40 Year Old Law Student

Was I like this when I was younger? Did I care so little for my education too? Quite often, people will not do their assigned class reading so that when we break into groups to discuss the reading, it’s usually me talking to one other student in the group. In three of my four classes I have group projects, trying to get the group to do their work is like pulling teeth.

I feel bad for the teachers, because I only deal with this on a small scale. It’s disheartening to try to motivate the unmotivated.

My creative writing teacher constantly notes how it must be spring quarter from the listlessness of the class. The bad cop teacher has taken up saying, “Can I get a ‘What What’,”  whenever he wants a response from us. There is usually a mumbled, unenthusiastic “what what” returned.

Today, when the class was a blank stare of sunny Fridays.

Teacher: Can I get a “What What!?”
Class: what what
Teacher: Now can I get a “woot”…nevermind…
Female classmate: What?
Teacher: “Whoot whoot”. You know the song? It’s by Jay Z.
Class: *blank stare*
Teacher: You guys don’t know the song by Jay Z?
Me: You do know the uncensored song says, “Can I get a ‘Fuck you!’” Right?
Teacher: What? No. I worked at the Qwest stadium and they played that song all the time.
Classmate: Maybe because they can’t played the uncensored version there?
Teacher: Hmmm…I don’t believe in censorship, I might have to go with the uncensored version.

If he does, he might get a slightly more enthusiastic response from the surly tough crowd that my class is.

I feel even more bad now, I think I might have ruined something that my teacher really enjoyed. There’s a local station here called “KUBE” that I used to love, the female DJ once talked about how awkward it is when she’s caught singing the uncensored version of R&B/Hiphop song and people looked at her like she’s putting in crude words in there on her own.

People, there are usually explicit lyrics in rap songs. It’s not what’s played on radio, but don’t pretend it doesn’t exist.

It is every boyfriend’s job to tell their girlfriend they are crazy. And my boyfriend takes that duty very seriously. Sometimes he is correct, even if I will never admit it to his face. Other times, it’s simply him not understanding my perspective.

I’ve had some problem sleeping most days. Each week, I have a minimum of two papers due and I spend a few days on each. Every night when I go to bed right after writing, a thousand thoughts continues to flutter in my head. Revisions. Additions. Each so soft and flitting, nothing solid, but continues to pester. Each draft is still not good enough.

boyfriend: It’s good, you should stop worrying.
me: It’s only okay, I know what “good” is, and it’s not that yet.
boyfriend: You’re just being too much of a perfectionist now, it’s good.
me: I’m not a perfectionist, I just don’t accept mediocre work.

This goes back and forth until he realizes it’s better to shut up.

For one of my writing class recently, we had a local writer visit us. She did a Q&A about her writing process. She said, “When you write, be ready to let it consume you, because it will.” A book that she recommends is The Eleventh Draft. That’s about how many revisions it takes to come up with something good.

I felt an, “Aha!” moment. Then barely resisted the urge to call my boyfriend and tell him how right I am. Again.

I knew taking two writing classes could be madness. And I knew adding a public speaking class would only compound to the madness, but I really wanted to do this as a self-litmus test. I figured if I couldn’t handle a couple reading/writing intensive classes at a community college, becoming a lawyer is probably a stupid idea.

It has been three weeks already and a pattern has emerged in my study habits. It’s something like this.

• Finish all accounting homework, worksheets and quiz a week ahead of time so that I don’t have to worry about it for the rest of the week.
• Big writing assignments, 2 due each week (1 for composition II, 1 for creative writing). I spend first day outlining and start writing. Second day, I finish writing and start correcting. Third day, I do more correcting and add finishing touch, and the boyfriend helps with final proofread. Then I spend the rest of the day freaking out over how the paper is just not good enough, until the boyfriend tells me to stop freaking out and get the hell to bed.
• Whatever random cracks of open time I have is spent on public speaking class work or reading books for all classes. Lots of reading.

I’m doing well in my writing classes, but I can’t seem to relax and think I’m doing well enough even though I’m getting 4.0s in my writings. My problem right now is that I feel like each writing takes just about everything I’ve got and it still feels like it’s not quite enough. So I’m afraid if I relax, it’s just giving in to “teh suck”. This feeling will go away with more practice or so I hope.

Time is not my friend in adding to posts. However, I do wish to share class writings here. Feel free to judge them harshly since I do not have to hear you read it out loud. Have I mentioned how I get all worked up every time we have to read our own writing in class? I thought people lose their ability to blush after 30, but those people probably did not have to read their own writing out loud.

Yesterday marked the completion of my first week of school.

It had been well over a decade since I’ve attended school that I was extremely nervous the first day. It felt a little bit like getting on a ski lift after not snowboarding for many years. The ride up the mountain built up the dread of having to get off the lift at the top. When riding a lift, for snowboarders, one foot has to be not bound to the board. This made for awkward manipulation of the board because it’s a lot harder to control and the free foot has a way of getting caught sometimes, leading to a terrible fall that I can’t seem to avoid. Then I would have to awkwardly scramble out of the path of people that would slide off the lift with so much grace, one can almost hear Swan Lake music crescendo in the backdrop. Lucky for me, first day of school, didn’t result in my falling at the foot of the school with a pathetic yelp.

All four of my professors are wonderful and likable in their own unique ways.

My Creative Writing: Nonfiction professor reminds me of a younger and not so angry George Carlin. He’s a bit of a cynic, but has a smirk about him that makes me think he’s always laughing at something, perhaps some irony in every situation. It would not be out of place for him to write a book titled Napalm and Silly Putty because of how he loves words that brings your senses into play. The contradiction of images of copying an image off the Sunday comic with putty versus with the catastrophe of war, too terrible yet perfect for imagery.

I feel bad for my Accounting professor because almost 80% of the class are new-ish immigrant or exchange students with hard to pronounce names. He’s the oldest out of all my professors; I’m guessing he’s right about my mom’s age. My mom, when she has to deal with something she doesn’t understand now, she gets frustrated. As she gets older, it’s just harder and harder for her to pick new things up, or I get the feeling she just doesn’t want to anymore. This is like watching the professor do role call, he pauses, scrunches his forehead and tries very hard to pronounce each name like a puzzle he doesn’t want to play.

Everyone knows of a pretty girl in high school that plans on being a communications major. One of the few that follows through on that thought is my Public Speaking professor. She’s pretty and smart with all the quirks that suits a public speaking teacher. I don’t know if she’s single, but if she is, I can bet all her friends wants to set her up with some nice single guy friend they know of because she’s wonderful in the way that everyone wants for their good guy friend. She has a love for cute pumps which leaves nasty red welts where the heels rub up on her skin. The class is about 50% new immigrant/exchange students, because of this, she chooses for us Speak Up! An Illustrated Guide to Public Speaking. After all, she has to practice what she preaches about engaging her target audience.

My English Composition II professor scares me a little in the way a good poker player scares me. He reminds me of Raymond in the TV show “Everybody Loves Raymond”, in that he doesn’t have a wide range of emotion showing, so it’s hard to tell if he’s happy or upset. If he’s part of a parent team, he’s probably always the bad cop. When the class zones out and doesn’t respond to questions, my Creative Writing instructor will tell us if we can blink a response or maybe tap a pinkie, it will help him with feedback; my English Comp professor will yell, “HELLO!?” Bad cop parenting. It’s a great contrast for the two instructors and very appropriate because one is trying to engage our senses and playful side, while the other is trying to teach us structures and get us ready for grad school writing.

Ever wonder if you’re secretly more racist or uppity than you think you are?

After visiting my local community college last week, I left feeling like I didn’t belong. I felt a moment of shame over some possible reasons. Perhaps I wasn’t jiving with the multi-ethnicity of the place?  Which would be odd because I’ve worked for decades at our family restaurant with 98118 zip code, a zip code known for being the most diverse in the country, and I loved the clientele. Perhaps my years of yuppie life had crusted my brain with too much upper crustiness that I scoffed the at inner city feel of the community college?

Then I realized the last time I felt this way, it was at a club with a particularly young crowd. I was afraid to respond to the young man hitting on me, because if he pinched my butt, his parents might sue me for statutory rape. I felt old. As an older law school hopeful, I knew age was something I would be dealing with. However, even in my LSAT prep, I was dealing with being a decade older than the average student instead of feeling like I could have given birth to the average student.

There is a silver lining in feeling super old now. Instead of feeling like the really old gal when I get to law school, I will feel like a plucky spring chicken. Navel shots? Bring on the salt lick!

On Monday, I applied for admissions at a local community college. Because I’ve been out of college for over ten years, they wanted placement exams done. I went in to take my math and English tests the next day, but not before I freaked out over whether I remembered the equation for a line or what a dangling participle is.

The English tests were embarrassingly easy. Half the time I wondered if they were designed to trip the gangster looking types I saw around school. Example of a sentence that needed fixing: “He were angry at them.” Might be: “He’d be all angry at them.” Some of the sentences were straight thuggin’. There were no participles, dangling or not, to identify.

Because this school was an inner city community college, it was filled with all sorts of interesting characters. People of a wide range of color and age came here. My mother took ESL classes there some thirty odd years ago when we first got to the states. It was easy to bus to so this was a great school for new immigrants. Capitol Hill had a number of halfway houses nearby, so there were some possibly under the influence types loitering around. To round off the interesting crowd, senior citizens could take two free classes a semester, so throw that into the pot. Stir it up. And you have my first day.

That night, I went out for dinner with my boyfriend. When we were a block away from the college, we saw a Japanese girl with a flouncy short skirt and multi-layered knee/thigh-high stockings, full anime getup. I told him, “See, that girl probably goes to my college.” He said, “You are going to have a very interesting time there.”

I’m very excited about the writing class. I’m giddy about it. This is a class I’ve been wanting to take and even as I was plotting away for law school, I was trying to figure out where I would fit all this in. Now I’m getting the class and a potential drug source. It’s a win all over.

My lack of updates to this blog is because I’ve been quietly holding my breath, waiting for replies from schools.

On Friday late afternoon, the letter of rejection from my law school of choice came to my email. I was having a drink with my sister at her bar. From just the subject of email, I knew it was bad news. It mangled my ability to think at all and I was teary eyed beyond my own control. I canceled dinner plans with friends and asked my boyfriend to pick me up so I could go home and mourn, in private, the death of my dreams of starting law school in summer of 2012.

Unlike the mourning over a loss of a love one to illness or old age, dreams are more heartbreaking in that you feel like you directly controlled the outcome somehow. This particular outcome felt like I’ve failed myself. And the many friends I had to call to let them know about the outcome: that I’m not going to start law school this summer after all. Of course like all good friends, my friends did their best to cheer me up, but a mourner fresh in mourning is not ready to be consoled yet.

There’s an episode of a television series called “Castle” where the protagonist’s daughter applied to Stanford, and despite being an amazing student, she was rejected. She cried and cried and called herself a failure. I rolled my eyes and thought she was being such a silly drama queen. Oh, I judged too quickly.  A rejection letter was a rejection because it found the candidate wanting. It was hard to not feel like a failure for a moment.

If a lady is rejected by a male suitor, we tell her to not worry because there are plenty of fishes in the sea, and this is also true with schools. However, I do not wish to relocate. A big part of why this particular school has become so ingrained in my dreams is that I spend so much time looking at it. I can see it from my living room windows. Every time I drive myself or my boyfriend to work, I drive by it. Because I can run over and lick the building at a moment’s notice, it’s so easy to visualize myself being there. The dream is so much more real when it’s not a nebulous cloud. I do feel this school is a good fit for my needs and would allow me to be available to help my family by staying near.

View of snow covered trees lining SU from my living room.

After I settled down, I went back to reading the email. For a rejection letter, it was actually kind. Not kind in the “I’ll just be overly polite in telling you you suck” sort of way, but kind in that the letter stated I was a strong candidate but they felt I could use an advance writing course before I reapply and that guidance will be provided for courses I should take if I choose to go that route. Also, I should get my application in before December 31st (curse you letter of recommendation that held me up for over a month!).

I won’t lie. Worries about writing ability have been haunting me. I’ve written so many words on multiple blogs, but it wasn’t until I had to write my college essay that every single word came out like jogging through hip deep snow. It wasn’t that I lacked the words to splatter across the page as I’ve done before, it’s that I worried about how my writing would be critiqued. Another thing I worry about is that I can’t outline to save myself from poorly displaced fat on my body.

At the age of 36, it’s tough to know I have to wait another year. Nevertheless, I am pretty excited about taking a writing course though. It’s something that I’ve talked about doing for far too long. While I’m at it, I would like to check out that accounting , public speaking and psychology class that I’ve been dying to take. Hopefully this next year will not be a wasted year. Diving in Great Barrier Reef is back on my pre-schooling list.

The end of a dream, whether it is achieved or missed, makes room for more new dreams.

As part of the LSAT prep class I took, one of our instructors gave helpful advice with law school application process. Sandy, who specialize in helping us with all questions applications related, talked us through much of the navigating the LSAC website and preemptively answered questions she knows we will have. She gave us many helpful advice regarding Letter of Recommendation and sadly, I ignored her advice out of smugness, smugness that caused me many weeks of sleeplessness and anxiety during the holiday season.

I’m sharing her advice, some of which I took, but all of which I wish I had heeded.

1. Who to ask?
   I’ve covered this topic in an entire post. Key thing to note from what Sandy said, if you have been out of school for two years, you are right on the cusp of needing at least one letter from your professor. Less than two years, you really should have at least one letter from a professor.

   Another thing, as much as you want a shining recommendation, at the end of the day, it’s the letter writer that bothers writing at all that completes your file, so make sure you find someone reliable.

2. ASK FOR MORE THAN THE REQUIRED NUMBER OF LETTERS!!
   If the required number of letters is 2, ask 3-4 people to write letters for you. You will have the option of assigning letter writers to schools when you apply, at which point, if someone failed to write the letter on time, you can choose from the submitted letters. Trust me, even if you really prefer to have a certain special someone write the letter, when your file sits as incomplete long past personal deadline, you will settle for a letter written in puked up crayon from your neighbor’s 3 year old cat if it will close your application as complete. I’m only partially joking in the last sentence but mostly because I don’t know if LSAC will accept a bloody paw-print as signature.

   This could have saved me so much heart ache and disappointment if I did this. I asked two good friends of mine, both of whom were producers of multiple projects I’ve worked on and I’ve known for over ten years, to help with the letter writing. Letter Writer #2 got the letter sent in and processed in a very timely fashion. Letter Writer #1 who also happens to be my best friend and whom I’ve been griping to about the law school applying process since last January, still haven’t sent in the letter as of my writing this. He said yes to the letter writing a full year ago and I even asked if he would like me to make other arrangements for the letter writing when his letter wasn’t turned in by December 9th. He didn’t respond to my text message asking about the letter on December 22nd. In the end, I broke down and begged another friend, also ex-coworker, to write me a letter two days before Christmas. This made for the worst Christmas gift ever, for my boyfriend especially because he got to hear me cry about this for the entire month. I cry like a maimed animal, it’s absolutely terrible and you just want to put it out of its misery, so hanging out with that for a month is about as fun as it sounds.

   My heart still breaks when I think about the fact that my friend never responded and never sent in the letter. I don’t even want to know what happened at this point because it doesn’t change this simple fact:
   My applications sat in incomplete status for a month longer than intended because I had to wait for two letters of recommendation. Rolling admissions at my target school started in early December and I wasn’t a shoo-in applicant, so this would really hurt my chances being late by a month.

3. Letters of Recommendation or Evaluation?
   Sandy said she spoke to a few office of admissions about their preference and it sounded like Letters of Recommendation was still the way to go. Some schools would accept evaluations, but just about every school would accept LORs. That said, one very helpful tip that Sandy gave us: print copies of the evaluation questions to give your letter writers for guidelines.

   There is a link from the “Letters of  Recommendation and Evaluations” section to “Current Evaluation Questions”. Copy and paste that to emails or a word doc to print out for your letter writers. It really gives the letter writer a better idea of the type of information law schools want to know about you.
   
   

4. Things to Include In Letter of Recommendation Package
   Make sure you include the LOR Form. There is a line that is optional for you to sign, it waives your rights to read the LOR, Sandy’s advice is to just sign the thing. It shows that you have confidence in the people writing your letters of recommendation. I will admit to not having signed the paper for my 3rd letter writer because leeway time was something I lacked, so I just emailed the PDF file to him.

   With my first two letter writers, I had time to spare, I made the proper package to mail out. Things to include:
   1) LOR Form, signed and dated to waive your rights.
   2) Stamped envelop with the address for LSAC written.
   3) Copy of “Current Evaluation Questions”.
   4)If you don’t speak to this person regularly, include some basic explanation of what the evaluation questions is for and making sure the LOR is signed.
   
   

5. Thank You Letter
   Because my letter writers are long time friends of mine, whom I have failed to send gifts during important holidays and birthdays (I’m a bad friend, yes), I got each letter writer a large gift basket from Costco full of meats and pate.

   Obviously if you are on a student budget, elaborate gift baskets are not necessary. However, a letter of appreciation is still a must. From the standpoint of someone who stressed for a month because someone failed to write the letter, I can tell you, when someone does NOT write the letter, you truly appreciate the ones that come through for you. And you should do your best to let the person know you appreciate it, whether or not you selected their letter to bundle with your application.

Another thing to note, LSAC will accept fax letters even though they don’t recommend it, but I do wonder if it’s faster than mailing it. Second thing to note, LSAC is closed from Christmas to New Year’s Day. This means if your letter, like mine, arrives during that time or right after, it’ll take nearly a week for them to get to your letter of recommendation and process it due to the week long pile up. Again, I do wonder if I had the letter faxed, if this would improve the timing.

Getting the letters of recommendation ended up being my biggest hurdle, which it really shouldn’t be had I planned it better.

I apologize for abandoning the blog in the midst of law school application woes. I had really hoped to take everyone on this painful journey with me, because I could really have used your company. Then I started working on the application, and certain parts became such a struggle that I really didn’t want to think about it, let alone come here and cry about it. Because no one loves a downer, especially me.

However, it’s a new year and I’m back. I can now reflect upon the application process and talk about it without feeling like it’s adding to the stress of trying to apply. Mostly because I’ve been self-medicating with ice cream.

Snowboarding season has finally arrived in Seattle area, I didn’t realize how much this too has been depressing me until I got on the slopes and started feeling glee.

So, it’s the day after LSAT again for me. And you’re here because you’re wondering how other people are feeling the day after their October 1st LSAT test?

I feel fine. Better than fine. A little hungover.

As I mentioned yesterday, after the test, I went to see 50/50. It was pretty much what I was hoping for. The movie was a comedy about a living with cancer, so you know there would be sadness and anguish over how some people were dealt the unfair life cards, but there was much laughter too. I’m not trying to promote: instead of thinking about LSATs, think about cancer. Although, it does help to illustrate that LSAT is not the worst thing on planet. However good or bad you did, your life is not over. Laugh a little already. And being that it’s October, it’s time to focus on law school applications anyhow.

I just bought some new heels in preparation for law school, because at 35 I feel it’s time I own heels that doesn’t conjure images of woman gyrating to the tunes of “I Wanna F*ck You Like An Animal” when I strut in them. My other shoes are various sports gear: hiking boots, running shoes, water shoes, mountaineering boots, snowboarding boots, biking shoes, etc. I don’t think any of them would fair any better in a courtroom setting.

While I was writing yesterday, I put on the heels to break them in a bit. If I thought taking the last LSAT was painful, breaking in new heels made it seem delightful. As a person most comfortable in hiking boots, I’m rarely a picture of poise and grace in heels. In new leather heels that need to be stretched out, I look like a baby giraffe trying to stand for the first time, with a lot less “awwww” factor and a lot more “holy hell, she is about to trip and break her neck” factor. It’s not even possible to fool myself into thinking I look graceful, because when the boyfriend is around, he holds one of my hands tightly while circling his free arm in front of me, like he’s getting ready to catch me.

He’s setting me up to fail as a lawyer, because I can’t exactly have him follow me around trying to catch me all the time. However, I can maybe hire a team of midgets to follow me around and catch me if I trip. Then, maybe instead of admitting I can’t walk worth shit in my heels, I can pretend like I’m doing an impromptu body surfing whenever I trip. If there are other lawyer types looking, I can be all like, “Yeah, I got to body surf on my midget posse, what’d you got? Nothing. I win!”