On Being Delusionally Optimistic

There is always a point every semester – during project submissions, end semester exams and other law school trappings when the work from weeks past has pilled up, when deadlines have been stretched out to the extent where they have lost all their linear quality, that I get delusionally optimistic about my ability to get my work done. And then suddenly, I find all the time in the world to do the most inane of things – such as learn Japanese by repeated viewing of Death Note, or read up Wikipedia’s entry on Wikipedia, or write blog posts instead of law review articles…

NAZE??!!!

that’s ‘why’ in Japanese in case anyone was wondering.

It’s a mixed up, muddled up, shook up world or Hello, again…

For the past few days, I’ve been feeling a lot like Gordan Way. I don’t remember much about this character from Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, but what’s stuck in my head is a description of how he would call up people, preferably being directed to their answering machines, and then talk his heart out as to what all was needed to be done. I don’t remember much about him apart from the fact that he kinda gets killed by an electric monk and his horse – at least I think it was a horse, it might as well have been a donkey- but the more important thing is – I kinda understand his urge to tell people about his elaborate list of Things to Do.

I find myself trusted with responsibility; tons of it. Sure, there might be the tad bit of me that’s pleased with this development but a larger more ‘get me out of here’ part is sick with worry. It’s not that big a deal, except I can’t seem to quit making lists. Also, I might be secretly a tyrant in the making; what’s worrying is how pleased I am by the idea.

I spent twelve hours yesterday and today morning formatting and editing a piece of work, just to realize a moment after I had dispatched it, that I’d forgotten to do something as basic as run it through an MS Word Spell n’ Grammar Check. I’ve most probably over–edited it and most definitely forgotten to add page numbers. I am not quite sure whether I could pass it off as a balancing act.

The LAN connection in College has been tweaked so that certain searches on key words evoke an error message. Considering the Third year First Round Internal Moot Problem is about a gang raped woman whose bisexual husband runs away with her first gay ex-husband, the ingenuity of this tweaking is mind numbing. Ah well.

I wish I could say that I am mooting again for the right reasons; more than the right reasons, wish I could say with a theatrical smirk and a half shrug – ‘Coz I am good at it.’ A lot of people in my batch seemed to have given up on it…at least for this year. I persist because…well, because I don’t want to regret not giving it another shot, because I love the high and the effort that goes in, and even at its worst, there is a delirious part of me that knows that looking back it will all seem funny. I realize the last lines straight from one of those American movies, where the hero/heroine amidst cheery pop music decides to do whatever big thing that he/she had been feeling rather ambivalent about. Chances are, this being the real world and all, if I don’t make the cut, I’ll be bawling my eyes out, but I am, for most parts, certain that, heartbreak or not, I’d still be glad that I did it.

In other news I still do not have a Law and Economics topic. Also, though the ‘geeky coolness’ of saying I am studying Space Law still makes me grin, my project topic on spectrum and orbit leasing might have wooshed over my head, narrowly missing my hair. Not that, technology was ever my forte…have I told you about the time when I crashed not one but two laptops in the space of a week? Oh wait, that was last week! Philip, to whom all my laptop woes are directed, told me he was going to donate to a corpus fund so that he could buy me a typewriter. I went through all the classic symptoms of de-addiction. All I could think of doing when all my friends were listening to music, playing games, watching movies, doing projects – in short hanging out with their own respective laptops was well clean. I dusted my books, regained the surface of my table from piles of accumulated junk, ironed my clothes and when all that could be done was done, I did something more along the lines. Think about it. I spent entire Sundays cleaning! The Horror!

Of course, I am back to my old ways, now that my laptop’s returned. I just spent an entire evening writing this long drawn out rather pointless post…which was the only way I could think off coming out of a really long hiatus. It was either this or one of those mindless ‘you’re tagged’ blog polls. And I used that, the last time

Desperate Pleas for Help as oppossed to Do Not Disturb Signs

This notice went up outside my room at approximately 1:30 on Saturday afternoon. Unlike the many, who write DO NOT DISTURB OR I WILL KICK YOUR ASS outside their door, come exams, I approach them with…well desperate cries for help.

Dear Everybody,

Hello and Welcome to another edition of “ This crazy girl has gone mad again!” What can I say except that I have been frittering away my life in wishy washy pursuits. I’ve been editing the magnum opus of the Kick-Assest Issue Ever (Yes, it is called that, yes it is that much Kick-assest); I’ve been reading about the latest p-sets those crazy kids have to do; I am also suddenly and irrevocably in love with Jess from Gilmore Girls…again. (what can I say, there is just enough James Dean in him.)

As a result my studies have been (what’s the right word) rather ‘neglected’. In other words, the time for PANIC is now. The time for action was in all probability two weeks ago. But NO, my delusional mind tells me: there is hope. And this Hope person/ voice tells me that if I know what’s good for me, I will lock myself in my room, throw away the key and study like mad. So if you see me wasting time, Scream At Me; if you hear too much ac/dc playing in my room; Scream At Me. Remind me about prioritizing. Give me Notes and Advice. If All Else Fails, (gulp) as a last resort – Call My Mother.

Love

Me

Ps: by any chance have you seen a key lying around anywhere?

On & On…

Have you ever found, how, it is at the most importunate times that you are seized by the most wonderful of ideas? I always have the most awesome (albeit not the sanest) plot lines take hold of my head when I have exams. I start day dreaming scenarios and dialogues while my civil law module lies abandoned. Of course, by sheer force of will, I try and prevent furthering of these thought processes. funny thing is, the moment the exams over, the plots lose their sheer intensity in my head. weird.

but that wasn’t what I really wanted to blog about. (then again, the fact that it was the first thing that came out, kinda defeats the above argument) what I wanted to tell you about is how I feel like rambling on and on.

Yesterday, I made a new gmail account. I’ve had one before but it wasn’t the sort you give to possible short term employers (no it didn’t say flowerpower87 or bazooka900 but it still was not formal). The new one, has my college name attached to it. .NUJS it says and I will probably need another one, say three years down the line but it meant something to inextricably link my name to .NUJS, though it probably has been linked to it ever since I decided to come here almost two year back.

Of course, now I have to make the painful switch from my old hotmail account to the gmail account. My first and foremost plan, is to have my mail transferred automatically from hotmail to gmail via pop3 or the Mail Fetcher option. Only problem is hotmail for some reason best known to itself, allows pop3 only for users situated in the UK, Italy and other such places. No problem, a little google search for post office numbers in England, and a little tinkering with my personal info on hotmail and voila I am proud citizen of the Great Britain. This should have worked, as they seem to rely solely on the personnel info (and not the more tricky IP addresses) to allow pop3, but I still seem to be encountering an error, and probably will have to do more tinkering around. Any Ideas?

In other news I finally went to the Kolkata Book Fair, one terribly dusty event. The bigger names Random House, Oxford, Cambridge and Co were terribly disappointing, but the smaller shops had the sort of collection that fills you with the bittersweet thought that you can never have read enough. There was also Benfish apparently one of the best fish food people in cal but it only made me realize how much I miss my mama’s fish curry…sigh. Anyways, ended up buying way too many books and will therefore probably end this semester in near penury. More about the books later.

Also, I seem to have a writer’s block when it comes to writing for Writer’s Block. (Aha Aha truly contrived providential pun, but what the heck). I need all the points I can garner and yet the words refuse to come. I do believe blogging takes care of all my urge to write and thus have no ready prose available When I Really Need To Write. Gah!

Bunked class today because of itchy red spots on my body that itch. I seem to have the strangest luck with Docs. they usually are good at what they do albiet eccentric. this one has been inviting me to his daughter’s Bengali Wedding in November of 2009 ever since last year. He was terribly excited at seeing red itchy spots that itch and was convinced that it was a) Diabetes b) chickenpox. Later, I had him wittle it down to an infection/allergy and now am forced to take pills that cost a fortune. I googled it and was not very surprised to find, that there was a generic drug at half its cost. I think there is some provision in some law that lets me have the right to demand the alternative cheaper med, but I’ll probably  lose that wedding invitation.

I seem to have a small albiet regular readership (yes, yes, it’s all thanks to you, Sroyon). I keep thinking that people must end up on my blog by mistake, but how many times can people end up on my blog from the same set of urls, eh? at least, that’s what I’d like to think.

On Recession, Recruitment and Reasons Why

We had a treat last night; one of the fifth years who’d got a job decided to let the whole lot in campus gorge on Rosogollas, and ice cream at his expense. Second senior to do this, in a week; damn sweet, I hope it becomes an instant custom.

Of course getting a job is always a big deal in college – campus recruitment remains one of the most gossiped events of the year – who got in where, who didn’t, how many recruited in percentages and so on, but this year getting a job took on a gravity quite unsurpassed with the oft quoted and much abused phenomena of recession hanging over everyone’s head.

It became quite common to walk into conversations where everyone was discussing statistics – so and so firm promised to take so and so number of people, but they didn’t – the bastards; or so and so college had a better track record with recruitment this year, even though it couldn’t hold up a candle to our college, you get the drift. Most felt sorry for the fifth years- some genuine, some patronizing…some in a way I don’t quite get.

Take one of my friends…she sees the poor track record this year as some sort of threat to her own personal recruitment which is two to three years in the future. She is frustrated by it, angry almost, asking why she should spent five years away from home, doing this back breaking course when in the end it may amount to nothing. She could, she says perhaps not in her strongest moment, have just chosen to study at the tacky place near her home, if in the end this is the only sort of result she is going to get. I snap at her to quit worrying and she quotes ILO’s expected figures of job loss at me. I think of my father and am suddenly, powerfully worried. I quickly perhaps even unkindly ridicule her and the figures and brush it away. I refuse to be worried, perhaps unwisely.

And these sort of odd disconnected snippets go on and on; one fifth year who, when she saw a group of pesky second years staring said with very little heat, quit staring, yes we are unemployed, and another one who I overhead on the phone talking airily about how her dad was worried about her and wouldn’t let her sit jobless at home.

My mum called me up a few weeks ago and because I sounded upset launched into speech on how it didn’t matter much – about recruitment or grades as long as you are safe and happy and it took me almost fifteen minutes to realize that she’d freaked out on my regular petty problems because she’d been reading about some chap who’d killed himself at IIT coz he didn’t get a job, due to you guessed it, recession. I told my mum in no uncertain terms that a) she was crazy and b) she was crazy. I think, strangely enough, she felt much better at being told how ridiculous the connection was.

And that’s what I hate about recession. The genuine effects of it are there for everyone to see and to be worried about- job loss, unemployment, loss of a lifetime of saving, the whole nine yards. But what I hate more is how much it is affecting people – the fears it’s creating sometimes to the point of utter ridiculousness.

I know that you can’t ignore recession, you shouldn’t but I wish it wasn’t turning into everyone’s personal bogey man.

Connecting Imaginary Dots

It was the 8^th afternoon of the month of December. Slowly but surely, an entire class attending a lecture on Science, Technology and Law was being put to Death by Power Point. One brave individual, who rallied, was rewarded with a seemingly inconsequential piece of mindless information:

“The International Seabed Authority, under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea 1982 , has a wing to spearhead exploration of the deep-sea bed. This wing is called the Enterprise.”

Perhaps one must congratulate her keen sense of observation. More likely, one must feel pity for the weird wiring in her head, which made this (un) necessary connection:

ENTERPRISE =

Ergo, Dude, some negotiator sitting at a top level UN Convention drafting meeting was a total Star Trek geek! OMG, V. Cool.

Even more appropriately, perhaps, one must pity the fact that in the sum total of the five lectures that day, this minuscule connection was the only thing that made her grin.

Post 1 of One Year At Law School: Dealing with the Disillusionment

I know this girl who left one of the best of the national law schools (let’s just call it Bla-Bla shall we and no, I am not taking any perverse pleasure in calling this premier institution Bla-Bla). One of our earliest conversations went like this:

Me: So you left Bla-Bla for this (for the record I have the utmost respect for this but compared to bla-bla, this was no competition)

Her: Yes.

Me: ARE YOU CRAZY???

Her: It just wasn’t what I expected it to be.

Me: I repeat, ARE YOU CRAZY???

I still don’t know whether her choice was for the better, but I do understand it better now. There’s a lot of disillusionment attached to our first reception of law and law schools. For a lot of us, doing law from what are purported to be the best institutions in the country is an idea that appeals to our Perry Mason/Boston Legal/ John Grisham/ Insert own law fantasy book, movie , TV show addled brain. The University has to be a cut above the rest, the education offered in it a brilliant dazzling epiphany, its professors have to be compelling illum…er… you get the picture?

All this codswallop hope that you have of the place crumbles before your first lecture in the place gets over. Actually sometimes it happens a lot faster.

Imagine sixty odd fresh from school lot cramped into a tiny class room in the middle of summer waiting for there first lecture.

Instead of the wizened old professor, in walks well…I know appearances should not matter but seriously…

Hello! I AM CHOCKO!!!

One permanent grin and countless pjs after, everyone is rearing back in their seat in abject horror. It’s so hot that it a human rights violation to hold us in class and Chocko has long ago started talking in Latin…like really.

I can say with utter certainity that I know at least one person who made up her mind to call it quits right after the first day in class and quite a few did the same in the months that followed.

Disillusionment …heaps of it. In all shapes and sizes. I guess a huge amount of it stems from having their fantasies of the place broken. For a lot of us, getting into law school has been a long term plan; they worked their arses off to get through the competitive exam and they are entitled to dream about this place.

Weirdly enough, I turned out to be one of the few who escaped the initial disillusionment bug. This may have a lot to do with the fact that I had never ever not in a million years thought I would be studying law! Law school kinda just happened (not that I didn’t work my arse off, but it still was a lot more eleventh hour than the ordinary). So I didn’t have that many great fantasies of the place and in a way I guess I got lucky.

Truth is I think as far as law is concerned (and maybe it holds through for most courses too) you have to give it time. I’ve heard a lot of my seniors say that if you can get through the first semester of law school, without cracking, you’re gonna be okay. That probably is the best attitude.

And law takes time to grow on you. It takes time to go through a sixty page judgement (oh come on, I was in first year! I am not going to read some insanely big judgement!) and to finally decipher the sheer subtle brilliance of the reasoning behind it or to read a1760 case and marvel at the fact that the judgement holds to this very day.

And though you may never really understand what Chocko taught you in class you might discover much to your surprise that the guy for all his ranting on setting the hardest paper ever, is still a softy when it comes to correction and more importantly unless you actually take his optional papers (in which case you really are crazy), you only have one more class with him in the five years that follow.

One Year At Law School : An Introduction

One Year At Law School, I keep scribbling that on my note pad, in hopes that some profound thought would strike me; in hopes, that I would be able to write something revelatory on my experience and wrap up my first year with a nice one lined eulogy. But as always I only get static.

I could probably say: ‘it has been one hell of a year,’ or pass on an ‘endearing’ phrase to law student aspirants everywhere: ‘Welcome to Law School. Get ready, to be Counter-Striked.’ But there is something neat about these lines that just don’t explain the messy half done feel that I have for the first year.

The post/posts that follow therefore are hardly clear on where the hell are they heading and are at best scribbled down half thoughts of someone who finally has a holiday!