Winter Break

Ahhhh…exams. The fabled exams of law school came and went and we’re all still here to tell the tale. My impression of my first round of law school exams was that they were impressively difficult. My professors truly fired every missile they had at us and crafted some insanely labyrinthine puzzles for us to solve. I came to law school for a good challenge, and they brought the goods. I learned some lessons about preparation: get outlines done earlier, don’t hesitate on making the flashcards (just make them and thank yourself later). Despite some missteps, I’m satisfied with my performance and hope my section-mates feel similarly.

My winter break was excessively busy. First, Christmas came at full-speed right after the last exam; and there is absolutely no similarity between being college-aged at Christmas and being a 33-year old man with a wife and toddler at Christmas. We hosted our families; which meant shopping, cooking, cleaning, wrapping gifts, decorating, and sweeping pine needles out of square inch of our floor-space.

Any free chunk of time in the days before and after Christmas I spent working on music projects that I had been hired for the three weeks off I had. In my insane hubris, I decided to freely book myself during all my “off time” with drum recording work and musical arranging work. While it was really nice to dust off some of those abilities that had lain dormant for months, I did bite off more than was reasonable to chew. Luckily, I was able to get it done with no time to spare before I was off to my last activity of the break.

The Saturday before classes began, I drove my mom, my wife and I to Berkeley, CA at 6am because my brother and his wife had just had their first child, a day ahead of schedule. So, I became an uncle as of two days before writing this! We got back home the night before my first day of classes. All of this added up to a very full and exciting winter break, if not completely exhausting! As I sit down to read my first few chapters of the new semester, I can’t help but feel like it’s a bit of a respite from the wildness of my winter break.