Full Circle

So, this may very well be my last day of school. ever. no more class. (still, two more papers...well, one story...one paper...and one in-class exam). but, back to being FINISHED. forever.

not only that but today was a perfect ending to my why-the-hell-did-i-ever-listen-to-my-parents lawschool career. it involved the usual suspects (lets just say more or less a daily routine that i've picked up in my past three years):

- getting less than five hours of sleep

- frazzled nerves/anxiety

- hating people (...er...a good friend, in fact... because...my-fucking-gosh, i'm sorry, but no business executive wants to read about 15 pages of a country's history in a plan to start a business abroad so can you not take this critique as a personal assault on your writing or your judgment and just realize that our teacher specifically said 100000 times that he wants "short" "concise" and I want to get a good grade? plus, can you maybe add an appendix or a picture to your part to spice it up? WHEW! now that felt good. almost as good (and probably more appropriate) than when i exploded at him in the computer lab in front of 60 undergrads).

- laptop cord stealing

As most of you know, if you know me, I have about three law school terror stories. They may not compete with the best of 'em but they are near and dear to me. Coincidentally, they all happened my first year. (maybe i grew older and wiser...maybe i grew callous...maybe i became "one of them"...I'll let you decide).

Story #3

This one is not so good. it just involves the first time i've ever had a 60+ year old man masturbate to me and my friend at 12:00 pm (yes, that's noon. yes, that's in broad daylight). directly across from my house. WELCOME TO PITTSBURGH.


Story #2

This probably should be story #1 but for the purposes of the post i'm going to give you the abridged version and not make it as cool as it probably should be. pretty much it involves: me coming home after my last final of 1st year (on about 7 hours of sleep for the past two days & subsisting on about one bag of popcorn, redbull & by that point lots and lots of whiskey) to see my house was broken into, me calling two friends & the police while driving to friends house wasted (it was my first & last time!! it was an emergency), me asking friend (who i just yelled at today) to come with me to my house when he still had to take our civ pro exam b/c he had spent the night in the emergency room the night before...coming home to find the police going through my house...with dogs...finding person in bed...coming out with person who is handcuffed and pretty much naked...(person was found in my bed)...and then me seeing that its a close friend. drunk, tired, wasted with the police telling me s/he may be a potential rapist, i had to decide whether to prosecute while s/he was in the back of the police car.

oh yea, then the police telling me my house was ransacked & me and friends going upstairs and realizing "nope, that's just Melissa mess."


Story #1

The main character in this one was my closest friend first year, who lived across the street from me and who took the bus to school with me all the time. everyone thought i was her lackey (sp?). talked on the phone with her most nights. she called me *every* thursday to wake me up for our 8 am Torts class (these facts may be fuzzy...maybe 8:30 am...definitely Torts...definitely before 9 and after Tuesday). last day of classes? She steals my laptop cord. Or, because i'm trained in the law, she allegedly steals my laptop cord.

Here are the facts...I'll let you decide. You know what i just said about our relationship. last day of class, she takes an extra laptop cord, realizes it. calls the *other* person who sits next to her in our only class on that day. then e-mails me from a fake account which obviously ends up in my junk mail (not even joking...this e-mail address was straight up random like "r u XXx 762") plus, hello??? i have no power cord, hence, no e-mail...CALL ME!!. (afterwards, she tells me she didn't have my number. (which she obviously did have (see: torts class wake up calls)...and she could've easily asked the person who sat to her other side because that person also surely had my number). and, by this point when i talk to her, i've already wasted a day on a laptop cord hunt (and Pitt only gives us one-two study days)...i went to three stores...only to spend $100-120 on a new ("universal") laptop cord.

where is this fine lady now? she may or may not be the editor of law review. ethics. gets you to the top.

But anyway. Back to me, my life, my last day of class and laptop cords. So, we had this project & we were at school until 2 am yesterday night. none of us had gotten any sleep in like three days...cram, cram, cram, blowing out 80 pages...and in the process? Michelle, our group's most finest LLM student, loses her laptop cord. She e-mails me this morning asking me about it. And, i'm like, of course I didn't take it. silly thing. i've been the laptop cord victim. (actually, in the last minute cram lingo of getting our paper together my e-mail to her....when she asked if by accident i took it with me the night before....read more like, "nope! sorry!" then i went back to finishing our project. which for the record we completed at precisely 3:01 and our professor came in late at 3:03 :-):-):-))

While other people had last days of school that ended at noon or started at noon or involved getting wasted with a few professors...mine involved revising footnotes and grammar on an 80 page paper on four hours of sleep. Class from 9-10 (which lasted all of 10 minutes...), class from 12-1 and the presentation class from 3-5. then i had to eat and go to mediation training from 6-9. So when i came home to blog about my last day of classes and went to plug in my computer...OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG...this power cord isn't broken like the one that "accidentally" broke when someone "accidentally" knocked my laptop off of my brother's bed...OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG...I had Michelle's laptop cord!!!!

First thoughts: I am a thief. a stealer. I'm ET! (er...that's totally a movie reference...like i'm an "alien" and law school is my home...).

Second thoughts: OMG OMG OMG i have to get in touch with Michelle. i called everyone for her number (this is quite a feat b/c i *hardly* use my phone). i even called the boy who i could've strangled today re: our Haiti project (or last night when he called me "Meliss" and asked me for a bloody tangerine or whatever it was called...)

I zipped to school. dropped off michelle's laptop cord. apologized 17 times over. told her i'd do anything. kiss her shoes. anything! help her study for her exams. All the while, hearing kirk tell me thief/steal/rob jokes (which were actually pretty funny) while i contemplated: 1) does this mean I really am ET? 2) do i have to call her an apologize? 3) am i the worst person in the world?

but you know what? after some coaching & consoling by Michelle (of all people...who I will just say for the record has THE best outlook on life...i call her apologizing like crazy...and she all calm "don't worry, i'm just happy you saved me $80").


So any lessons in this long long long post (which no one probably has finished...which is a good thing...b/c its late & i'm running on low battery...and run-on sentences...which is why i'm trying to bold the real "meat" of this post)???

(...in no particular order...)

1) I've realized that law school didn't kill me after all...it didn't suck any decency out of me (or at least not all of it). Even Michelle understood that my laptop cord theft was an absent-minded mistake (...which goes into the pile of lost Pitt ID, wallet, and keys as of late...). There was no malice. There was no purpose. and as soon as I realized what I did, i tried to fix everything.

2) I've also realized, I'm not perfect. there will always be people better than me (who will let me know that they're better than me) but i need to just try my hardest.

3) Fine, I may also need to follow Holly Miller's advice in the article "The Art of Keeping Your Mouth Shut" (Details Magazine, May 2006) (which is not online so I can't send a link...). Because not every place is as big and anonymous as the University of Michigan. Law school may be like high school but (not that i've been there yet...) the real world may be too. (Jobs, neighborhoods...especially those with cul-de-sacs...i guess the blogsphere now (remember the good ol' days when it was just me & you and a couple of other people back in early 2004?). Unfortunately, while most of my malicious statements are saved for those truly deserving of my wrath (see: my problems of taking out anger on my family)...i need to stop talking when I get into awkward situations.

[Some highlights from her article...

When things are awkward, most of us start to blather. But that's exactly when we really need to stop talking.

"It's very American, this implied intimacy," says Sally Quinn, the Washington Post columnist and legendary hostess. "People feel they're entitled to criticize or give advice. There's no formality at all anymore - everyone's your best friend."

4) And, finally, on a cheesy note. Appreciate those moments of clarity and sanity. Tell people who mean the most to you how much you love them and how knowing that you have their support, gets you through the hardest days.

HERE'S TO STARTING FINALS SEASON SPRING 2006!!!