Technical difficulties... please stand by

I had intended to be a bit more active in posting, but I've been temporarily derailed. For no apparent reason, yesterday the AC adaptor to my laptop stopped working. I've gone low-lech for the next few days until a replacement is sent. (I'm currently posting this from the law school computer lab.)

Fortunately, that should be pretty soon. I called Dell support yesterday and with any luck they've already shipped a new power cord my way. As much as some people may complain about technical support lines, Dell was pretty good about the whole thing. Sure, I may have been talking to someone in Mumbai, but if Dell still manages to get me a replacement part without much delay, I'm happy with their service. And I won't even quibble over how long they kept me on hold listening to muzak.

With any luck, I'll be up and running by Friday, and I promise a new post about something soon thereafter. Until then, feel free to browse some of my friends' blogs at the right. In particular, Brendan has been posting excellent coverage of Hurricane Katrina and the aftermath in New Orleans.

Back in the trenches

Yeah, I know, it's been a while.

Classes have started back up here at NDLS. I survived the intensive week of Trial Ad, and even had a lot of fun doing it. It was just like mock trial all over again... only there are a few things I need to change ("You must unlearn what you have learned") -- those bad habits that mock trial teaches you because it's more about performance (Razzle Dazzle...) than actual trial work. Still, there's an undeniable thrill of giving an opening or closing, or getting up to do your cross examination, or even make a clever point on redirect. Good times.

It feels a bit strange being a 2L. All of a sudden there are a bunch of 1Ls running around, and they look pretty stressed out about law school already. It's hard to imagine I was the same way last year. The rest of the law school tends to look upon the 1Ls with something like bemusement. Classes seem less stressful now, in part because we know what to expect, and (at least for me) in part because we weren't assigned much reading for the first class. Both of my classes today, for example, were the "hand out the syllabus and introduce the course" variety as opposed to the "let's get started, Mr. Ho will you discuss the first case" variety. In short, very different from the typical 1L first class scenario. It's nice to be able to ease back into the law school groove.

That's not to say that 2Ls aren't experiencing their own brand of stress. Interview season has begun, so there are 2Ls dashing around in suits interviewing for a position in nine months that may lead to an actual job twenty-one months from now. You know, something that will help pay off the mountains of debt we're all accumulating. It doesn't matter that we've barely started our second year of law school, we're expected to land a job now. No pressure, or anything.

I'm pretty excited about my class lineup for this semester. In addition to Intensive Trial Ad, I'm also taking Evidence, Cyberlaw, Business Associations (BA), and Moot Court Appellate. I'm in class by 8:30 everyday, but at least I finish early (9:50 am) on Wednesdays and Fridays.

Finally, it's been nice to reconnect with my classmates. And instead of seeing everyone at once, I've been catching up with my comrades in arms a few at a time over the past few times. It's pretty much just as you'd expect a sequel to reintoduce the main characters. Everyone seems to have had a great summer, and most people seem happy to be back. Of course that will likely change a bit as soon as the good weather is replaced by snow and howling winds cutting across the South Bend tundra...