Frequent Citations

My New Exercise Routine

I got my new carrel (carell? Carrell? carel? KARELLE? It has multiple spellings, but carrel is the TypePad approved spelling.) and it is on the sixth floor. The journal office is in the basement. Today I think I trekked between them about ten times, and I wasn't even at school all day. When you're taking the stairs, and hauling around a computer and books, that gets to be a pretty good workout.

At one point, there was someone sitting in my carrel. He was astonished that they were reserved. Um, do you see the textbooks, and the personal belongings strewn all over some of them (not mine)? But I said hey, no problem, grabbed my Con Law book and went back to the office to read. I mean, I have options for reading locations even if the office is a war construction zone and the opposite of quiet a lot of times (same could be said for the 6th floor, I guess).

When I went back later to swap textbooks he was gone anyway.

Now if I could just get the guy behind me to quit chewing gum with his mouth open, and taking phone calls, and generally disturbing the peace, life would be peachy.

I'd settle for him not smacking his gum. I hate that sound.

What Listserves Were Made For

After yesterday's little contretemps in the library, a certain 3L posted a notice on the list-serve asking people to please not print the keycites for Marbury and the like. (Actually, it was something about not needing to know when Asahi was cited by some court in Kiev.)

So today we got this email:

Dear 1Ls,

2Ls and 3Ls are working on very important things, it is inappropriate for you to use the Westlaw Printers at all.  Please transcribe the cases and keycites by hand.  Stencils are available in the library (in Courier New) which you can borrow.  If you have any questions, please ask a law librarian.

If you would like to be patronized by a 3L, please find me in the Green Lounge where I will be re-reading my Bigelow brief. It is so good!

Good luck on your briefs!

The exchange has been a refreshing change from all the announcements about sublets.

Pandemonium And Printing

It seems to have finally occurred to the 1Ls that their major writing assignment is due in a week. The library is crammed, and the print room (where the Westlaw and Lexis printers reside) has been hit by a blizzard. Half the blizzard is one print-out, because some sweet little 1L who's never used the services before decided to print out a report on one of the world's most-often cited cases... it's pushing 2000 pages.

Anxious 1Ls are scurrying around, grousing about the broken printer and missing print-outs. If they bothered to pick them up once in a while, they wouldn't be missing--but hey, go ahead and leave them in everyone's way for a week. Please. Still, I do have some sympathy. The pressure's brutal, and the stakes are high. What they get on this assignment is pretty much their grade for the year.

Oh, how well I remember.

Fountain Of Sleet

Yesterday, I watched out the library windows as they prepared the fountain and fired it up again. It's Admitted Students Weekend, so they try to make everything look as pretty as possible. Today, it is sleeting. Nasty, nasty sleet. Last year I believe there were hail storms during Admitted Students Weekend.

The library remains bone-chillingly cold. I brought in a space heater. It was so cold I could not work. The library just posted a services survey. I'm going to suggest providing mugs of hot chocolate.

In A Nutshell: Phooey

Dear Nutshell[1] Thief:

 You are scum. I hereby wish upon you a 169 in both the classes for which you swiped my books.

 Very truly yours,

 Citations.

UPDATE: I found them!! Whee!! I had searched and searched and finally I gave up and resigned myself to the idea that after a year of leaving my stuff scattered all over a library table all the time, someone had finally swiped a couple of items.

This year we have had a few laptops stolen, a thought which makes me shudder and promptly email myself everything important. But theft here is extremely rare, and usually blamed on the occassional stranger in the building. Hey, we're an insular group. And it usually is a stranger.

Except for that pizza, we're a pretty courteous and law-abiding bunch. Yay.

*humming happy tune*

 

---

[1] A Nutshell, for you non-lawschool readers, is a little (and surprisingly expensive) book summarizing the law for various subjects. They can generally be read in a weekend or so, and are great at simplifying the law into something the dimmer among us (me) can sort of generally grasp.

 

Cold Snaps

It's so cold in the library--on the main floor--that you can almost see your breath. On the fourth floor, it's about 95 degrees, but there's no oxygen. So freeze and breathe, or roast and suffocate. Installing an HVAC system in the middle of a midwestern winter is maybe, just maybe, not the greatest of ideas.

Oh, and the car died again.

*grump*

Moving From One Procrastination To The Next

The Comment, it is Done! (The first draft. The crappy first draft.) Printed, turned in, emailed, voila.

*sigh of total exhaustion*

Now I have to do this little opinion, and read 8 gazillion pages for Admin (noooooo!!!!) and try to remember where we left off in Commercial and oh crap! I have Crim Pro tomorrow too. Ah, phooey.

Anyway.

I'm trying to take deep breathes and just keep going. As I was toiling away in the library this evening I looked out to see an ambulance in front of the school, and later learned that one of my friends had taken slightly ill. Said friend will be fine, thank goodness--but it's not something you like to see that happen. One more person to take notes for in Commercial tomorrow...

*cracking the whip*

Back to the Opinion!

Now With Not Just Noise, But Stink Too!

In a brave (if pathetic) attempt to work on the two massive papers I have to write in the next two weeks, I trekked back to the library today.

Where the construction workers had roped off a massive section of the main floor in order to do I have no idea what, but it involved a lot of noise--even more noise than usual, I should say. So that was bad. But I was coping, and toiling away in near isolation because almost no one was left in the library. The very last of the make-up finals was this morning, so who else had reason to be working in the library?

Apparently, some guy. Who a) doesn't go to the law school, and b) needed to wear the entire bottle of aftershave or whatever sort of stink-juice it was, and c) had to sit directly behind me. Not even on the other side of the table behind me, but right behind me. In an otherwise empty and massive room, he's sitting two feet away and smelling the place right up.

*onset of migraine*

So I gave up, trekked back home through the sleet (nice!) and tried to ignore the little sports fans in order to get a few more hours of work done. Which I did, sort of.

Seriously, what more are they going to do to us to get us to quit using the library? I'm telling you, it's become a war zone. And tomorrow is a day-long proof-reading gig, the most likely spot for it being--why, yes! The library!

Now With More Drips!

You know it's bad when the dripping is so loud it drowns out the sound of the jackhammers.

Yes indeed, folks: the library is leaking again. I really want to shoot someone. I don't think slapping them around a little is enough. Finals are next week! We need a place to study without -- as the girl who just left said -- water torture!

Some days, it's just too much. Weatherstripping, people. Learn about it. Use it.

Remind Me Why I Didn't Apply To Stanford

Ping! Ping! Ping!

That was the first thing I heard. Then there was a bit of a muted hustle and hubbub. The library is leaking. Now I think it's leaking behind me.

The jackhammers are bad enough. But now this?