I must be completely into the swing of things. School has picked up its pace, and where I thought I was ready, I was wrong. At some point between the Tuesdays, an assignment built up on me, consumed me and my time, and I still couldn't get it together until the minute of class it was due. Ridiculous.

In my Legal Rhetoric course, which is essentially "How to read and write, legally," we have been given several assignments which are meant to eat up all of our time.

There are Quizzes/Exercises on how to "cite" the law. (The law, by the way, consists of statutes and cases and everything else that governs that special way we interact with each other. There is an amazing system of 'citing' all these different places that laws come from, based on state, the reporter its in, how many balloons were released after the case, very important distinctions that lead up to a complicated method that requires a book with tables at your side at all times.)

There is, of course, reading out of the "how to write legally textbook". Actually, there are two textbooks that explain how to write. We are supposed to read both of them. Then, when the time comes, they tell us what was written in the book by giving us a large incomprehensible, impossible to follow along, and truly boring lecture on a Monday morning at 9 complete with powerpoint presentations that have slides of pictures of various websites that we'll be doing the majority of our legal research on. These slides are of course meant to show us how to navigate the sites, and search using proper terms and what not; realistically it's a lot like taking pictures of a large deserted island, complete with a jungle and some water features, then showing these pictures to a group of people explaining that there is treasure underneath a particular tree in one of the pictures, and then telling them to go find it. But, before you do that, you also take pictures of another deserted island, with a slightly different jungle, and a slightly different water feature (you know, a larger waterfall or something cool), telling the group that the same treasure, or potentially the same treasure, is under a different tree that looks like the one you just saw but on a different island. Then you tell those people, who want the treasure, truly do want to be able to find it, to go get it ... and no, there's no map--only the pictures of the islands. ... Have fun.

The work to be done is an "Office Memo". Apparently I didn't get it. It took forever. I don't want to go into great detail about it...still a little sensitive. Just know that I'm trying to learn how to write in legal language, and form. It's not easy. It took a lot of time last weekend. It was my first draft. This week is the next draft. I haven't gotten feedback yet, but I'm pretty sure i need to overhaul the paper. Which means it'll take a lot of time this weekend as well. Ugh.

It's okay though. Thanks to the Jewish Religion I have a three day holiday. Ah, Yom Kippur. Thanks.

On that note, I'm headed off to the library. I took most of Friday off from studies and am going to hit the books today!

Law Pal