Sunday 16 October 2011

Fall is Here

September 26, 2011
Well last week, I had a smack in the face. My school is nice enough to have a professor only for “extra help” purposes. The classes aren’t mandatory, but almost everyone goes. The extra help stuff isn’t bad, but the good stuff is getting a test question and having him grade it. And boy, after taking one, I got fucked. He didn’t give an actual grade, but it’s pretty obvious I did really poorly and would’ve basically failed.
However, I was happy to see on the Facebook group for our class that everyone got this smack of realization as well. The day to day reading has been quite reasonable for me. I’m always a class or two ahead on reading and following around with notetaking in class and understanding the concepts isn’t hard. However, looking at the big picture, synthesizing all these rules and concepts into an essay is extremely rough.
Multiple choice can focus memorization so that it’s doable, but getting a wide open question and being forced to regurgitate all the rules we have in our readings is extremely hard, especially criminal law. I’m pretty annoyed and stressed with this all.

September 30, 2011
Happy Birthday to me yo. I head into the city and meet up with Miah, his new g/f Hannah, Tom, Stefan, and Lydia at The Cardinal for dinner. We get a BBQ platter and we can’t even finish it. Stefan complains to the really kind waitress that I had last time about people standing around the restaurant. He’s very forward about his complaint and the owner comes down from upstairs and explains that other people were throwing a birthday party and it got a lot bigger than they expected.
It really was not a big deal and it’s not like their party was loud and obnoxious. Either way, the owner sends us down loads of pecan pie. It’s way too sweet and not my cup of tea, but it’s still a really kind gesture.
Unfortunately, it’s raining and we have to walk over 10 blocks to Common Ground, where I reserved space. Bolanos, Scott, Josh, and Angela are already there and Hannah’s friend comes along as well. We play Trivial Pursuit drinking game. Later, Aaron shows up and we head to Keybar for some free shots. They offer free shots for a whole party when it’s your birthday, and they even give leeway for a week behind or ahead.
Eventually, it’s Bolanos, Tom, and I, we go to Baohaus and then take a cab to Penn. We find a guy being arrested, not sure what for.

October 5, 2011
So the tally up on my birthday, Treez got me a beer. I had a few cards sent to me. My brother got me a sweater that came in the mail, but it’s a bit big, so I’ll have to go to Urban Outfitters and exchange it for something else. My grandmother gave me some money before she went to China and I’m going to set that aside for awesome stuff instead of counting it as my general expenses for random meals and a beer here and there. I decided to buy myself a proper, though budget, chef’s knife and it’s pretty sweet because my house hold knife was getting pretty dull.
Yesterday, I decided to bake pumpkin chocolate chip cookies because I went to this Asian Club Meeting for law school. One of the member’s is trying to get to Geneva to go to this convention so she can learn about women’s rights and then use that to help because in Southeast Asia or something. Anyway, for her flight, she needs to make money through a bakesale, so I thought I’d help out.
There’s this hilarious student in class that’s so racist. No, she’s not racist on purpose, she just cheats like a 5 cent Asian massage parlor whore. She seems to understand English fine and knows vocabulary and her grammer seems fine, but her accent is too crazy. Hey, good for her, maybe she’s a recent immigrant or exchange student or whatnot, so nice job for learning English and being able to get by law school. I’m all for it. But yo, I’m going to barely hold back laughing at the stereotyping that’s involved in the accent.
I had a meeting with my professor yesterday. It’s our small class of about 20 people. The other classes are big lecture halls, whereas this is about learning the substantial stuff that actually will be utilized when we become lawyers. We had to write a memo and there’s mandatory student/teacher meetings so there we go. I received my first grade from law school and it was a 8.75/10, the grades ranged from 9 to 7.75. She so far has been pretty rough about being really active in class. From what we hear, she’s a lot more demanding than the other students have it, but we seem to think that’s a good thing. I like her, others like her, we’re learning.
Despite not getting the highest grade in the class, she seemed confidant that I know what I was talking about with my draft and was quite impressed. I felt I participated in the class a decent amount, but I guess she expects more now seeing how I can write, understand the material, etc. She asks if I participate in the larger lecture hall classes, where I don’t really too much, but still do, however this does light a fire under my ass. It’s also hard not to smile like the Grinch while she’s complimenting me, but I try by best to keep it in.

October 8, 2011
I stay at home the night before because I have a Yelp event at noon. I get into the city and meet up with Atron. We have a couple cocktails, day drankin! We leave only an hour in because there’s nothing much to do and we can’t get shitfaced during the day. I walk around Eataly, which I’ve never been to. I walk around to a large gift shop in the area and then La Maison du Macaron. Their chocolate almond croissant is incredible. I get back home, chill out, and take a quick nap.
It’s Tom’s bday, but I have a cold and I had one last week. Instead of trekking all the way into the city, I have a few of the guys over, Bolanos, Scott, and Avi, who I haven’t seen in forever. Ela’s on Skype despite it being 4:30 because bars don’t close and she’s awake. We sit around my computer, it’s Scott and I, no one is here yet. We chat around with her and her roommate Sven, which I haven’t heard much about, cool guy. But yeah, technology these days, us four “hanging” out despite being thousands of miles away.
We have some beers and they leave to grab some White Castle. I’ve been super healthy recently, eating at home and cooking instead of having cheat meals outside. This pig out is pretty bad, two burgers and “loaded” fries (ranch, bacon, cheese on fries.)

October 10, 2011
Luna texted me this week, this gal I dated earlier this year, but ended up losing contact with. I was supposed to hang with her yesterday, but I still felt sick, but today turned out fine. She was with some friends though and we meet in Chinatown. It’s a super hot day like it’s almost summer. We go on an egg tart tour and then hang out at the Highline for a bit. I get back home at night.

October 16, 2011
I end up staying in on Friday even though Luna wanted to hang out.
I spent the day pretty sick. For some reason, my cold is coming back randomly. At night, Stefan wanted to hang out. Shit don’t stink wanted to make plans and hang. Luna also was around. However, I just didn’t feel like hanging out. Maybe it was because I was sick or something, but I just didn’t feel like hanging out and I stay in doing nothing.
Today, I go into the city with Jenn to check out Occupy Wall St. The park is quite small, but it’s just a weird scene. It’s a conglomeration of lots of politics views, including assholes like Marxists and 9/11 conspiracy theorists. Then there are amateur hip hop artists that are spitting some garbage. The tents, sleeping bags, and “living stuff” is really weird. Clothes all over. Food being given out. It’s just a nasty nasty scene.
There’s even this guy that takes cologne samples because he pissed himself the night before. What an animal. Just a classy classy place…
Jenn, her friend, and I leave after an hour and go to Banh Mi Zon for a quick bite.