The sun really DOES shine after a B+

although it's not shining today. Fall has rolled into town. Dark clouds hover and threaten rain (but rarely deliver), the temperature has plummeted to the high sixties, and fire places across the neighborhood are roaring. What wimps! The women at the symphony last night wore fur - I saw them with my own two eyes.

It's the kind of weather that makes me want to put on a bulky sweater and thick socks, open up all the windows, crawl under a blanket and read. (Which is a good thing because I have plenty of reading to do!) It reminds me of college when Jen and I shared a small one bedroom apartment. And our late night study sessions which M would join around 9. M always brought decadent treats designed as motivation and reward for making it through the endurance study session. Most of the time, though, we'd end up eating our treats while watching Friends (it was in its heyday) and then falling asleep on our books.

Another fall, another semester of studying. The 'mere 70 pages' we were assigned in week one was no ordinary 70 pages. I had to read each case 5 times before I could figure out who actually won. The topic was jurisdiction and the cases started with Pennoyer v Neff - words said to strike fear into the heart of even veteran lawyers. I started reading Sunday night and by class had read only three of the five case, but the three I did read I meticulously briefed - which turned into its on discouraging fact in a way. The cases I had struggled over, read and re-read, repeatedly consulted the dictionary and law dictionary about our professor summed up in two sentences a piece. The following week was our first exam.

III

Here's a mere tidbit of the exam: "Joe runs a corporation headquartered in South Carolina, though he has sales people across the country. He owns a vacation cottage in California which he sometimes uses for work, but he lives in Road Island. A customer of his bought JoeCompany product in California and is now suing in that state. Does the court there have jurisdiction?"

And so begins the attempt to weed out the uncertainties and apply the case law to the various scenarios that could be created from the multitude of possible resolutions to the different uncertainties. That was a nice sentence, wasn't it? Well, that's what it was like to read these cases, minus the Latin! And if like me, you throw up your hands at some those uncertainties and make some darned assumptions so that there's a chance you can answer the question in less than 6 pages, you get a B+.

And the worst thing is, I knew I was making this mistake WHILE I was doing it. (There's a name for that isn't there?!?!)

So now, for almost a week John has had to listen to the moaning and groaning of a B+ student. It goes something like this:

Deep, guttural, painful moan bellows out of the bedroom. "KK, are you alright?!" John shouts as he makes his way down the hall. And I reply "I AM A B+ STUDENT."

"John, I can't get the TiVO to do what I want. But then again...I AM only a B+ student."

This has gone on for days, but it's lessoning now as we prepare to study NIED. For you non-lawyers out there, that stands for Negligent Infliction of Emotional Duress!