You know paralegal school has kept me busy because I haven’t
been blogging.
I know paralegal school has kept me busy because I have a growing
stack of Wednesday New York Times crossword puzzles that haven’t been solved.
I am a devout member of the
Church of the New York Times Sunday Crossword Puzzle in Ink, and have been for
many years. Since my local newspaper sees fit to give us a “free” Wednesday
paper along with our Sunday subscription, I’d started attending Wednesday choir
practice at the Church as well. After dinner, I did the Wednesday puzzle before
taking to my recliner and watching junk TV. Until, oh, about five weeks ago.
Now I have a collection of puzzles on my transparent blue puzzle clipboard. Sunday
services still go on (just barely), but the extra day of praise for Mr. Shortz
has fallen by the wayside.
But I digress. And I blog, because
I have a week off for Thanksgiving. Hooray! “How have things been going,” you might
be asking. Well, let me catch you up.
Torts has (have?) come and gone.
We have learned all there is to know – or at least, all MUPP thinks we need to
know – on the topic in a mere four weeks. Twelve class hours. One assignment.
One final exam. Done. Torts Guy did improve after the first class. I guess he
realized there was no way he could make it through thirteen chapters in four
class sessions unless he floored the accelerator, so he did so. Also a big help
was a set of PowerPoint files, which apparently came from a sister program in
Florida, guessing by the references to Florida statutes. A little odd,
considering the program at the Mothership started a good six weeks ahead of us,
so they would have already been through Torts, and they’re in the same state as
we are, and it would have made more sense to use their PowerPoint files. But it
all worked out in the end. Torts Guy managed to fit a course review into the last
half hour of our last class, and just
might have been reading over our exam as he reminded us of the topics on
which to concentrate. Including mentioning a specific section of the state code
that was particularly helpful. (And telling us it was named after Tony Dorsett,
so that the sports fans among us would remember that it was section 33. Nice.)
How did I do in Torts? Ninety percent on the assignment, and a 96 on the exam. I was
disappointed that Torts Guy hadn’t written any comments on my assignment along with the grade. Don’t get
me wrong: I was pleased with my 90, but I’d like to know what I missed that
would have gotten me the other ten percent. (Okay. I admit it: my inner grade
whore wanted that bright, shiny 100. There. Satisfied?)
Meanwhile, back in Essential
Skills, my assessment of our instructor (I need a nickname for her) seems to be
correct: she’s energetic, informative, and is not going to let us slack off one
bit. At the moment, we have, in addition to our reading assignments (updated
the morning of class), three written assignments hanging over our heads: a
demand letter, a “we sent a demand letter to the folks you’re suing” letter to
our imaginary client, and an internal memo on a canned subject. We’ve had two
sessions on citing cases and statutes, and now we should be able to put a cite together without
using the Bluebook. We’ve watched a live Lexis demo wherein she showed us not
only how to enter a search strategy, but also how to evaluate the results, and
modify the search query based on them. She took us on a field trip to Large’s Major
Private University’s Law School Library for a meet and greet with the Actual
Paper versions of the resources we’d be searching in Lexis and Westlaw (or “Wexis”
as they called it at WCSSL-SP). And she’s
no slacker, either. She re-vamped the syllabus for the second half of the course
to make better sense of the order of topics, and does her own PowerPoints for
class, which she e-mails us beforehand. I like her. A lot. (She deserves a nice
nickname; not just “Skills Gal.” I must give this some thought.*)
A few last bits to get fully
caught up: We haven’t lost any from our gallant band of seven. In fact, we are
supposed to gain an eighth member pretty soon. I’m not sure how that will work,
being as how she’s missed five weeks of class, but who am I to argue with the
fine folks of MUPP? In our immediate future are double doses of Essential Skills
until xmas break, followed by double doses of Civil Procedure for our next substantive
class. Our last topic will be Contracts. I’m not sure how I feel about that subject.
At WCSSL-SP I had the Contracts Professor From Hell, and hated every second of
it. I hope I don’t find I have a mental block thanks to him.
I think that covers everything
for now. I need to go put some sweet potato fries in the oven, and catch up on
all the lecture note transcribing I didn’t do while I was studying for my Torts
final. And then there are those letters and that memo to work on.
‘Scuse me while I get back to the
salt mines.
