Well for starters, I am still surviving law school!!! I just finished my sixth week and its amazing to look back on my notes and see how much I have learned in such a relatively little amount of time! I feel like a lot has happened, and not happened all at the same time.
September has been a pretty good month. I started "working" for Kaplan Test Prep to help advertise all their services for students throughout their three years in law school, as well as for the big Bar exam we all have to take to be licensed to practice as lawyers after we graduate. The perk behind this gig is that if I can get a certain amount of people to sign up over the next three years, I will get myself a free Bar review course (which is like a $3,ooo value). Jason and Kasia (Jason is best friend from high school, Kasia his girlfriend) both did this at the University of Illinois Law and absolutely loved their course and working the tables to get students involved.
Speaking of Jason, one of my social outings this month (of which there are still few, but I am truly trying to work on it!) was to go to Second City for a "Best of Second City" comedy and improv show as a surprise for his birthday. Imagine SNL meets Whose Line. It was hilarious and a blast to just laugh for hours with two of my Chicago "family" members. This is where a lot of famous comedians that appear in a lot of movies and on SNL come from. If anyone comes to Chicago to visit, this is definitely a fun thing we can do!
Work is also going quite well! I am starting to get some of my own regulars and I rather enjoy not having to do anything law school related for hours at a time (outside of sleeping). Now that I have found my groove at work, I think it shall continue to go quite well.
At school I have been able to attend a couple of pretty neat events. The first was the Student Alumni Exchange where I was able to mingle with past JMLS grads, both recent and long-time out, and was able to get school advice and business cards to build on my network. I have reached out to a couple of the more recent grads to see what advice they have for securing a job and what not in today's market. So I will have to keep y'all posted on where that may lead me...
The other was a Privacy Law symposium held at our school in honor of a dedication of a court room class room in the building. Justice Scalia even came and talked at the convocation that followed, but I was unable to go due to scheduling constraints. I was able to attend a panel discussion on privacy law, and heard 4 very different views on the matter. One of the neatest things about it, having a passion for reproductive rights, is the only female on the panel was Kathryn Kolbert, one of the litigants from Planned Parenthood v. Casey in 1992. This was one of the hallmark cases brought in front of the Supreme Court that could have overturned Roe v. Wade. She brought up this interesting anecdote that because 1992 was an election year, they didn't was this issue to fall to the wayside, so they pushed to get the case on the SCOTUS (Supreme Court of the United States - for those of you who don't speak legalese) docket to have it decided before the election in November so they could keep it a hot topic in the election. I found this fascinating because 10 years later we see a very similar thing happening in our nation. Law is awesome.
I came across this video one day about Ruth Bader Ginsburg and found some further motivation to keep doing what I am doing to hopefully be as amazing and inspiring of a woman as she is... I highly suggest you watch it! (P.S. this website has TONS of awesome women who have paved the way for us all, check it out!)
I am also still trying to milk every bit of sunshine I can out of this city. It's amazing how much I miss it! This was from the other night when I was doing a little homework out on our balcony as the sun was setting.
But mainly I still spend all my time at the library... Here I am as least still in good spirits at the lib!
The trade off for being in the library all day long is that my locker looks like this at the end of it all. Which means I don't have to carry any of these heavy books back home with me and can feel like a normal person for one night, making a nice dinner, relaxing, and going to bed early without any concern of getting any work done :)
Being as far as I am in the school year, now I get to commence the dreaded and time-consuming task of outlining. In order to study for my ONE exam I have for my classes that determines my entire grade for that class (based on a curve), I have to take all my case briefs, notes from class, and any other supplemental info I may have collected and compiled it into a 50-some page outline that I will read over and over and over again (most likely over my Thanksgiving break) so that I can solidify all the law that I have learned and practice applying it to different fact patterns (this just means the story of a law suit I might encounter where I must determine what kind of action the client could bring, how they satisfy the elements of it for the court, etc.). In my property class, however, we voted to have a midterm so we can be exposed to our professor's testing style and to have fewer questions on the final. This is what the outlining process ends up looking like for me... :)
Speaking of which, I probably should get back to it... Need to utilize my "free time" as much as possible... Oh! Real quick. I went for a jog yesterday. Yes. I know. You're thinking "Cassie?! Jogging!!!" The idea is absolutely as crazy as you imagine. With how sedentary (Sami - not sedimentary haha) my lifestyle is, I now feel compelled to exercise. And the sad part is, I feel sore. My goal is to go at least three times a week. Here's to exercise! :)
I miss you all greatly and cannot wait to see some of you in one month and 19 days when I return to FoCo (yes, I have a countdown on my computer). Let me know how you are!
Love always,
Cassie
1 comments:
Cassie, Thanks, I enjoyed your Blog. Sound like you are doing fantastic! I'm proud of you, and happy for you. Keep up the good work. Casey
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