The 1st Amendment Rocks

Or better put, I rocked the first amendment! I got an A in my Mass Media Law class. Our school doesn't give +/- so that's the best grade. I'm stoked. Now all I want for Christmas is A's in my two grad classes so I can show a perfect 4.0 on my graduate school transcripts. Maybe that will help balance out my undergraduate GPA on my law apps.

Now It's Advent!

My birthday has passed and its beginning to feel like Christmas. It is -31F outside and my steady stream of packages and cards have begun to arrive. Now that finals are over I have a chance at a life again. We went to Church on Sunday and it was beautiful to see how the holiday season decorations were up. Episcopalians have a tradition of the nativity wreath. Each Sunday of December we light one candle out of 4 which form a circular wreath and the center one is lit on Christmas. Our own nativity wreath has gone unlit this Christmas season with all of the hub-bub of family matters and stress of finals. After the service on Sunday I really felt the joy rather than the hassel of the season.

On Sunday night we had friends over to make Christmas cookies and homemade carmel corn. My brother-in-law brought over his XBox and we played Rock Band. I am generally a musical person with quite a few years of piano under my belt, but I admit defeat when it comes to drums. I was appointed lead singer and did much better on vocals. Hubby was actually quite good on drums. Much fun was had by all. it was nice to think, hmm... we could do this again tomorrow if we wanted to, we don't have any classes! In fact, the only thing I have to do right now is get up and go to work. It is a nice feeling. I still would like to find Christmas presents for my two brothers, but that might have to wait. Right now, I'm reveling in the freedom of having no obligations. The only thing I have to plan for is our Christmas party. Since Christmas day is traditionally a family thing for us we are having a Christmas party to celebrate the friends in our life. Mostly they are hubby's guy friends, I don't really have any girlfriends, oh well, maybe next year. With so many guys attending the main event will be the food of course, so I'll have to go grocery shopping soon. After finals the only food in the house was spaghetti. It will be nice to cook for pleasure again rather than scraping something together for dinner with no enthusiasm.

Finals are Upon Me, Oh No!

I can't believe my last post was November 21st. I have pretty much been in a funk ever since I heard about my cousin's death. We went to the funeral in D.C. I may blog about that at some point. (The Secretary of Defense was there!) Other than that I've been working on passing my classes. After this week I will be out from a crushing amount of work and better able to focus on fun things, interesting things, and future things. Tonight is my last traditional final. I still have a correspondence final due on Saturday. Tonight's final on Contract Law for Engineers is the culmination of a great course. Unfortunately I've learned so much I don't have a clue what the test will be on. I'm just hoping that knowing the cases, reading the book, reading the slides and remembering the IRAC model will get me through. My term paper was due last week and thankfully that is out of the way. I did an analysis of the new Patent Reform Act of 2007 and its impacts on science and engineering.

Tomorrow is my birthday. I always prefer to turn odd years, they make me feel younger. Unfortunately the forecast for my zip code is: (0° -27°) so my chances of doing anything other than snuggling up at home are minimal. I hate going out to eat and dreading the ride home in the cold car. I'll probably postpone my birthday until this weekend and try and get my correspondence final in Mass Media Law out of the way, that is unless hubby has sweet birthday plans that he has been very good at concealing.

Having all of my classes out of the way will be a big relief. Then I can try and be happy about my birthday and begin to get in a holiday spirit. For me, Christmas officially begins after my birthday. I usually refuse to do more than put up my tree in advance of December the 13th. This year I broke my rule and shopped ahead of my birthday. This was done partially to prevent mental breakdown by doing all of my shopping for 4 siblings, one sibling in law, and 4 parents all in 12 days right before Christmas. I shopped online and will hopefully see a steady stream of packages arriving at my doorstep over the next few days. I highly recommend online shopping to law students. It can save money if you use coupon codes which give a percentage off and free shipping, plus you can do it during your few free moments that come here and there rather than having to plan shopping around your studying. I use www.mrrebate.com, which gives me a % cash back and coupon codes, usually get a 25-30% off code and free shipping and then pay with my credit card which gives me 2% back. I almost never pay more than 70% of an items cost using this system. It's worked out well so far. All I have to do is wrap things when they arrive. This leaves me plenty of time to focus on more important things like the government's role in regulating advertising. Hmm...that's even sort of related to Christmas. I wish they'd regulate that Christmas ads can't run before Thanksgiving, but I guess I've learned enough in my class to realize why that isn't possible.

Thanks for Cooking

This year's Thanksgiving will be very low-key for us, more so than usual. I usually take great pride in preparing more dishes than my family could ever hope to eat and spending all day in the kitchen. This is followed by a Thanksgiving coma, good night's rest and the day after tradition of watching White Christmas and setting up the Christmas tree. These family traditions have been going for so long I'll hardly know what to do with myself tomorrow.

We are going over to hubby's parents' house and all I'm tasked with is showing up. Of course I'll still be making fresh bread and a side dish and making hubby wear something other than a t-shirt and jeans. His family's holidays are very simple almost to the point of just being dinner together. There will be a turkey, mashed potatoes and a veggie. To most people that sounds like Thanksgiving, but to me it sounds like somebody stole half of dinner. I have found memories of working in the kitchen with my Mom and two sisters cooking all day, trying new recipes, watching my Dad carve the turkey and try and not take his hand off with the electric knife, and listening to my Mom cheer over the football game.

This Thanksgiving I'm kind of glad I'm not spending the day with my side of the family. It will most likely be a somber occasion. I will see my parent's at the funeral in DC so we decided to stay in town and not travel to their house this year. Hubby's Mom will be glad she gets to keep him. They've had dibs on us for Christmas for the last 6 years so I guess it might be time to switch it up. One of these years it might be nice to stay home at our house, invite all of our stray friends for the holidays and create some of our own traditions, but without kids in the picture the assumption seems to be that we are the strays who need to be subdivided amongst our relatives. That's ok, for now I'll let somebody else do most of the cooking. Maybe I can even encourage them to make a bigger deal out of the holidays. Even I, who have had the same post-Thanksgiving tradition for over 20 years will break my pattern and not set up my tree first thing in the morning. I will actually dare to brave the black Friday crowds. Our TV which we bought at Sears is going on sale $600.00 off that day if I get a price adjustment before noon. I may actually drop by Old Navy too. Cashmere sweaters for less than $30.00 is hard to beat.

Correspondence Classes Suck

I am finally getting back to my mass media law class. This was a summer sessions correspondence class that I took for the fun of it. Life got in the way and as the story goes with correspondence classes in general it got put off. Now, my incomplete in the class will turn into a big fat ugly F if I don't finish the course by the second week in December. Like all of my correspondence classes, which I make lovely schedules for, I'll end up finishing it at the last minute of the extension that I shouldn't have needed in the first place. Of course, there is a catch. My professor only accepts 2 lessons a week for grading. This makes sense as I wouldn't want to have to grade an entire semester's worth of work for the entire class all at once when grades are due. This makes me have to start now and not get off schedule. I finished the first 6 lessons over the summer which leaves me with the last 6 still to go. Along with a term project. I have covered the history of the 1st amendment, prior restraint, libel, invasion of privacy (appropriation and intrusion) and invasion of privacy (publication of private information and false light) so far. This leaves me with gathering information, FOIA, protection of sources, regulation of obscene and other erotic material, copyright, regulation of advertising and telecommunications regulation. It's a lot to digest at once, but I know it's my own fault for procrastinating.

My regular semester class is going great. I'm taking contract law for engineers. I got a perfect 100% on my midterm which was a first for me. With languages I was constantly spelling things slightly off and with engineering 100% was unheard of, so getting that grade was awesome. My professor sent me a personalized e-mail telling me my grade and informing me that it was top in the class and asking if I'd ever thought of law school. I got a huge grin on my face that day which was very needed giving the way the rest of life has been going lately.

Actually, that isn't entirely true, just my family life is miserable, and not even my own family unit, its my extended family. I switched jobs as well and my new job is awesome. I keep saying how much I love it, and this is making hubby question why I would want to leave to go to school. Basically I switched from contract administration of engineering projects to design work. I'm in a group/team environment which is really great to bounce ideas around in. For the first time in my professional life I have other electrical engineers that I'm working with and can ask questions of. I'm usually surrounded by other disciplines, and trust me, it makes a big difference. I normally feel overwhelmed and silly, like my degree didn't prepare me to be a real EE. Now I realize that everybody feels that way when they get out of school and even people who have been working for 15 years have some of the same questions I did. I thought it was just a problem with me. I'm still going to work on finishing up my applications this week. I like to keep my options open and law school really excites me.

In more sober news, they have scheduled the interment at Arlington. I have booked tickets to fly into DC on the 1st of December. If I change my mind I can always cancel them. That is one of the perks of flying 150k miles a year, no change fees or cancellation fees.

I did do one happy non-school thing today. I ordered my Christmas cards. I always order from Naitonal Geographic. That way I get gorgeous photography and I support something that I believe in at the same time, science and exploration. I have cute penguin cards on their way.

The Perfect Snowflake

As you can probably tell from my last post, life has been sucking a lot lately. I have been so demotivated. Then on Tuesday it snowed. Being an Alaskan, this is nothing new to me, it snows all the time. But the snowflakes were different than I've ever seen before. The snow was huge, so large that you could count all 6 sides of each flake and watch them come lightly to rest on your sweetheart's hair before melting. So large and fluffy, not slushy at all. They were perfect, beautiful snowflakes, and after 17 years in Alaska, the prettiest I've ever seen. They were beautiful enough to break me out of my self-absorbed thoughts and look around me again. Here is what I saw:

I didn't have my camera with me, but I found these on another blog. They capture what I saw beautifully.

This was my soldier

I won't post his name here because I don't want my family finding my blog under these circumstances.

This was my cousin. He was a West Point graduate serving with special forces in Iraq when he was killed on the 6th by an EFP. Last night, about 10 minutes before class my Mom called to tell me that my cousin had been killed on active duty. He was one of my closest cousins growing up and I have tons of West Virginia memories of us doing stupid things like floating along in inner tubes when the "crick" was flooded. I'm feeling like shit right now, not least because hubby is also in the Army and doesn't seem to see why this makes me so upset. I live in a military town in a military state in a BUSH country so it's not like I'm getting a lot of helpful comments. Instead, it's all, "Well, you know he was a hero." I know that he was a strong Christian and that he believed in what he was doing and loved it, and that should make me feel better, but I don't want to be told how I should feel, I just need to grieve a little and deal with personal family stuff.

He has requested burial in Arlington (DC) and depending on the family arrangements I might attend. I have never seen news footage of 9/11. On the day it happened I was at work and refused to turn on the TV when I got home. I didn't want to put myself through that emotionally. When reports come on Iraq that are at all personal I switch the channel. Not only did I have a cousin who was a Captain, I have a brother at West Point right now and a husband who joined ROTC in 2000 for the scholarship money, never imagining what the consequences of that would be. It's really hard to love the soldier and hate the war and not have everybody think you're a bad person in this country. Shouldn't everybody hate that we're at war, regardless of the reason for the war?

Me bursting into apparently random fits of tears isn't the best thing at my new job. I'm going to try not to think about this for awhile.

Well Done - Be Thou at Peace

Will post soon

I really need to post the rest of my Santiago trip posts. Life has just been getting in the way lately. I leave again tomorrow for another trip to St. Louis Missouri. I also started my new job today. I'm trying to get some design experience rather than just pure contract administration experience. Not to mention the fact that I'm getting together my personal statements, begging for letters of recommendation before my professors leave on sabbatical. Oh yeah, and I'm married and trying to have a life. It's just a lot to deal with while jet-lagged and fighting a cold. I'll post soon, I promise. I'll have nothing better to do while on the plane than make blog posts.

Santiago Trip Day 2

I spent last night at the Radisson Santiago. Oh my God, that place was nice. And don't get me wrong, I know that in the States Radisson's are not the nicest, but internationally they are awesome. This Radisson was recently remodelled in January 2007. It's classified as a 3 star hotel, but it was much closer to 4 stars. My room was gorgeous with a really sleek modern look. The concierge was immensely helpful. The staff were all fluent in at least 3 languages. Upon checking in I received a welcome drink which was excellent. When I got to my room I had a complimentary snack and bottle of water. The bathroom was a large marble tiled affair. The best was when I opened my windows and was presented with a great view of the Andes Mountains. The hotel is located within the World Trade Center and is in easy walking distance to restaurants and is only a block away from a metro stop (Tabalaba). When I woke up and went downstairs for breakfast I was stunned at the quality and quantity of the breakfast selections. There were 10 different meat courses, eggs, hashbrowns, cereal, at least 5 different juices, fruit, and much much more. It was complimentary of course and teh service was excellent. As I was walking out the door the staff asked me if I wanted any help planning out things to do and see. They were very helpful and gave me a map with all of the highlights on it. I didn't just do the things in the guidebook, but instead went to a lot of architecturally unique things just to see them. Places without giftshops, but beautiful art instead.

I went downtown to spend the day sightseeing. Unfortunately, I discovered that on Monday most of the touristy things to do downtown are closed. I think this is because most of the museums and things are open Saturday and Sunday, so Monday is the day that they are closed. In all honesty, I wouldn’t really recommend trying to sightsee in Santiago on Monday through Wednesday. Most of the markets, museums and other sights are open Thursday through Sunday. You could probably see most of the “can’t miss” sights in Santiago in one day. Museums open at 10, so I’d start by seeing some of the cathedrals in the morning, see a few museums in the afternoon and after lunch go up the furnicular to see out over the whole of Santiago. I would then spend the afternoon shopping in the local markets and finish the night off with dinner and dancing.

In the end I spent the afternoon looking at the national cathedral and other Churches and walking around downtown. I took the metro downtown and it was surprisingly easy to navigate despite my lack of proficiency in Spanish. The ride downtown took about 30 minutes by metro and cost 480p ($1.00). The maps made it very easy to figure out where you were going and transferring lines was quick and easy.

In general the city is very safe. It is clean, easy to navigate and non-Spanish speakers can usually find someone to assist them in necessary. I will say that you should hang onto your belongings. When I was shopping in the afternoon I saw a man tackled by the police for attempting to steal from a man. He was arrested by 6 officers, cuffed and searched on the spot.

I did notice that being the only natural blonde woman in the country makes people look twice. As I was walking by I had more than one guy give me the macho South American leer. A couple of guys stopped me and wanted to tell me how beautiful I was. It was a little intimidating, but not in a scary way. I did enjoy the fact that unlike the US where I am curvy, here I am very beautiful. I'm learning to embrace my curves. Next time I think of going on a diet after watching Kiera Knightly movie I'll book a trip to Latin America instead.

When I got back to the hotel I thought about just going to bed. Dinner here starts at 9 to 9:30 at night, which is a little late when you're jet lagged. I'm quite happy to say that I took the concierge's advice and went out to dinner. I went to a small restaurant called Coco Loco off of Vitacura. The food was excellent, cheap and authentic Chilean seafood. I spent less than $10.00 for three courses and it was the best seafood I've had in a long time. Even though it was just me I had no trouble ordering. I was suprised that dinner for 1 took almost 2 hours, but it was like that in Paris as well. The neighborhood near the Radisson is quite safe and well-lit at night so I didn't mind walking back to my hotel at 11:30.

I'll have to post photos later.

Santiago Trip Day 1

First off, let me say that LAX is the worst international airport in the world, well that I’ve been to anyway. The entire concourse, and yes I can say entire, has just one restaurant and a few duty free stores. The hot dog stand produced overpriced and subpar hot dogs which those of us who had no other options were grateful for. There was no real bar or lounge to rest in for a few hours. I must say that if I were an international visitor, I would be unimpressed. If I’d known better I would have eaten in the domestic terminal before going through security at the international terminal. Hmm…maybe that attitude is why everyone around me appeared to drop 20 lbs the second I entered the international terminal. Yup, Americans are fat. Oh well, I just wish they had a Starbucks or something in the terminal. We don’t even restrict American’s to that level of selection in far flung Alaska, why should we be losing out on the money our international visitors would drop on their layovers by not even offering food. My other big beef with LAX is that the displays made it nearly impossible to find what gate your flight was at. If I had checked in and had my gate printed on my boarding pass that would be fine. But I checked in 12 hours prior in Fairbanks, Alaska long before my gate had ever been decided on.

I did find that exchanging money at LAX carries no fee whereas doing so in the Chile airport has a $1.50 fee. Small savings and a better exchange rate to boot. After 25 hours of travel I finally made it to Chile. I had layovers in Seattle, LA and Lima, Peru. The Peru stop was long enough for me to get off of the plane, buy a postcard and get back on the plane. I was amazed at the folks who brought back 2-3 bags worth of goods from the duty-free. That reminds me, since when has shopping on a plane become the “in” activity? The people on my Lan Chile flight were shopping duty free like there was no tomorrow. The bargains weren’t good and the duty can’t be that high. We each had catalogs in the back of our seats and they kept coming up and down the aisles delivering orders to folks. The guy in the seat next to me spent over $400 in our 12 hours together. I’ll admit, I succumbed and bought some hand cream, but that’s because mine was confiscated in LAX. I found myself more than entertained watching 4 movies, playing with the Berlitz language software (I now know how to count in Russian, English, German, French and Spanish), and playing digital Tetris, Poker and Blackjack. Those international planes are sweet, especially when you get an exit row. I had as much space as the people in first class and paid half the price. I couldn’t fully recline, but that wasn’t a big deal because I don’t sleep on planes anyway. Now it's time for me to go sleep!

Spanish for Travelers

I leave tonight for Santiago, Chile and I'm not ready, not by a long shot. My laundry is in the washer for things that I need to pack. I have to gather things from all over the house and put back half of things I think I'm going to pack so that I actually can carry my bag and have room for souvenirs. I would also feel guilt carrying things around that I don't really need as they only release more CO2 into the atmosphere. This will be my first eco-friendly trip. I bought carbon credits when I booked through Expedia. They sent me a nifty green luggage tag to put on my bags and show off my status to my fellow travelers. It's made out of plastic. Isn't that a petroleum product and therefore non-Earth-friendly. Perhaps it's recycled plastic. I have a lot of trip preparation to do during my flight. For one I need to look through my guidebook and see what I want to do on my two off days. For the other I need to develop a working knowledge of Spanish so that I can navigate. Apparently Chileans aren't commonly fluent in English. So far my phrase list is three words long. I have on my list: ATM, police, and coffee. Hmm... priorities need adjustment perhaps. Of course I also told myself that on my flight I would study for my midterms that are coming up the week I get back and do all of my law school applications, essays, etc. I don't think even I can do all that in 30 hours. Oh yeah, I don't sleep on planes, that will help.

"infidelity while on active duty in the army"

I was quite disappointed when I found out that my blog was the top result for a Google search of "infidelity while on active duty in the army." This two sided coin is a really sensitive issue, spouses cheating on soldiers and soldiers having too much fun in the desert, but with the national divorce rate as high as it is I'm sure it's not unique to the military. Thankfully I have not lived through a deployment yet, nor have I lived on a military base where this type of behavior is probably more common. To others who might find my blog this way I would offer that you should be concerned about preserving your marriage before your soldier even gets orders to deploy. Being a military spouse is hard, but making it work is really worth it. It will take work, don't kid yourself. If you are a 19 year old bride who married her high school sweetheart turned marine you're kidding yourself if you think that high school romance and gorgeous uniforms last. You have to put in the work, know when to listen and know when to shut up. This isn't just about you, you gave up "I" when you said "I do." Instead I want you to think about why you wanted to get married in the first place. Is what you have worth preserving? If so you won't be putting out personals ads looking for fun. Don't think of it as being left behind, neglected, lonely. Don't just be a dependent, stand on your own two feet and be yourself. Your marriage should be able to last and you should stand up and be your own interesting, unique and joyful person. Don't let yourself become bitter or paranoid. If you think that your partner trusts and loves you then you shouldn't have to worry about them either.

Oh and in case you're wondering why I would come up under a search like that in the first place, I did a review of a new TV show Army Wives awhile back.

I Heart Law Mommies

Law Mommies are brave in so many ways. If you haven't heard about Kim or Lag Liv you need to take the time and visit their blogs. They are both going through their own nightmares and law school at the same time.

Letters of Recommendation for Law School

I requested two of my letters of recommendation for law school last night. One is my old department chair and one is a professor. They both know me really well from my work with our professional society so they have seen both my in class performance and my leadership/volunteer work. I was thrilled that they were both so enthusiastic to write letters for me. I'll be sending them my resume and personal statement from last year soon to give them some material to work off of. I really want to get good letters though and these being engineering professors I'm afraid they'll write a MS program reference. "This is a good student, I heartily recommend them to your program and you should believe me become I'm a really impressive academic that you should respect as your peer." This isn't what I think law schools are looking for. An official letter on official stationary from an academic is probably less meaningful that thoughtful commentary on my strengths. I'm trying to figure out how to phrase my letter request to solicit the "right" kind of letter.

The other one that really freaks me out is my third letter. This professor/friend said, "Just write the letter and give it to me to sign." I don't really feel comfortable doing that, but it really seems like an opportunity. Any advice?

XBOX Price Drop

Not to be outdone by Apple, Microsoft has announced that it is dropping the price of its most popular gadget, the XBox 360, by $50. Hubby hasn't really played computer or video games since he graduated from college. Mostly its because he's out of touch with the latest and greatest since leaving the dorm life. Lately he has taken to replaying old classics from the 1999-2002 era, aka the time before we were really together and he had copious amounts of spare time on his hands. I think it's about time he stopped feeling old, I mean he's only turning 27 this year! So I'm undecided between getting him an XBox or a bunch of computer games. I've never really understood the idea of console games. You pay $400.00 for a system and then you still have to buy each game at $60.00 each! This thing better also make toast and replace at least two other gadgets in our house. Undecided and in need of feedback from those who actually understand. His birthday is in two weeks.

Alaska's Primary is in August Next Year

It's very hard to get my fellow Alaskans interested in politics. They really don't care about national elections that much. We're a red state, always have been and probably always will be. The most chance a democrat has of being elected is if they run for state office. Although that chance is slim to none considering our governor has the highest approval rating of any elected Republican in office in the entire country. She is awesome, I'll admit it, and an August 2007 poll had her approval rating at 84%, with 5% disapproving. I don't suppose it helps that we have the last primary election in the union. August 26th! Really hard to feel like your vote is going to count for something when all of the big decisions and drop outs will be happening months earlier after other states have voted. I really would support a national primary election. You could vote for who you think should be the candidate rather than just the most electable one.

3 Times the Challenge

Saw this on Ana's blog and felt that I should pass this along. Kim is a law school blogger/Mom/and cancer patient, wow a triple whammy. She is being nominated for a blogger scholarship of $10k which I'm sure is richly deserved. Currently she is 3% behind the leader in votes, but I know that can change so take the two seconds to go and vote for her. You don't need an account or anything.

Here's a link to the voting page:
http://www.collegescholarships.org/blog/2007/10/08/vote-for-the-winner-of-the-2007-blogging-scholarship/
Here's a link to an article in the most recent issue of Student Lawyer, which mentions Kim:
http://www.abanet.org/lsd/studentlawyer/oct07/spotlight.shtml
Here's a link to Kim's blog:
http://blawgcoop.com/lawmom

Travel Plans - Santiago, Chile

Currently I travel a lot, as in over 89,000 miles in the last 12 months or over 145,000 miles in the last 15 months. This time last year I went to Paris, Butte, Phoenix, Richland and LA (twice) all in the months of September and October. This year I'll rack up San Diego, Portland, Berkeley, Santiago Chile and St. Louis in the same two month period and that's after turning down 3 trips. This will of course no longer be sustainable once I'm in school so I'm taking advantage of it while I can. I hope to travel to India, Las Vegas, Chicago, LA and England before relinquishing my volunteer work and settling down into law school. By that time I should have enough frequent flyer miles to go just about anywhere and bring hubby along. Poor hubby, he's only gone with me on one trip to Boston for a week. Probably better off because as glamorous as all of this travel sounds, I'm really there to work and I rarely see more than the airport and the hotel meeting room. I'll fly out after work on Friday get in Saturday morning for a Saturday meeting and fly right back home afterwards. For a person who doesn't sleep on planes that is rough.

I try to have one trip that is about a week long twice a year and save my vacation time for those. I basically pick the most interesting meeting I've got coming up and then extend my travel plans at that destination, getting two days of hotel and the airfare for free. Last fall it was Paris, this spring it was Boston, and this fall it will be Santiago, Chile. I'm pretty excited about this. Excited and intimidated. When I went to Paris I had 8 hours of Pimsluer CD lessons under my belt. Thankfully I've got a pretty solid grounding in languages and this translated to being able to roughly navigate through Paris and get non-English cab drivers to take me where I want to go. It also helps that French and Russian have a lot of cognates so my vocabulary was artificially higher than it would have otherwise been. Spanish though, um yeah, I don't know Spanish at all. I fully intend on using at least part of my 34 hours of travel time that will be spent getting there learning a little Spanish, but I suspect it won't be enough. Thankfully two of my friends who are Spanish will be coming and hopefully their European Spanish will be enough to get me by during the times we're together.

This trip is creeping up very fast. I just booked my tickets today and the trip is in like 2.5 weeks. I don't know what there is to do there or anything. I'll have two days before the meeting to play tourist so I guess I'll be packing my guidebook and backpack along with my suit and laptop. If anybody has any suggestions for Latin-American travel, I'd be happy to hear them. I haven't even had time to do a good Google search for travel blogs to Chile yet.

LSAT....Finished...Again

I started off awfully. I didn't get to the last game. I hate LSATs that start off with games. I was off my pace and read the clock wrong, thinking I had 10 minutes left when the 5 minute warning caught me by surprise. It was all up from there though. I finished every other section before the 5 minute warning and was able to go back and look at my unsure answers. The experimental section was reading, hardly surprising since they are getting started developing a pool of questions which have comparative reading in them. The writing sample was more one-sided than last time. That's about all I can disclose, unlike my fellow test takers. I for one took the warning seriously that we aren't to discuss the test until it has been disclosed by LSAC. Others began gabbing in the restrooms as soon as we hit the break. It was also interesting to me that out of the 13 people signed up to take the test at my location only 6 bothered to show up. That's a lot of money to take a test if you're not going to show up. If I get all the questions I answered right and missed only the ones in the games section that I didn't get to and assuming that I get none of them right purely by bubbling in a D to fill the space that leaves me with a maximum score of 172 using the conversion table from the December 2006 administration. Of course people keep getting better at the test so that conversion may not be reliable. I really doubt that I got all of the questions that I got to correct. I average -4 on those sections. That would put me at a total of -9/-4/-4/-4=-21 or 163, a mere 3 point gain. Anything can happen of course, for all I know the final 9 questions of logic games could all have had a correct answer of D and I could have rocked the test, doubt it. Oh well, sigh, no 180 for me, wasn't expecting it anyways.

LSAT isn't everything though. I need to do my personal statements, get my recommendations and request my transcripts. This is my to do list for the next 2 weeks. So until October 20th at 10 am EST I get to live in blissful ignorance. Ack, no, did I get off on my bubble sheet by one, did I skip over an important point on the writing section, no, no, must not think about the stupid test. I have a 160, I can't do worse than that.

Top 15 or Don't Bother?

The news for law schools lately has been bleak. Seems to be the message is, Top 15 school or don't bother.