Saturday, September 25, 2010

FAMU-TSU Weekend 2010

Ramblings Post #137
A man must always doubt himself. If only a little bit. Confidence is a much admired aspect of a man's makeup, one which lets him rise in the morning and attack those obstacles between him and his goal. Arrogance is a much despised concept that creates enemies and closes off routes that later might be retraced. The difference between Confidence and Arrogance is that Confidence realizes it might be wrong. The difference is doubt.



It's the FAMU-TSU weekend.

People been partying since Wednesday night (I got the emails). There have been drop-ins, drinks at the bar, cocktails, parties, soirees, gatherings, groupings, day parties, parades, tailgating and oh yeah, a football game too. After that time when the band plays, er...the game is over, there will be more of the parties, gatherings and other stuff. My fellow alumni are doing it big. Always have.

And I'm home. Alone. I've been reading through my notes, reviewing the rules of Evidence and getting ready for a mid-term.

And if one person says "but you're investing in your future" or "doing the right thing"...I might have to give them a piece of my mind [Note: that comment reads that way for "legal" reasons]. This is borderline torture.

When I first got to school, one of the professors gave the entire evening program a short talk about how to treat spouses and loved ones. Law school is famous for breaking up marriages as studies get more intense and you immerse yourself in study. If you're going full time. If you're going part time, you got a whole different set of issues. It's not the study...it's life in general.

I work. I go down to the office and put in a full day. And not a simple set of tasks either, but a series of issues and problems that are always an emergency, always need an immediate answer and somehow always require somebody do something...and that somebody is usually me.

Then I leave work, drive downtown and go to class. Some nights until 10pm. For which you need to be prepared, you need to have read the cases, briefed the cases, done the hypotheticals, reviewed the terms, etc and so on. You can buy a casebook, but to use it effectively, you read the case, the casebook to tell you what you just read, then re-read the case to see if you can see it now. There really isn't a substitute for actual reading.

Then I go home to....nothing.

I'm single, so there is no wife, no girlfriend, not even a pet. I go home and eat something, if its not too late for my diet, the meals of which all have to measured and prepped, then crawl in the bed and the next day...repeat. My off days I'm home, making sure I read what I need to have read, my weekends are spent doing all that case reading and briefing I talked about earlier.

It is not very exciting.

My diet, and by the way I'm down over 40 pounds, says no alcohol, so on those rare moments I do head out, they're brief. The diet also limits the water intake, so even that is out as option. There are times I wonder who this program was designed for, its so restrictive, but we'll see when it comes to the next phase.

So I'm home alone, on the weekend. This weekend. Of all weekends. Studying.

Yay me.

This is how lonely looks.

Barkeep....hello, barkeep....can I get a little service over here? Barkeep!

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