A deep and abiding fear

There are very few things that legitimately terrify me. Failure in law school is the most common fear I encounter, but that’s par for the course. Getting mugged in Waco? Nah, no one’s going to mug a guy without hair, I clearly don’t have enough money for Rogaine. Germs? Hand washing just prevents my immune system from knowing what’s up.

I’m afraid of earthquakes. Absolutely, completely, terrified. Fortunately I live in Texas, where you only need to worry about tornadoes and drunk dudes in giant trucks. I’m OK with tornadoes because you can see that sucker coming and (usually) get the hell out of the way or hide. The same goes for drunk kickers.

But you can’t avoid earthquakes.

I’m not sure if you’re aware, but when an earthquake happens, the earth moves. One of the most reliable things imaginable – the ground – moves. Not only does it move, sometimes it experiences liquefaction. You can’t run away from the ground without a jetpack at the ready. When you’re in an area experiencing an earthquake there is nothing you can do to escape the fact that the earth is moving and destroying structures around you.

Last summer I worked in Bezerkeley, California, for a high school ’student leadership conference’ and my roll was analogous to an assistant principal. I was most afraid of an earthquake happening while being responsible for 250+ kiddos crammed into a dorm. In fact, I called it. I knew it was going to happen. Well guess what? The earth did a little shimmy at 4 in the morning with a few hundred kids in bunkbeds and this blogger supervising things. It was a sublime moment of terror. The only sensible thing I could think of doing while it happened was to pull the blankets over my head. Fortunately that was just a little ‘tremblor’ as the locals referred to it when they weren’t busy laughing about it.

On Thursday I’m travelling to LA for a weeklong visit with family. The news tells me the earth thought it was a cool idea to go nuts and quake today. I’m packing a hardhat.

So, if the ‘Big One’ hits while I’m out of my beloved home state where things make sense, and LA descends into a state of anarchy as it sinks into the sea, I probably won’t update this blog because I’ll be busy surviving like I’m Snake Plissken.

Done.

Finals have been over for a few days and now it’s time to decompress. After a prolonged period of intense stress, it feels like getting off a treadmill. You feel like you’re still running even though you’re walking, so you kind of stumble around a little bit until that sense of movement and your actual movement match up again. Something similar happens after finals. Unwinding has always been very difficult for me.

I think I performed poorly on the tests and during this quarter in general and I’m disappointed in myself. The focus just wasn’t there. Was it the fact that it was school in the summer? Complacency? The heat? I don’t think it really matters what the external factors may have been. Ultimately it was just my own lack of focus. Sometimes it’s good to have a solid kick in the ass. I just hope the kick in the ass I’m anticipating isn’t too excruciating.

But for now, we have a miniature summer vacation for four weeks. Most people are leaving Waco to go and see friends and family. I will be in Los Angeles for a week visiting my mom’s family who I haven’t seen in ten years and then out to the other coast to visit my dad’s remaining family. My carbon footprint will be massive, but I’m ok with this because Mother Earth never bothered to give us Griffins or some other winged beast of burden. Planes will have to do for now.

Before these adventures, I must say goodbye to several people who are very close to me. They’re leaving for faraway places and I’m very happy for all of them because they’re taking advantage of fantastic opportunities. Still though, saying farewell is an unpleasant experience. There’s too much finality in the ritual, so instead of saying goodbye and considering that to be the end, I look for ways to avoid the final meeting or I start to prematurely disconnect from them. But when it comes time to actually say happy trails to you, it’s easier for me to say and think, “I’ll see you in the future.”

It’s both exciting and painful when the law invades your pop culture knowledge.

Briefly, before I return to my cave of solitude and legal lamentation, have you ever seen that Simpsons episode where Abe and Mr. Burns are the remaining members of their old WWII unit- “The Flying Hellfish”?

Well, in this episode, their old army unit found a treasure trove of paintings in Europe. The soldiers agreed that the treasure would go to whomever was the last surviving member of The Flying Hellfish. Abe and Mr. Burns battle it out. Unfortunately for them, the rightful heir to the treasure appears and takes it away.

If this were real property, they would have had a joint tenancy with the right of survivorship. I wonder if there’s an analogue for personal property? There’s also some adverse possession here.

What just happened in this post is something that some students experience when they’re immersed in a particular area of the law. It’s a tendency to spot torts, consideration and crimes in everything and everywhere. It becomes an involuntary reaction that one cannot simply turn off, it’s an automatic process. I should come up with a name for this Pavlovian response and submit it to the authors of the DSM-IV.

A second to emerge from my cave of legal solitude

If you decide to come to Baylor Law School, take heed! Taking the Contracts II final is like staring into the face of god. It is awe-inspiring and terrifying, too much for one person to comprehend in 3.5 hours. Do not think otherwise when you hear “the Contacts II final is a tough.” This is no hyperbole. It was easily one of the most difficult tests I’ve ever taken, but it was also one of the most fair. It definitely penetrated your knowledge of the topic. There were layers upon layers of issues. And like the face of god, I knew they were there, but I could do nothing to articulate them well. At times it was like I was trying to talk about what air looks like.

I think I just had my ass summarily kicked. It is unpleasant. But the only thing you can do after getting totally rocked by something like this is to move forward.

On to Property.