I can't believe this is my 8th week out of 11. I have only 3 weeks left to this quarter.

It can't come soon enough, I think.

Overall, I'm pretty sure I regret teaching this class. It has consumed my time in a way that I could not have fathomed before I was living it. I have not been able to devote myself to my other classes in the way that I would like. I have had more stress than my entire first year.

Perhaps if it wasn't coinciding with the insanity that is interviews, it would have felt more do-able, but .... that's not the way it happened.

I know that there are positives from this experience - probably positives that will come with me for the rest of my life. But right now, they don't seem worth the negatives.

Next quarter that I am in school (which starts in March), I am going to take 5 classes. They are going to be so delicious. I am going to take Education Law, and I'm going to take Employment Law, and I'm going take Land Use, and I'm going to take [either Advanced Family Law Litigation OR State and Local Government] and I'm going to take Corporations (ptooey) and I'm going to do a clinic ... a Certiori Clinic ... Death Penalty appeals. Um. That's 6. So I'm going to have to make some decisions (which the class schedule usually does for me).

Last night, I was reading Advanced Crim and Family Law, but all I could absorb from them were the types of theories that I am immersed in for the Class That I Am Teaching. Family law was addressing the different approaches attorneys can take while representing clients, either "I'll do whatever you want me to do, as long as you pay me," or "I must explain to you all the negative consequences that may happen to you, your children, and the structure of your family if we proceed in the way that you *think* you want to proceed, because you, dear client, are unaware of the impact that litigation can have on a co-parenting relationship." And all I could think was, "oh! we should excerpt these, and put them in the text for next year!"

Then Crim was about jury selection, and whether the jury should be a cross-section of the community, and if that means that striking black jurors is a due process violation, and all I could think about was the various "default perspectives" that a diverse jury pool could bring to the fact-finding process.

I think it is a new way of thinking that is very solidly ingrained in me now, and I think it's positive. At the start of the quarter, it seemed so ... business-esque, like in a cheesy sort of way. That I would start talking about "deliverables" and "stakeholders" and "psychological contracting" and "working agreements" and and and ... I've managed to take the concepts without the abhorrent (to me) vocabulary. Once or twice I was talking to my Beloved and I said some gooey phrase, but only once or twice.

Perhaps this entry made me think that this Class that I am Teaching isn't all negative. But it's still been a rough road. I can't wait until it's over.

posted by Zuska @ 10:17 PM

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