Leon, 3L

What is the difference between a linked list and a vector?

And with me failing to answer that relatively simple question, we came to the stage of my legal education where I realized that I could no longer pass a Microsoft interview. Actually, since I have never interviewed with Microsoft, one could argue that I might never have done very well, but I choose to give myself the benefit of the doubt. Guess it's a good thing I like this "law stuff," otherwise, I might be in trouble if I were looking for a job.

My time in Providence is wrapping up next week, with my final draft opinion going to the Judge tomorrow (I hope) and then going through a round of revision and then circulation to the other judges. It is unbelievable how short the time I spent there seems. If I could convince everyone involved to let me stay there for the rest of the year, I'd do it in a heartbeat. I guess that's what judicial clerkships (after graduation) are for, and I am going to have to seriously weigh the positives and negatives of those when we get closer to application time.

In preparation for returning to campus, and partially because our day-trip skiing this Sunday was scuttled by an unusually strong allergic reaction to the bleating of the alarm clock, I decided to go to the gym today (for the first time in something like six months). If I can steer my car on the way to work tomorrow morning, I will consider this a small victory for mankind. I wonder if the GPS in my phone can chart a route to Providence that does not require any turns.

Speaking of GPS -- not sure if this is going to sound a little like when people complain that the clock on their VCR (remember those?) is impossible to program, but what the heck -- I think GPS hates me. My first experience with this then-emerging technology was when a friend decided to substitute this gadget for the paper directions I had directing me from the Tampa airport to a hotel on the beach. Roughly 45 minutes later, the infernal device told us to take a right in 500 ft -- we had arrived at our "final destination". Given that the device had picked a cemetery (which was nowhere near the beach or the hotel) as our resting place for the evening, I wondered aloud whether there was a setting to perhaps pick a "final destination for this evening, not my entire life" or if, perhaps, the device knew something I didn't know.

Then there was the time that a different friend insisted that his GPS knew the cow paths Boston calls roads better than I did. He finally gave up trying to direct me after the third time his little black box tried to make us drive through a wall.

Then there was the time a friend wanted to know how fast we were skiing. With the GPS hanging out of my jacket pocket, I achieved a speed of roughly 64 miles-per-hour on a relatively steep groomer. I was somewhat impressed by this (it was not a very well-groomed run, and I was not going flat-out) until the device registered me going about 35mph through the lift line... while I was standing still.

My latest encounter with the limitations of satellite-based navigation came last weekend, when the maps of Lincoln, NH absolutely refused to line up with the actual town. The streets were right, but the numbers were all off by an unpredictable number of blocks.

So, basically, I think GPS hates me.

But now, I am back to more important things, I have to figure out how to weigh an elephant without the use of a scale, and how to figure out which one of otherwise-identical bowling balls is heavier than the others (you are given only a balance scale, like the ones Lady Justice is holding, and can only use the scales twice). Both are relatively famous Microsoft interview questions.

Posted by Leon at 7:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I spent this past Monday night at the Museum of Fine Arts. The entire night. From about 6pm to almost 10pm. In case the significance of me voluntarily spending four hours at a museum is lost on those that don't know me very well... let's just say that those who do know me well are probably looking for some way to secure themselves to the ground, since the Earth is sure to stop spinning momentarily and gravity will cease to work. Don't get me wrong -- I like museums. I just like other things more. I also find that museums, unlike good wine, are good in moderation. Despite my wife's excellent tour-giving skills and endless amount of knowledge when it comes to any exhibit we have seen, my attention span tends to wane after hour number two, and tends to approach that of a fruit-fly by hour three. At four hours, my body switches to self-preservation mode and starts trying to pick a fight with said wife, seeing the potential marriage-ending conflict over whether a particular artwork could have been made by a crack-addicted monkey with only one arm and a lazy eye as better than the alternative of staying at the museum any longer. Come to think of it, this pick-a-fight to leave the museum ploy may have gotten overexposed during our trip to Europe a few summers ago, and now seems less effective due to my wife ignoring my tantrums and pretending not to know me.

So, what was I doing at the MFA for four hours on Monday night? I was attending an opening ceremony for the "Splendor and Elegance: European Decorative Arts and Drawings" exhibit. It turns out that at some point between on-campus interviews, my fall quarter finals, my wife's birthday and Thanksgiving, I somehow agreed that we should upgrade our membership at the museum (yes, we were both paying members even though one of us gets free admission because he is a law student -- there was a perfectly logical reason for this, I just can't think of it right now) to something called the Museum Council. This level of membership gets you into exhibition openings not open to the public, and gets you invited to other events as well. In exchange, the museum gets your soul when you die. Well, not quite, but they get more money from you than they were before, and a chance to cultivate some serious donations when we all make it big and compete to see who can get the new wing named after them.

Any fears I had of being bored to tears (or having to come up with a new exit strategy) were removed when a waitress presented me with a tray of wine glasses to peruse the second I entered the "closed-to-the-public" museum. Wine and art? Now, this a man can get used to. The exhibit was truly amazing, consisting of furniture and drawings the details of some of which left me scratching my head in a "how did they even do that?!" way. Seriously, the inlay work on some of the furniture was done with precision that I can't even imagine any human being capable of. The slide-show presentation was... well, a little dry, I admit, but it was book-ended by chatting with some friends and an impromptu (and very exclusive) tour given by my wife, so even it was palatable. Then they fed us dinner -- a pleasant surprise for those of us who thought the hors d'oeuvres earlier in the evening were going to be it as far as food goes.

Did this one evening turn me into a connoisseur of all things MFA? No. But it was a lot of fun. And I am looking forward to the next one.

Posted by Leon at 10:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

or rather it will not be viewed on youtube during class.

One downside to being away from school for three months is the difficulty of staying "in the loop" about things that happen on campus. Some things are relatively minor: the ongoing renovation of the library seems to have relocated its entry point, a situation sure to cause confusion for those of us who auto-pilot themselves to the third floor only to find a wall where a door used to be. I expect to do this at least thrice when I come back, hopefully with hilarious results. Others, however, have a much more far-reaching and long-lasting impact on our education, for instance: I just found out that one of our professors has banned the use of laptops in her first-year Constitutional Law class.

Arguments over the use of technology are not new. My father-in-law recalled people's use of typewriters when he was in law school. I remember the first programmable graphing calculators (banned from the SATs). People sometimes tend to see technology as enabling negative behavior, or as being a distraction to others, and this creates conflict.

In the interest of full-disclosure, I should mention that the debate over laptop use in the classroom is not limited to NUSL. Many schools, including law schools, are struggling with balancing the useful aspects of technology with their distractive attributes. Some have turned off the internet, others have banned students from taking their finals on laptops. I should also mention that my background in software engineering as well as my completely illegible handwriting (no wonder grandma wanted me to be a doctor!) Put me firmly in the "don't take away my laptop" side of the debate.

I do admit that with wireless internet in every classroom and games available on every laptop, the temptation to "zone out" and not pay attention is great. However, banning laptops will not make people pay attention – I have a stack of high-school notebooks full of doodles I can submit as evidence. Besides, some people do well in school despite consistently setting new high-scores in minesweeper while in class – I have no idea how they do it, but they do.

I find the distraction argument equally unavailing (sorry, I work for a judge – I have to put this into everything I write now). If you find yourself so easily distracted by what someone else is doing in class, then may I humbly suggest the front row. In fact, perhaps this is a solution – reserve the front row for those who do not want to be distracted by laptops, and ban laptop use in that front row. Similarly, another less draconian measure would be to turn off the wireless signal inside classrooms – no facebook, gmail, or whatever else the kids are into these days.

There is another wrinkle, as well. Some people simply cannot take the volume of notes needed by hand. The ADA would protect those students, and they would surely be allowed to use laptops in class. However, law school is a stressful enough place without being ostracized by your professor's technology policy. And what of those of us who have no medical reason (other than incredibly illegible handwriting)? Would we be able to get waivers as well? Where does the line get drawn? We strive to make a legal education available to anyone who wants one – so why ban technology that might enable additional people to practice law?

I shudder to think what I would have to do if I couldn't use my laptop. Transcribing my in-class notes when I get home is only half the solution, since I would also need my notes from the cases I read at home to be available in paper form (for in-class reference). So, I'd actually be copying my in-class notes from paper to computer and my at-home notes from computer to paper. Can someone please explain to me how this added effort is supposed to help me in my legal education?

Now, I don't want to alarm anyone. There is no NUSL policy against laptops, and there does not appear to be one in the works. Professors set their own rules for the classes they teach. This instance is the first I've heard of anyone banning laptop use outright. The reason this particular decision troubles me so much is because it was done to a 1L class – where you do not get to pick your section, and thus your professor. Had it been an upper-level class, those, like me, who prefer to use laptops, could choose not to take the class – or at least go into the endeavor knowing that laptops are banned.

In the end, if laptop use is important to you, my advice is simple: do your homework. Find out whether schools you are thinking of attending have a laptop policy, and whether that policy is being reviewed. Talk to students, check the web for news coverage – try to gauge the atmosphere. Finally, and most importantly, be prepared to deal with it if you find yourself on the wrong side of a laptop-ban decision. This seems to be an oft-debated topic, and no policy seems set in stone.

Posted by Leon at 7:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)