The first week of the Spring semester is over, and so far it’s been fabulous! I love my classes, my professors, and my classmates (we’re all still here!). It honestly feels like I haven’t left; everything is so normal now. It’s funny to look back on how I felt the first week of classes last semester. There was so much confusion and anxiety, and that’s all in the past… for now.
Before I get to the shenanigans of this semester, I’ll tell you a little bit about my break. I did nothing… and it was amazing! I probably would have gone out more if my Explorer hadn’t been getting repaired the whole three weeks I was home. I caught up with family, binged most of my favorite shows that I let slip away during the semester, had a great Christmas and New Year’s Eve, and napped! It was just the lazy, relaxing vacation I needed.
The stress started sooner than anticipated when I got back here to Moscow last Friday. I came home to a house that had no water and no internet! Suffice it to say, I didn’t need that drama right before this semester started. Luckily, I have awesome parents who came down Saturday to fix everything. I got the internet situation settled while Tom figured out why I didn’t have water, and no, it wasn’t because the pipes underground were frozen, which is what my stupid maintenance man told me. “Sorry, nothing we can do about it. Just have to wait for things to warm up.” Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Got to wait until March to have water! Idiot. Anyway, a heater down in our crawl space and a 50 foot extension cord did the trick, and I had water about 2 1/2 hours later! All thanks to “Big T.” 😚
By the time Monday rolled around, I was ready to go! My class schedule is much nicer this time, except that the other section has Fridays off 👎🏻 that would have been awesome. Oh well. My Constitutional Law class (or Con Law as we call it) is from 8:30-9:20am Monday through Thursday. I think it’s the perfect class to have first thing in the morning. My professor is so sweet! He memorized all of our student pictures before the first day so he could immediately call us by name. Plus I think Con Law is going to allow for some epic debates!
Next is Criminal Law (Crim Law) Monday-Wednesday-Fridays at 11:30-12:20. I feel this class will be the most challenging for me, mostly because Crim Law is based more around statutes rather than case law/judge-made law, which is how we’ve been learning law so far. Our professor even said on the first day, “If you don’t understand what’s going on by the 5th or 6th week of class, that’s completely normal. If it gets to be Spring Break and you are still having trouble, then you have a problem.” Yeesh. Talk about long hours trying to understand that class! This professor seems very nice, though. I made the unfortunate decision to sit on the aisle; 2Ls and 3Ls have said he likes to call on people on the ends of the classroom. It’s proving to be true, because he already called on me!
After Crim Law comes Legal Research and Writing (LRW) again Mondays and Wednesdays at 12:30-1:20. I have the same professor because this is a year-long class, and she’s fantastic. She’s very organized and keeps us on the ball with our paper deadlines. We only have two papers to write this time, but one is a trial court brief and the biggie is an appellate brief: much more intricate than the office memos we wrote last semester. And at the end of the semester we give oral arguments on our appellate briefs in front of “judges.” I hear that’s the most stressful experience all of 1L year. At this point I’m looking forward to it, but then again I don’t mind speaking in public. Thank you, FFA and FBLA!
Finally, I have Civil Procedure II (Civ Pro II) Tuesdays and Thursdays from 2-3:15pm. I like to think of Civ Pro as a year-long class as well, since we also have to the same professor as last semester. She’s amazing as always. It’s fun to have a professor that’s so obviously passionate about what she does. The only downside is the timing of Civ Pro II leaves roughly a 5 hour break between Con Law and Civ Pro II on those days. It’s been tough to try to stay busy this first week, since there isn’t much to do yet except organize notes and read for the next day. Yesterday I wasted almost 3 hours talking with friends before I started working on other things. However, I think the break will be a Godsend when we start writing our briefs in LRW and outlining for classes.
But the most important thing that happened this week? GRADES! Final grades finally came out today. We waited almost a month for them and they’re finally here. I didn’t fail any classes and I’m not on academic probation! Woo hoo! Class standings won’t come out until the first week of February, so I don’t know where I sit compared to my other classmates. Honestly though, I don’t really care right now. I’m just happy that last semester is finally over, and I can move on with this semester without looking back.
Hope all of you had wonderful holidays, and don’t let the snow get you down! Check back here in a few weeks!
Short and Savvy, J.D. 