the daily snivel

Or else I'd lord my awesome successes over the world like a haughty god, telling all naysayers (and one screwy ex-girlfriend) to suck it.

Behold the list of prizes and medals being awarded to the mighty graduates! (And, uh, scroll down to where it says "Faculty of Law"):

And all it cost me was a bunch of 14-hour days and by extension my soul sex life. Am I a role model yet?

 

Well, I got my Professional Responsibility and Practice Management Examination score back today, and I'm happy to note that I passed with the above-noted score of 83%. All the exams are pass/fail, but the pass/fail point is relative to the performance of the group as a whole (that is, all the law students writing the exam for the Bar Admissions Course in Ottawa, London, Toronto, and Windsor), so if the group does better on average, the score required to pass is higher. If the group does worse on average, the score required to pass is lower. This time around, the passing score was a 50/83, or 60%.

I'm very pleased with my score -- it was a draining and time-consuming test. Thinking back to the exam, the only places I might have lost marks would be the tricky questions on trust accounts, and maybe some issues having to do with the Law Society by-laws. I'd hate to think I was, in fact, 17% Professionally Irresponsible on basic issues of the Rules of Professional Conduct. Then again, my condolences to those poor bastards who must have failed, too.

In any case, that's one professional licencing exam down, and (ugh) seven to go. The next one is (glurp) Real Estate on this coming Wednesday. 

Of course, as we all know, one of the pettiest in a string of lows in US foreign policy happened in 2003, when the cafeterias in the US House of Representatives three office buildings deleted "french fries" from their menus and replaced them with "freedom fries." This was done in blustery outrage over France's refusal to support the proposed war of aggression liberation of Iraq. They remain on the menu to this day, a tribute to the infantile obstinacy of that once-great nation. But now, even the congressman who demanded the name change has decided the invasion was wrong:

...
Walter Jones, the Republican congressman for North Carolina who was also the brains behind french toast becoming freedom toast in Capitol Hill restaurants, told a local newspaper the US went to war "with no justification."
...
But the name change, still in force, made headlines around the world, both for what it said about US-French relations and its pettiness.
...
Now Mr Jones appears to agree. Asked by a reporter for the North Carolina News and Observer about the name-change campaign - an idea Mr Jones said at the time came to him by a combination of God's hand and a constituent's request - he replied: "I wish it had never happened."

Although he voted for the war, he has since become one of its most vociferous opponents on Capitol Hill, where the hallway outside his office is lined with photographs of the "faces of the fallen"...

I admire those who have the courage and integrity to admit that they were wrong. But I have much more admiration for those with the courage and integrity to stand up for what was right in the first place, especially when faced with outraged bullies on the other side who demand they get their way. 

Truer words were never spoken:

Rarely are the words of one state legislator worth national attention, but when Senfronia Thompson, a black representative from Houston, stalks to the back mike with a certain "get-out-of-my-way" look in her eye, it's Katie, bar the door. Here is Thompson speaking against the Legislature's recent folly of putting a superfluous anti-gay marriage measure into the state constitution:

"I have been a member of this august body for three decades, and today is one of the all-time low points. We are going in the wrong direction, in the direction of hate and fear and discrimination. Members, we all know what this is about; this is the politics of divisiveness at its worst, a wedge issue that is meant to divide.

"Members, this is a distraction from the real things we need to be working on. At the end of this session, this Legislature, this leadership will not be able to deliver the people of Texas fundamental and fair answers to the pressing issues of our day.
...

Please do go and read every word. It does a lot to answer those who think banning gay marriage has anything to do with real Christian values. 

I was a little surprised today not to see clouds of black smoke rolling over the city out of the Parliament buildings following today's harrowing votes in the House of Commons over the proposed budget (which was expected to pass) and the proposed NDP-backed amended budget (which was not). Call it schadenfreude, call it bloodymindedness, but I was grimly pleased that the Liberal government survived the Commons voting. Had either vote failed, the government would be in a decisive position of non-confidence and by Constitutional Convention, Prime Minister Paul Martin would have been asking the Governor General to dissolve Parliament tomorrow morning.

This is frankly because I do not believe the Conservatives deserve to have an election at this time. They knew quite well their electoral success in a snap election would come in the form of the protest vote from Canadians fed up with the apparent corruption and back-room dealing of the Federal Liberal Party. And despite howls of outrage, they made shady deals of their own in an attempt to ensure that such an election would be forced upon us at a time when most Canadians would prefer to hear the final report of the Gomery Inquiry into the sponsorship scandal before an election is ultimately called. I actually admire the progressive platform generally endorsed by Gilles Duceppe of the Bloc Québecois, but a party with national ambitions like the Conservative Party is hard pressed to win appeal by forming a cynical and strategic single-issue (bring down the Liberals) coalition with a single-issue party (separate from Canada). By rejecting the social spending required in the 2005 budget in exchange for the support of the NDP, the credibility of the Bloc has significantly withered (in my reckoning of such things).

The overall level of political discourse has been nothing short of childish for the past two months, and though I am glad that the Conservatives are all having a stiff drink tonight (and the wretchedly unsympathetic Peter Mackay cries into his beer -- do what the rest of us do when we get dumped, pal... start a blog!), the Liberals themselves have precious little to be proud of themselves over. This was a one-vote victory, and nothing more. In the end, I'm forced to agree with those who have remarked that there will be precious few, if any, adults left in the House of Commons once Ed Broadbent steps down.

Meanwhile, here's another great Canadian blog for you: The Amazing Wonderdog...

Dear Steve
Look, I hate to be the one to kick a man while he's down, but there's a rumour you're going to be unemployed soon, and I want my money. It's not personal, but I really can't afford to be giving money away to indigent Conservative party leaders. I'm sure that you'll agree. It's just not fiscally responsible.

So anyways, tough luck on the vote but we all saw that one coming. Things are going to get ugly for you, now, I think. I can hear the rats moving in the walls.

I warned you, but you didn't listen. You just can't go charging around like that, taking a hefty lead in the polls and turning it into a dead heat. Your buddies expect you to win. That means that your polling numbers have to go up.

And I don't think your friends are going to be too pleased with the optics of driving out a moderate member just before the big vote. Oh, sure, she may have been equally unwilling to accommodate your point of view, but you know, you're the one with the image problem. They can't vote her out. And I hear Peter is kind of pissed off at you about, you know, yelling at his girlfriend until she decided to make him look a fool on national television.

I don't think your cronies will depose you in the near future, because after all there's that promised election for next year, and if Paulie goes back on that promise, well, he's still got a weak minority, right? And who wants to thrash their way through a nasty leadership race just before an election, and then roll into the thing with a stale platform that belongs to the dope they just tossed out? That would be dumb. But then again, they've done dumb things before, too.

Whoops. Scratch that "dope" bit. Substitute "nice feller."

Anyways, keep your back covered, and pls send that cash right away. Two Jetsgo dollars, remember?

And always remember, it could be worse. You could be Peter MacKay. And hey, if things start to get you down, just remember that there's always a place for you at the Fraser Home for Former Conservative Leaders, where you can sit down with Mike and Preston and burble out renditions of "My Way" until the nurse comes to put you to bed.

Yrs,

Skippy.

 

Everyone is running around with the vapours now that Belinda Stronach has crossed the aisle and joined the Liberal Party, and so I thought it was high time that I started paying more attention to Canadian politics given that I am a Canadian and all, even though it's the diabolical machinations of the far right in the US that get me most worked up. I found a rather nice progressive Canadian blog, and will henceforth be adding it to my selection of links (located in the column on the right). And it shall be known as POGGE, or "Peace Order and Good Government, Eh?" 

Now that the exams and essays are marked and reported, I'm pleased to see that I did quite well this term, despite the marked third-year "I've got an articling position, please just let me out of here!" ennui that routinely afflicts law students and in any case had virulently ravaged me. I'm essentially a straight B+ student this term, save the "S" (for "satisfactory") I got in the pass/fail Clinic course (though I'm eagerly awaiting my transcript which will indicate whether, as it did last year, I was satisfactory "with distinction" or not) and the A- I received for the Exonerating the Wrongfully Convicted course, which is pass/fail for one term (of case work) and graded on a major paper in the second.

I worked extremely hard on that final paper, putting the better part of two weeks just into the writing, but had been lamely dodging my professor's request for a rough draft that he could review and comment upon all semester. Finally, I just handed in the finished version on the last possible day. This made his comments e-mailed to me most appropriate:

I have graded your paper and gave you an A-; it would
have been an A with a good edit, but that's life with
deadlines.

A parting jab, and one that is well-deserved. Still, I really enjoyed writing that paper and am pleased that I did so well with it. An A- in law school is no small feat (and while a full A is by implication even rarer, I'm thrilled enough at the one to not mind missing out on the other). 

I honestly thought that when I handed in my last paper and formally finished law school forever, I would have all this lovely time in which to write and update my journal and generally stay on top of things. Unfortunately, this has proved (like so many things in my life) to be a woefully misguided assessment of things as they really are.

Last Monday, I formally began the Law Society of Upper Canada's Bar Admission Course, which is a four-month educational phase involving daily classes and 8 licencing exams in the areas of professional responsibility, real estate law, civil litigation, family law, criminal law, tax law, commercial law, and wills and estates. Each module lasts several weeks and is followed by a 3 1/2 hour exam. In fact, I just finished the professional responsibility exam, which was unusual in the sense that it came after only a week, was closed book, and is the exam you're more likely to fail than any other. "They," of the they who say "that's what they say," do say many things, but among those things is the apparent fact that the failure rate of the professional responsibility exam is between 30-40%. I found it long and tiring but not actually tough or filled with surprises, though in fairness the questions often referred to tricky subjects like trust accounts and professional indemnification insurance, and you were required to know how the Rules of Professional Conduct and By-laws applied to situation, and not just realize when something was obviously unethical. Additionally, I don't actually have my results back yet, so I can't even say how successful I was and will only have to assume for the time being that I am, in fact, both ethical and professionally responsible. While exams are judged on a pass-fail basis, you still get a score, and the tricky thing is that the pass/fail point varies from exam to exam depending on how well the group as a whole ultimately performed. So, for one exam the pass point could be 50% correct answers; on another exam, it could be 60% or 65%.

Meanwhile, we also begin practical assessments of professional skills like interviewing clients, negotiating with opposing parties, drafting, and making submissions in court. This week, we began interviewing exercises as a component of the new real estate model that also commenced this week after our exam, and I have to say it's frustrating to be forced to re-learn skills I've been practicing for the past two years in my work with clients at the legal clinic. I'm trying to content myself with the fact that you can never get too much practice at such essential skills, and even though I do things a certain way this doesn't mean it's the right way, and so on. But for now it seems a little, oh, redundant, especially when I go back to the clinic where I'm actually dealing with real clients, and not just a law student pretending to be one. Although I started off with such mock interviews when I began training at the clinic, it's still silly that we all end up play-acting on the basis of handouts listing some basic facts that give a lot of details, but not enough, so sometimes the "client" ends up having to guess at the answer of a particularly probing question. It's like the episode of the Simpsons when Homer tries to intercept a letter sent to Mr. Burns by pretending to be him, and when asked for his first name, he has to stupidly respond, "I... don't... know."

As I said earlier, I'm working part time at the legal clinic this summer as well, which is really the high point of each day. I'm loving it. I get my own little office, am kept frantically busy (I'm helping with memos, policies, caseworker training, and of course wrapping up my own client files and working on the website) and the students working there this summer are always dropping by to have questions answered and to chat. I like being helpful and enjoy having an open door for anyone and everyone, and I'm planning on putting out a dish of candy on my desk as bait to attract passers-by. It worked really well last year when our articling student (who helped supervise the criminal division) did this, and the only thing I might change is the selection (he liked putting out Werther's toffees and hard candies; I prefer the idea of offering chocolate or fruity candy...).

Of course, another great part about working is that eventually you get paid, and after three years of law school I'm sorely in debt and need every drop of income I can get right about now. The past two months in particular have been very lean; all the credit has been expended, I couldn't work during the school year, and as a consequence the pantry was getting awfully bare and I was getting more than a few friendly phone calls from computers that believed (correctly) that I owed their companies money. I even had to write my landlords a not asking them not to cash my rent cheque until I got paid, which (mercifully) finally happened today. It's comforting to think that, now that I'm finished law school, there's no reason I ever have to be in that position of hardship, hunger and poverty again. I'm working now, I'll be starting my articling in September, and after my Call to the Bar in July 2006, I'll be a full-fledged lawyer. Making, one hopes, some of them big lawyer bucks. You know, I actually don't want or need much -- just enough to pay the bills, have a roof over my head, and be able to order in some yummy Thai once in awhile -- but protracted periods of costly education have meant that these are truly luxuries to me. In fact, the signs of success for me will be humble. I'll need to own a car, but I have no desire for a big or fancy car. Personally, I know I'll really have made it when I have a fireplace, even if it's just a fireplace in an apartment.

In the meantime, you've doubtlessly noticed how busy I am. I come home even more exhausted at the end of the day than I did during the school year, and I'm on the go so much that there's so little time for myself. Things will calm down, though. I mean, they have to.

So: here's the good and the bad.

The GOOD

• I got a B+ in Administrative Law, murkiest and most cunning of all the areas of law!
  
• I got paid this week in real, honest-to-goodness money. Not magic beans or even blowjobs, but sweet, exchangeable-for-goods-and-services money, in cheque form.
  
• This means the rent is paid, the messy hair (source of my sworn foe, helmet head) has been cut, the bills are not so threatening, and I can afford to book a driver's test.
  
• One of my dearest friends is going to the University of Ottawa law school next year (you know who you are!).
  
• Several of my dear friends are getting married.
  
• Graduation is less than a month away.
  
• Finally, I am so full of cake right now.
  

The BAD

• Celibacy, celibacy, celibacy.
  
• I broke a spoke on my bicycle riding home yesterday, so I'm stuck taking slow, hot, crowded buses until my ride is properly pimped out with a less broken spoke (yo).
  
• They killed off Commander Tucker on the last episode of Enterprise and I cried like a baby whose parents are losers, though in fairness to myself they were partly tears of anger that such a great character would die for such a pointless plot point on a holodeck recreation with fucking Counsellor Troi Exposition telling us that "He had no idea he wouldn't make it back."
  
• Still forced to tolerate my roommate and boyfriend-of-roommate with barely concealed seething rage and clenched teeth.
  

 

Simply go to the University of Ottawa, which provides access to the gym between September and April if you've paid your tuition, but which uncoolly charges students $120 to use it in the summertime. And then be so broke that even the moths in your wallet can't spare any change. Voila! -- instant, guilt free rationalization.

Luckily, the Bar Admissions Course is located a half-hour bike ride through downtown away, meaning that I've been getting a good hour or more of cardio every day and will be doing so all summer. Buns of steel, baby. Buns. Of. Steel. 

Now that I've handed in my final paper, I have formally finished law school for once and for all. This is quite exciting (especially for my poor, tired old bank account and anemic credit), though instead of being entitled to any rest, I have instead quickly shifted gears and begun the Bar Admissions Course for the Law Society of Upper Canada as a Student-at-Law (think of it as a junior woodchuck lawyer cadet -- I have a card that says so and everything). This means that I'll be spending the next four months taking two or three-week crash courses in fascinating subjects like real estate, wills, professional responsibility, tax, and so on, and writing an exam for each (my first one is on Monday). It's the academic component of being admitted to the Law Society, and each exam is part of the licencing process, so passing has that satisfying "I'm on my way to growing up and becoming a lawyer!" feeling.

Meanwhile, I'm also working part time at the legal clinic, dividing my time between overhauling our website and working on policies, cases and whatever else comes my way. I do have my own office (with key!), which is kind of a nifty experience, but the main draw for me is just that I get to stay on at my beloved clinic for a few more months. I would be suffering severe separation anxiety and probably a massive identity crisis without it. Best of all, of course, is the fact that I get paid to work here again, which will go a long way towards buying me some of that precious, precious food. And equally precious shelter and cable.

On a sadder note, a priceless piece of memorabilia has been taken from me forever. We have lockers here in the basement at the clinic (a real dungeon-y affair, with an ancient stone foundation that makes it look like a haunted castle), and I moved into one like some hermit crab last week because it was a handy place to keep my sneakers and gym clothes. Unbeknownst to me, the maintenance staff decided that, because the term was ending, the lockers needed to be cleared out, so they left notices on the lockers indicating that they were to be cleared out or the locks would be cut. I didn't notice these until last night, at which point I promptly sent an e-mail to our office administrator seeking a stay of execution. He received it too late, however. At 8:00 am today, they came for the locks, cut mine off and unceremoniously dumped the contents into a box.

Oh, I got my stuff back. What I didn't get back was the only thing that mattered -- the lock itself. I had that lock since high school (and it only had one day left to retirement!). It was the lock from my high school locker, of priceless sentimental value, and now it's gone forever after so many years.

Ah, possessions are fleeting.