Leon, 3L

It is amazing how our fast our time away from school flies by. In a mere month, I will have traded in the relative comfort of my office and somewhat regular working hours for the round-the-clock experience that is commonly referred to as "classes." To that end, the school opened up the registration process for the next quarter, and even provided a probable schedule.

The schedule is an important component, and the day it comes out can feel a little like playing the lottery (or playing craps, I suppose, or any other sort of gambling activity). Let me explain. As frequent readers are aware, NUSL has two rotations. One group of people spends their summers and winters on co-op, and springs and falls in class, the other group does the opposite. This means that you have to choose your friends carefully, lest you end up never seeing them again, separated by the impenetrable barrier of being on different rotations. The school actually frowns on fraternizing across rotations; I hear some have been expelled for it. (In case the sarcasm wasn't as thick as I thought: I am, of course, kidding. Some of my best friends are on the "other" rotation). However, one real consequence of the rotation system is that some classes are only offered twice in the two years we get to pick our own (first-year classes are picked for you), and consequently only once "during your rotation." To help a student roadmap their education, NUSL provides a running list of classes to be offered every quarter for the next two years. The list does not contain the days and times the course will be offered, just that it will be. This way, one can peruse the list and see when certain classes have to be taken (if they are to be taken at all). So, before the actual class schedule comes out, one can make a list of all the potential classes to take. Then, you hope that the schedule doesn't cause them to conflict. Hence, the lottery feeling.

I considered the fall schedule to be a push (I did not win or lose) because while there was a rather annoying conflict between Corporations and Trademarks, Corps is offered again next year, so I can just take it then. The spring schedule is pure bliss. I was interested in seven classes, knowing that I could take no more than five of them. In the end, only two conflicted: International IP and Securities Regulation. I wasn't sold on Securities Regulation to tell you the truth -- it's just that as a less-than-proud Wachovia shareholder I completely believe that we need better regulation of securities. So, International IP won out. This meant that the schedule actually allowed me to decide which of the other classes I was least interested in. The decision became easier after the description for one class yielded the letters F, C, and C, in that order. I am not convinced I am ready for a quarter of dealing with the people that brought us the "wardrobe malfunction." This left me with five potential, non-conflicting classes, all of which I want to take, and which add up to 18 credits. Hmm. 12 credits is full-time enrollment, 16 is the max. This leaves me with a dilemma. Ask/beg to be allowed to take them all or find a class to drop.

Problem is: there isn't really one that I want to drop: Business Bankruptcy, Secured Transactions, Patents, Corporate Tax, International IP. Having gone through non-business bankruptcy and non-corporate tax in the fall, I am not about to wimp out now. Patents and international IP are clearly not up for discussion. Secured transactions are everywhere, and seem incredibly pertinent in light of the current economy. So, you see, I have to take all of them!
Of course, none of these looks like a "gimme," either. Also, it is entirely possible that I'd be looking at five in-class exams at the end of the quarter (and we don't have reading week). That could be painful. Hmm.

In the end, this reminds me of my first cliff-face while skiing. I shouldn't really call it a cliff-face as much as about a six-foot drop off a perch into some soft, powdery snow. Absolutely terrifying the first time you are faced with one, however, and doubly so for someone whose jumping abilities are well documented as being rather sub-par. As I was awkwardly preparing myself for my immediate demise from a broken neck (and thinking of all sorts of excuses why I needed to take my skis off, hike back up and around this little cliff, and forget that this ever happened), something poked me in the leg. I dug through my pocket to find that my then-girlfriend's key chain had decided to attack me. Inscribed on that key chain: "NO GUTS... NO GLORY." I promptly decided to ski off the "cliff."

A mid-air-ski-detaching-somersault and a face-plant later, I was safely below the drop-off, having bruised nothing other than my ego. I guess the point is simple: life is boring without risk. So, I'm leaning toward taking all the classes. And I am bringing my wife's key chain with me on the first day of class. You know, just in case I want to wimp out at the last second.

Posted by Leon at 6:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Fahrenheit. Hmmm. That was the base of the mountain, at 2PM, according to my car's trusty thermometer. Yup, the same car that was sitting in the sun, at the base of the mountain, protected from the wind by a massive snowbank (on three sides, I park carefully to avoid dings from errant shopping carts, car doors, kids, alien spacecraft and the like). The car is also made of metal, and despite what some of my best friends might think, I do not believe it can feel things,,, like how cold it really is.

So, how cold was it at the top of the mountain, with the sun obscured by clouds and trees, and with the wind blowing hard enough to cause the lifts to stop every once in a while to prevent a catastrophe that would surely result in the mountain ending up on the front page of every newspaper in the Northeast? Couldn't actually tell you. Despite it being cold enough that any exposed skin risked frostbite within ten minutes... Despite it being cold enough for your fingers to freeze to the metal buckles of your ski boots on contact (when you would come into the lodge, take your gloves off and attempt to remove a ski boot to see if you did, indeed, still have toes -- an ill-advised proposition, in hindsight)... Despite it being cold enough to make your eyes water (inside your ski goggles)... Despite all of this, we never bothered to look at the thermometer at the top of the lift. It could be that we didn't want to spend an extra second at the top and freeze to death, but I would like to think that we were just having too much fun.

We took a pre-emptive step before even starting: we broke out the "powder" skis. For the uninitiated (non-skiers): when skiing on a really, really cold day the last thing you want to do is strap on a pair of race skis that allow you to achieve barely sub-sonic speed and woof it down the mountain. Instead, you want a slower, fatter, more pliable ski to take into the bumps (moguls) or trees. That way the heat you generate skiing down doesn't have to fight the speed-generated wind and keeps you warm enough on the chairlift on the way back up.

And so, we spent the day shivering on the chairlift, but also enjoying some of the best terrain the east coast has to offer. And we had it mostly to ourselves, most of the crowd choosing to keep the hot chocolate machine company in the lodge. Our biggest challenges were (though not necessarily in this order): (1) making sure to veer far enough to the left, to get back over to a groomed trail that returned us to the chairlift, before the hill dropped off to the right causing us to hike for a few hours to get back (though my wife assures me that's a hike I would have been making alone), (2) keeping from becoming a tree-hugger in the truest sense of that term, (3) looking out for those roots, which have a tendency to grab hold of a ski (and only one ski), (4) making sure the car, yeah, the one that sat in the relative warmth and comfort of the snowbank, started (so that we could go back to the condo).

The car starting, as it turns out, was the roughest part: there was definitely more than a little hesitation there -- but that's good news, for it can be fixed with a new battery.

P.S. Sunday was a bit warmer -- a positively balmy 5 degrees -- and the car behaved admirably, all things considered.

Posted by Leon at 8:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

As far as I know, there is no official school of blogging, or an accrediting association, or even an internet course one needs to take to become one. This means that we create the rules as we go along, pretty much. Due to the flowing nature of the exchange (I write when something pops into my head, you read when bored), I think the first rule should be: never make statements that lock you into a specific time-frame. Thus, wishing people a happy long weekend on a Wednesday is a silly notion, since it is entirely possible that something new pops into your head between then and the actual weekend. So, I take it back – no weekend wishes for you (yet).

As some (or possibly most or all) of you may have noticed, a monumental FISA Court opinion was published recently. FISA is the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 which creates procedures for judicial approval of surveillance of those who engage in espionage or terrorism against the US and on behalf of a foreign power. The court is an eleven-member body tasked with approving the eavesdropping requests the government makes. When an entity (in this case an unnamed communications provider) wishes to challenge the court's decision, it appeals to the review court. That body is staffed by three judges. For more info: click.

The decision made public the other day upholds the Bush administration's controversial eavesdropping program. The program allowed the government, with certain safeguards in place, to intercept electronic and voice communication as long as the target of the eavesdropping was reasonably believed to be out of the country. I won't try to paraphrase the opinion, but if you are interested, the opinion can be found here.

I am sure the discussion is not over. For one, the Protect America Act of 2007 which was being challenged was not renewed in 2008. However, Congress did approve a similar act which remains in place today. For another, the opinion upholds the decision against an "as applied" challenge, which means that it is possible that some scenario could arise where the use would be unconstitutional.

At any rate, the decision, as I said before, is monumental. At the very least it furthers the debate on how far the Fourth Amendment goes and what exceptions are allowed to the warrant requirement therein. In the immediate future, however, it strengthens the executive branch's surveillance powers.

Now, you may have a nice weekend.

Posted by Leon at 9:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

(With apologies to Dr. Seuss)

Since I am apologizing, I may as well beg for the forgiveness of those loyal readers who think that I have devoted enough time (last year) to the subject of NUSL grades (or as we like to call them: Evaluations). Having just gotten my first taste of NUSL's new High Honors, Honors, Pass, Marginal Pass and Fail system, I figured an update is in order. If you disagree, please feel free to scroll down for a riveting discussion of how cold it is outside.

Without further adieu, I have received grades from two of my four classes yesterday, which allowed me to see first hand how the honorifics work. Brief recap: grades are really a paragraph of text which evaluates your performance in a given class. During the first year, they formulaically start with: "Your performance on this exam was..." (or something along those lines). The next word in the sequence determines how well you did, and most professors use Outstanding, Excellent, Very Good, Good, and so on. However, during our second and third years, we also get the aforementioned honorifics to go along with the paragraph of text and to allow for quicker summarization of one's transcript.

I admit, I welcome this change. While it does not lead to a grade-point-average or a class rank, it does make it somewhat easier to compare your grades to those of others. And let's be honest for a second, employers, especially in this economy will compare grades (as well as other criteria) to determine who to hire.

The honorifics also eliminate the problem of professors who choose to use non-standard buzz-words such as "Commendable" or "Interesting", which eliminates the problem of figuring out where on the Excellent-to-Fail scale those words fit in. There is also the added bonus of the professors being free to be more creative with their paragraph of evaluation. There is no longer a need to force the buzz-word into it, and so both of my evaluations had a more natural and less forced feel to them. Now, let's just hope I am just as happy after I get my remaining two evals – I have this fear that one of them might compare my legal reasoning to a porcupine (prickly on the outside, squishy on the inside).

In non-grade news, I spent a good chunk of last week listening to arguments in front of a panel of the First Circuit Court of Appeals. The most rewarding thing about my current internship (aside, I suppose, from the ability to dramatically improve my writing skills) is the chance to see the court in operation. While any "civilian" can listen to arguments, judicial clerks (and even us lowly interns) get the full story. We have access to the briefs, and we take part in both before and after-argument debriefings with our judge. This means that even for cases I have no involvement in, I get an idea of what the judges see as important or pivotal to a case. Watching the arguments with the aid of this foresight is an invaluable learning tool.

And now, as promised: man is it cold outside!

Enjoy the long weekend, folks.

Posted by Leon at 1:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Last year around this time, upon realizing that Northeastern's winter break was a mere fourteen days long, I suggested that perhaps the length of the winter break should be given more weight when deciding which school to attend. This year, I am coming to the realization that choosing a co-op rotation is similarly afflicted. Because I am on the summer/winter rotation, I get to forego even the two-week winter respite. Instead, I do what the office does, which in my case means I got the day after Christmas and New Year's day off, with half-days before each holiday as well. When your holiday plans involve visits to the petrochemical refinery state (New Jersey) and Gotham (NYC) it makes the time off seem that much shorter.

Some notes from these trips:
1. Dear Prius owners: you know that warm, fuzzy feeling you get when you look at your fuel economy gauge? The feeling is just as good from the right lane of the highway as it is from the left. I am not going to debate the value of buying a "green" car that will take you nine years of average driving to break even, but let's agree on one thing: you did not buy this car for its speed or agility. Please, pretty please, move over to the right lane where you belong and stay there. It'll be safer for us all that way.

2. Dear New Jersey drivers: I don't even know where to start. Taken as a collective, I have never seen anyone drive as poorly as you. The grass is not part of the highway. Red lights are not akin to yield signs. Turn signals help. And I have no idea why the latest fad is for you to have purple headlights, but I am not a big fan.

3. To the gentleman driving the SUV with the Maryland plates during the New Year's Eve snowstorm on 95 south: When you abruptly change lanes on a snow-covered road, without signaling you create a dangerous situation. First and foremost, you cause the person you just cut off to have to slow abruptly, which is not easily done on a snow-covered road. Second, the sudden movement is likely to make your tires break loose and cause you to skid. This can result in you panicking, over-correcting and slingshooting yourself off the highway into a ditch. Actually, I suppose I don't need to tell you this, because you already know all of it, having experienced it, but I hope that this note may reach someone who has not yet tried this maneuver.

4. To the young lady who stopped in the right lane of the highway during a blizzard: I understand that your windshield wipers were somewhat frozen. I understand that you wanted to bang them off the windshield to make them useable again. I just don't understand why you thought it would be safe to stop in a travel lane, during a blizzard, when visibility is almost non-existent. This is why the road has shoulders.

5. To the state of Connecticut: The white stuff that sometimes falls from the skies is called snow. You have these big metallic things called snow plows. From the name, you may have deduced that snow plows are used to... plow... snow. I don't know why you decided not to use these things during the recent snowstorm. I am sure you had a good reason. In hindsight, it does seem awful wasteful for Massachusetts and Rhode Island to have plowed their roads when it is clear the snow would have eventually melted there, just like it did on your roads. I guess I should address this to RI and MA, since they were the ones that must have done something wrong and wasteful.

In spite of these minor driving-related irritations, I had a wonderful time at my destinations once I got there. I hope everyone's holidays were likewise enjoyable.

Now, back to the proverbial grind.

Posted by Leon at 2:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)