Easy Street

I don't know how many law students read my blog, but I'd like to issue a warning in case there are any 1L's or 2L's out there: people will tell you that 3L year is soooo damn easy. This is a lie.

I know people who've had a relatively sane, calm 3L year, with obscenely long weekends and very few finals. Most of the people I know, however, I think will agree with me on the above statement. 3L year may have easier or fewer classes, or maybe not, but that certainly does not mean that it will be easy. Here, for your reading pleasure, some common bits of 3L stress, with some suggestions from yours truly randomly thrown in. For example:

You may have job, but if you don't, prepare for the stress. Prepare to send out a ridiculous number of resumes. Prepare to say congratulations over and over again, and mean it, while nonetheless gritting your teeth with jealousy. This doesn't make you a bad person. It makes you honest. Try not to throw your computer when Career Development emails you repeatedly about your job search. Try not to worst case scenario yourself when you look at your bank balance.

You will no doubt have to apply for the bar. Do not, as I did, leave this to the last minute. It will be tempting, but there are many, many papers and phone calls that go along with this. Start thinking now of all the places, with exact addresses, that you have lived and worked for the last five (at least) years. Start trying to remember every location where you've ever gotten a speeding ticket. Have a helpful link, on me. It's from this year, but it's illustrative. You may also start questioning your actual character and fitness for the first time ever. Trust me, you're fine, unless you embezzled from your summer job or something. In that case, I'm sorry.

You will have to sign up for Bar Bri, if you haven't already. If you have, you will finally have to pay them. This will hurt, and you will curse them to the ends of the earth. You will have good reason to. My suggestion: comfort yourself by looking up the number of times that they've been sued, and the settlement amounts.

You will probably have a financial aid exit interview. More helpful advice: have a bottle of your beverage of choice waiting for you at home. Trust me on this one.

My last piece of helpful advice: I'm not trying to scare you, I'm just being realistic. Every year has its own unique obstacles. This is your last, so even if you don't have a job, and you're kind of broke, and your bar application's due next week, try to enjoy yourself, because chances are it's the last time that you'll get to live like a student, for better or worse.

And, with that, enough "trust me on the sunscreen" style writing from me. My last finals ever are coming up, and I still have outlining to do.

Is There a Convention I Don't Know About?

I'm starting to think that CC's on Magazine is a sort of gathering place for odd people. Yesterday we had space invading girl, not to mention an assortment of odd balls that didn't bother me, thus not warranting a post. Today, there was an especially strange breed, known as Toothbrush Boy. TB started out outside in the Cafe Rani courtyard. I noticed him because he smooshed his face into the window to get his friend's attention, which would have been fine on its own, but he had a toothbrush. An orange toothbrush that he was holding and occasionally scraping his teeth with. In public. Eventually he came inside, still with his toothbrush, still scraping his teeth, and sat at the table across from me. Now, I have a short attention span to begin with, but this was too much for me. I spent the next hour, during which he played with, examined, sucked on, and repeatedly scraped his teeth with his toothbrush, trying not to giggle hysterically at this blatant display of strangeness. When a couple of friends called me to go for a drink I was glad in more ways than one, because I'm sure that if I'd stayed my curiosity would have overcome my sense of propriety and I would have asked him what the hell was up with the toothbrush. As my friend Pink Pirate said when I emailed her about this strange phenomenon:

That is a really weird thing to carry around and chew on, because it causes people that cannot see you (she was at school) to ask whether or not you are homeless, i.e. whether or not you have some sort of mental illness/personality disorder.

In addition to the above suggestions of mental illness (aside from the toothbrush he seemed pretty normal), we have the pledging frat boy suggestion, wherein said pledge must look like a total spaz in public, and boyfriend's suggestion, which is that, given the fact that people can hang out all day without spending any appreciable amount of money, you're just bound to get some interesting characters.

I'll be there all week, so I'm hoping for more stories of unabashed freakiness throughout the next seven days, although I doubt anyone can top Toothbrush Boy. Stay tuned.

Inappropriate? Or am I just being sensitive?

Maybe I'm just being bitchy, but weigh in and tell me if this is as weird as I think it is:

I'm sitting at the CC's on Magazine, doing some outlining for class. It's early-ish, so there aren't that many people here, and thus many open tables in the back room. I'm sitting in the corner, using one table for my laptop, and the table next to me for my books, since I've got a bunch of crap with me. So I'm chilling, doing my work, and this girl comes, sits down at the table that I have my books on, and just...sits there. She flips her phone open and closed, pressed some buttons on it, but otherwise...she's just sitting there. I thought at first she was waiting for the bathroom, but people are coming in and out and she never gets up and goes in. She just sits there, at my second table, which is really close to the one that I'm sitting at. So I give her a couple of "may I help you?" sort of looks, which do nothing. Eventually, after about 15 minutes of this uncomfortable closeness, I start flipping the pages of my book a lot, hoping that she'll get the hint that, yes, I'm using this table, and get up and leave. Which she finally does. But seriously, I feel like her actions were sort of freakish and inappropriate. There were plenty of open tables! It wasn't like I was taking up an inappropriate amount of space. We didn't know each other. And she wasn't doing anything! Weirdo.

So, tell me, am I being excessively protective of my personal space? Or is she a big weirdo for randomly chilling at my table, not knowing me at all, and fiddling with her phone for the better part of 20 minutes, despite my rather obvious discomfort with her presence?

Coyote Ugly - It Ain't Pretty

Last night a friend and I visited the New Orleans franchise of Coyote Ugly. Normally this isn't the type of bar that we'd set foot in, but she'd won two gift cards to the place and we decided that drinking for free was a good idea. Not so much. To demonstrate:

Decor: think sparsely decorated falling down warehouse. By "decorated," I mean that there are hundreds of bras hanging from barbed wire decorating the ceiling. Over the front door there are plastic flags donated by Jagermeister declaring "bikers welcome!" Good to know.

Drinks: "we don't really do fancy here." Nor do they stock fruit, apparently, so there will be no limes in our drinks. Okay, you're taking a stand, refusing to fancy up my drink for me. Oh, but you will dump some overly sweet fake lime juice in my drink? Interesting. Why bother with the lime juice if you refuse to stock the fruit? Now you're no longer taking a stand. Just buy some limes already.

Bartenders: pushy. One of them starts pressuring us to buy shots, despite the fact that we have just taken two all on our own. We concede, and she tells us that said shots are buy two, get one free. The third one being for her, of course. So we take the shots, get one for her, and she tells us that it will be $14. We tell her that we're paying with a gift card, and she tells us that in that case, the price will be $21. Note to bartender: this is not a good way to get your customers to buy you more shots. Just sayin'. We are also told that $15 is not a good enough tip for a $70 bar tab. Really, because that sounds like about 20% to me.

Music: bad. Really bad. We walked in to the sounds of "Pour Some Sugar on Me." Okay, I like that song as much as the next person who likes tacky music. We hear it again 15 minutes later. In between we are treated to music ranging from Metallica to Nelly Furtado's cover of "Man Eater." My friend tells me that she refuses to acknowledge that Nelly Furtado exists, much like she refuses to acknowledge that Chloe "I'm so Avant Garde" Sevigny exists. I start thinking that this is a good way to look at it. We are also told that some horrible Papa Roach song about emo kids wanting to kill themselves is the bartenders' "signature song." Ah, yes, because that screams sexy fun bar song to me too.

Clientele: Mostly tourists. One truly fine mullet. Business in the front, party in the back!

I'd say that about wraps it up. Go if you must, but bear in mind that this is not the Coyote Ugly of the movie. Piper Perabo will not be singing to you from the bar, and there will be no fruit in your drink. But you can have lime juice, should you so desire.

Shameful Confession Thursday, Part 2

I have a seeming inability to quit smoking. I'm really good at deciding to quit, and I'll be fine for a couple months, then have one at a party, smoke for a couple days, decide it's bad for me, and quit again. I've been doing this for about five years now. It's annoying.