Unbearably Average

Got my grades back for another class and the results are in:

I am an unbearably average 1L.

On the positive side, I have a life!

=)

Legally Liza

My friend A.M. was in town this weekend and found it amusing to refer to me as "Legally Liza" every time he had the opportunity. The truth is, I've completed only half a semester of law school and I still feel like maybe I am here illegally. Pretty soon ICE is going to come and deport me back to undergrad.

Being in law school is like returning to high school. We have lockers. We have class together with the same group of people. I've had to return to using my backpack, because I am no longer just carrying around paperback versions of the Iliad or Uncle Tom's Cabin but 1,000+ page casebooks, notebooks, supplements, and 20 highlighters of varying colors. On any given day, it probably weighs close to 50 pounds. I have a lunchbox. And because we are around each other all day every day, there is gossip. Lots of it.

Don't get me wrong, most of the time I LOVE Law school. I like reading the opinions, figuring out the rules of law that apply, and trying to guess the ending before I get there. I like how after I finish underlining all the relevant things in the case in my color-coded strategy that it looks like a rainbow of information. I like how my professors make jibes at us if we are unprepared, and continue to find ways to make us laugh at ourselves and the material. I think that without this humor (and the fear that I will get called on and ridiculed), I would fall asleep in every class.

And that's probably what I was most unprepared for. I spend roughly 15 hours a day in class or reading. I typically go to bed at 1:30 or 2, and wake up at 7:00. Thursday and Friday get a little better, but for the most part its grueling schedule. Before I was to lazy to make a pot of coffee, but now it's the first thing I do every morning. Yesterday I bought 3 12-packs of diet coke so that I have some variety in my caffeine intake. The other thing I was unprepared for was the extreme loneliness that haunts you every day. Studying law is not really best done in groups. Its done alone, in your cubicle, surrounded by books. Luckily I have great classmates that plan some social events to break up this monotony, but usually I am alone. For an extremely sociable person like me, it's my equivalent of hell.

The other life-saving thing about law school is my acapella group, Headnotes. Its the one thing I look forward to, and we rehearse twice a week. For some reason, belting out high notes and hearing all of our voices come together in perfect harmony is a better stress-reliever than yoga. We have a few performances coming up next month and I am really excited to finally be performing again in front of people.

Although I occasionally feel upset about things, I try to remember that every transition takes time. Maybe soon I will begin to feel like I am part of this institution; but for right now I still feel like a stranger in a strange land...

Messy Spirituality

I am so glad to be done with this semester. Not only does it mean I only have on more semester to go before finally finishing my undergraduate degree, but it also means a fresh start. I began this school year following a break-up of a semi-long term relationship (not my longest but still enough to actually be hurt enough when it ended) and in a huge mess spiritually, which is rather ironic considering I spent the majority of my summer attending a church retreat program. I guess after breaking up with A., we had a few conversations which were hurtful but revealing to who I am as a person. His main complaint with me was that I never opened up, never trusted him in our relationship. Now that I've had some time to reflect on that I realize that he was right in many ways, but that I did have good reasons for not opening up to him completely.

Anyways, that is in the past and not really important. After Leadership Training ended, I went home for a few weeks, hurting and angry with God. I had prayed for a long time that God would send a spiritually fulfilling relationship where we could both grow together, and before I started dating A. I feel like I prayed about it A TON and God gave the green light. So I was wondering why God had given me this relationship that was just overall not beneficial to either of us. Although I was angry with God, I still turned to him for comfort and waited to feel his presence, but I never did. Maybe I wasn't hearing him because he wasn't saying what I wanted, maybe I was pretending to be open and vulnerable but I was really being selfish, wanting to hurt on my own instead of really offering myself up and letting go of my anger. I don't really know...

After about a month of waiting and feeling neglected I returned to school and felt more bombarded spiritually then ever before. I felt that after finishing LT everyone expected me to take up leadership roles in the church, but I didn't feel like I was in a good place to be leading or directing anyone. I wasn't even sure if God was there anymore. I tried desperately to be ok with seeing A. everywhere and even tried to hang out with him and be "friends". All of that changed though when my grandfather passed away in October. He tried to be supportive but it just made me want him to be there for me in ways he couldn't be anymore, and so I told him I needed my space for awhile.

I remember the night my grandpa died sitting in bed with my grandmother, reading her Psalms and wanting to believe in all the promises of comfort and redemption but wondering to myself what the words really meant and if I could trust them. I remember sitting in the funeral home while people came up and said, "Don't worry, he's in a better place now" and not knowing if that was true. I knew he was a believer, but I couldn't even believe a place like heaven existed, and even if it did if I wanted my grandfather to be with a callous, unresponsive God like the one I was experiencing. I remember standing in the prayer annex off the church while his ashes sat in the sanctuary, the pastor praying that God would give our family comfort, the words sounding hollow in my ears.

After that I just cut myself off spiritually. I was angry, I felt alone, and when I talked to some people about it they told me I was being childish and selfish, which just made me more angry. So I quit going to church, small group, everything that reminded me of A., my grandfather, the pain, and mostly the rejection I was feeling from God. I convinced myself God is what people turn to when they can't rely on themselves, and from now on I was going to rely on myself and if I failed then that was that. No need praying to an invisible deity who may or may not be there.

I was getting really good at ignoring my emotions. Occasionally though they would come out, while having dinner with my friend Jack or talking with some of the women who were on staff with New Life. But I would remind myself later that there was no point being a baby about it. I was on my own now, and I couldn't waste time feeling sorry for myself.

Thursday night I went to church for the first time since my grandfather's funeral. It was the same church we had the funeral service at, and so it was already hard for me to be there. I felt the emotions coming so I just shut down. I closed my eyes and started to breathe and I regained composure. We sang some Christmas songs and then the Deacon started to deliver the message. I zoned out and started to look around the old church. I've always been mesmerized by the ceiling, because it's a weird square-ish shaped building but the cross-beams are uneven so it looks like a cross. I remember going to this church as a kid and spending the whole time looking at the ceiling, counting the wooden panels and trying to figure out why the room was shaped so oddly. I've had many life-changing experiences in this church, many I remember and many I don't. I was here when my parents were married (I wasn't yet born though..) and for my baptism (and my sister's, and my brother's.) It was in the fellowship room that we had a 70th birthday party for my grandfather. I was here the previous summer when my parents renewed their vows after a 9 month separation. So many memories tied to this church, it seemed inevitable that I would keep returning here again and again.

I stopped staring at the ceiling and closed my eyes again, out of tiredness but also because my mind was working too fast for me to keep up. I kept replaying this semester in my head, trying to figure out how I had become the girl who was sitting here now, emotionally detached and angry with God and my life. It would take to long to write out everything I was attempting to process but essentially I realized this:

My inability to trust the people in my life has prevented me from trusting God. Not just because I don't believe he will do what is right, but also because I am afraid he will disappoint me, because I have felt disappointed by him. Yet my perspective on life is so short-sighted, that I can not know if these disappointments are really blessing in disguise. Or if I can even be sure in what it is that I want, because I am even changing my own mind every second of every day.

I'm not saying I've figured out how to trust God. I don't know if any of us really ever do. But at least I'm one step closer to figuring it all out, or at least inasmuch as the human mind can ever attempt to understand God and the purpose of our lives.

My life as a Supermassive Black Hole.

Midterms are almost over, and I have resolved that for the rest of the semester I am going to stay on top of my reading assignments so I don't end up reading them all the night before my exam. I'm almost positive I failed my midterm for my 100 level class, which will be difficult to explain to law school admission programs...

My last Letter of Recommendation should be coming in this Friday and then I can start sending out applications. So far I have received application fee waivers from everywhere but Yale, but I wasn't really expecting one from them. Heck, I really doubt I will even get in but my mother insisted that I should apply and so I will.

I'm really not sure if I want to go to law school or not yet, and I worry that sending in all of my applications will make it that much harder to say no if they offer me a great admissions package. But I can't reconcile this part of me that has always wanted to become a writer. My favorite class at U-M was my creative writing workshop, and ever since I was a young girl I would write short stories and poems in my free time. A part of me wants to be a powerful attorney and crack down on sex-trafficking and unfair labor practices, but another part of me knows I will regret not pursuing writing.

I guess for now I've just decided to turn in all of my applications and see what happens, and start hardcore praying for guidance on what to do about all of this. I'm also thinking about doing NaNoWriMo to see how I fare with writing an entire novel in one month. I'm a little worried because I am already struggling to keep up with classes this semester, but I guess my senioritis is preventing me from caring too much. Also, it's possible I could submit a part of the novel in to the creative writing department to see if I could get into the upper-level workshop next semester.

For now though, I'm trying not to let schoolwork/RA stuff / applications / life decisions suck me in to a supermassive black hole...

Caroline

She played it hard and yes she played it rough
Made her feel safe and it made her feel tough
And rock by rock she built those walls everyday
Built herself a tower so far away
And from up high in that castle
She knew no one could get too close to touch
And if life and death were such a game
Why did they all make such a fuss?
And if birds could fly high over their troubles
She gonna find some of her own wings and fly
And no one could convince or pay her double
Or tell her she was too young to die

Oh Caroline, Caroline

Stay Happy

I've been trying this new thing where I go a whole day without being negative. It's sort of working, except when I get around people who know me well enough to know that I'm just faking it and then I end up confessing that I'm conducting an experiment...

The idea came to me from a friend over coffee last week. We were discussing different Chinese philosophies, which inevitably lead to the discussion of Confucius. My friend noticed that I seemed to dwell a lot on all the negative things that were going on (being over-worked, not enough sleep, crumbling friendships, stress over the law school application process &c.) instead of feeling excited about life. "What you believe internally will be manifested externally", is a Confucian idea that my friend revealed to me that morning. And since then I have been trying to maintain a more positive outlook.

The problem is I seem to be stuck in a rut. I'm running the treadmill of going to classes, training for my 10-k, completing apps, and hanging out with the same people I've hung out with all of college. Not that any of this is bad, but its just so predictable that even I'M not excited about my life anymore.

So I've given myself a challenge to do at least one new thing a week. I'm tossing around the idea of blowing off this weekend's homecoming game and taking a trip to Canada for the day, or going to the Run Woodstock event in Pickney that I wanted to do but no one else was really up for. All I know is that I'm 21 years old and free to do whatever I want to do in life and I'm playing it safe. I don't want to wake up some day and regret not doing all the things I could have done now.

"It was Colonel Mustard with the Percoset in the Cabin..."

This past weekend my parents went to Gatlinburg for their anniversary. Unfortunately, their cabin was broken into and they lost all of their prescription medicine as well as their laptops and ipods. They filed a police report and today the pharmacy called us to let us know that someone had been pulled over and caught with the prescription for Percoset in their car (a leftover from my brother's recent oral surgery)and a bag with my mom's bathing suit. This, after spending all afternoon buying insurance to protect our entire family from identity theft since our recent tax documents were on their laptops.

After receiving the news, we decided to go to the local Mexican restaurant, La Plaza, for my mom's birthday. We were going to tell the waiter it was my mom's birthday but she told us not to, because then they would put a giant sombrero on her head and shove flan in her face. After everything else she had been through in the past 24 hours, she could not handle having flan shoved in her face to a rousing round of "Feliz Cumpleanos" so we decided not to tell the waiter.

Halfway into dinner, (and 3 margaritas after the fact) my mother starts discussing the robbery:

Mom: "Now I'm no deductive, but I think it was an inside job"
Lauren (My sister): "Uhh... you mean detective?"
Mom: "That's what I said! Now I think what happened was the cleaning lady told Colonel Mustard about the extra Percoset. Then he told the Maintenance Man so he could break in the door. And then he took all the drugs."
Me: " Colonel Mustard? What is this, CLUE?"
Mom: "Yea well I hope that asshole took all my estro-pills on accident and grew some man-boobs. Then maybe he can run around wearing my bathing suit in prison. Now where is our waiter? I gotta get out of here. I want ice cream. But I don't want to wear no damn sombrero"
Me: "Hey wait! I think I hear them singing! I think Dad told them!"
Mom: " Get outta my way, I don't want to be here!" (stiff-arms me out of the bench and takes of running to the car)

It was hilarious. One day, I plan on writing an entire book on my family. I'll be the next David Sedaris and I'll get to appear on daytime shows like Oprah and Ellen.