Special Appreciation

Now that I have made it through the first half of the forging year of law school, there is a lot of thanks owed from me. Right now, I am going to just make one direct thank you to the most important person through this experience. My wife Diana deserves more than my thank you for all that she does. Diana has shown me true unconditional love. When I have come to frustrating spots in the semester, she has never wavered in her support for me. Throughout all my insecurities and feelings of inadequacy, Diana is the first to tell me I can succeed and that she is proud of me. Diana works hard so that we don't have to have the outside stresses of financial woes. Her job isn't always her favorite, but she sticks with it. She shows a level of maturity that I have not seen in my friends wives here at school. I want Diana to know that she can always vent to me and come to me when she is having struggles, I will be there for you like you have been there for me. Diana has put a lot of trust in me and how much I can provide for our family, first when she married me, and recently when she moved 12 hours from home while I try to gain a legal education. Because of the trust she has put in me, I owe her the world. In front of all who read this, I dedicate my next semester to Diana and promise to put in the time and effort to gain my full potential in law school. I make these promises so she can be comforted in her decision to share her life with me. I want Diana and everyone to know how much I love her. She is my motivation through this all and she is amazing. Diana, I Love YOU!

We Govern Ourselves

Back in my carefree days working a campus job with a really good buddy of mine, we had a conversation. This post is an extension of that conversation, and I hope my friend remembers the conversation.
I was very interested in law enforcement before my decision to attend law school. I am very pro law enforcement, but I also recognize when individual officers act wrongly. My friend was concerned about who police's the police. Sometimes it is hard to swallow the fact that the police can go and arrest people for their wrongs, but sometimes cops get away with a lot of bad things.
In law school we are half way through our first year mid-terms. We were preparing for standard exam procedures such as going to the bathroom, getting a drink, and for those who smoke, taking a final smoke break. It shocked us when the person brought in our exam, went through the instructions, and told us she would be back 5 minutes before the end period of the exam. That shocked us. Who would monitor any cheating? Then someone raised their hand and asked, "what if we need to use the bathroom". The following answer shocked us too. We are given a specified amount of time for each exam and we can leave the classroom to go to the bathroom and/or smoke or stretch, etc. We can use our time any way we so choose as long as we don't violate the honor code we signed at the beginning of the year.
WE ARE LITERALLY LEFT TO GOVERN OURSELVES. We are in a professional school now and they expect us to act accordingly. I have never been given such trust and responsibility under similar circumstances (taking exams). Even the LSAT was closely monitored. I just thought my friend would find it interesting on how we are governed and monitored at law school.

That Time Of The Year...

It is the end of the semester and time for mid-terms. Some of you might be thinking, "did her say mid-terms, shouldn't he be saying finals?". It is true that for most undergraduate and graduate programs, it is finals time and time to gear up for new classes next semester. For law students, we carry 15 credit hours the first semester and those classes carry over to the second semester. So this semester we have Torts, Contract, Civil Procedure, Property, and Legal Research and Writing. Since we only have one test a semester, we are having mid-terms in December. Finals for us happen in May. Next semester we add another class of Criminal Law to make it a full 18 credit hours. They can push us as hard as they want, but the only thing we can do is quit or power through. I may have said that before, but it is about to hold true. I am looking forward to having close to a month off from school. It will be nice to do some no brainer activities. I may even catch up on a few posts I have been wanting to make on here.