Hats off to Caveboy and Gio!

I am, as I have been for the past few days, struggling through my journalism law exam, and thought I'd take a break by posting. It - the exam, I mean, not posting - has been, is and promises to continue to be, a painful experience.

I was one of the very few people here who could have actually not taken the class. International students are assigned to another class, titled "New York as a Foreign Country". But, after the first day in that class, I decided that it would just be a waste of two hours every Friday morning, and chose to take the law class instead. And the result of that. . . I'm sitting here slaving away on my law exam.

I think anyone who makes it through law school, and mountains of Opinions which sound more like Latin (to someone who doesn't know Latin, of course)deserves a medal, to say the least. So, hats off to Caveboy and Gio!

It's not that I really regret taking this class. It's actually quite interesting. But it's a lot to read, remember and regurgitate, and I've realised that my regurgitation skills went out the window when I was about 10 (for better or worse!). So, here I am, armed with my big book of Supreme Court opinions in most of the landmark journalism cases, the (very unclear) notes provided by the TA (whom a classmate of mine, a lawyer in a former life, dismissed as "only a second-year law student") and more thorough notes emailed by another classmate, who was also a lawyer in a former life (see a pattern here Caveboy Esq.?!?! :-P)

"It shouldn't take more than six hours," the same TA reassured us (or maybe it wasn't a reassurance?!?) It takes six hours to WRITE the thing. It takes another six hours to find the cases and the opinions and to connect them to the cases in the exam, and to come to sort sort of cohesive and coherent conclusion. It definitely does not take six hours - try 12.

It's due at midnight tonight - well, 11:59 p.m. to be precise - so adios amigos, as I return to Branzburg v. Hayes.

And in other news, I just got a grade in one of my classes that I still have to hand in a story for. Should I still turn it in? I'm tempted to just leave it and be done with it, but then, the grade can always mysteriously change, and we can't have that. . .