The Goblet of Explosive Flatulence

So here I am at my parents' house, sipping a cup of red wine and engaging in our traditional family holiday activity of watching the James Bond marathon on Spike TV; yeah, we're a family composed mostly of men :-P. However, since I've seen "For Your Eyes Only" several times before, I figured I'd take the opportunity to comment on last night's activity: seeing "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire."

Ok. I admit it. I'm a Harry Potter fan. I resisted it all the way up until about the time book four came out, but then I was playing wingman for a buddy of mine at this awful party... well, to make a long story short I found myself hiding on the porch where I found a copy of HP and the Sorcerer's Stone... I only read about 20 pages before my buddy (finally realizing that flight was really the best option) came to ask for a ride home, but that was enough.

Anyway. I think the books are terrific. The writing is fantastic and the stories are, if nothing else, a lot of fun. The movies on the other hand... well I liked the third one a lot, but the others were pretty awful. The most recent one was no exception. Like the first two, number four spent way too much time trying to cover as many scenes from the book as possible and far too little time developing a coherant and entertaining movie. Far better to just take a few really important scenes, do a good job developing them (as opposed to the piss-poor development actually seen in the movie) and let them tell the story instead. It is as though the producers are afraid that rabid mobs of outraged teens and young adults will descend like a fiery rain of blood and death upon their studios if they sacrifice someone's favorite scene. Bah. The only time movies based on books really turn out well is when the book is just a base and the movie is a stand-alone product.

Ok enough. My ability to simultaneously blog and appreciate the subtle nuances of Bond's interaction with the female supporting cast is quite limited.

Law School Exams

Oi. Exams in law school are something of a bitch, which I'm sure many who read this blog already know. Seriously. You study your ass off for a whole semester, take a few hundred pages of notes, read and brief a few hundred cases spend countless hours making sure that you grok the law in its entirety, but your grade for the class comes down to a single 2-4 hour test. Seems to me that these tests are less an evaluation of how well you understand the material (though you'd better have a good grasp of it or else you'll spend the whole exam just looking stuff up) and more an evaluation of how fast you can compose a broad essay that fits in as many different points of law as possible. Sure the profs tell you that all you really need to do is answer the question, but from what everyone else tells you, doing that is what you do to get the passing grade. Getting the high marks requires you to answer the question AND throw in everything else that is even remotely related.

Then, as my torts prof said, exam grades are entirely artificial and arbitrary. You either write down what the prof wants to see or you don't. The argument/answer itself is not so important so long as the correct topics were mentioned and understanding was demonstrated. I'm sure that the theory goes something like "if the students know the material well enough, the issues will be obvious" but honestly, the sort of time pressure we're put under makes it nigh impossible to address any given point with any sort of real nuance or depth without sacrificing the same on other questions, and (at least for me), knowing the true depth and nuance of the law almost seems a detriment because it is so very easy to get caught up in one explanation and then not have time to adequately address the other points (yeah, sure, the answer is better time management, but that only works if you remember to look at your watch). Anyway, time management aside, I question whether these exams are really an efficient evaluation method. Seems to me that because there simply isn't enough time to really show the prof what one has learned, there probably won't be all that much difference between the exam written by a student who really knows the law in all of its complexity and that of a student who only knows the basics. I dunno, I haven't gotten my grades yet, so I'll stop kvetching for now and get back to you once I've seen how things went.

And so it begins

One down, five to go.

Welcome to my blog. Now that I am a professional at this whole law school thing (one semester done), I figure I will actually have the time and perhaps even inclination to maintain this little project. My intention is to create a running narrative of my life as a law student and a sounding board as I try to hash out my beliefs on religion, politics, philosphy, italian and tex-mex cooking and how each intersects and overlaps with the others.

I'll start with a series of reflections on the past semester and then work from there.

Welcome and enjoy!