Dreaming

Exams are over. Thank God. I feel like I'm becoming more of myself again. Somewhere between the black letter law, I lost a part of me. Between the memos and reading and cases, I lost focus. I narrowed down my sight to what was directly in front of me, instead of everything around me. I realized this as I was filing through some old paperwork tonight and came across my law school application that I had tucked away. Most people will tell you that they just wrote "something" for their personal statement, whatever "something" is; I, however, wrote about a picture of a horse that a nine-year old Russian girl named Anne drew for me the summer I lived in Russia. Long story short, it was through this little girl, Anne, that I came to understand that humanity transcends the boundaries in which we confine ourselves. In that moment I realized that I had the capability to touch someone. Maybe that's an idealistic statement; but I've come to realize that the only person that will be hurt by my dreams is only myself.

I came to law school in search of becoming part of the world in a very real way. I'm not out to save the world, just to do what I can to make a difference. The foundation of our interaction in this world is shaped by the law; I believe that policy is a very valuable mechanism through which the world can be changed. That's why I came to law school, to be a part of that. But somewhere in the past semester, I lost the idealism that drives me. Now I have three weeks to take a deep breathe and dream. It's time to remember why I'm here and where I'm going.

Just A Little Dancing

At 12:10pm on Friday, I click the "Finish Exam" button on the top left on my computer. With that simple click, I have just submitted my property exam. One semester's worth of material crammed into a three-hour test. There is no turning back after that click, only forward. So by 1:30pm of that same afternoon, we were at a coffeeshop studying contracts. My mind is racing and numb at the same time. When is the UCC Article 2 applicable? If O conveys to A for life, then to B for life, is that a vested or contingent remainder? What distinguishes an option contract? Do joint tenants or tenants in common have a right of survivorship? Is there a difference between fraud and misrepresentation? When is it trespass to chattels as opposed to conversion? What are the exceptions to enforce a pre-existing legal duty? What the hell is a contract? Is that even what we're studying?

We have a two-day turnaround for the third exam, as opposed to the three-day turnaround we had from torts to contracts. Our days and nights have been long, seemingly endless. Consumed in outlining, notecards, multiple choice questions, practice essays, we often lose track of the hours. The hours that turn into days that we also lose track of. It all becomes a countdown: "three days to property" or "one day to contracts."

It goes without saying that at some point we will hit a breaking point. It's that point when the information you are learning doesn't just go in one ear and out the other; actually, that information just never goes in at all. We ran into that wall around 7:30pm on Friday night. Three small pizzas and two bottles of wine later, we were giddily dancing around my living room to the scene on Love Actually when a twelve-year-old girl is singing "All I Want for Christmas" at the school Christmas program. As though we were three little undergraduate girls, here we were tipsy instead of studying. Sometimes, all you need to do is dance.

We were back to studying on Saturday morning. Just a little dancing, that's all we needed.