Today is the First Day of the Rest of Your Life

I've been home for just over a week, though it feels like longer. The beginning of August is fast approaching, bringing with it the promise of exciting times, as I will leave for Virginia to try my hand at the whole Law School thing. In under 3 months, I will have been long past orientation, and have sunk into the hard, bitter grind that is daily life at school.

How do I know it'll be a hard bitter grind? Well, this handy dandy "guide to 1L life book I got as a gift from my mom tells me so. So, do you say "aww, that's cute, his mother bought him a book?" No. Because the book was just the beginning. Going forward there are some realities that I've had to face:

I Am Unemployed.
I've come to accept this reality as true. I've also decided that the conventional low-effort summer jobs that I would want for two months will not be materializing in front of me. Blahablahblahtheeconomyblah. Looks like waving  my fancy undergraduat degree around isn't going to make it rain.

Because I now have a long summer's worth of time on my hands, said mother has seen fit to make sure I don't just sit around the house ["You'll get soft!"]. And so I received the "How to not fail out in one year from Law School" book. Followed by 3 hornbooks. It's true, everyone says that one should "relax, take time to recharge the batteries" and such in the last summer of blissful freedom. But since Dream Internship fell though, summer bliss seems to be punctuated with ways to mitigate the lost good experiences. And so, I now have the tools I need to master CivPro before I even set foot in a classroom. Or at least know enough to survive my first cold call.

[Sidenote--Expecting me to follow my bolded heading structure was stupid.
A word on cold calling. I honestly don't think it's going to be that bad. I've had legal studies classes before with the Socratic Method, and I really don't find the prospect terribly frightening. If by some strange twist of fate, this record of my life becomes popular enough that some 0L is out there reading my words (I'm talking, of course, before I become rich from publishing this blog.), know this: The Socratic Method and Cold Calling are NOT THAT BAD. Unless you haven't done the reading. Then it's hell.

The key to getting past any irrational fears you--yes you, 0L--may be be having of the demons that are the Socratic Method (SM) and Cold Calling (CC) is understanding the true nature of the beasts. Accept that the professor knows more than you. Accept that you likely will not know that much less than the average classmate you may have. Accept that the point of the Socratic Method is not to be "right." Understand this: any good professor can break you if they want to. Whether you succeed or bomb a round in the SC pits with your prof is simply determined by whether or not they let you walk away with your organs intact.

You may do great in your first CC or you may bomb it. If you did the reading and intelligently attempted to apply it, at least made it show that you did so, you did fine. Did you pay attention to the comments of the prof? Did you listen to the person who eventually got it right? Did you remember how you got there? If you can answer yes to that, then you did fine. At the end of the day, let go of the fear of classroom embarrassment: chances are, half of your classmates are just happy it wasn't them.]

Back on Track--Now where was I with these headings? Oh yeah...

I Have No Furniture.
This means that I need to shop. A lot. Over the past few days I've been budgeting out money that I received as a gift to cover my furnishing expenses. Despite the fact that I've been stockpiling stuff for my dorm for the past 4 years, I have been living solely off of the university's interior design. >.<

Given that I have the money to spend for a nice little shopping excursion, it's been a bit of a time trying to balance the two warring angels on my shoulder: Price and Quality. I've got a firm intent to hold on to my stuff forever (there's stuff in the house from my parents college and undergrad years--heck, I'm going to be sleeping on my mother's first mattress out of law school come the fall), which means it needs to be high quality. Unfortunately, higher quality is tied to higher price, and then I feel guilty that my honest to goodness intents to be frugal for once have taken a tumble again. It's for a good cause I suppose. After all, all of my dorm gear is still good to go, so the whole quality lasts thing must be true.

I Now Have a Totally Free Summer.
Hang on a second...I'm unemployed! That means I can do whatever the heck I want! ["Want" is defined by what I can afford] I have to say, I think there are upswings to this. High School Best Friend is going to be joining the Navy as a pilot in the fall, so I may not be seeing much of him after this summer for a while, but since I'm free I can hang out whenever I want. Today I went on a day trip with another friend to Annapolis at the drop of a hat. I have time to catch up on reading, and entertain no one in particular but you (see, like that personalization??) with this blog. Actually I have a bunch of stuff that I want to do, and this way I have the time to do it. Good deal.

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Now, for my Cool Things of the Day. First is a Red-Bull sponsored mega-skydive over here...

What you need to know: A man is going to jump out of a balloon borne pod in the Stratosphere, plummet towards earth, break the sound barrier, and hopefully survive. Go to the website to see the awesome intro video, if nothing else. http://www.redbullstratos.com/

Also, listen to this song:

 

Mmmkay, that's it. Ttyl.