Archive for October, 2006
Tuesday, October 31st, 2006
The E-man’s Second Halloween
The E-man looks really cute in his Halloween costume! My wife picked it out and we got a bunch of compliments. I’m thinking he might just have to wear it every once in a while!
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Tuesday, October 31st, 2006
Happy Halloween!
I hope everyone has a happy and safe Halloween! I’ll be posting some pictures of the E-man soon!
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Friday, October 20th, 2006
Grokking law school
I’m starting to notice that there are two types of learners in my law school; those who learn for the sake of learning, and those who learn to meet the particular goal of passing law school exams.
I guess I’ve assumed since the beginning that I’m here to learn about the law, to work my way into it and really grok it (By the way, ‘grok’, which rhymes with rock, is one of my all-time favorite words and is an accepted word in the English language which comes from Heinlein’s “Stranger in a Strange Land.” The whole book is essentially a definition of the word grok, but at one point the reader is told that “Grok means to understand so thoroughly that the observer becomes a part of the observed—to merge, blend, intermarry, lose identity in group experience.”). The exams - hurdles we all must jump - are just a way to measure our understanding and group us accordingly, for better or for worse. Don’t get me wrong, doing well on law school exams is critical. But is that the only reason I’m here? What about learning about the law? Aside from elucidating so-called “Black Letter Law”, reading and briefing cases forces me to learn about the nuances in law, about objectivity and subjectivity, about the art of law.
But those who are here just to get through it, to hurry up the next 3 years as much as possible, have a completely different philosophy. For them, the exams are the alpha and the omega, the whole point of law school. These are the same people who constantly whine, “This is a waste of my time.” If I only had a nickel for every time I’ve heard that in the past 9 weeks, I could afford law school. I love the fact that first-year law students purport to know SO much about the law that they are able to deem an exercise as wasteful. I’m 30 years old with a Ph.D. in biochemistry and I don’t yet know what is a waste of time and what will be helpful somewhere down the road. But maybe that fact that I’m 30 years old with a Ph.D. in biochemistry is WHY I don’t purport to know what is a waste of time. I don’t know a damn thing about the law yet, so every exercise will be helpful. Every exercise will put another piece into that big puzzle which is missing the cover to guide me.
Sometimes I feel like one of the major anti-establishment books, Planet Law School II, is all about learning for the sake of meeting that single goal of doing well on exams. It spends a significant amount of time bashing the law school curriculum/mentality and blaming the status quo for bad lawyers as well as making law school so difficult. In my humble opinion, the HOW of law school curriculum is an important question but changing it will not alter the overall results. Law school will always be difficult and there will always be bad lawyers. It’s supposed to be hard, and as such it will always create a stratified hierarchy of lawyers; those who rose to the challenge and those who got by.
Believe it or not, I’m not passing judgment. Everyone is different and therefore learns differently. I learn for the sake of learning, but by no means does that make me better than anyone else. I’m just pointing out that I see two types of learners at law school.
1 Comment » - Posted in Life by blaine_5
Wednesday, October 18th, 2006
The E-man and the Seal<br />
Flipping through the National Geographic on a Wednesday night:
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Wednesday, October 18th, 2006
Wordless Wednesday - The Grandma Magnet
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Monday, October 9th, 2006
It was an incredible Fall weekend
We had some family over on Saturday. We spent the day at an Apple Festival, then at a Pumpkin Patch, and finally picked our own empire apples at an Apple Orchard. The sun was out in a clear blue sky all day, and my forehead and nose actually got a little red! In October! As we were picking apples we had to sample a few, of course, and I learned that there is nothing in the world like taking a bite out of an apple that had been warmed on the tree by the sun. They were incredible! The E-man had a great time playing with pumpkins and picking apples, and I wanted to share a few pictures. I hope everyone else had a great weekend too!
1 Comment » - Posted in Life by blaine_5
Monday, October 2nd, 2006
Now I know how the clothes in the dryer feel…
In honor of the October 2006 Blogging for Books scary theme, I thought I’d write about the scariest moment of my entire life. It’s not about Halloween or ghosts, but it just so happens that this was also the only time I’ve ever thought I was going to die.
Back in the summer of 1997 I was 21 years old and doing biological research in a lab in Upstate New York (if you’re thinking needle stab or other dangerous biological accident, I might as well disappoint you now – it’s not that outrageous). As part of this summer program, the 20 or so students engaged in research throughout the university would get together on Saturdays to do something educational or entertaining. Usually it was informational sessions about getting into graduate school or a visit to a museum, but one bright sunny day we were to take a bus to a nearby whitewater rafting company.
Ironically, I almost missed the bus for the adventure that morning. I had friends in the area and had spent the night at their place. We’d played cards and had some drinks and although they’d promised to set an alarm, a drunken haze had descended upon the house and it never went off. I awoke with a start and woke up my friends to give me a ride back to school. I was worried about missing the bus, not knowing that I was hurrying my friends so that I could stare death in the face.
The whitewater rafting trip was advertised as a 7 mile adventure that had class III and IV rapids. For those of you who haven’t been whitewater rafting (i.e. the sane), rapids are categorized from I to VI. Category I is described as “fast moving water with riffles and small waves” while category VI are almost always deadly. Rapids in categories I through III are typically safe for swimmers, while category IV rapids become more dangerous.
We’re all pretty excited to get started, but before we do there’s a brief instructional lecture about listening to the guide, about the rapids and the dangers, and what to do in the event of an emergency. To this day the scariest part of this talk was being told to raise your feet and aim them in front of you, because if they get caught in a crevice you’re done for (of course they didn’t say it like this b/c they need our business, but it was implied). Then we don our lifejackets, our wonderful life-giving lifejackets, and get into the boats.
I get a good seat, about halfway from the front and on the outside. It’s a good spot, not much responsibility except to lean when I’m told, and a good chance of lots of splashing. The trip starts out pretty slow as we work our way out into the water and down the river. We practice our leaning and paddling a little, and the tour guide declares us ready to go.
For the first half of the trip we encounter some pretty cool rapids and manage to get pretty wet while having a great time. There are about 8 of us on this raft and we talk and laugh and are thoroughly enjoying the trip.
Until it happens.
We’re approaching a group of rapids and the guide wants us to enter them in a certain orientation (front forward and aiming towards a certain target) for the safest passage. We’re leaning as directed and he’s paddling to aim us in the right direction. Unfortunately our orientation is off just a little bit and instead of going through the rapid front-forward the raft is slightly off-center. The rapids push the raft into a large rock rather than around it, and the raft tips up on its side throwing me off the raft and into the rapids.
It happened so fast and it was so unexpected that I didn’t have any time to analyze the situation. Instead it was just a series of thoughts that flashed in my head. My first thought as I’m being thrown is that my head will hit a rock. My next thought is to swim up to get air. I didn’t have time to take a deep breath before I went in, so I need to get up for air as soon as I can.
And that is when I realize that I’m being churned in the rapid like clothing in a dryer. As the rapid passes over the rocks it forms a barrel-like current where water is rolled over and over. I didn’t know this at the time, but I did know that I wasn’t getting to the surface. Simultaneously I also realize that there’s another person in the dryer with me! Not only is there someone in there, but we’re extremely close together. In fact, we are each using the other’s body in an attempt to get to the surface. All I can remember are arms and legs flailing. I’m certainly not proud to admit that I was reaching for the surface, and perhaps it’s an exaggeration to say that we were “using” each other to get to the surface. At that moment, when you’re fighting for air and the rapids are churning you to oblivion, the mammalian brain instinct is to reach out and grab for safety and the surface. That’s what we are both trying to do. Here I am, this 21-year-old supposedly chivalrous man, using another person to get to the surface. Not only that, but as I’ll soon find out it’s a woman in there with me. Maybe chivalry is dead!
Finally, after what seemed like an eternity (but was probably only 30-60 seconds), the rapids spit us both out. Breathing air feels really good, but now I have to assess the situation. A few brief seconds shows that the lifejacket does indeed keep me at the surface now that I’m out of the dryer, and I’m free to look around for rescue or a way out. I see that I’m floating downstream towards more rapids, but the raft is headed my way. My biggest worry now are my feet which are raised practically into the air for fear of getting them caught in a rock and forever disappearing beneath (at least until me and the foot rotted away from each other!). And I’m almost embarrassed to say that as I’m floating down the river, practically 100% free from danger, I stop to think about dying. I didn’t say the things I wanted to say to people, I didn’t do this, I didn’t do that.
When they pulled me back into the raft, my heart was pounding away. I was still pretty damn scared at that point, but luckily we were almost to the end of the adventure. Before long we were all drying off back at the lodge and telling our stories.
After all was said and done, it was a pretty life-affirming experience. I’ve told the story more than once to woo a crowd and gotten some good laughs out of it. And I get to tell people about the time I almost died. But I swear to God I was never able to look that girl in the eye again.
