1L Hell - Over and Done

It wasn't that bad, but there were certainly some rough patches. Now the paper for my favorite class is in and I am done. Few weeks of freedom and back to school in mid June. Looking forward to meeting up with some friends I haven't seen for ages and spending time with my family early next month. You know, maybe I'll do this law thing, after all.

Exams Done, Paper to Go

Well, I have finished my exams. Wait, wait, I'm still not done with my second semester at law school. There's still a paper I have to turn in in a couple of days. So, there's some more pain on the horizon before some rest. You'd think I would enjoy writing these things because I am a journalist. But no, papers just don't provide much joy. And on top of it, I don't get paid for them and instead I go into further debt as the days go by.

This semester was certainly less rough than the first one. I had a better schedule, less demanding classes (Civil Procedure was a killer in the Fall, even though the prof was great). And when you kind of settle in and see that it's not going to be all roses so might as well accept in and enjoy life a little by coming out from behin the books does helps. This time around I took my exams spaced closer together, so it was basically: exam-study day-exam-study day... And this time I figured that last day of studying is not going to make a huge difference, so get a good outline or two and just go over the stuff that you hopefully learned in large part during the semester.


Some people out there still stress quite a bit. My fellow Northwestern blogger at Thrown for a Loop has made some interesting entries over the exam period, sometimes seeming to reach the edge of sanity. But we're all a little on the crazy side out here. I have been out in "the real world" for quite a while before coming back to school and thought I could deal with the pressure. And I have, in large part, but the stress does get to you. My sleeping hours are all out of whack (writing this after 3AM, after all) and I'm a little jumpy, perhaps because I'm drinking even more Diet Pepsi and Coke than usual. And on top of this I've been having some difficult times with a good friend, which hasn't helped.

But I'm almost finished. Now let's get this Entertainment Law done before Thursday afternoon.

Poland Up In Arms Over Russian Pipeline

Poland, always a little touchy over deals between Russia and Germany, at least since that 1939 fiasco, is quite upset over the fact that Germany still wants to go ahead with a pipeline that will take Russian gas under the Baltic Sea. This, of course, will leave their neighbor in the middle in the cold and more vulnerable to Russian whims, similarly to Ukraine and Georgia. The previous German chancellor already got rewarded for playing along with Uncle Vladimir, but looks like Angela Merkel is also not willing to drop the agreement.
The Baltic pipeline doesn't seem to make much economic sense because it will cost more to build. So what's the deal here? Hey, aren't those pesky Social Democrats in Merkel's cabinet? Oh, yeah. And never mind that Poland is now part of the EU and certainly a much more stable partner than the Russians. Good neighbors.