Day 865: Up the down staircase
Jan. 26th, 2010 09:03 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nagi_schwarzThat's my goal. To go up the down staircase. As it seems that this week is determined, already to march steadily downward. Or maybe I'm marching steadily downward and I know I need to go upward. It's like trying to run up the down escalator, perhaps.
Sunday was a good day, for the most part. Made it to church safely, got to see friends I haven't seen in a long time, talk to people I don't usually talk to (Med Student Stephen's roommate Alex, for example), and it was good times. As it turns out, Med Student Stephen is no longer my home teacher, so we said our farewells and he gave me a hug but he also asked for assurances that it would still be all right for him to come over and talk. He's never shown any such inclination to do so outside of home teaching, but I assured him he would still be welcome at my place, because he would be.
Also, I blame Jenny from Oregon but...I'm throwing myself into a new fandom. I will state right here and right now that I will not love it nearly as much as I love Merlin (Colin Morgan is a powerful weapon to wield, Shine BBC, so well-played), but Robin Hood is pretty awesome anyway. I'm not as charmed by Robin as I should be, I don't think (I've taken a shine to Will Scarlet and Jack, actually), but I'm enjoying the show all the same. Watched too much of it on Sunday (even though I got business done on Sunday, like writing letters and the rest).
Monday was a long day. It started off with one exciting intake call, i.e. some poor woman whose landlord shut off her utilities. The boss said we could call her landlord and be scary lawyers to make him turn her utilities back on (because that's constructive eviction in this state and she could be entitled to 3 months' rent plus reasonable attorneys' fees, and since he shut off her utilities one day after another, we could count that as five separate offenses instead of one, which would be much more expensive for him), but when we called the lady back her landlord had turned her utilities back on, and that was that. The day got progressively less exciting after that, as I spent an hour getting yelled at by an excitable legal activist woman who seems mostly interested in getting her credit straightened out (understandable in this economy) and hauling people into court.
I know the court has subpoena power and all, but really, if someone doesn't want to be forced into court, they won't go, and the people she's trying to challenge can afford a default judgment or two. Listening to her recount her small claims court battles in which she had all the evidence and opposing counsel had none makes me think she has things under control, but who knows. When one party is wealthy and assumes the opposing party is poor and has no counsel, the wealthy party's counsel is often woefully under-prepared and so buckles when the other side is prepared, which is arrogant and cruel (but I know that'll be my classmates some day), but hey. I think the lady just needed someone to listen, but she talked faster than Professor Watts on coffee and after a while I sorta gave up taking notes. I think I could adequately describe her problems if the Boss wanted to know, but in the meantime...yeah.
So I worked on Confiteor during Church & State because I'm a 3L and we do things like that, and then I went to lunch. And by went to lunch I mean I dashed down to the sidebar and attempted to wolf down a salad and read some webfic on my iPhone. Only Katie from Florida was telling me about her harrowing experiences driving in the snow (because she's from Florida and it's pretty harrowing for her), but after being yelled at for an hour I was in no mood to listen, so I mostly nodded and smiled a lot. All my life people have told me that I'm a chatterbox, but now I'm in law school and I keep meeting people who put me to shame. I thought I was on intake at the clinic, but I wasn't, so I filled out my time sheet and then set to reading the Landlord Tenant Act. I hung out in the study corner, and Alex from Section B (not to be confused with Med Student Stephen's roommate) was there. We sorta talked, but mostly we chilled in mutual silence. Ryan M. came by to say hello as well. Everyone says he's worse of a chatterbox than me, too. It's frightening to know people like that exist, but then Ryan's a nice guy and I like him. Also, he used to work at the clinic and has promised me tips when I need them, so that's kind of him. Also, he kept me company over the summer when I'd spend hours in the Corner reading BOEs, so I like him.
Class was interesting - we hashed out the ins and outs of the landlord tenant act and learned what dirty tricks and stupid things lawyers around here do when it comes to public housing. Also, we heard funny war stories from our Boss about surprising attorneys who thought her clients were unrepresented. Apparently someone from OHA complained to the university president to the effect of trying to get him to tell our Boss, "Stop winning, kthxbye." Who does that? Her response was great. "If I was in private practice, what would he have done, called my mother?" We laughed long and hard.
Afterwards I ran to the post office for stamps and then made it home in time to eat some food and catch an episode of Robin Hood.
Family Home Evening was awesome. Korina and I drove together because she is from Arizona and also finds driving in the snow a little harrowing. I regaled her with accounts of my terrible taste in Japanese music, and then I conducted because Josh P showed up late. Afterwards Levi and I were supposed to plan the month of February, but I got waylaid by Jordan, and, well, Jordan's cute. He asked for my help, and I figured since he was Institute president he wanted something church-like done, but instead he said he needed litigation help. Apparently he's in defense of criminal cases but will be playing the part of the prosecutor, and he has to do a pretrial motion to suppress. The professor's instructions were vague and Jordan really doesn't have much to work from, so I talked him through oral argument, through direct and cross (as much as I could in twenty minutes) and then smiled and tried to be encouraging.
I'm such a sucker for a pretty face.
Which leads me onto a terrible tangent, especially considering I need to be in the clinic in fifteen minutes.
Now, for me Merlin is like chocolate. When I'm having a bad day or need a little pick-me-up, a Merlin clip, a comedic picspam recap, a little fandom fluff - those make me smile. So I was trolling through this one recap of 2x05 (no pun intended, really) and was brought up short by those pictures of a shirtless Prince Arthur (who really was gratuitously shirtless through a lot of season 2, often to mitigate the fact that he was being an unholy prat during that episode). Some of the accompanying text for the picspam was pretty explicitly objectifying, and I wasn't amused the first time around that I read it, and this time around I just felt...bad. I mean, I know in one of the season 2 episode commentaries Bradley James and Colin Morgan make a joke of it, counting all the times Arthur is pointlessly shirtless, but it made me feel bad. For Bradley James. Because he truly is a fantastic actor (see 2x08, no shirtlessness necessary as a point), and whenever his character gets short shrift, the directors have him take off his top to distract the fangirls. (Unless he's injured, and then he legitimately has his shirt off. Sorta CM Agent Morgan style.) And I feel guilty for giggling over how good-looking he is, because actors are good-looking; it's a tool of the trade. I feel like I'm disrespecting the hard work he puts into his character whenever I get distracted by precisely what the directors want me to get distracted by (ending a sentence with a preposition; my bad). So...from now on I am going to attempt to refrain from horribly objectifying the poor man, because he's a professional and good at his job, and he deserves professional respect. It's like female attorneys who dress like bimbos to distract pervy male judges from the inadequacy of their arguments - that's wrong. Professionals should respected for their skill, not the amount of skin they show, and...end of rant. Okay.
Sorry.
I inherited some strange guilt complex from my mother.
So I'm really enjoying my Native American Law class. Only today I had to read about the removal of the Indians during the Jackson Administration, and...I got really, really angry. And frustrated. Mostly at the State of Georgia (the Cherokee v. Georgia and Worcester v. Georgia cases in point), but also at Jackson (everyone thinks it's so cool that he said, "Justice Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it" but you know what Jackson was saying it in reference to? Marshall trying to stop Georgia from annihilating the political existence of the Cherokee Nation in Georgia). And...urgh. Just reading what happened and why, and how even good people figured it was inevitable that the whites would keep encroaching on Indian land anyway and since the Indians were unwilling to assimilate it would be for their own good to get their treaties broken, get kicked off their land, and forced far away. There are two sides to every story, and sure there were Native aggressors as well as white aggressors, but...the paternalistic condescension made me grind my teeth.
Now, I'm not even Native American, so I cannot properly empathize with the Native plight over the centuries, but I think I'm at least starting to see why my friend Alison gets angry whenever the subject of Native Americans comes up and someone says something unintentionally bigoted or ignorant (her father is full-blood Cherokee, see). But I've seen how even my "nice" friends laugh and sneer and disdain the natives in third-world countries because they're ignorant and dirty and don't understand how the American way of life is superior, and maybe it's better for them to be ignorant and left alone. But the people in those countries aren't ignorant, and they're not stupid, and they're not incapable of understanding western thought. Case in point: me. Dress me down, smear some dirt on me, I'd be indistinguishable from those streetwalkers in third world countries. But guess what? I'm fully capable of western thought; I'm not completely ignorant, and I don't think I'm going out on too much of a limb to suggest that having made it this far in law school means I'm not entirely stupid.
I know what it's like to be considered second class. I still haven't forgotten that time in year six when a girl asked if, when I grew up, I'd go be her servant. Because apparently that's all my people are good for. I know most of the girls like me are serving class in foreign countries, but it's not by choice - it's by economic necessity, to support a family back home. How many nice American girls who have trained as lawyers, nurses, and financial analysts would be willing to be nanny/maid to stuck-up foreigners for low wages to support the family back home? Just saying.
Urgh. Thinking about this is just annoying me, and I'm late for clinic anyway. Interrogatories and discovery came back, so I'm going to make sure opposing counsel provided real answers before I cancel the motion to compel.
Because compel I will.
Sunday was a good day, for the most part. Made it to church safely, got to see friends I haven't seen in a long time, talk to people I don't usually talk to (Med Student Stephen's roommate Alex, for example), and it was good times. As it turns out, Med Student Stephen is no longer my home teacher, so we said our farewells and he gave me a hug but he also asked for assurances that it would still be all right for him to come over and talk. He's never shown any such inclination to do so outside of home teaching, but I assured him he would still be welcome at my place, because he would be.
Also, I blame Jenny from Oregon but...I'm throwing myself into a new fandom. I will state right here and right now that I will not love it nearly as much as I love Merlin (Colin Morgan is a powerful weapon to wield, Shine BBC, so well-played), but Robin Hood is pretty awesome anyway. I'm not as charmed by Robin as I should be, I don't think (I've taken a shine to Will Scarlet and Jack, actually), but I'm enjoying the show all the same. Watched too much of it on Sunday (even though I got business done on Sunday, like writing letters and the rest).
Monday was a long day. It started off with one exciting intake call, i.e. some poor woman whose landlord shut off her utilities. The boss said we could call her landlord and be scary lawyers to make him turn her utilities back on (because that's constructive eviction in this state and she could be entitled to 3 months' rent plus reasonable attorneys' fees, and since he shut off her utilities one day after another, we could count that as five separate offenses instead of one, which would be much more expensive for him), but when we called the lady back her landlord had turned her utilities back on, and that was that. The day got progressively less exciting after that, as I spent an hour getting yelled at by an excitable legal activist woman who seems mostly interested in getting her credit straightened out (understandable in this economy) and hauling people into court.
I know the court has subpoena power and all, but really, if someone doesn't want to be forced into court, they won't go, and the people she's trying to challenge can afford a default judgment or two. Listening to her recount her small claims court battles in which she had all the evidence and opposing counsel had none makes me think she has things under control, but who knows. When one party is wealthy and assumes the opposing party is poor and has no counsel, the wealthy party's counsel is often woefully under-prepared and so buckles when the other side is prepared, which is arrogant and cruel (but I know that'll be my classmates some day), but hey. I think the lady just needed someone to listen, but she talked faster than Professor Watts on coffee and after a while I sorta gave up taking notes. I think I could adequately describe her problems if the Boss wanted to know, but in the meantime...yeah.
So I worked on Confiteor during Church & State because I'm a 3L and we do things like that, and then I went to lunch. And by went to lunch I mean I dashed down to the sidebar and attempted to wolf down a salad and read some webfic on my iPhone. Only Katie from Florida was telling me about her harrowing experiences driving in the snow (because she's from Florida and it's pretty harrowing for her), but after being yelled at for an hour I was in no mood to listen, so I mostly nodded and smiled a lot. All my life people have told me that I'm a chatterbox, but now I'm in law school and I keep meeting people who put me to shame. I thought I was on intake at the clinic, but I wasn't, so I filled out my time sheet and then set to reading the Landlord Tenant Act. I hung out in the study corner, and Alex from Section B (not to be confused with Med Student Stephen's roommate) was there. We sorta talked, but mostly we chilled in mutual silence. Ryan M. came by to say hello as well. Everyone says he's worse of a chatterbox than me, too. It's frightening to know people like that exist, but then Ryan's a nice guy and I like him. Also, he used to work at the clinic and has promised me tips when I need them, so that's kind of him. Also, he kept me company over the summer when I'd spend hours in the Corner reading BOEs, so I like him.
Class was interesting - we hashed out the ins and outs of the landlord tenant act and learned what dirty tricks and stupid things lawyers around here do when it comes to public housing. Also, we heard funny war stories from our Boss about surprising attorneys who thought her clients were unrepresented. Apparently someone from OHA complained to the university president to the effect of trying to get him to tell our Boss, "Stop winning, kthxbye." Who does that? Her response was great. "If I was in private practice, what would he have done, called my mother?" We laughed long and hard.
Afterwards I ran to the post office for stamps and then made it home in time to eat some food and catch an episode of Robin Hood.
Family Home Evening was awesome. Korina and I drove together because she is from Arizona and also finds driving in the snow a little harrowing. I regaled her with accounts of my terrible taste in Japanese music, and then I conducted because Josh P showed up late. Afterwards Levi and I were supposed to plan the month of February, but I got waylaid by Jordan, and, well, Jordan's cute. He asked for my help, and I figured since he was Institute president he wanted something church-like done, but instead he said he needed litigation help. Apparently he's in defense of criminal cases but will be playing the part of the prosecutor, and he has to do a pretrial motion to suppress. The professor's instructions were vague and Jordan really doesn't have much to work from, so I talked him through oral argument, through direct and cross (as much as I could in twenty minutes) and then smiled and tried to be encouraging.
I'm such a sucker for a pretty face.
Which leads me onto a terrible tangent, especially considering I need to be in the clinic in fifteen minutes.
Now, for me Merlin is like chocolate. When I'm having a bad day or need a little pick-me-up, a Merlin clip, a comedic picspam recap, a little fandom fluff - those make me smile. So I was trolling through this one recap of 2x05 (no pun intended, really) and was brought up short by those pictures of a shirtless Prince Arthur (who really was gratuitously shirtless through a lot of season 2, often to mitigate the fact that he was being an unholy prat during that episode). Some of the accompanying text for the picspam was pretty explicitly objectifying, and I wasn't amused the first time around that I read it, and this time around I just felt...bad. I mean, I know in one of the season 2 episode commentaries Bradley James and Colin Morgan make a joke of it, counting all the times Arthur is pointlessly shirtless, but it made me feel bad. For Bradley James. Because he truly is a fantastic actor (see 2x08, no shirtlessness necessary as a point), and whenever his character gets short shrift, the directors have him take off his top to distract the fangirls. (Unless he's injured, and then he legitimately has his shirt off. Sorta CM Agent Morgan style.) And I feel guilty for giggling over how good-looking he is, because actors are good-looking; it's a tool of the trade. I feel like I'm disrespecting the hard work he puts into his character whenever I get distracted by precisely what the directors want me to get distracted by (ending a sentence with a preposition; my bad). So...from now on I am going to attempt to refrain from horribly objectifying the poor man, because he's a professional and good at his job, and he deserves professional respect. It's like female attorneys who dress like bimbos to distract pervy male judges from the inadequacy of their arguments - that's wrong. Professionals should respected for their skill, not the amount of skin they show, and...end of rant. Okay.
Sorry.
I inherited some strange guilt complex from my mother.
So I'm really enjoying my Native American Law class. Only today I had to read about the removal of the Indians during the Jackson Administration, and...I got really, really angry. And frustrated. Mostly at the State of Georgia (the Cherokee v. Georgia and Worcester v. Georgia cases in point), but also at Jackson (everyone thinks it's so cool that he said, "Justice Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it" but you know what Jackson was saying it in reference to? Marshall trying to stop Georgia from annihilating the political existence of the Cherokee Nation in Georgia). And...urgh. Just reading what happened and why, and how even good people figured it was inevitable that the whites would keep encroaching on Indian land anyway and since the Indians were unwilling to assimilate it would be for their own good to get their treaties broken, get kicked off their land, and forced far away. There are two sides to every story, and sure there were Native aggressors as well as white aggressors, but...the paternalistic condescension made me grind my teeth.
Now, I'm not even Native American, so I cannot properly empathize with the Native plight over the centuries, but I think I'm at least starting to see why my friend Alison gets angry whenever the subject of Native Americans comes up and someone says something unintentionally bigoted or ignorant (her father is full-blood Cherokee, see). But I've seen how even my "nice" friends laugh and sneer and disdain the natives in third-world countries because they're ignorant and dirty and don't understand how the American way of life is superior, and maybe it's better for them to be ignorant and left alone. But the people in those countries aren't ignorant, and they're not stupid, and they're not incapable of understanding western thought. Case in point: me. Dress me down, smear some dirt on me, I'd be indistinguishable from those streetwalkers in third world countries. But guess what? I'm fully capable of western thought; I'm not completely ignorant, and I don't think I'm going out on too much of a limb to suggest that having made it this far in law school means I'm not entirely stupid.
I know what it's like to be considered second class. I still haven't forgotten that time in year six when a girl asked if, when I grew up, I'd go be her servant. Because apparently that's all my people are good for. I know most of the girls like me are serving class in foreign countries, but it's not by choice - it's by economic necessity, to support a family back home. How many nice American girls who have trained as lawyers, nurses, and financial analysts would be willing to be nanny/maid to stuck-up foreigners for low wages to support the family back home? Just saying.
Urgh. Thinking about this is just annoying me, and I'm late for clinic anyway. Interrogatories and discovery came back, so I'm going to make sure opposing counsel provided real answers before I cancel the motion to compel.
Because compel I will.
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no subject
Date: 2010-01-26 09:22 pm (UTC)-First off, I get that you're studying law but where are you doing it and which year?
-The job you have, is it a university practice?
-What's 'clinic'?
I hope you will answer those.
And I had similar thoughts about Bradley today after watching episode 10 for the first time too. I mean, Arthur spends his first two scenes shirtless for bed and then only towel clad. That's sad because Bradley has some amazing faces that I love to see. And here... They just make us focus on one thing unlike letting him act.
no subject
Date: 2010-01-27 02:50 am (UTC)The job I have is more technically an internship, and yes, it is through the university. I work for the legal clinic, which is a non-profit branch of the law school dedicated to helping low-income people and families resolve their civil law issues. For my internship at the clinic (which is pretty much like a job, without pay) I have to put in fifteen hours a week - five hours screening potential clients (hence me getting weird phone calls), four hours of class training with the professor (the Boss) and the rest on case work.
Hope this answers your questions! :)
As for poor Bradley - Arthur as a character is, at times, distressingly inconsistent. He's not stupid - he leads troops and so has a mind for strategy and also a mind for politics. However, sometimes he's conveniently stupid for the sake of plot, which makes me sad. Like the whole thing with Morgause in 2x08? Yeah, if he just did a little math, he'd know she wasn't much older than him, and seeing how his mother died when he was born, he'd know that she really wouldn't know much about his mother. Granted, Bradley did an absolutely beautiful job in that episode, and I don't fault him one bit - the writers were just...I don't know what.
no subject
Date: 2010-01-27 12:33 pm (UTC)I agree, Bradley plays Arthur like a genius and he makes us love him. However, the script writers seem to be unable to decide on where they are going with this character and that makes him sometimes annoying.