The Last Week!

So, how ironic is it that the last blog I posted was after my first week of law school was complete and now, the first time I really have a minute that I feel like I can write something that makes any sense, it is the night after I have just left my last class of the semester!  I can't believe how quickly it all went by.  I walked out of that room tonight with a skip in my step and a smile on my face.  It is in no way over.  For the next 2 weeks, I am studying for what I have been told will be the most difficult exams I have ever faced so far.  I won't say it is the most difficult I will ever face because I still have four years of law school and a bar exam to complete.  But the rumor is, there is nothing like a law school final.  I actually got lucky in my first year.  My torts professor actually gave us two midterms this semester which accounted for 25% of my grade.  Which is more than I can say for Contracts.  In that class, we have one test... the final which is 9 days away... worth 100% of our grade.  It is one chance... if I blow it, I could be booted right out of law school.  But that's depressing to think about, so let me just assume that my good luck in life will follow me through this test taking procedure.

Right now, I am learning to study - which as most of you know, is not something I have had to do a lot of in my life.  In some ways, I feel like I am behind the curve in that regard.  But I will stumble my way through it and figure out what works best for me.  I will be spending all my spare time in the library, meeting with study groups, and reading, writing, and rewriting as I prepare for my upcoming exams.  I will be taking a break on Thanksgiving to enjoy the company of those near me whom I love and I will be thinking of those who I can't be near. Once these exams are done, Breighton and I are heading home to Louisiana to spend a few days with my family and friends there and then I will spend a little time relaxing before the new semester starts in early January. 

So what am I feeling right now?  Joy, elation, pride, happiness, fear, and accomplishment just to name a few.  It has been 14 weeks since classes started.  And it all feels so surreal.  I still can't believe I am doing this.  That I am in law school.  That my life has headed this direction contrary to all the years that I thought it never would.  This world has a strange way of turning sometimes.  The paths we think are our right ones, change so suddenly.  We stumble into new places, we achieve when we were not even trying, we fall in love when we were not even looking, and we find happiness when we thought it was impossible.  I am sitting here now, looking at my small Christmas tree, sipping my celebratory white russian (thanks mom & Joe!), and smiling.  Because for this moment, I am happy.  I am so very happy.

The First Week!

I know that most of you have been waiting for the update on my first week of law school. I guess the best place to start is letting you know that I survived it! Starting with a two-day orientation (Thursday and Saturday) where we actually attended our legal writing class both days, along with various presentations to get us prepared for our first year of law school. The official classes started on Monday and we had reading assignments due that first night. So, I actually spent the Sunday before classes started in the Law Library for about five hours trying to get a head start on class. Now, FIVE hours in the library, uninterrupted, would have been enough for me to get through TWO weeks of homework in undergrad... Law school... not so much. In five hours, I was able to complete... FIVE case briefs. That's right... 5. Let me put it in perspective. One of my classes had 7 case briefs for the week. The other had 5. The third class (Legal Writing) had about 45 pages of reading. All for one week. I had just spent 5 hours in the library and had not finished one whole classes work! Uh-oh.

Now, I realize that this is a new way of reading for me. I mean, this is no Harry Potter book! And, I also realize that as time progresses, I will be able to draw the important points out more quickly and therefore get through them faster. Now, I know what you are thinking... "That's great, Jen! You are going to BREEZE through law school!" EXCEPT for one thing... the reading assignment for the first week was very small as compared to what is coming my way for the rest of the semester! So, right now, I am focused on finding balance. I have spent a substantial amount of time this weekend trying to get through the entire weeks' assignments so that next week is not so crazy. As of now, I feel pretty good about the coming week.

As for the actual classroom experience... it has been great! The general theme you hear from all of the professors, any practicing attorneys and anyone who has been through the law school experience is this (in some form or another)... "The law school experience was one of the most enjoyable, tiring, and exciting times of my life." I have not heard one person who has completed law school say "I hated it." Now, I am sure there are some people who dropped out who would say that... but I don't think I will be one of those people. Right now, I am playing the "quiet observer". I do a lot of listening and watching. I have not been called on directly yet (thank goodness!) but I have raised my hand on a couple of occasions to add my input to the discussion. There is a saying that "no good attorney asks a question they don't already know the answer to", well I am following a similar mantra "don't raise your hand unless you are fairly certain you know what the hell you are talking about". I am sure I will become more confident as time moves on and I will begin to believe I know what I am talking about much more than I actually do... which will be an entirely different blog update :).

Well... I think that is about all I have time to write for now. I have to get back to Legal Writing and I still have to brief all the cases I read yesterday. Oh, and yes... I realize that most of you may have no idea what I mean when I use these terms so I will try make some shorter posts moving forward to explain those things (for those of you who are interested). Thanks again for all the support, all the good wishes, and all the love!!

The Days are Flying By!!

I can't believe it has been over two months since my last post here! What in the world have I been doing?? I guess the answer is that I have been trying to relax, I have been working a lot, and I have tried to push away the feeling that my life was moving rapidly in the direction of chaos. I think some people just think I am over reacting when I talk about the fact that my life as I know it will be over come August 17th. I want to try to break down my week for everyone...

If my job works with me the way they are promising, I will be at work from probably 7:30am till 3:00 pm every day. From there, I will drive to downtown Fort Worth where I should pull into the school parking lot by 3:30. From there, I will head into the law library (or whatever other study spot I have found) where I will spend the next 2 1/2 hours reading, studying, doing law outlines, etc. I will then head into class from either 6-8:30 (2 days a week) or 6-10 (2 days a week). From there, I am going to go home, wind down from the evening and crawl into bed to start all over again. That is 4 days a week. On Fridays, I will probably work a full day (till 5pm) and then spend my weekend studying, reading, etc. while also spending time with Breighton, Nick, and my closest friends (who I have promised to at LEAST spend one night per month on a girls night). The general rule of thumb for law school is that for every hour you are in class, you will spend 3 hours outside of class reading and preparing... so I will be taking 12 hours of class... that means you add another 36 hours of study time plus the 34 or so hours I will be working and what you end up with is not a lot of left over hours... Now, don't get me wrong, I am not complaining... I am actually very excited but I just wanted to break it down for those people who may not realize exactly how much time I will have to dedicate to this experience.

So, what have I been doing in the meantime?? I have had the opportunity to go see some great concerts, I have spent a couple of weeks in Austin where I worked my butt off but at least I got to get out of the office and have a change of scenery. I also spent 5 days in New Orleans with Nick where we got to stay right in the French Quarter thanks to the generosity of his friends. I got a chance to remember how much I love that city, how much I miss the people there, and how amazing the food is. Oh yeah, and I got a chance to enjoy the fact that I can walk in, get a daiquiri, and then head off down the street alcholic beverage in hand. :) It was great to see the city as a "tourist" and really enjoy all the nuances that it has to offer. The "joie de vivre" that pours out of everyone in that city is just overwhelming. From my trip there, I brought back some great pictures (posted soon), some great memories, a really cool ring I bought at a little jewelry store on Royal St. and of course... about 10 pounds... (a trip to south Louisiana would not be complete without weight gain after all!!). We finished off our trip with a drive in a rented convertible out to Covington, LA where we spent the night at my Aunt and Uncle's place on the lake. We ate some delicious boiled crabs, drank some great margaritas, spent some time on the jet ski, and finished off the night in the hot tub and then had a little shrimp spaghetti (my grandmother's recipe)... which I loved!! :)

Once again, I feel so blessed in my life. Even with all the difficult times and the challenging moments that I thought I would never recover from... somehow, some way... this world always seems to work out okay for me. I never take that for granted... I always work hard for it... and I always feel so blessed.

If I miss my opportunity to see anyone before school starts... please be patient with me and I will do my best to schedule some "fun" in here and there. And of course I will end this post with my usual promise to write more often...

Best wishes all...

Writing Again

I know most of you must think I have fallen off the face of the earth. The last thing I posted was the blog that I wrote on the way home from Louisiana after my dad died. I guess after that, everything in my life started to go a little crazy. So, here it is officially in writing...

I came home from that trip, went straight to my mailbox and found my letter of acceptance to Law School waiting for me. The feeling was very muted because of the events of the weekend. The thing I had been waiting for, the letter I had been checking my mail incessantly for, was right there in my hands... but my dad had just died. So joy was hard to come by. Last night, I was at a party where I saw a friend who I don't talk to regularly and who I only keep in touch with through Facebook or Twitter or other internet modes of communication. He asked me if I had gotten accepted into Law School... I think that is when I realized that I very well may never have actually put the news out there that I was in. I know that most of my family heard the news just from phone calls and inquiries... but I don't know that I actually wrote it down. So there... I am going to law school. It starts in 13 weeks... 92 days to be exact.

I have been out to a couple of events that have helped me face this reality. I went to an all day event hosted by the law school (Texas Wesleyan School of Law) where I participated in a mock class led by one of the professors. We were given a case brief ahead of time to read and then we were able to answer questions about the case. That was a pretty cool experience. The entire day was like one big slap in the face with the reality that I was indeed going to law school. Just last week I went to a reception where I was able to meet and mingle with some current students and some of my future classmates. One of the greatest things about law school is the division of classes. For example, since I will be going part-time evening, there is only one section for that group. What that means is that everyone who is starting this fall in part time evening will be in your class. For the first year of law school, every class (with the exception of a smaller legal writing class) will have the same students in it. As I move through the following years, the classmates will change based on the courses I choose to take but that core group will always be there. So when I go out to events like the one last week, it is nice to be able to talk to a few people and get a feel for the people who will be going through the craziness with me.

My job is going great. This new division I have been moved to is growing like crazy. Our sales are doubling every single month, we are getting better and better at marketing our products appropriately and I am having fun at work every day. Which is a GREAT feeling. I am so blessed to have found this spot. And I am even more blessed that I am going to continue to be a part of this magic while I am going to law school. It is so much more rewarding than just waiting tables or something equally mundane.

Breighton is doing fantastic. He is counting down the remaining days he has in school. He is ready for summer. He is starting to take up an interest in cooking (YAY!) and so I am trying to nurture that. Yesterday we made mini-pizzas for dinner where we each chose our own ingredients and piled them on to our liking. We also made brownies (which are the devil and which I am going to send home with him). Today I believe the dinner of choice is spaghetti. I am trying to take the time to explain to him the ingredients I am using and why. I talk to him about the herbs and spices, let him smell them and taste them so he understands how they affect the food. He gave me the sweetest mother's day card where he said that he loves my cooking and thinks I look pretty when my hair is down (instead of in a ponytail - which is how it usually is on the weekend). So this weekend, I made a point to wear my hair down just for him. :)

Well, I think that is all I have to say for now. Hope this update finds everyone doing well. I will try to write a little more often over the summer as I TRY to learn how to relax a little before the whole thing passes me by. Once law school starts, I am going to try to commit to a minimum of one blog a month to keep everyone updated on how the journey is going. Until next time...

Real Life Movie

You ever have real life feel like a movie? I have. It just happened to me this weekend. I just traveled home to Louisiana to attend my father’s funeral. I headed to East Texas to meet my brother and his family so that we could make the trip home together. There is something so somber about bringing a family together for an event like that. It also brings to the forefront exactly how rare it is to get the whole family together. As I stood in the funeral home, looking around the room at all the family scattered about I could not help but feel sad. I know my dad would have loved to have us all together as a family for a number of other occasions.

A friend asked me if I had regrets… if I felt like there was something I wish I would have done or said before this happened. At first, with the exception of just getting to simply say goodbye, I didn’t think there was. But as I spent two days talking to the hundreds (literally… almost 300 people attended his funeral) of people who came to pay their respects to him and his family, I found so many things I regretted. There were so many sides of my father I didn’t know. The things I did know… how everyone knew him as a joker, how he was very humble, how he never met a stranger and how he had a genuinely kind heart… those were no surprise. What was a surprise was how one of his fellow managers from Lowe’s told me how he had this unique ability to calm down the most angry of customers and have them leave the store happy and a returning customer… an ability I have always had and had no idea where I got it from. The same manager also told me how he could talk to every person at their level, regardless if they were a master electrician or a housewife who had never been in Lowe’s before. He was patient and helpful and never made anyone feel dumb for asking a question… another ability that I have been told I have and really didn’t know where it came from. I heard stories from fellow members of this church about how their grandchildren were so sad to hear about his death. How they all knew him and loved him and cared so much for him. So I guess I feel regret that I have only seen him with my “child blinders” on. How I never looked outside of my previous known experiences with him to get to know him as a man, not just a dad.

I guess if I have to die, I can only hope that I will have touched the lives of so many people. Lowe’s corporate office literally sent in employees from other stores to cover his location so that every single employee could attend his services. There were Lowe’s customers who showed up. There were people he had known for one year and people he had known for 40 years. Being his child, I (as were all my siblings) was constantly approached to be told stories of my father and to be reminded just how much of a loss it was.

It was a grueling two days for everyone and at the end of the second day, as I sat around with some of my family and we talked about my dad and we picked on my sister and we did all the normal things that families do, that overwhelming feeling of being on a TV movie washed over me again. The family begins its path to move forward, life must go on… Fade to black… Roll credits.

All settled in...

So here is my weekend...

I woke up at about 7:30 Saturday and drove to my old apartment to meet the movers who arrived at 8:45. By 11:15, the movers and I had moved everything from my old apartment to my new one. Thank goodness for movers! Now the fun part begins. I start unpacking immediately. Now in case you may have some misguided notion that I am a slacker... Saturday would have proven you wrong. I did not... could not... stop until every last box was unpacked. So, at 11:00 Saturday night, I opened the last box and put everything away. On Sunday morning I woke up finish the things I did half-heartedly on Saturday such as my pantry, my bathroom cabinets, etc but now here it is Monday and all I need to do is find a new computer desk so that I can unpack my "desk" box and hang curtains in my living room and bedroom. Whew... I was one tired girl! I thought about taking some pictures to post, but at the end of the day, it is just another apartment. It doesn't look much different from the last apartment. All the same stuff is here, its just arranged differently. Probably the most different thing about this apartment is that I am no longer on the 3rd floor (I know a lot of people are glad for that) and I have a great courtyard view with lots of trees (which are all bald right now). The only negative thing I can find about it so far is that my cell phone signal sucks here... and I REALLY don't want to have to get a home phone. So I am just going to see how long I can tolerate the crappy service. Maybe I will just change providers :) I have been looking for a new reason to dump Sprint. :)

And somewhere in the middle of Saturday, Breighton (who has a full service chef in mom) decides burritos sound good for dinner. So we drive over to the store to get a few groceries and the ingredients for burritos. One of which is refried beans... in a can. Problem? My can opener is still at my old apartment. I still had a few cleaning supplies there and I had left that in the drawer from my last week of scarce living. So here I am with a can, no can opener, a hungry kiddo and me... a tired woman who has NO desire to go back to the store again. So, I fumble through my cabinets and end up with my corkscrew which has a handy little knife on it for slicing the foil around the bottle. I spend the next ten minutes stabbing and sawing through the can until I finally have broken through enough to peel back half of the lid and scoop the beans out. In the end, we were fed and happy and my son was fairly impressed with my ingenuity.

Speaking of my son... I have a funny story from this week... That boy cracks me up!

Breighton and I had Chinese food for lunch yesterday. His fortune cookie said something along the lines of "you will travel soon and find many fortunes". He said he wondered if whoever wrote the fortune knew what he was going to be when he grew up. Because (and I quote) "right now I am conflicted about what I am going to be when I grow up." I ask what he is "conflicted" about. He says, "well, I either want to be an engineer or a restaurant worker." :) What kind of restaurant worker? I ask. "Hmm... maybe like one of the people who says hello when you come in the door." That's right folks.. my 9 year old son can't decide if he wants to be an engineer or a host at a restaurant. Kids... :)

Oh Hell... I'm 31...

Well, it happened. I woke up this morning, and sure enough... I had turned 31!! I know, I know... this thing called "aging" happens to the best of us, but still I can't help to be in a little bit of denial. Overall, it has been a good day so far. I am at work so I still have to deal the usual customers and they have been unusually upset this week so that has put a damper on things. But my employees - they were great.

I came into an office full of red and yellow balloons. But not just any red and yellow balloons. They all had the word "Purple" written on them. Why? Because the girls know my favorite color is purple but the only girl who is able to get here before me was not able to find purple balloons. So she wrote the word purple on all of them so I could "visualize" my office filled with purple balloons. :)

They also brought in lunch for me. They had ordered a couple of pizzas and brought salads and a veggie tray because they know I have been working out like crazy and watching what I eat. I did have a piece of the really good cake they brought though. I mean, you can't be completely rude, right? I got a little purple flower arrangement and a starbucks gift card and a couple of coffee mugs... do they know me or what??? :)

Tonight I am being whisked off to dinner with Nick and next week I am going roller skating with some of my favorite girls to finish off celebrating my 31st. I mean what better way to deny getting older than roller skating, right??

So besides getting older, the only other thing happening right now is that I am moving. I am excited for the change, but I hate the packing. I found an apartment in the town of Euless which a lot of people don't seem to actually know where that is. It is about 20 minutes from where I am now, but the important thing is that it is 20 minutes closer to my job and 20 minutes closer to where I will "hopefully" be going to law school. So it is a good move. The place is really nice and I get to have a patio facing a nice wooded courtyard and I am on the first floor so my neighbors will not hate me when Breighton and I play the Active Outdoor Challenge on the Wii.

Well, I am home and I am going finish getting all spiffied up for dinner. I will email out my new address info to everyone very soon. My official move date is February 21st. Thanks to every for the birthday wishes!!