Magic Cookie

17 months, almost

2008-07-22T20:53:00.005-04:00

Dear K,

I hardly know where to begin. You've changed and learned so much since the last time I wrote.

You're talking a lot these days. Your favorite word is "No," which it took me a few days to realize you don't always mean. I've been trying to teach you "yes," and I think it's starting to catch on. I used to be able to list your entire vocabulary in a few lines, but I can't do it anymore.

You're starting to recognize your numbers and letters. You like to count, "Two, thee," but never one. You'll point to "O, P," but for every other letter you say "E."

You have all your animal sounds down cold now (including a couple that I made up -- one day a school friend will inform you that a giraffe does not say GEE, nor does a panda say pan-DA!!), and when we sing "Old McDonald" you supply the sound effects. You have a duck rattle that Velcros around your wrist, and lately you never want to take it off. You run around wearing it and every once in a while you look at it and say, "Quack, quack," and laugh.

This summer you've spent a lot of time riding around the neighborhood in your blue car, pointing excitedly at dogs and blowing kisses to passers-by. When I walk around without you, people ask me, "Where's the baby?"

I took you to a concert over the weekend. This was your third time seeing live music this summer and it makes me so happy that you love it. You bounced in my lap, and got up and danced, and clapped after every song. I'll be done with my summer job soon and I see lots of singalongs in our future.

Other things you've been doing lately: Pinching my nose while saying, "Nose!" Knocking down towers of blocks: "boom!" And stacking up five and occasionally even six blocks on your own. Eating corn off the cob and watermelon off the rind. ("Eat the pink part," I remind you, and you still try to shove the green part in your mouth and then look at me, shaking your head.) Becoming more attached to your pacifier, suddenly, after over a year of only having it for naps and bedtime. I knew I shouldn't have let you have it that day, but you were so miserable about your teeth that I thought you needed something to comfort you. Speaking of teeth, you still love brushing yours and would carry your toothbrush around forever if we'd only let you. Drinking out of a sippy cup with large holes and a fast flow, except I only put a little water in it at a time because when you're done drinking, you like to turn it upside-down and see the water come out. Drinking tea: "Tea! Tea!" I made you some chamomile tea when you were sick and you loved it. You had a little of Daddy's iced tea over the weekend too. Going up stairs, but not down so much -- I know you can, you just don't want to. Climbing a little -- up on the fireplace, or on the footstool in the kitchen. We need to do another round of babyproofing.

Today we were looking through a magazine and when you saw a picture of Thomas the Tank Engine, you got so excited. First you said, "Train, train," and then you saw his smiling face and got a huge grin on yours, and then you carried around the picture saying, "Te, te," which I translate as "Thomas, Thomas." (I told you his name.) How did this happen? As far as I know you've never seen Thomas before. Either they're indoctrinating you at daycare, or the whole nature versus nurture thing isn't much of a debate after all. I guess it had to start some time.

Somebody at work was telling me that even though her nieces and nephews are older now, she thinks their personalities haven't changed much since they were your age. I hope that's true for you too.

Love,
Mommy

HLS waitlists and course capacities

2008-07-16T20:19:00.004-04:00

The Registrar sent out a table listing the number of enrolled and waitlisted students for each fall class today. In case anybody stumbles across this blog who's thinking about attending Harvard Law, I thought you might find this interesting. It gives you an idea of not only the courses offered, but also which courses and professors are popular and which classes are easy or hard to get into.

Got my kid back

2008-07-16T20:04:00.001-04:00

Let's recap:
Thursday: JW picked up K two hours early; Mrs. Daycare called to say he had a fever.
Friday: I stayed home with feverish K.
Saturday, Sunday, Monday: Miserable baby. Lots of yelling, little sleeping.
Tuesday: K coughed all night and woke up covered in snot. JW stayed home in the morning, I came home at lunchtime to relieve him.
Wednesday: Woke up screaming, but within an hour or so, was happy and ate a good breakfast. By evening, seemed totally back to normal. I can hear him snoring away over the baby monitor.

THREE molars have poked their way through my baby's mouth in the past week. Let's hope the worst is over. After a rough week, tonight was a relief: when the kid is happy, everybody's happy.

Confirmation

2008-07-15T22:20:00.002-04:00

that I am a big nerd. (Via I Am Not My Hair.)

Maybe 9 to 5 isn't the problem

2008-07-14T22:05:00.003-04:00

One evening with both of us at home and nothing urgent (for me) to do, and I already feel much better.

We've traveled three out of the last four weekends, visiting family. One of us has been out of the house nearly every night for the past few weeks. Of course it's tough to keep up when we're both working AND hardly ever home as a family. This pace would have been tiring pre-kid, and it just doesn't work now, especially with a miserable baby with sharp teeth poking through his gums.

So, with one day's perspective, maybe I can cut myself some slack.

We ate dinner out of the freezer today. Lately we've been cooking a lot, which is healthy and all, but takes time and results in a sink full of dishes. Frozen stuff has always been a last resort, but it was totally worth eating out of a box to relax and have a leisurely dinner and a glass of wine and still be completely done and cleaned up by eight.

This week, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday nights we're busy, but at least this weekend we'll be home and can catch our breath.

Summer catchup

2008-07-13T22:43:00.009-04:00

I would love to blog more, but by the time I get the kid off to bed and finish everything I have to do, my brain capacity is so diminished that I can only do passive activities like surfing the web and reading books. I am incapable of accomplishing or creating anything in the hour or so before I have to go to bed so that I can get up with my early-rising baby and make it through the next day.

We've been out of town the last two weekends. Two weekends ago we were at the in-laws' for the 4th. Dr. Mr. and Dr. Mrs. CT visited and a lovely time was had by all, even though K took a long nap and missed the parade where they throw candy from fire trucks. This weekend we were back for JW's grandmother's surprise 90th birthday party. His sister and brother-in-law came up north for the occasion.

K took his first boat ride and went swimming in the lake. This weekend he learned the word "no" and we think he is growing some molars. Last night he woke up every couple of hours screaming and today he refused to sleep and was miserable by the end of the day.

The combination of work and baby is exhausting even with JW doing both dropoff and pickup every day and me working more or less 9-5 summer associate hours. So far all we've figured out for sure is that when I start working for real, we are going to hire a cleaning service. I do not know how people do the dual career thing with kids. Somebody told me that at a meeting of female attorneys, a senior partner flat-out said, "You need a nanny or a spouse at home." The person who told me this was kind of shocked, but after only a month or two, I'm starting to believe it.

I love my summer job, but it will be wonderful when life returns to its laid-back law school pace. I am going to enjoy every minute of the last 1/6 of my three-year vacation.

Book review: The Slacker's Guide to Law School

2008-07-09T20:22:00.012-04:00

Clearly, The Slacker's Guide to Law School is not intended for me. The author, Juan Doria, emailed me and asked if I would review it if he sent me a free book, and I said sure. Now, the slacker thing to do would be to just blow it off once I realized, wait a second, why would I spend my time reading a guide to law school when I'm a second-semester 3L? But I said I would, so I read every word.

It was actually pretty entertaining. I even laughed out loud a couple of times, like when he laid out a strategy to get other people's outlines. (If you're attractive, you can flirt, and if you're ugly but your dad is a partner at a big law firm, you can do people favors; but what if you're ugly and your dad is a bum? You'll have to read the book to find out.)

I liked the laid-back approach of this book, and agree with its philosophy that you can do fine in law school without being all stressed and competitive about it. It echoed a bunch of things I've said on this blog over the years, like: avoid the library during exam time; don't worry about what other people are doing; skip the things you think you're supposed to do if you're not really interested. It also had some great points to make about, for instance, the value of staying in your hometown for school, and the uselessness of the briefing method they teach you during your first week.

The entire first chapter is devoted to talking prospective applicants out of going to law school. Any attorney or law student will tell you this, but I don't think it can be reiterated enough that you should only go to law school if you want to be a lawyer! (The book has an alternative: if your relatives are really pressuring you and you don't have anything better to do, make them pay for it.)

The book is very autobiographical. It's based on the author's own law school experience, with a couple of anecdotes tossed in about some of his friends. So I'd recommend taking this book with a grain of salt. Actually, take any book about law school with a grain of salt, or maybe more like a salt shaker.

The autobiographical approach bothered me in some ways. The author makes clear in the first chapter that he wishes he hadn't gone to law school in the first place and that he never really wanted to be a lawyer. Then in the rest of the book, he talks about how boring and pointless law school classes and activities are, and strongly suggests that the actual work most attorneys do, like legal research and writing, is so dull that nobody could possibly enjoy it. Yeah, okay, maybe if you don't want to be a lawyer, a lawyer's education is dull, just like if you have no interest in physics, you'd snooze through a course on quantum mechanics.

He also seems to assume that most law students' primary motivation is money, and at one point says that nobody respects law school grads who go into public service or government work. I'm too lazy to look it up, but he says something like, "Nobody's going to be impressed that you took a job as a public defender." Maybe it's because I go to a school where a large firm is an easy option, or maybe it's just the people I hang out with, but I think the opposite: that people who do the virtuous work that doesn't pay get a lot more respect. There may be people who are obsessed with the rank of their firm just like they're obsessed with the rank of their law school, but I don't think that's everybody. Law grads who take noble, or radical, or off-the-beaten-path jobs at my school tend to be admired and envied by people who don't have the guts to do that.

One more quibble: I dislike the attitude that you're the consumer of your education and you don't owe your professors the courtesy of being prepared for class. A class is a community, not just a commodity that you're paying for. The professor is a person who's trying to teach you something, and it only works if students live up to their end of the bargain by engaging in the process. The best classes I've had are ones where everyone participates, even if it's forced by an aggressive Socratic method. In the worst classes, everybody's checked out and shopping or reading ESPN online. It's true that you can sometimes get decent grades without paying attention (although I'd argue that, especially at schools where you learn less black letter law, paying attention in class is at least 80% of studying for the final) but it makes for a pretty unsatisfying educational experience. Of course law school sucks if you're just trying to get through it, and so is everybody else, and nobody really cares.

Overall, I would recommend this book as a refreshing read for someone who's already stressed thinking about law school. I know I would have appreciated it back when people were telling me that I'd end up divorced and miserable after my 1L year. It has lots of valuable tips and provides reassurance that you can have a good time during law school. If you're the obsessive researching type like I am, I'd recommend reading another book like Law School Confidential to supplement this one. If you're not, just read this book. The other ones seem designed to cause anxiety; this one is the opposite. But if you get past the first chapter and decide that you still want to be a lawyer, just keep in mind that you might actually like law school. Even slackers can be nerds.

Update: Here's a great blog post for law students-to-be, in a similar vein.

Things that have made me smile lately

2008-07-02T21:12:00.002-04:00

Fresh lychees at the market.

This post by Ana.

K eating corn on the cob. Once he got the hang of it, his eyes lit up and he attacked it, pausing now and then to yell, "CORN! CORN!"

JW playing Dino-Run.

Nia class. Nia is a fitness technique, sort of a cross between yoga, martial arts, and dance, with elements of tai chi and meditation mixed in. It's a little wacky, but so much fun and such a relief to do something expressive without feeling like I'm not doing it right or being judged, for the first time in my life. Sometimes it almost makes me cry. During my first class, I caught myself in the mirror with this look of intense concentration on my face. I realized that I'm constantly trying to do things right, comparing myself to everybody else in the room, no matter how much I like to think I'm laid back and not competitive. It's hard work for me to be unselfconscious and not judge myself. But it feels good. And I think I'll need that sense of just being myself, not worrying what other people think or expect, and being calm and present once I start working. The other day, a bunch of associates were talking about who treats them like shit and who they need to impress and what they think is expected of them, and I realized that I've been deluding myself a little bit about this job. It might not be a thousand-person firm, but it's still biglaw.

This blog. It's nice to have a place to put my stream-of-consciousness ramblings.

Be kind to your four-legged friends

2008-06-30T21:24:00.005-04:00

Yesterday I took K to a community orchestra concert where a friend was playing the violin. She said it would be family-friendly, but I was a little worried when we got there and it was 95% adults sitting quietly listening to the music. K, music-lover that he is, was happy bouncing in my lap to the first song and running around and dancing to the next two. After each song, he clapped and signed "more."

They started playing a long and serious piece in the middle, and K decided it was time to hide behind the chair and pop out, yelling, "BOO!" I took him into the lobby, where he was fascinated by a speaker broadcasting the music. He kept running up to it, feeling the vibrations and putting his ear up to listen. A little girl saw him and started doing it too. This instigated a brief turf war which sent K crying to Mommy at first, but eventually he went back and smiled at the girl, who stared at him and ran back to her mom.

The orchestra closed with "Stars and Stripes Forever," which called for a march around the room. ("KA, KA," K cheered when it was done -- "KA" for concert.) I hummed the song on the way home and this morning he requested it again. I thought I remembered some lyrics*, something about being kind to your four-legged friends, but I couldn't remember any more so I made it up. Here is my song, which K made me sing over and over today:

Be kind to your four-legged friends
Don't ever kick or beat them
Give them a soft place to sleep
And feed them lots of food.

Be kind to your four-legged friends
For you never know when you will need them
When you are sick and fall down
Your dog will bark and then the neighbors will hear him.

* It actually does have Sousa-penned lyrics. JW sang me the version I had been thinking of: "Be kind to your web-footed friends, For a duck may be somebody's mother, Be kind to your friends in the swamp, Where it's very, very damp."

K's new cousin

2008-06-24T21:59:00.005-04:00

We spent the weekend visiting our new baby niece, who I will dub Peanut for blog purposes because she is so very tiny. K looked enormous and round next to her.

The attempted cousin pictures resulted in one or the other of them crying, so this was the best we could do. It reminds me of that scene in "Say Anything" where Diane points to her graduation present, a new car, and says, "THAT?" and meanwhile Lloyd poses behind her so they can be in a picture together.

I'm not sure what K made of her. JW thought he was a little scared of her. He pointed at her a few times and said "Shhh" (because she was mostly sleeping), but that was about the extent of their interaction. She's only a week old, though. It'll be fun to see them grow up together.

I can hardly remember when K was that small.

I don't know if the baby registered our presence, but our visit was good for my sister-in-law, who was having a tough time. We had some good new-mom talks. "How did you get through the first few weeks?" she asked me. I shrugged. "Cried a lot." I think that made her feel better.

What I read about today

2008-06-23T20:39:00.005-04:00

If you ever wondered how prestige-obsessed the law profession could possibly be, this National Law Journal article on visiting assistant professorships provides an answer: an established practice at a successful firm doesn't buy you anything unless you also went to a top-tier school, made Law Review, and clerked for a federal judge.

New York schools are teaching immigrant parents how to complain to teachers. No joke -- the NYT article talks about how American parents understand that they can call their kids' teachers or administration to complain about problems, but immigrant parents keep quiet, so some schools are reaching out to the immigrant parents to explain how things work over here. Which does equalize things, but... my parents kept quiet too, and I thought it was disgusting how some of the other kids' parents would harass teachers for giving their kids unsatisfactory grades, or pressure the administration to bend the rules, which they always did given enough parental yelling.

The slow death of the semicolon. Did you know that people who use semicolons are pretentious? Also, lazy: "The semicolon allows woozy clauses to lean on each other like drunks for support." Great sentence. (Actually, I am completely mischaracterizing the article, which supports the semicolon cause.)

And here's the reason I was reading all this stuff.

15-month appointment

2008-06-22T22:55:00.004-04:00

Almost forgot to post my summary of the doctor's visit two weeks ago.

Height: 29.5 inches, one inch up from last time. 10th percentile.
Weight: 21 pounds, 11 ounces, exactly a pound more than last time. 15th percentile.
I mentioned that JW was worried that he was too small. "He's petite," said the doctor. "But perfectly proportional. And frankly, considering his parents, his size is not a surprise." Sad, but true.

I also asked about his early waking. "What time does he wake up?" asked the doctor. "5:30." "Sounds like a perfectly reasonable time to me."

On the transition to one nap, the doctor said we didn't have to do anything -- he would gradually transition over the next few months, and some days might take two naps and other days only need one.

K was interested in the ear probe and the eye thingy. He didn't like the tongue depressor or sitting on the scale. He got two shots and screamed and screamed. But strategically, I had brought his blue car and he forgot all about the needles when he got to ride home in style.

Book reviews

2008-06-21T14:10:00.001-04:00

Divisadero by Michael Ondaatje. She sat beside the book, her body rebelling against the turgid prose. A family torn by violence; a writer, in an earlier century, wandering. Hours of her life had gone, like expelled spittle down a bathroom sink.

Bringing Down the House by Ben Mezrich. Money. Intrigue. Nerds. If it weren't all true, this would read like a wishful-thinking beach book about math geniuses who ditch MIT for a life of high rolling and dating NFL cheerleaders. But the true story makes it a fun read, despite a writing style that ends too many chapters with ellipses.

Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl. Most of the 400+ page book is about spoiled rich kids at a private school, who binge-drink and obsess about their drama teacher. But it keeps you reading because of the mystery it sets up in the first few pages: that teacher is dead, and our heroine knows something about it that nobody else does. So you page through the parties and dinners and teen romances, and suddenly in the last hundred pages the book accelerates with a screech, hurtles forward, and drops you over a cliff. Then you want to go back to the beginning again to piece together all the clues.

Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri. Yet another book about the Indian-American immigrant experience. My mom lent this to me, exclaiming about how sorry she was that she had never understood how hard it was for me and my brother. Now I see why it made her upset. Disintegrating families, failed marriages, adultery, disease, and yes, death -- it's all here, in grim detail. "It sounds like Jhumpa Lahiri's opinion of immigration is --" I started to say to JW, after describing the book, and I was going to go on about how she appears to view immigration as a tragedy, for the isolated first-generation travellers who leave their countries behind, for their hapless children stuck between two worlds and not belonging to either, for the unsuspecting American friends and lovers drawn into their webs. But he finished my sentence for me, succinctly: "Stay home."

I didn't like it. I returned it to my mom with a copy of Karma and Other Stories to cheer her up.

Currently reading: The dregs of my to-read pile, Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain.

Just when I think I'm out, they pull me back in

2008-06-19T20:51:00.000-04:00

I am pondering being a tax lawyer again. Yes, I know what I said. But I've been doing tax work for the past week and I like it. See, I go through these phases with tax:

You want to do what to the what?
I have no idea what you are talking about. I can't even lift these giant books.
I cannot possibly figure this out. It is incomprehensible.
It is incomprehensible, but only to me because I am too stupid to understand.
Hey, this is starting to make sense.
This is actually pretty interesting.
Figuring out the tax code is fun, like an elaborate puzzle. Also, I am a super genius.
Rinse and repeat.

So here is my pro and con list.

Tax:
+ Reasonable, flexible hours that you can mostly set yourself -- few work-all-night emergencies.
+ Be an expert in an esoteric, yet crucial, field.
+ Constantly learn new things and use analytical skills.
- Relatively isolated from rest of firm.
- Very small group with no junior associates.
- Seems difficult to develop long-term relationships with external clients.
- Not sure if I will ultimately find it worthwhile. The point seems to be more about saving money or complying with rules, rather than actually accomplishing a goal.

Corporate:
- Hours can be unpredictable, at mercy of client.
- Seems like there's lots of grunt work the first couple of years.
- Not clear that you really need to be a lawyer to do this kind of work. Could be replaced by consultants?
+ Lots of interaction with clients.
+ Opportunities to develop expertise in industries as well as legal specialties.
+ More flexibility for both present work and future career options.
+ Big department with lots of associates and partners at all levels.
+ Established training procedures.
+ Helping people accomplish a desired goal.

I think the last point will be determinative for me. Still, I'm going to find out if it's possible to do both types of work at The Firm.

If you've been a summer associate, you've probably experienced the Lunch Email: "I'm going to lunch with so-and-so, a litigation associate. I can bring two summers." Within seconds, you get twelve responses. I sent out a lunch email the other day saying I was going to lunch with a tax partner. NOBODY responded.

Facebook etiquette

2008-06-18T20:33:00.006-04:00

Is it an insult to de-friend someone?

This girl I used to be good friends with in high school -- we weren't speaking by the end, or maybe had just drifted apart, either way I don't remember why -- friend-requested me. I accepted, because, why not, and then noticed that she was linked to all these other high school people.

Probably because of her, I got another friend request by a random high school person, a girl I didn't invite to my ninth-grade birthday party, causing much consternation and eventual rifts in my group of friends. Afterwards I felt bad but never apologized. I think we were on speaking terms by the end of high school.

Then I heard from the first girl. She had called me a year or two ago, left me an effusive message saying it had been so long, she couldn't wait to catch up, please call. I left her a message back. Never heard from her again. This time she sent me a Facebook message -- asking for legal advice. I actually wrote back and suggested a few things (disclaiming, of course, that I wasn't a lawyer and this wasn't legal advice, but just some general thoughts). It's been a week. No word from her. Not even an, "OK, thanks."

High school is a time I would rather forget. I am tempted to remove both of these people from my list and forestall further attempts at contact by high school acquaintances who either want more Facebook friends or are having problems with their employers. Maybe I'll wait a week and de-friend them quietly.

Bruised

2008-06-16T20:36:00.003-04:00

K came home today with bruises all over his face. He tripped and fell face-first into a large wooden schoolbus. Mrs. Daycare said he cried all morning.

The moment I walked in the door he held up his arms for me to pick him up. For the rest of the night he was all cuddles and smiles. Clearly he was in need of some Mommy TLC.

Ordinarily I have no qualms about sending him to daycare, but it kills me that I wasn't there when he needed me. My baby was hurt and I didn't even know. The same thing could easily have happened at home, but at least I could be there to try to comfort him.

I'm just a boy with a new haircut

2008-06-15T15:40:00.007-04:00

Before:

After:

Our Father's Day activity was K's first professional haircut. We drove half an hour to take him to a special kid's place that has little cartoon characters and videos and balloons and specially trained stylists. He was confused when they strapped him into the seat, terrified when they put the cape on him, and screaming by the time the stylist trimmed his bangs. We managed to distract him for brief periods by showing him the camera viewscreen and taking silly pictures of Daddy, but then he would realize SOMETHING IS HAPPENING TO MY HEAD GET ME OUT OF HERE!!!!

In the after picture, note the snot still leaking from the nose and the green card next to K on the floor. After his haircut, he was given this green card to put in the machine in exchange for a special prize. The machine made a loud whirring noise, at which his face crumpled and he started running for Mommy, but the trauma was mostly forgotten when he received a small bug in a plastic bubble.

Happy Father's Day, JW!

Narrowing down my options

2008-06-14T10:00:00.001-04:00

Even after Corporate Tax had its way with me, I still toyed with the idea of being a tax attorney. I had moments of loving tax, and the work might be fun in the context of actual practice. I took on a tax assignment at The Firm.

The partner frowned at me. "What do you know about Code Section 354?" he demanded. I felt the familiar pit in my stomach that I used to get during class. I was able to choke out an answer. "What do you know about New York tax law?" I could respond confidently to that one: "Nothing."

"Go learn about how New York taxes corporations and then read through these materials and answer the question," he said, rattling off various references to regulations and cases.

I now know that I've been deluding myself. I am not smart enough to be a tax lawyer. All I can do is hang on through the tax assignments I'm given until I can slink back to the corporate department.

* All substantive information changed to protect the innocent. (This will be an ongoing policy for any posts about work.)

Overheard, sitting on a cement bench

2008-06-13T18:00:00.001-04:00

Harvard Square T station, waiting for the bus.

A woman is having an angry conversation over her cell phone. Not so much angry, really, as disappointed. She is talking to someone who clearly means a great deal to her, but who has let her down. She is willing to forgive. They can try again. But she can't keep doing this over and over. Things have to change.

As I move closer, I realize she has no phone. She is pleading with a small dog wearing a sweater, who is peering out of a leather bag perched on the bench in front of her.

"Can you believe this?" mutters the woman next to me. "I think she's crazy. Something is wrong with this lady. Seriously wrong." She leans closer so that her last sentence is in my ear. I glance up briefly, realize that once again there is no phone, and glue my eyes to the book on my lap. I don't want to get into this.

But the other two do. The dog lady turns her wrath on my seatmate. "I HEARD YOU!" she said. "I got problems, you don't know... why you gotta tell me about my problems. You don't know what I've been through. I have this dog," she said, indicating the dog, and the book was interesting enough that it drowned out the rest of the monologue. She went on almost until the bus arrived.

Summer associate, take 3

2008-06-12T22:40:00.003-04:00

Summer job is nearly 30% over.

One thing I love: I have a job that requires me to go the library, which is in the building, on a near-daily basis.

One thing I hate: They installed enormous new printers, which I can only reach on tiptoes if the printer is pushed all the way against the desk. If it's not, I can't reach the printouts at all. I feel a little humiliated every time I have to print something.

Luckily, there are many things I like and nothing else I hate. I was a little anxious before the summer started, feeling like the firm had forgotten about me and wondering if I was making the default choice. But I am really enjoying being back and am looking forward to returning permanently after graduation.

Aunt-to-be

2008-06-11T22:04:00.003-04:00

My phone rang at 6:45 a.m. "What do contractions feel like?" groaned my sister-in-law. "Sounds like you already know," I replied.

My brother called this evening asking about natural childbirth tips. "Don't you have any breathing techniques or anything?" "It's a little late for that!" I told them both to just hang in there and it would all be over soon. He sounded awful and I could hear her in the background moaning.

Labor was excruciating for me. But I didn't give in to my temptation to tell her, "Just get the drugs!"

I'm going to have a niece soon!

Commencement

2008-06-05T15:08:00.005-04:00

I Commenced. It was okay. The morning university ceremony was long and cold and dull. The lunch law school ceremony was casual. I sat with my family and cut up chicken for K, lined up when it was my turn, walked across the stage to get my empty Harvard Law folder, returned my gown and hood, and went home.

I walked across the stage with K and thought about how he had made me feel sick during my 1L finals and kicked me for the first time during Corporations and now we were graduating together. But then I realized I wasn't really graduating. Still, he's in my official graduation picture.

Tomorrow I will Commence back to work and in the fall I will re-Commence my law school classes.

Dean Kagan did two things in her speech that I liked. One was to acknowledge that many law students feel they've lost their values by the time they graduate. She said that we should value our newfound ability to see both sides of an issue we used to think had only one answer. That ability clarifies your thinking and can help you decide what you really believe. People always complain that law school tears down your beliefs, so I liked her suggestion that it's our responsibility to build them back up using the skills that we've learned.

She also spent a few minutes talking about Barack Obama and his unconventional career path. She pointed out that the usual path for someone like him -- star student, Law Review President -- would be a circuit court clerkship, followed by a Supreme Court clerkship, followed by appellate practice at a top law firm. Instead, his professors scratched their heads when he went to do low-paying community civil rights work in Chicago. But look where he is now. Her point, she said, was not that following your heart will bring you riches and glory, but that it will take you where you want to be. I appreciated that, as we (most of us, anyway) prepared to start our careers, she urged us one last time not to chase prestige and instead to pursue what we feel is satisfying and worthwhile.

Read J.K. Rowling's entire speech here. Not only did she deliver graduation wisdom, but she also mentioned gay wizards in the first minute.

Somebody pointed out that, since I like law school, I should be happy that I still get to come back after graduation. That's a good attitude, I think. I dislike ceremonies and crowds, and I love law school, so I'm actually glad this won't be my last memory of it.

The conversation I had with the girl at the rental table when I returned my cap and gown about sums up my day:
Her: Ooh, can I see the diploma? I've never seen a Harvard Law one.
Me: I, uh... don't have one.
Her: Oh, do they mail it to you or something?
Me: No...

Got no class

2008-06-04T22:04:00.003-04:00

Today was Class Day. I missed half of it. I didn't get a lot of the emails about commencement, since I'm no longer officially a member of the Class of '08, so I didn't realize this was the day our commencement speaker would speak. I was looking forward to hearing him, too.

I ran into a friend on the way back from the ceremony, where they had given out prizes. She said there was a prize for section leadership and, "of course, we all thought of you, it's too bad you're not graduating!" Yeah. But I am. Sort of. If I don't count as part of my section anymore, I guess I'm nowhere.

I went to pick up my cap and gown. I walked up to the table balancing K on one hip. "Oh," said the girl handing out regalia, "you're graduating?" I went to pick up my tickets and they looked at me blankly until I handed them my ID. Then I wasn't on the list. They wrote my name in on the bottom, below the other mom in my class who's graduating mid-year.

The photographer taking pictures of celebrating graduates put down her camera when she saw me with K. Another friend stopped by with her parents to say hi to K. "Oh," said her parents, after she introduced me as a classmate, "are you graduating too?"

There were lots of other women with babies there. Harvard Law wives, every one.

K and I hung out outside the big tent at the reception. It was too hot and crowded in there and he was cranky. Most of the people out there were the older parents, sitting on the benches for a break from standing up.

I'm used to feeling alienated at big law school events. I have friends at school, but they're scattered. I never really clicked with my section, despite being the de facto organizer of every event. I never developed a group. But I've never felt so invisible before. Just a mom with no class.

K and friend

2008-06-03T20:23:00.001-04:00

Reading roundup

2008-06-02T20:00:00.001-04:00

I haven't done one of these in a while. Partly because during the schoolyear, I rarely read anything that doesn't have to do with either law or babies.

Currently reading: Divisadero by Michael Ondaatje. Not liking it all that much.

Books I've read recently:

Palace of Illusions by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni. An amazing book. It's a retelling of the Mahabharata by Panchaali, the wife of the five Pandava brothers. Having grown up with the Mahabharata and the Gita, it was eye-opening to hear the familiar stories from a new perspective. In the intro, Divakaruni writes about how she would spend hours poring over the huge leather book in her grandfather's study, and how the women were treated as mere instruments in the lives of the men. She remembers thinking that one day, she would write about the women in the story. She has done that, bringing a personal dimension that I've never seen to the sometimes baffling story that seemed so far from my reality as a Bengali girl growing up in America. She weaves in events small and large from the text while putting them all in the context of Panchaali's life. My father's birthday is coming up and he is getting this book.

Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. "That's a self-help book, right?" said my mother-in-law. "I saw it on Oprah!" I'm glad I heard the words "self-help" and "Oprah" when I was already halfway through, because I enjoyed the book. A lot of the Amazon reviewers complain that she's self-absorbed, but it's really a mini-memoir of her own journey to find herself, so of course it's self-absorbed. I don't see it as universal truth and would hate to think of it as a self-help guide, but as a memoir I found it entertaining and insightful. The structure -- three sections about seeking pleasure in Italy, enlightenment in India, and balance in Bali -- made all the stuff about spirituality and meditation and being in the palm of God much easier to take, since you get to know her before she starts in on that.

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See. Not bad. Starts off with a stomach-turning description of footbinding. Goes on to review the friendship of two women, matched as lifelong friends when they were children. Kept me interested, but I didn't love it -- the characters never seemed that real to me.

Beyond Reason by Roger Fisher and Daniel Shapiro. A worthwhile read -- doesn't have as much filler as some negotiation books. Talks about how to deal with negative emotions and foster positive emotions in a negotiation by paying attention to five core areas: appreciation, affiliation, autonomy, status, and role. I'll write a more detailed review later unless I'm too lazy.

Blink by Malcolm Gladwell. I couldn't help comparing this to "The Tipping Point," and it's not as good. Gladwell's strength is the interesting case studies, but beyond the stories this book is a little incoherent. It starts out by saying that we tend to make good decisions quickly, because lots of unconscious thought goes into those decisions and with limited time we're forced to focus on what's really important. But our biases can mean they're actually bad decisions. And sometimes we focus on the wrong things. But with lots of deliberate study, we can become experts and understand how to overcome our biases and which things we should focus on. So... at the end, I'm not sure what the take-home message is, if any.

Smoke and Mirrors by Neil Gaiman. I read this book when I was stuck on the couch with a sprained ankle. It contains vampire poems. That's all I have to say.

Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman. Okay, I'm not the biggest Neil Gaiman fan. But this book was enjoyable, a nice mix of fantasy, mythology, and caper -- at times it reminded me of Dave Barry's novels, where all the characters converge and chase each other around at the end.

Who Moved My Cheese? by Spencer Johnson. I got this book from the library by accident -- I meant to get "What Color is Your Parachute?" for JW. But I read it anyway. It literally takes 15 minutes to read. It's a story about mice and little people who live in a maze and look for cheese. When the cheese moves, the mice adjust and adapt and go looking for more cheese. The people get upset, and are afraid to go anywhere else, and wait for the cheese to come back. Eventually, one strikes out on his own, while the other stays stuck, unwilling to accept the change. In case you don't get it, there's a chapter at the end where a group of friends discusses the story and how it applies to their lives. I'd say I got 15 minutes worth of wisdom to justify reading it.

Karma and Other Stories by Rishi Reddi. I wrote about this a little before. I liked the book -- a bunch of intertwined short stories about people in an Indian community in suburban Boston, so I could relate.

The Book of Vice by Peter Segal, the host of NPR's "Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me." It's funny, like he is on the show, but ultimately unsatisfying. He doesn't reveal much that I hadn't already heard, and he wavers between trying to be part of the scene he's in (whether it's a swinger's club or a casino) and a detached "can you believe that people actually do this?" attitude. My personal favorite vice is gluttony, so I had an extra beef with that chapter: it was about Grant Achatz's restaurant Alinea, and I see his food as more art than gluttony. (If I'm ever in Chicago again, I am heading straight there.)

Swapping Lives by Jane Green. I'm kind of embarrassed to have read this, because I hate the inanity of chick lit. But this was a fun read during finals. Plot: British magazine editor and rich suburban American mom switch lives. You can imagine how it turns out.

On my reading list:
Reread Difficult Conversations
3D Negotiation by James Sebenius
Ask For It by Linda Babcock
Something by John Gottman
Something by Joan Didion
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami
Not a lot of inspiration on this list, not a lot of fiction, and virtually no new books -- I could use some help here. Any recommendations?