Bring Your "A" Game

When I started law school, I received the usual advice:

-cut out all non-essential activities (movies, TV, sleep...you get the idea)

-map out a timeline/plan for your studying

-make studying your priority over other things

At the same time, I developed an avid interest (some might say addiction) to "bad" reality TV. My 1L year it was Next Food Network Star and Iron Chef America. 2L brought with it Next Iron Chef and Food Network Challenge. Dancing With the Stars accompanied the beginning of my 3L year, and 4L has brought with it the worst (and therefore most compelling) series of all -Project Runway. I also flirted with Celebrity Apprentice and a second season of Dancing With the Stars before succumbing to the pressure of deadlines and law school assignments. Even though I definitely violated the first and third rules of surviving law school, I found that these reality shows provided me with a new and different perspective on surviving law school that other activities did not. Let me share them with you:

1. Law school, like any other creative activity, is a full-contact "sport." Law school changes you. It is fiercely competitive both internally as well as externally. Law school will beat you down, bruise your ego, and dash your hopes. Only by focusing on the next task and doing it to the best of your ability will you survive and move forward. Add to that the sense of never quite measuring up, that your best is merely second-rate, and that at any time you will hear the dreaded words "you're out," and you have a sense of the type of ego beating that law school inflicts. As a result, I found an odd kinship with the competitors on shows like Dancing With the Stars, Next Iron Chef, and Project Runway. Each week a cadre of individuals put forward their best efforts that were then scrutinized and picked to pieces by a panel of expert judges. Each week I saw one competitor singled out and sent home because they weren't quite "good enough." I also began to have more empathy for my professors as I watched Tim Gunn and Alton Brown seek to offer realistic mentoring as well as consolation to struggling competitors who were ultimately sent home. Reality TV might not have improved my grades, but it made me a better law student because it provided a road map of how to survive in a seriously competitive environment without losing myself in the process.

2. You can't win if you don't play. Early on in each of the competitive reality shows, it became clear who came to win. Everyone who came to win showed up and worked hard. Every day. Even during Dancing With the Stars when H1N1 flu was at its peak, dancers and celebrities intent on winning showed up in surgical masks and gloves and continued to train. Derek Hough showed up running a temp and only went home when he couldn't see straight any more. Did they all win? No - reality TV doesn't work that way and neither does the FYLSX. However, Concord students who passed the FYLSX show the same dedication. They show up. They work hard. They don't quit even when things get tough. Do all of them pass? No. But they can be proud of the fact that they played. They showed up. They trained hard, and they did their best.

3. Winner's bring their "A" Game. Alton Brown said it best. "Sometimes good chefs have bad days." That is true for everyone. Tim Gunn said to one designer "Get something out on the runway. Move on so that you can do better on the next challenge." Anyone can have a bad day. Winners learn to work through their bad days so they can consistently bring their "A" game to every situation they encounter. You can pass the FYLSX on a bad day - but it will be easier on a day when you've brought your "A" game with you.

4. Remember, that it is just a game. When I was at WMCL for Advanced Advocacy, Professor Songsteng, the director of the program, told us students that this was our chance to take risks and fail so that we could learn how to play the game. "No one is going to jail. No one is losing a million dollars. Take a risk. I'm offering extra credit for the person who steps outside the box and takes the biggest risk this week." Did we take risks? Sort of. But it helped to remember that even though law is serious, it is also a game and in order to play it well we first have to learn how to play - even though that sometimes means taking risks and failing. And even though it is serious, law school is at its heart a game. So take some risks. Have fun. Failure isn't final or fatal - its just a way to learn.

So now I am heading into the homestretch - the end of my 4L year. I have had highs and lows, triumphs and defeats. But law school has not beat me. I look toward the last hurdle - the bar exam - and look back at all that I have learned. Some of my best lessons haven't come from a law book. They came from those who showed up.

The SBA "Motivational"

It is not actually called the "motivational" but it might as well be. Its official title is the "SBA President's Welcome." I'm one in a semi-long line of speakers whose job it is to encourage the students who will be subjected to what I affectionately call "Demon Exam I" (Not to be confused with Demon Exam II - eg the CBX).

This exquisitely designed torture device - aka the First Year Law Student Exam (FYLSX) or "baby bar" as it is better known as - is a required hurdle for any 1L from a non-ABA-accredited, California registered law school. Students must pass this exam before any further law classes are credited toward their total number of required hours beyond the three 1L foundational classes - Torts, Contracts, and Criminal Law. The weekend before this hell-on-earth 7 hour exam, Concord hosts a three-day boot camp style review session geared toward preparing students to take and pass the exam. Saturday evening they recognize students who have gone above and beyond academically. They also feature small speeches from various VIPs - including the SBA president (that would be me). The goal of the program is to encourage students to go into the test and "give it hell." However, speaking as a survivor, many of us that have taken and passed the exam agree that taking it is like standing on your own 1 yard line, throwing a "hail Mary," hoping that it makes it far enough up the field for a first down, doesn't get intercepted, and that you don't get sacked. Miriam - my upperclass mentor (who has now graduated - wail!) says that the best thing about the FYLSX is when you receive your passing score and know that you NEVER EVER have to take it again. Taking the "baby bar" is not for sissies.

This will be my third motivational - my second in official capacity as SBA President (I gave the first one along with then SBA Secretary and later SBA President Miriam Billington). I usually try to keep it light, upbeat, and under 5 minutes in length. So far my longest has been 4 and change. I try to keep it somewhat humorous and engaging because everyone is tired, hungry, and looking forward to dinner and relaxation before the last long day of review on Sunday. The hardest part about the motivational is keeping it appropriate for a mixed audience. No one has had enough to drink to allow for a roast (that was Friday evening's program), no-one wants to hear that it is worse than a 4th down on your own 1 yard line (no pressure), and you definitely can't say that everyone in the room is likely to pass (the pass rate is abysmal and the October exam has a reputation for being harder than the June exam). Instead the tone must be cautiously optimistic, upbeat, with the reminder that there is always next time - but only as a last resort.

So I'm off to watch another few hours of bad reality TV (Project Runway, Chopped) in search of inspiration.

4L - Ready or Not

It's funny - I look back to the beginnings of this blog (when I started my 1L year) and think about that summer before I started and how I felt:

excited.

intimidated.

ready to go.

In trying to get a feel for what this law school adventure would be like, I read through the blogs of other law students - many of them almost finished with law school and caught a general tone of:

bored.

burned-out.

ready to go.

Now that I am a 4L, I recognize those same sentiments.

Bored - been there, done that. Ready to start another year of learning rules and applying them, and learning when they don't apply. It isn't new and fresh any more. It's just more of the same. The course titles are different, the course numbers are different, the content is different - but there isn't any difference in how we use it. More of the same.

Burned out - again, been there, done that. I'm tempted to say "just hand me the rule book, hand me the cases, tell me what you want me to write about and then get out of my way." I've been a pretty self-directed learner for the most part anyway. I socialized my way through college and graduate school. My learning happened through talking with groups and interacting with others, and the hardest thing about attending an online law school has been the lack of in-person socialization that occurs. There is no student lounge (except for the virtual kind), no cafeteria, no professors with offices and office hours. Email is nice, because you can communicate any time you have a problem or a question, but there is something about being a prof groupie that gets lost in the translation when there is no office to hang out in after class. (I suspect that if Professor Kaufman had an actual Concord office it would have to be the size of a small conference room to accommodate all of us. Same for Professor Bracci.) Same with mentoring. There is no virtual translation for sitting down at a cafeteria table with your bff and knocking your head against the table and wailing "Evidence SUCKS!" (Although Miriam and I came close with Yahoo Messenger - the ALL CAPS key and the exclamation point got quite a workout.)

Ready-to-go: Yep. Definitely ready to start the year. Definitely ready to finish it. Ready to be DONE!

4L - Ready or not - HERE I COME!

Why the experts have the question wrong

Ok, now I've got your attention.

We all know the question. Shall we all say it in chorus--"What would you do if you knew you couldn't fail?" I hate that question. Loath it. Struggled to answer it so that I could "unlock" what I was meant to do with my life.

I struggled with this question for years. Depending on how you're defining fail I discovered many answers to that question. What would I do if I couldn't fail? And, appropriately enough, I came up with Fantasyland answers such as flying without an airplane, skiing the alps as a beginner skier with no training, swimming a coral reef with no oxygen tank so that I never had to come up for air. Stuff that clearly couldn't happen in real life. The books I read told me I wasn't approaching the question properly - that I had to imagine things that were possible, but I was still afraid to do. Come up with something that you're afraid to do, remove the failure, and unlock your passion. I have an answer for them - bull@^&%!

When you take away failure, you remove passion.

Life coaches, teachers, and others like to remove failure because it supposedly removes the "mental blocks" that people have if they know that they could fail. My answer for that - if you're afraid you're going to fail so much that you won't even begin, then it isn't your passion. You don't care about it enough. It isn't worth it to you to put everything on the line and try anyway.

How do I know? Personal experience. Law School.

As a first year law student failure and I became friends. I failed a lot. Even when my work received a passing grade, I felt like I failed because I was a naturally high achieving student so a grade less than a B felt like failure. I questioned my decision to go to law school. I questioned my ability to complete the program. I toyed with the idea of quitting - many, many, many times. I grew discouraged. I remember telling my first year professor that I was only getting 65s on my essays and I should be doing better. His answer - I should be glad I was consistently writing 65s because it was better than many of my peers were doing and I was doing just fine. (I refrained from asking him how the kool-aid tasted and where I could get some.) Even after I passed my first year I continued to entertain the idea of quitting many, many, many times. Failure continues to accompany me along this journey. I still make mistakes when I answer questions. I still have professors tell me "no, go back and try again." Failure is still an option. I still have the demon exam known as the California Bar Exam to pass when I am finished with the coursework.

The possibility of failure continues even after law school ends and I enter practice. All lawyers know that they can prepare and represent their client well and at the end of the day it still comes down to the opinions of 12 carefully selected people. There's even a t-shirt that says "My case depends on 12 people too unlucky to get out of jury duty."

So why do I persist?

Because I care. It is my magnum opus, my great work.

Failure - definitely a possibility. But success doesn't taste as sweet without the knowledge that working for it meant something. That is the role of failure. Failure is the "I dare you" that life packages with challenges.

Because a man's reach should exceed his grasp - else what's a heaven for?

(Robert Browning)

Here's the question for the experts - What is worth enough to you that you will risk failure to achieve it?

Enough of "Simple" Already

Today I had it.

It came in the form of a title of a blog post - "4 Simple Ways to Stick to a Meal Plan"

And my inner 5 year-old REBELLED!

"Simple this, Simple that, Simplify in 4, 8, 10 easy steps. Simple steps. Get Real!"

When my inner 5 year old gets annoyed enough to speak up rather than just whinging and doing her own thing, I generally listen. It saves time in the end. Not listening leads to messes and broken plans and a general sense of global failure, so listening earlier rather than later reaps huge benefits.

And after calming down long enough to open a new post page, I listened - and learned.

Creativity is not simple. It can not be boiled down into a paint-by-numbers experience or existence. It needs space to grow and become itself. Following a simple anything takes the joy away from the creative part of life. Following a simple this or an easy that in a paint-by-numbers fashion takes away the ability to grow and learn. What happens when Step 4 would work better as Step 2 in my world? What if I don't like Step 3? Or find that I need 4 and 1/2 steps or 7 steps instead of 6? What happens then? You forget I'm not wired like everyone else. I need an example of a finished product, but then get out of the way and let me figure out how to put the design together. It will get there, and it will probably be right. Step by step is great for assembling IKEA furniture, but not necessarily for designing a life style.

I listened.

I learned.

I think I'll be unsubscribing from a few blogs - unless my inner 5 year old thinks that would be too harsh. She's a generally forgiving soul.

So when did the light turn on?

I wrote the essay assignment I had been dreading. The its-so-big-its-going-to-eat-me essay assignment. The one that I fall asleep and dream that I write my @$$ off and when I get it back it has a big red 0 on it. That essay.

So, I did what I always do when I need to write a big assignment. I pretended it didn't exist. I worked on other assignments. I worked on my brief - which also turned into an its-so-big-its-going-to-eat-me assignment. I cleaned the house - sort of. Because everything I picked up was either related to the brief, related to the essay assignment, or notes for class. Which only caused me to worry more about the its-so-big-its-going-to-eat-me essay assignment.

Then I attended graduation. And I saw my LAW professor, who had only good things to say about my teachability and my scholarship. (Did I mention I LOVE my LAW professor??) Which inspired me to go and write the other essay assignment I had to write. These things come at you fast in 3L. It seems like there's an essay almost every week, so if you get behind, its easy for there to be three or four hanging out in the dropbox waiting. I felt pretty good about finishing that assignment. So I worked on the next one. And felt pretty good about that one too. So then I decided it was time to get off my butt and write the big assignment that had been hanging out in the dropbox for almost a month.

So I opened it and started to write.....and write......and write. And as I wrote, I realized that I was not struggling to write this essay. It was just writing itself. Bit by Bit. Piece by Piece. I was writing it, without really worrying about it or thinking about it very much. It was just writing itself, as though my fingers were just transcribing what the essay wanted to say about itself. It was long. It took a lot of time. I think I will probably get my usual 65 - but I'm okay with that because at least it felt solid and not horrible.

It was while I was driving home last night, that I realized that the light had finally turned on for this class. Every course has a point where you say "oh yeah, I got this." Corporations I had from only a few weeks in. I'm sure it didn't hurt that my sister is in finance and that was all I heard at the dinner table from the time my sister started her MBA program until she finished, and all the best books on leadership and planning are written by business people, so when I started reading about option this, and fiduciary duty that, it wasn't horribly foreign. Professional Responsibility was another. This one, however, was a struggle all the way along until now.

But it still remains a mystery why at some point the hammer falls and it goes from being a foreign language to being something understandable. It always causes me to ask myself the question 'so when did the light turn on?'

Top ten ways you (and the rest of the world) know you're a 3L

10. You have the most competitive law school bookstores set up in your internet favorites list, so it is easy to "comparison shop" for your textbooks.

9. You no longer believe that you are going to fail out when you get a 65 on your essay.

8. Your significant other has added Law and Order to the list of banned shows because he is tired of hearing you shout "objection" before the TV attorneys and then listing off all the reasons why the evidence should not be admitted. (And he doesn't want to hear the explanation of why either.)

7. The kids know that unless mommy has "evidentiary proof" of completed homework there will be no ice cream, cookies, pudding, or other dessert-type items after dinner.

6. The kids have informed you that the promise to: [get a dog / go to Disneyland / take a trip to Hawai'i / insert your own here] is not considered by them to be a social promise and they expect performance in return for allowing you to [stay late at the law library / not interrupt during study time / miss the school picnic so you can study for finals / fill in the blank] so that you can graduate.

5. You sometimes think you see the light at the end of the tunnel, but you're not sure if it's really the light or just wishful thinking.  There is also the possibility that it is the headlight of an oncoming train...

4. The old philosophers got it wrong - the road to hell is not paved with good intentions, it is paved with hypotheticals, fact patterns and drafts of Legal Writing assignments - and the floor of your study provides evidence of that fact.

3. The house is cleaner than it has been in over 2 years - because the options are clean the house or work on the moot court brief.

2. Community Property is just a yearlong example of all the reasons why marriage is still a property contract.

1. The professors see you at the Barrister Ball or other student/alumni event and say, "didn't you graduate last year?"

Leveraging Technology

I recently posted the following as my Facebook status:

To all my FB friends: My green patch is growing weeds. The candy shop went out of business. The farm is being sold at auction. The cove and sea garden turned white. Blame it on Corporations and the rest of the 3L course load - it won, they lost.

I got a few comments from this, but only a few. The status post has stemmed the tide of goodies and game invites into my status and notification area. It has also stemmed the guilty feeling from looking at 100+ notifications that always seemed to need my attention.

In a tech meeting yesterday, my co-worker Stephen admitted that he loathed Facebook. (I am paraphrasing, mostly because he used a string of long words that all added up to the more pithy word loath, so I used it here for brevity) This is almost blasphemy in blogging and social media circles, but I admired him for his honesty, and silently admitted that his stance on Facebook was pretty close to my own.

Don't get me wrong - Facebook has served me well in areas where I used to feel I was woefully unorganized. I now acknowledge friend's birthdays, anniversaries, and other important dates much more readily and easily than I used to, becoming in real-life closer to the person that I wish I were inside my head. This is not because I am any better at remembering these dates, but because I have leveraged Facebook to act in a way that my date planner and my calendar could not. My calendar could not put a cute little icon next to people's names and list them in ascending order according to when their birthdays were beginning a week before it started. My handheld did slightly better, but I still had to program it to start sending me notifications a week before. I also had to remember to go to the store ( or my email program), find a card, send a card, hope that I had their address/email address right, and wonder if it got to them. With Facebook, I see the birthday icon and note if it says "today." For the ones that say "today" I can click on the person's name, taking me straight to their wall where I can write a birthday greeting. No question about if I got the address or email right - I can see right there that I have the right person. No question about whether or not they got my greeting - I post it right on their wall, along with all the other people who have posted greetings on the wall. I don't have to wonder if they received it - I know that as soon as they log into Facebook, and click on their profile, they will see my greeting on their wall along with all the other greetings that are sitting there.

However, I have also found that FB has started to serve as a substitute for real, meaningful interaction. If I want to connect with someone, I send them a message or superpoke them or send them a widget for their farm, garden, sea-garden, etc. I also have a certain amount of admiration for the way that charitable organizations have leveraged the popularity of these games by monitoring use and making donations based upon the amount of traffic to their sponsored games. I rarely pick up the phone any more. I rarely email people. Write a letter - an actual, mail-through-the-post-office letter? Are you new? That would take time. Time for me to write the letter. Time to find a stamp (assuming that I have a stamp). Time to go to the post office (because it is likely that I don't have a stamp, so I would have to buy one). Time for the letter to travel to its intended recipient. Time for them to open read it and respond to it (assuming that they do respond to it - in the advancing age of technology, it is more likely that I would receive an email thanking me for the letter and that they would get back to me soon).

So Stephen, if you are reading this, yes, I do blog - like I do anything else that requires time, thought, and energy - rarely and in the precious moments of time stolen from the "more important" things in my life: family, studying for law school, and the occasional Friday night out with friends.

However, I do Facebook, Tweet, and occasionally email. So if you need to get in touch with me about something that can't wait, text me or message me - I'll probably get it. If, however, you would like to discuss the intrusion of Facebook and other social media into more meaningful and connected types of communication, send me a letter, or meet me on Friday evening when I'm out with my friends.