Blog Entry 54

March 16th, 2010
I write to you today from that dark state between utter exhaustion and just a bit too much caffeine. 

Moot court is on Saturday, and the pressure is starting to build. I haven’t seen the 1Ls this worn out since last semester’s final exams. On one hand, I’m really excited about the oral advocacy competition, but on the other hand, I just want it to be over so that I can get some semblance of a life back. 

Last night, after I got home at 6pm (Mondays are my late days, remember?), I went rollerblading for about a half hour to give my brain a break. Then, I ate some dinner…and after that, it was down to business. I had 38 pages of reading for contracts (and we didn’t even get through our previous assignment today, so I’m way ahead on my reading for that class…) and then worked more on my oral argument for moot court. I finally made myself go to bed at 1:30, but then I woke up at 6:30 (a half hour early for a Tuesday) so that I could work more with my argument before contracts. I felt surprisingly refreshed when I woke up this morning, and it was so nice to drive to school while watching the sunrise…little did I know then that just a couple hours later I would feel like I do now. I am now utterly exhausted and can’t believe that it isn’t even noon. Of course, I don’t even get the chance to sleep in tomorrow because I have to be downtown for my first externship interview at 10am.

I think the biggest problem with moot court is confidence. We’ve been working with this hypothetical situation since the beginning of January, we spent hours upon hours writing briefs about the different positions…we know this stuff. The challenge is that, rather than preparing a neat little argument, we have to be prepared to have our arguments interrupted with questions from the judges. It’s intimidating. I think I need to get past the notion that I can actually feel prepared for moot court and just accept the fact that, no matter how much time I put in, there is just no getting past that feeling of uncertainty. Oh, did I mention the fact that our involvement in this competition isn’t graded? We are expected to show up and put in a good faith effort in order to avoid a detrimental effect on our grade, and obviously we all want to do well, but is this really worth making ourselves sick over? (And yes, it seems like there is definitely something going around here…the thing about having all of your classes with your section and spending all day every day with the same people is that when one person is sick, it just makes its way around. I need to get out the vitamin C…) 

The bottom line? My quality of life will improve dramatically at 1:35pm on Saturday when I have completed my oral argument…