A heartbreaking work of super briefing genius

warning: The following post contains frequent mention of law school and law school related activities. If you are offended by the talk of law school, whether of the T14 or TTT variety, you might want to wander elsewhere and offend not thy precious sensibilities.

The last seven days have been the most difficult, most humbling string of incoherent hours of my life. I have never been more tired or more sore or more weepy or more terrified or more joyous. I will soon write a post dedicated specifically to what happened during Legal Research and Writing, but right now I'm just concentrating on making it hour to hour. I will say that I had really low expectations for law school, meaning I thought it was going to be a horrific, gory experience, and I know that it is for many law students, but it is because of those low expectations that I can actually sit here seven days later and say that orientation was a somewhat pleasant, perfectly manageable process. The lesson to be learned from this is, of course, to aim low in life and be thrilled when the worst doesn't happen. I am a new law student and I'm already doling out superficially useful advice that turns out not to be applicable to anything.

What hasn't been perfectly manageable, however, is the inhumane aftermath of orientation that no one really talks about. Just when I thought things couldn't get any worse -- worse than the case briefing assignment, the 5 pound books, the bleeding, the abdominal contractions and cramps, the body-contorting fatigue -- I realized this morning that I haven't been reading my other, OTHER set of textbooks and am now in the library at 9pm on a Saturday.

Here is where talk of law school really kicks in.

Right now I'm looking at The Law of Civil Procedure, Contract Law and Theory, and Cases and Materials on Torts along with their corresponding E&Es. The thing about E&Es is that they're supposed to make the material easy to process, and for normal people who retain information normally, E&E's may actually make material simple and easy to understand. I have never processed information normally, and all the drinking I did during undergrad has basically made it so that my body cannot EVER retain information again, and the E&Es just make it so the law isn't very impossible, just marginally impossible. I spent about 8 hours today on 30 pages of material, and all the studying techniques I learned during undergrad became laughably inept as I screamed and screamed for mercy.

If you don't get the reference, shame on you.
http://www.dooce.com/archives/daily/02_09_2004.html