semester is dead set on getting me kicked out.  no matter how much time i put in to school, it never seems to be enough.  and i’m not talking about not being able to read each case twice, i’m talking about not being able to read the last 6 cases of every assignment.  it’s just too much.  allow me to elaborate:

1.  a class with a professor that expects you to MEMORIZE the provisions in her outline.  NO, not get to know and apply, MEMORIZE.  memorizing a poem is easy, make it as long as you want, memorizing a shopping list is doable… but legal provisions that for some reason, love commas, and long running sentences, with complex sentence construction, and awkward word selection, which seem to just go on, and on, and on, much like this one… - i find it nearly impossible.  on a good day (enough sleep, relaxed atmosphere), i can average 40 minutes per provision.  thats atleast 3 hours of every time you study for class na (3 meetings a week), ok lang sana if thats it, but the thing is memorization is apparently the bare minimum in her class, cases ka pa…(id also like to note that this professor is notorious for failing HALF of her classes…lucky me this class is 5 units)

2.  every saturday we have 2 three-hour classes.  the professors here are really pleasant and fair, but the thing is, they give you atleast 20 cases each, yes, each.  and this is where the fair part comes in…if you dont read the case, no excuses, no saying ok, ill just call you again and study harder…it’s: take your medicine like a man.  also, i’d like to note that they call at random, and nearly half the class gets called every meeting.  that means, yup, no immunity at all from having recited the week before.  so everyweek is recit-level study.

3.  as for the two other classes, these are our only relatively manageable ones.  except for the fact that one of them is also the ‘you can be called every meeting’ type… they are both pretty ok…that is, if you look at them singularly.

4.  …put all of these together, and cram them in to a week…that’s a different story.  like i said, it’s the perfect storm.  u spend the weekdays worrying about your scary 5 unit subject, and when that’s over with, you still have 40 cases staring you down. 

i know that professors and the college in general just want to make great lawyers out of their students, but i think a line has to be drawn somewhere.  it’s easy to say ‘all of this is for your own good’, because seriously, who would dispute that?  but to make inhuman demands from the people you are suppose to be mentoring is bordering cruel na.  one of my favorite teachers once said, there’s more to life than law school…sadly, for me, i’ve learned that with a schedule like this…it’s  a choice between living a healthy, well balanced life and flunking out, or condemning yourself to a colorless existence for a chance at surviving the semester…ironically to relive the torment all over again when another semester begins.

honestly, i don’t know if this is the life for me.  law school was actually fun and interesting at one point (holla at professor disini, labor 1), now it’s become an uninspiring chore.  THERE, i’ve found it.  the reason why this sem sucks so bad is because there absolutely no time to step back and think about what you are learning, your just learning it as quickly as you can so you can vomit it out during your next recit…after that you move on to the next subject.  proof of this is the fact that i actually  ENJOY the 2 relatively manageable subjects discussed earlier.

i’m pissed today. hope things are better tomorrow

(btw, some teachers say: "you’re here in law school to study"as a generic answer to any complaints the students might have, i agree, but what i feel they’ve forgotten  is the fact that "law school" extends past the halls of malcolm, it’s become the most important part of the lives of their students…i feel they should realize the enormous power they have in affecting the happiness of their students.  dammit, treat us the way you would’ve wanted to be treated as students)

classess have started.  and wouldn’t you know it…ANOTHER 6-DAY SCHOOL WEEK.

this sucks.  during pre-registration, we were put down as having only 4 days of class, with tuesdays and thursdays off.  I kept bragging to everybody that i was going to put up a ‘poker night’ every tuesday evening, sigh, at this rate the only time i’ll ever get to enjoy the coolness of having a weekly poker night at my place is if i quit school and run an underground gambling ring.  yeah, i got that from boiler room…

if the schedule wasn’t bad enough, we also had the misfortune of having one of our favorite teachers replaced by one of the scariest profs in the universe(…ity) (by reputation).  i was actually a bit psyched to hear about it in the beginning, hearing william wallace rallying me to bravery in my head.  but now, 2 days from our first meeting with the prof, all that’s left is the desperate shout of "freedom!" and the sick sound of intestines being stretched.  i hope she isn’t as bad as everybody says she is.

so there it is… all i can do now is man-up and hope for the best. 

hope everybody else is enjoying life!

in words of sublime…

Life is too short so love the one you got
cause you might get runover
or you might get shot

sigh, so it ends.  back to school on wednesday.

it’s not as bad as i expected though.  people probably expect me to go into a litany about how much going back to school sucks mossy barnacles, but honestly, i have to say it’s a welcome burden.

this break made me realize that when you have nothing to do, you seem to stick out like a sore thumb.  to your friends, to your family….it also makes you an incredibly easy target for nagging and nit-picking.  (better to just APPEAR to look busy and stressed…you’ll stand out less)

to your friends:  you’re this constant annoyance who asks them to go out and drink in the middle of the workweek, or the dude who always has to have ONE LAST ROUND of beer or ONE LAST STICK OF YOSI before calling it a night.

to your family:  your this useless parasite who doesnt do anything but eat and sleep during the day and go out at night.  it also reminds them of how little you actually matured from your days as a high schooler.

conclusion?  well, i guess you have to have a healthy level of pain in your life in order to be a kosher member of a community.  ergo, having a ’sembreak’ is only fun for everybody, when everybody else is blowing off steam from the ‘previous sem’.  i don’t think there’s such a thing as having the time of your life because your buddy is on holiday…  of course this could be unique to me since i spent the sembreak away from where i go to school…

nah, it’s just growing up.  growing up has made ‘my friends’  no longer automatically synonymous with ‘my classmates’ or ‘my officemates’ or people you see a lot…it’s made friendship more meaningful.  the fact that you still take time out to accept eachother’s invitations and sacrifice sleep to give way to a friend’s longing to extend the gimmick- means that your friendship is just as strong it was when you were all ON THE SAME BOAT.  it’s stood the test of time so to speak.  the only thing that binds you together now is your past and ofcourse your friendship, there’s no pressure at all to make the effort to meet up, BUT STILL you do.  i think that’s just super duper:)

so thanks to all mah people who took the time out to ‘celebrate’ my sembreak with me hehehe  and to those who i wasn’t able to meet up with, summer nanaman!!  and to those who have a time-oasis of their own this sem, i promise to save up on cuts for such events!:)