Ketchup. Catsup. Whatever.

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.

-- 

*Ooh!  I’ve got it: “Skills Goddess.” Yeah. That’s the ticket.

Week One: In which the Fellowship of the Certificate is formed.

(That's a bit dramatic, but we are, after all, a small group of strangers from different backgrounds thrown together to work toward the same goal, so it seemed apropos.)

The students

When I say we're a small group, I'm not kidding: there are seven of us. No wonder MUPP wanted to "allow more time for people to register." Many fewer and they wouldn't have covered our instructors' salaries. Since I don't want to get sued (and this would be the crowd that would do it), I'll not name names, but rather use generalities in describing our happy band. To wit:

Two of us are taking paralegal classes as "law school lite," and intend to go on to the real thing in the future.

Two of us have jobs in the legal profession or deal with lawyers daily and want to be Real Paralegals.

One of us is demon lawyer spawn on both sides.

Three of us are not (very) gainfully employed, and think being a paralegal beats the heck out of whatever we're doing right now.

Two of us are looking for a career change.

(The mathematically astute among you will notice that this adds up to nine, not seven. Very good. Some of my classmates fit into more than one of these categories. Told ya I'm trying not to get sued...)

The instructors

I don't want to go too far out on a limb as I've only have had one class with each instructor so far. Here are my initial impressions.

The Essential Skills instructor, who will be with us for the whole program, is bright, bubbly (in a non-annoying way), chock full of helpful real-life tips, and is going to challenge us to do our best. She's not adverse to keeping things light and having fun, but I can see her cracking the whip if we start getting behind schedule.

The Torts guy, who will be with us for four weeks -- what can I say without getting myself in trouble? He's had a long, successful career in litigation, and has some terrific war stories to tell. And he tells them entertainingly. Were I looking for a lawyer to handle my problems, I'd put him high on the list, because he obviously knows his stuff. As a teacher, though -- not so good. He didn't cover anywhere near the material we needed to get through the first night. What he did do with us was skim through some of it, and tell us where he disagreed with the textbook's author. I really hope he improves, or we're going to be in a world of hurt come test time.

The venue

As I mentioned before, the office building in which our classes take place is at the intersection of two very busy highways (one of which has just entered a five-year construction program), and within about a mile of a third one. Class starts at 6. Anybody else seeing a potential problem here? As somebody in class put it, "Obviously the person who chose this location doesn't live in the City of Large." No kidding. A wreck on that non-intersecting highway just before Tuesday rush hour tied up the other two highways, and all of the surrounding surface streets. It took Spousie nearly 45 minutes to get me from the train station to class - a trip that should take about 15.* So I'd say the location is a fail. A geographically centrally-located fail, but a fail nonetheless.

The classroom itself is fine. Comfy chairs. Lots of space for the Magnificent Seven. But it's in a suite of offices, the rest of which is Totally Off Limits. This means no vending machines, no sink, no microwave, and no restrooms. There are restrooms around the corner in the building's lobby, but that's the end of the amenities. And again, class starts at 6. Dinnertime. Oops.

Now this one has me baffled. The centerpiece of the program is a very-well-appointed, user-friendly, no-learning-resource-left-behind website exclusively for the use of the program's students (and there are lots, under the auspices of several Major Universities - yup, I'm in a franchised paralegal program). Seriously, the website sold me on attending. It's that good. It's not just an add-on, it's an integral part of the program.

And there is no wi-fi access in our classroom.

No, I'm not kidding.

I don't know how much an 8-user wi-fi hotspot would cost, but it seems to me that it would be worth the price. (I did a quick search and found an offer of $299 for setup and $29 a month for month-to-month service. That'd be $420 plus equipment, and surely a Major University would have a compatible wireless router kicking around somewhere. I'd kick in another $50 bucks to have wi-fi.)

Of course, an all-around better solution would be to hold classes at Large's satellite campus of Major University. I'm not sure why the Mothership couldn't get space for a little bitty class like ours. Hopefully, subsequent classes will get better accommodations.

So that's the way it is, as the few, the proud, the Proto-Paralegals launch their tiny boat into the dark, scary ocean that is The Law. Let's hope the Kraken stays asleep. 

-----

*Did I mention there's been a logistical change? Instead of driving myself to class, I am leaving work, schlepping my school accouterments to the closest light rail station, and training it to the closest station to Spousie's place of employ. She leaves early, picks me up, carts me to class, drops me off, spends a less mentally exhausting three hours elsewhere, and then fetches me home again. This gives me a chance to snarf a sandwich in the car (or at the train station), to arrive less stressed-out, and doesn't put me and others on the road in danger of my driving home at night. (Trust me; this is a good thing.)

On the road again for the first time

Having gotten no further “we need to allow more time for people to register” notices from MUPP, it looks like my classes will really, truly start next Tuesday. So today I decided to do a test drive from LPL to the class site at the time I’d actually be driving it.

I double-checked my route, which involves surface streets for about a third of the distance. I’m trying to avoid an area of road construction at the intersection of two major highways, which, coincidently, is right next to the building wherein my classes will be held. I went over the satellite views of critical intersections. I was ready.

As I packed up my stuff at the end of the day, I realized I was feeling queasy. Either the leftover noodle and pork dish I had for lunch was past its prime, or I was – nervous? What was up with that? This was a dry run. A fact-finding trip. If I ran into logistical problems, there was no harm. I wasn’t on a deadline. And yet I was sure I was going to woof my cookies at any second. I took deep breaths. I reminded myself that Everything Is Fine. And off I went.

I left my desk at 4:35. I expected it would take 30-40 minutes to make the approximately 15-mile drive. It took nearly an hour. Traffic was ugly, and that was without any accidents or construction delays. Two of the stoplights along the route are ridiculously long, and let very few cars through in the direction I travel. I was lucky I didn’t have to wait through them twice each. I did arrive a full half-hour before my scheduled class time, but I would still have to eat a quick dinner, glance over the evening’s assignments, and get settled into my desk. Thirty minutes sounds like a lot, but it would go by very quickly. And the penalty for being late is quite harsh. According to the PRCP (Paralegal Rules of Classroom Procedure):

“Just as a judge will not tolerate an attorney’s being late to court, tardiness in this class will be discouraged. Any student not counted present at the beginning of class will be considered absent for the entire class” unless s/he presents a written excuse from his/her physician or employer, or the instructor decides to approve of the tardiness “in the interest of justice.”

Eep. Notice the lack of provision for traffic delays. Or for the forgiveness of a good-hearted yet chronically chronologically-impaired student. (Does the ADA cover that handicap?) Call me paranoid (I heard that!), but I’ve got to have more of a time cushion built into my schedule. Which means I have to leave work earlier. Which means I have to get to work earlier. Which means I have to get up earlier. And “not a morning person” doesn’t even begin to describe me. And what if I’m out at some remote branch on the other side of town, packing up books? (Why, no, LPL won’t be hiring movers to empty a branch undergoing renovation; why do you ask?) Fortunately, my boss is fine with flexing schedules a bit when needed, because I have a feeling I’m gonna need it.

Meanwhile, back at the Big Office Building in the Groin of Two Highways, I noticed that there were some empty parking spaces outside the parking structure. This is good, because the parking structure is two stories, the ground level is all reserved, and there is only stair access to the top level. (Yes, I’m lazy. And I’ll be toting a heavy, wheeled laptop case, at the end of a very long day, in the dark, back to my car. So just shush.)

Having conquered the scary, maniac-filled roads, figured out how much time I’m going to need, and located the classroom, it was time for a reward. I hied myself to the nearest Long John Silver’s (about which I have nothing bad to say, so I’m not going to wrack my brain for a pseudonym) for a Fish & More. Once my malt vinegar quotient was back where it belonged, I visited a nearby comics store and picked up a copy of Warehouse 13 #1, and left my number so they could call me when more copies of #2 arrive.

I’ve still got a few oversized butterflies circling my pyloric sphincter, but fish and chips, and a comic book go a long way toward getting them netted. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to write up a quick summoning ritual for the gods of traffic, and find a suitable sacrifice. I wonder if they like malt vinegar?

Latest dispatch from the front

[A brief recap, which will update my educational quest to the present day]

As I explained in the previous post, I have wrangled my tuition money from those who were kindly taking care of it for my retirement. (And fear not: I took out enough to pay taxes and the penalty for early withdrawal.)

I have, after many heated e-mails, convinced HOTH to let me drop my scheduled classes and gotten them to refund my already-paid tuition. (By-the-by, I'm not the only one in a state of high dudgeon at that fine institution. Many students who are not dangerously over-educated, and are entitled to financial aid have had their money delayed over and over due to "procedural changes." Some, like my friend Lacey, have found other sources of payment to tide them over until their financial aid arrives. Others, without backup funding, have had to drop out of school before they could even start. The aggrieved students have even set up a Facebook page demanding reform at HOTH. I wish them well.)

I have put up for sale one of the textbooks I bought. (Why, yes, I do happen to have that information handy. Thanks for asking.)

I even have a shiny, new, powerful laptop for note-taking, legal writing, and nifty-paralegal-school-website accessing.

Now I wait with bated breath for my classes to start.

And wait.

And wait some more.

I will be attending at a satellite campus, not at Major University's mothership which is many miles from Large. The same program's "home" classes have already started. Lucky them. Our classes were to start, well, today, actually.  Just after I paid my tuition, we were told that the start date would be pushed back to an unspecified date to allow students more time to register. I became a little bit concerned. Twelve days ago, we were given a start date of September 20th. That would have made it unlikely to finish before Christmas, although an ending date before the close of 2011 would have been doable. Today, we were told that classes would begin in mid-October and end in February 2012.

Say what?

I expected to ring in 2012 with a paralegal certificate in hand, followed immediately by a thorough investigation of the local job market. Now I'm idling my engine; my enthusiasm dwindling, and my impatience rising. All I can do now is wait. And wonder if I should have asked MU for a refund, and signed up for the longer program at one of Large's slightly-less Major Universities. As it stands now, I will graduate a few weeks ahead of that group.

I really, really hope that doesn't change.

In which I expose my ignorance of Things Financial

I have mentioned that I'm not good with numbers, haven't I? Yes, I thought I had. My anumia rarely rears its head in any significant way that I can't work around. It does affect my ability to process statistics and financial information, but I can usually work around it in conversations by nodding and making "um-hmm" sounds, or by just letting my eyes glaze over and turn to the next item on the page if I'm reading. But every once in awhile, I get caught.

If I were good with numbers, I'd have been hovering over my various and sundry retirement accounts, fluffing them here, turning them there, playing with ratios of stocks and bonds and following the S&P 500 and Warren Buffet's pronouncements like the words of deities. But no. I take a job, I sign up for the 401(k) or 403(b) or 98.6(q) or whatever it is, then when I move on to the next job, I repeat the same process.  I've gone from job to job, leaving a trail of abandoned clumps of retirement dollars here and there like empty bottles of Diet Dr Pepper. Not a worry in the world. Again, until I get caught.

Like when I try to wrest money from a retirement account to pay for paralegal school.

I'd been receiving statements from three financial concerns for awhile: "Cotton Swab," "Stereo," and "Aunt Cliff." (I'm doing the best I can with pseudonyms, okay? Geez.) When I decided I needed to raid my nest egg, I dug out the most recent mailings from each, and tried to figure out who was who. Stereo is handling my current pension money from the City of Large. Cagney and Lacey had told me that I could borrow money from my retirement account and pay myself back later, but only if it was the one connected with my current job. Let's see: try to figure out who in the Large HR department to talk to, talk to them, get whatever forms I need, get them filled out and money paid to me, all in a relatively short space of time? No thanks. People have gone into Large City Hall on simpler errands than that and never been seen again.

That left Cotton Swab and Aunt Cliff. Puzzling over the statements, I saw that my money with Aunt seemed to be in two separate accounts from two different jobs I'd had that used their company. Why hadn't everything gone into one pot? The money was all from me. It's for my retirement. Why split it up? This looked potentially complicated. On to the next statement. I had a big clump of money in the tender care of Cotton Swab, and despite the recent market downturns, it was doing pretty well, actually. So I decided that the simplest course would be to roll all of it over to Aunt, take out enough to cover my classes and books at Major University, and go on my merry way.

Poking around Swab's website, I noticed several mentions of rolling over money "to qualified accounts." What the heck did that mean? I thought I'd better call Aunt and see if one of my accounts was "qualified," and while I was chatting, find out what she needed to do to deal with my incoming dough, besides rubbing her hands together in gleeful anticipation. I called. Got put in a queue. And waited. And waited. And ... you get the idea.

Allrighty then. Time to call Swab. My first bad vibe came when I got a recorded announcement that said, in essence, "The person you're about to talk to Wants to Sell You Something So S/He Gets A Commission." Oh brother. The fast-talking Noo Yawker on the line had no patience with my hesitant description of what I wanted to do. He zipped through a list of the stuff Swab needed to know, winding up with, "Do you even know how they want the check made out?" When I said, no, and that I hadn't been able to get through to ask that question, he shot back,"Well are they the kind of people you want to do business with?" Since I hadn't had the opportunity to be condescended to in person like this guy had so ably done, I couldn't answer that question off the top of my head, so I said I'd have to call him back.

It looked like I would have to deal with the unreachable on one hand, and the insufferable on the other. What fun.

Long story short (too late) I finally reached a very patient person at Aunt Cliff who, after I trotted out the metaphor of leaving a trail of retirement accounts behind me wherever I go, quickly got the picture, translated my needs into FinancialSpeak, and got to work. Not only did he walk me through Aunt's forms, he placed a conference call to Swab (!), and got a less-snarky person to walk me through Swab's forms (!!!). Now that's the kind of people I want to do business with. Thirty minutes later, I had two sets of forms ready. In a week, my tuition money was sitting in my savings account. Another week, and I briefly and reverently held a Very Large Check in my hands long enough to pop it into a FedUp envelope and ship it off to Aunt Cliff. An email assured me it had been received and deposited into one of my accounts.

I sighed a huge sigh of relief, paid my tuition to Major University, and waited with bated breath for news of the program's start date.

What could possibly - yeah, you're way ahead of me.

Plan B-sub-2?

Please forgive me getting a little meta here. I had a few future blog posts planned out about some of my pre-class experiences at Hoth CC. One was going to be about checking out Hoth's library and law collection. Another was about logistics: cars, trains, long walks, and summer heat. One was going to be about the art and science of textbook shopping. But all of them have been rendered superfluous now, as I am currently trying to wrest myself from the tentacled mass that is Hoth CC. And if you've seen enough hentai you know where this is going.

The first instance of tentacle -ahem- screwage was the fight over core classes not being credited. Yes, it's been how many weeks now? And I can't get Mr. Paralegal Advisor (formerly known as Advisor Two) to return my e-mails or phone calls. If there is any kind of appeal I can make to have my undergraduate classes reconsidered, or if there is some provision for “school of life” credit, I have no way of knowing. Mr. Paralegal Advisor is my Hoth adviser. Period. And he ain't talking.

Given the list of actual Paralegal courses required, add English, Speech, and Government to Algebra (and whatever remedial classes I'd need to arrive at that level) and the required-by-the-program Computer class, I'm looking at a good four years of evening schooling before I'd get my grubby mitts on a Paralegal certificate. That's just too damned long. My cataloging job at Large Public Library would have long since evaporated by then, and Spousie and I would be living in a cardboard box somewhere.

And that was only the first tentacle. The second was an e-mail I received that said, basically, “You've got too many degrees to get financial aid. Bugger off.” Yes, since I already have a bachelor's degree, Hoth's Financial Aid office pitched my request for a student loan into the round file. Never mind that there are indeed loans available for the dangerously over-educated like me. They've got a higher interest rate, and you don't get to defer payments while you're in school, but you do indeed get these loans by filling out the almighty FAFSA, and going through your school's financial aid people. I guess that's news to Hoth. Again, no explanation, no appeal. Just the “bugger off” e-mail, and we're done.

Community college ain't cheap. Well, relatively speaking, it is, but it ain't free. I paid for my three classes with a stash of money I lovingly call my “coronation fund.” (I was saving up for an inevitable crown for a slowly-cracking upper tooth, and it had taken longer than I care to admit to get the total up as far as it had.) Without a student loan, at a comparable rate of future saving, I could multiply by three to how long it would take me to get my paralegal certificate. That's way too damned even longer than I reasonably have to get an occupational safety net under me.

So, we have not enough time, and not enough money. What's an aspiring paralegal student to do?

This one went to an information session about Major University's paralegal program. At the time, it was just for a look-see. (This was before the Two Terrible Tentacles made their presence known.) And it did look good: only four months. No class-transfer hassles: you got a high school diploma, a pulse, and enough cash? Congrats. You're in. But there's the rub: Cash. Major University's certificate falls under their Continuing Education program. As in: “we don't do financial aid.” They politely offered me a promissory note: ¼ of the tuition in advance, and monthly payments of the other ¾. (Um, right. If I could afford four-figure monthly payments, I'd just hand you the dough.) And then there's another six hundred for “required materials.” (No bargain-hunting expeditions for textbooks allowed.) Impressed as I was by their program, there was Just No Freaking Way.

Or was there?

Over frosty plastic cups of Starbucks' finest Tea Lemonade, Cagney and Lacy and Spousie and I brainstormed the possibilities. We came up with this: if I rolled over an old employer's 401(k) into an even older employer's account, and took a chunk out as a cash distribution in the process, I could plunk down the money to get me on a fast track to Paralegaldom. Granted, I'd have to take out enough to cover taxes and the penalty for breaking into my retirement piggy bank, but still, it would be doable. And I'd be down to only two retirement funds instead of my current three.

What could possibly go wrong?

I have the craziest dreams

Weary with toil, I haste me to my bed,
The dear repose for limbs with travel tired;
But then begins a journey in my head,
To work my mind, when body's work's expired.

                                        -- That spear-shaking Dude of Avon

Wouldn't it be nice if I didn't have to defend the honor of my Alma Mater, battling to get Hoth CC to recognize her faculty's competence in teaching English, Speech, and Government?

Wouldn't it be nice if I didn't need to take three years (not including the above-mentioned classes, and math, and computer literacy) to get a paralegal certificate?  Maybe something that would take a year? Or -- dare I say it? -- even less?

Wouldn't it be nice if I didn't have to be in classes with students who spend their energy arguing about page count and font size for assignments rather than on learning?

Wouldn't it be nice if a Major University, home of an Impressive Law School, would offer a short, to-the-point, skills-based paralegal program that would carry the imprint of said University, rather than a community college?

Wouldn't it be nice if --

An elbow jabs me in the ribs, and I hear Spousie's voice say, "Hey! Wake up!"


"Whaa--"

"The presentation is over. You fell asleep." That's my friend Cagney.

"If you're planning to sign up for MU's paralegal program, you're not making a good first impression!" adds Lacey, Cagney's roommate.

"It wasn't a dream?"

"Starbucks," says a trio of voices, and I'm hauled to my feet and pointed toward the door.

Whoa. This could change everything...