Today was rough. Beginning to end. For some odd reason, my Contracts class, which is from 12:20-1:50 on Tues. and Weds., is held from 8:30-10 a.m. on Fridays. The only day of the week that I need to be at school before 10:45, and it's on a *friday?* wtf?

So after inserting toothpicks into my eyelids to stay awake in Contracts, I had our "we are a very progressive law school" class. This class is very unique to my school, and is hard and .... of questionable usefulness, at the same time. It's required for all first years, and lasts the full year. The first semester, we basically read some articles and some newspapers then had discussions in our class. These are small classes - 15 students. And they're run 2L's and 3L's, not by professors. I really liked the class last semester. I enjoyed talking about touchy "issues" and getting different views on the table. Although the nature of my particular school is such that there is only one person with conservative views, and 2 with complete centrist views, and the rest of us are at varying points and flavors along the far left of the spectrum.

This semester, it's different. We have a client. Not just make-believe (which we had for our Legal Practice (writing, research, argument) class), but a real non profit group which works for social justice. There are a lot of different clients, and mine is one that works toward promoting legislation to decrease the discrimination against people who had previously been incarcerated. The Re-Entry Process. The 15 of us have to work together to come up with a cohesive report which focuses on "success stories" and how we can take the positive information we got from these people who went to prison or jail, and upon their release, picked up all the pieces they needed and acheived long-term stability without re-offending or being homeless and/or addicted to something or other.

In this semester, we had another "Teaching Facilitator" - a 3rd year student, for the first half. But we are on the quarter system, and everybody goes on co-op on alternating quarters (after first year), and so she left. So we had to nominate and vote for a new "facilitator" from inside our group.

I was nominated, and I got voted for. So now I have to run these meetings, and make sure that all of this project happens. We're talking about something which will end up at around 250 pages of information gleaned from field interviews, research, and our own analysis.

Today was the due date for our first cohesive draft. And I'm also on the writing committee. So all 15 people handed in their pieces of the project, and the writing committee had to piece it together and make it look nice.

Easier said than done. It's only about 100 pages right now, but it's a piece of crap. There are people in my class who apparently skipped grades 1-12, and can't write a sentence to save their lives. Some of the amazingly wretched paragraphs, phrases, and sentences that I was staring at left my head reeling!

This also left it to me, as the facilitator, to have to tell the class that our draft sucked, and that people aren't pulling their weight, and that the work that was handed to US was not the quality that we wanted to give to our professors, but it was not the writing committee's job to rewrite 100 pages of 15 people's work in 24 hours (we'll have much more time for the final draft, but still, we're not there to DO their work).

That was very taxing for me. I *hate* having to be critical. I think it went okay, but the entire 2 hours of the class were me feeling like I was being smooshed by a steamroller. I did have someone make an issue in front of the class about an individual conversation that I had with her, but I was able to mellow that out.

Then I had to meet with a partner about a Constitutional mid-term paper, which we have less than a week to do. I'm excited about it, b/c the case we have to analyze is Rasul v. Bush (that's the Guatanamo Bay case re: foreign nationals, and whether or not the U.S. Courts have jurisdiction). It's only a 5 page paper, but there's a lot of research and focusing to do.

But it was okay, b/c I was picking up the girls from their drawing class by 3:15, and we went home to pack while my partner was picking up the rental car b/c we were driving down to Connecticut to visit my parents, and go to IKEA!! We rented an SUV size vehicle so we can strap a mattress and a wall unit of shelves to the roof and have lots of room to put light bulbs and hangers and batteries, and other wonderful things IKEA.

(After living about a mile from an IKEA in the SF Bay Area, having such spotty access is difficult).

We almost didn't go b/c a storm was coming to New England, but I'm an expert storm tracker (also read as ridiculously obsessed storm freak), and could tell it was going to fizzle, so we still went. My poor partner was born and raised in Southern CA, and then spent a long, long time in Northern CA, but not near snow. He didn't know things like how the wet snowy road kicks up lots of dirty spit onto the windshield. He has complained in the past that I will squirt washer fluid on the window while driving - "how can you see!" But now, after one night of driving in the snow, he no longer thinks i'm crazy.

My parents live in a pretty rural town. On a pretty rural road. Up a very hilly curvy rural driveway. And this driveway is in the shade. When I later examined it closer, I saw that the inch or so of powdery snow on the driveway was NOT the only obstacle. There was another 2 inches of ice underneath.

My partner couldn't get up the driveway. He tried, but we got stuck on the ice. He had to back down the driveway again, but was having trouble b/c of his unfamiliary with the layout of the driveway and the WOODS it runs along. But he got down it. He was frustrated at that point, though, and surrendered the driver's seat to me. I was so excited! I hadn't driven in snow in like 10 years! Woo hoo! I got to drive up the driveway!!!

When I was young, when my mom drove, and when I then got my license, the answer to our icey driveway was SPEED!! The slower you went, the more likely you were to get stuck on the ice. 10 years later, I was not accurately remembering the extent of the required speed, and when I stepped on the gas, I overdid it. We went fishtailing into the woods. The kids were soooo freaked out (we weren't going THAT fast), although I came short of hitting some trees. But there was a small tree (4 inch diameter) that i went up alongside ... it scratched and dented the 2005 SUV we rented, which has only 6000 miles on it. Not too bad, but enough that our insurance will ahve to kick in.

And it was only after I crawled out over the passenger seat to allow my father to laugh at me that I realized .... the damned thing has 4 wheel drive. 3 different kinds. The Renault Alliance and the Volkswagon Jetta that I had driven in high school and college didn't have that option - hence the speed. This car ... we could have flipped a switch, and driven as slow as we wanted.

So, another hassle to deal with. As if 2 midterm projects, one take home exam question, and one 25o page paper, as well as 2 children and the regular things of life aren't enough!!!

posted by Zuska @ 11:51 PM

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