PT-LawMom

The Weekly MILS (Moms In Law School) Roundup** is the brainchild of Saramel (retired). It is hosted on a rotating basis at the PT-LawMom and A Little Fish in Law School blogs and is usually posted no later than Monday morning. Next week’s MILS Roundup will be hosted by Butterflyfish.

First off, go see pictures of the newest MILS baby, little Cora, here

Second off, if you are stressed by finals and only have time to read one thing, read this wonderful article by Andrea (PBB) for a little perspective!

After being beat down from the exam from hell, Butterflyfish definitely has the right idea. I actually did the same yesterday (vegged with the kid to recharge!)

LagLiv is DONE with exams! Lucky girl.

If Andrea thinks the men on the T are bad, she needs to read poor New Duck’s tale of woe (our newest MILS!)

Dakota has advice for law school finals at Adventures of Law School Mama and Magic Cookie has a great study aid tip here.

Kim at Diary of a Law School Mom was busy, busy, busy, but now she’s procrastinating along with me and Mommy on the Floor

Citations has some great advice for naive little 1Ls.

Meesh at KidSquared isn’t asking for too much.

Kim at Merits of the Case is gearing up after a rough semester.

Andrea at Peanut Butter Burrito could care less about finals because SHE GOT A JOB!!! Yay!!!

If you’d like to have your blog added to the MILS blogroll for weekly review or would like us to consider a specific post, drop the hostess(es) an email or leave a comment at their respective sites.

**Hat tip to the “original” Roundup — Evan Schaeffer’s Legal Underground and Divine Angst

So, as I mentioned before, my neurologist doubled my medication dosage this week. I was doing okay. A little scatter-brained and a little more dizzy than usual, but okay. Then last night I got hime, depressed from my exam, and took my before-bed dosage. Then, about an hour later after chatting with Chapin and getting Pumpkinhead moved from the couch up to his bed, I got ready for bed. As I was getting into bed, I thought, “Hmm… did I take my medication?” Yep, I took it again. Set my cell phone alarm and my regular alarm and went to sleep.

Woke up at 7:45 this morning. ARGH!!!! Still managed to make it into work by 8:40 (thank God for light traffic and a mother who’s willing to help out in a pinch and take Pumpkinhead to school!), but now I have to stay late to make up the time. Bugger.

Pumpkinhead is currently attending a very expensive local Montessori. We got three e-mails from them earlier this week. The first informed us that the annual “supply fee” is going up by $120! Nope, that’s not a typo. So instead of owing $400 in January, we now owe $520. Then the second e-mail informed us that we have to pay an extra “supply fee” for the week between Christmas and New Years ($30). Okay… The third e-mail tells us that Pumpkinhead’s class is going to be in the school holiday concert on the 17th, that Pumpkinhead’s going to be a bumblebee, and that I’m responsible for purchasing him yellow fleece sweatpants and a sweatshirt (do you have any idea how freaking hard it is to find plain YELLOW sweats?!?). And of course I can’t go (if work wouldn’t let me leave even 5 minutes early for an exam, they sure as hell aren’t going to let me leave early for this 4 p.m. concert!), but I ask my mother and she promises to attend, video camera in hand. Okay, so my blood pressure is up at this point but I’m still handling it all.

Then I drop Pumpkinhead off this morning. I’m walking in the door and I see a sign on the front door that says, “Tickets for Holiday Show - $10). They have GOT TO BE KIDDING ME!! Not only do I have to pay $520 a year for “supplies”, plus $75/mo. extra in the summer, plus $30 extra the week after Christmas, but now they want me to take time away from exams to hunt down an impossible-to-find sweatsuit AND pay for the privilege of seeing my little bumblebee sing for two minutes?!?! No freaking way!

So my question, to get to the point, is do you think it would be wrong of me to put him in the backup daycare near my work that day and just not let him participate in the show? He might be bummed, but he is four and quite frankly the cost/benefit analysis is really coming out against him. They’re done at 12 that day anyway so I’d be scrambling for childcare. Should I tell his teacher he won’t be there or why or would you just call in and say he’s sick?

I’m feeling rather devastated after my exam. Honestly, I just don’t know how I did. I tried to cover as many points as possible but I feel like I saw only the forest and not the trees (or he just asked really straightforward questions). I asked several people about one fairly easy (I thought) question (that was my first mistake — even asking!) and they all gave the same answer as me until another group came over and were like, “Didn’t you mention Omission? What about Complicity?” But what really got me down is that apparently our teacher spent a whole class discussing our state law on one topic versus the MPC & Common Law approaches. My study partner and I failed to include any state law on our outline and I completely missed the part of the question where it said “LOOK AT PAGE ___.” I did put down the correct statute and discuss the legal differences as I saw them (although what the heck do I know since, as I mentioned before, I have no recollection of this topic), but I failed to read the page she referenced, which had key data as to how they apply it. I feel like such a moron!

What is stressing me out most is that I attended almost every class and paid attention. When I compared my notes to a classmate’s, I had most of what she had (by pure chance — I was typing, but wasn’t absorbing). But do I remember anything my teacher said? Nope! Don’t even get me started on work. I want to be a successful attorney. How on earth am I going to do that if I bomb tests and can’t remember what I did this morning much less what I have planned for tomorrow? I guess it’s too early to tell what the long-term effects of the Neurontin will be, but so far mental defect is definitely a big one.

Okay, I’ve whined enough (assuming anyone’s actually far enough through my bitch session to care). Off to start studying for my next exam!

Finally some good news for the people who have been targeted, often unfairly, by ICE raids (specifically, legal relatives or household members or children who have been scared out of their mind by these raids and torn away from their family members). A group of Bay Area law firms is forming a task force to challenge the constitutionality of the raids on behalf of these individuals.

Well, I’m as prepared as I can be for my exam. I have virtually no ability to recall anything said in class, but the plus side is that I have great notes (thanks to a fantastic classmate who lent me hers to supplement mine!) and a wonderful outline. I reviewed my LEEWS tapes and book yesterday and will try hard to apply those tactics (I didn’t do it in CivPro because I had a hard time with the conflict pairs idea for that test). I went to sleep at 10:30 last night even though I wanted to read more because I have to work all day and I figured sleep was more important. Hopefully this will all lead to nothing less than a B-? Trying to remember that as long as I don’t completely fail and as long as I eventually pass the bar, I’ll still be a lawyer. Still, it’s scary.

And I have to share a little bit of nastiness I got at work yesterday. I was studying hard and saw this girl who works at my firm who graduated top in her class at a T4 school. I spoke with her last year when I was preparing for the LSATs and she was still young and innocent. Apparently she’s now high and mighty. When I saw her, I smiled and said, half-joking and holding up my large tabbed, bound outline, “Look at my outline. Would this have intimidated you?” Know what she said?!? “Um, NO! My outlines were always perfect and I never get intimidated.” Then she walked away. Well excuuuussseee me! How could she not have seen that as an opening for exam advice? The thing is, she was totally serious and seriously snotty. It wasn’t like she was “Why are you speaking to me?” It was more, “Why on earth would you think something as crappy as that little outline would actually intimidate me, the #1 student at my law school?”

So I have this brother. I try to forget sometimes, but, yes, it’s true. In the last year he’s been arrested twice for assault (on his girlfriend…), sued his landlord for stupid crap and sued his car financing company to try to get around paying his car note. My parents have sent him thousands of dollars to “help” because he has a medical condition that he uses to make them feel guilty. I got a call at 1 a.m. from my mother asking me to put $550 into his account (her money; my Internet connection) because:
a) He was $447 overdrawn (she just gave him $2k about two weeks ago!)
b) He was stuck on the side of the road somewhere in DC with no money.
c) He was FIRED from his job because he decided it would be fun to have an after-hours party with some cute, UNDERAGE girls and provide them with alcohol from the restaurant bar. What part of “jailable offense” does he not understand?

Okay, the boy is 26 years old, still in undergrad (supposed to graduate this semester, but no promises on that score), and now jobless and close to apartment-less if his landlady gets her way (she’s already removed the laundry to make it harder for him). He had a heart attack at 20 because he decided to take Ecstasy despite the counter-indication with his medial condition. It’s all about sex for him (I really, truly, believe he has bipolar disorder that has yet to be diagnosed) because he does crazy stuff for women, including spending all of his money on impressing them. Of course it’s all “poor me, why do THEY do this TO ME.” Uh-huh. And my parents want him to move here so they can “help him.” Um, yeah, just bring his drama this way, why don’t you?!?

I transfered $550 into his account, crawled back into bed and heard Chapin say, “That guy is not allowed in our house ever, ever, EVER again.”

A week is just not enough time to cram a whole semester of info into your brain. I’m also realizing that two days before the exam is probably not the best time to double the dose of brain-altering meds, no matter how much pain you’re in. My body is FREAKING OUT from the stress (I won’t go into the way TMI details, but, trust me, I’m a bit of a mess right now. Mirror-breaking kind of mess!) Back to Getting to Maybe. If I can’t learn substance, maybe I can learn how to properly BS my way into a B.

I think this policy is horribly behind the times and hope that this article and other press gets foreign service members’ domestic partners the basic safety and living benefits they deserve, but did he really, really think that Condoleeza Rice would write back to him? In this administration? Don’t think so!

Well this day went *much* better!

Was up until 1 a.m. studying and overslept as a result so that threw me off and I was worried the day would be similar. BUT I managed to rally and spent my lunch hour putting the finishing touches on my outline and binding two copies. My study partner and I spent hours on the phone last night refining our chart and cutting down the text of our outline. It looks so good and, as many of my wonderful commenters pointed out, making it ourselves has really helped us to learn the material. After I’d bound the two copies, my study partner picked hers up and dropped off exam diskettes for me to use.

The afternoon was a very busy but productive one at work. Mid-way through the afternoon, I went to fill out my timecard for Monday and saw that my vacation balance was 7.5 hours. I thought, “That’s odd!” because I can tell you right now that not only have I used ALL my vacation for sick time, but also that I have taken “dock” time since for doctor’s appointments. So I called HR and was told that the 7.5 is a rollover balance from prior years that can be released with special permission from a supervisor.

Soooo… yep, I called my supervisor and begged, pleaded and cajoled her into letting me use it for exams. The final answer is that I have to take the time in a full-day increment, so that means that I still can’t leave early for my first exam. However, I am now taking the whole day off prior to my four-hour closed book exam next week! Yippee!!! My main partner isn’t thrilled (he would have preferred two early departures over one full day but what can I do? I’m so relieved!! Next year I am praying very, very hard that my illness will be under control so that I can minimize time off and save vacation days for my exams.

Then, just when I thought my day couldn’t get better, I got a call from Chapin telling me that there was a letter from my firm in today’s mail. I was wondering what the heck it could be when he said, “What’s 12 times [$_,_ _ _]?” I was totally confused and then realized that, HOORAY, it was my annual raise letter! I got a 4.5% raise for next year. Yay!

Here’s hoping that the rest of this week and next go just as well!