2L – Page 5

Busy Bees in Fall

October 1, 2015 by Taco

HAPPY OCTOBER – OCTOBER IS THE MONTH MASTER RACE

Time to dust off the ole’ Blog.

While I’ve only been absent for 17 days, that’s still one of the longer periods I’ve went without posting. Maybe that will become the norm, I dunno, see generally The Rules. Sometimes I don’t feel like blogging, sometimes I have nothing to blog about, and sometimes I have things to blog about but just don’t have the time. Lately I’ve found myself firmly in category three. But before I start complaining about how busy I am, let’s revisit some fun things.

For instance, it’s now officially Fall! 😀

I love seeing the leaves turn into orange beer bottles.

With fall comes not only beer, but other delicious Fall beverages, such as the Salted Caramel Mocha from Starbucks.

The extreme unhealthiness of the frappuccino is balanced out by my water.

But really it’s mainly about the beer. Such as:

1. Samuel Adams Octoberfest – Boston Beer Company

While it’s true that I broke down and started drinking Oktoberfests before Fall even started, Samuel Adams is such as staple of Oktoberfests that its hard to declare the start of “Beer Fall” until you’ve had one (or six, or twelve, or sixty).

2. Post Road Pumpkin Ale – Brooklyn Brewery

Another trend I’ve been happy to see in the past two years or so is the rise of the Pumpkin Ale. Sure it’s been around for a long, long time, but pumpkin ales have gotten more popular in recent years. The thing about a pumpkin ale is that it is an easy beer to make, but a very difficult beer to make well. The biggest problem is that often the alcohol is just too potent in the flavor profile (such as with Dogfishhead Punkin Ale). However, this particular Brooklyn offering got the balance just right, and its probably one of the better pumpkin ales I’ve had. Once again, Brooklyn does not disappoint.

But it’s not all been Fall beers.

3. Heineken Light – Heineken Netherland B.V.

I’ll be completely honest, Heineken Light is not a great beer. But its a good light beer, and more importantly, its a beer I can drink when I’ve been having heartburn issues (e.g. very badly the past few weeks) without much issue.

4. Kirin Ichiban – Kirin Brewery Company, Limited

Kirin Ichiban is an American Pale Lager, made in Japan. Yeah. So basically its Japanese Budweiser, except its not. I had this for the first time during a sushi-making party with Aunt Train about seven years ago. It was just ok then and it is just ok now. I can think of no real reason to drink it over Budweiser because Kirin Ichiban is more expensive. HOWEVER, it does get bonus points for having the word “Ichiban” in the title – as SB, BIL, and I once drove MIL to the brink of insanity by saying “Ichiban” over and over during a trip to Illinois. Ah memories – in drinkable form!

If you remember my weird pie you’ll know that Fall tends to put me into a bit of a baking mood. So I went for another round of baking, except this time it was a little less throw together. The ultimate result was a Pumpkin Oreo Bread/Cake. Yes, it was good.

Nobody knows exactly what lies within aside from Oreos and pumpkin puree – no really, I have no idea what else I put in there.

Speaking of food, I had some family out visiting the New England area, so we met up with them and Aunt Train for a yummy dinner at La Famiglia Giorgio’s in the North End. Now, while I am on the record as stating that I think Italian restaurants are grossly overpriced (a sentiment I stand by), this was some of the better Italian I’ve had in awhile and the portions where VERY generous.

This shrimp and scallop angel hair pasta fed me for 2.5 meals, while SB got like 4 meals out of her dish.

Oh and of course I got beer, if it wasn’t obvious from the fact that there is beer right behind my food in the above photo. The thing about Italian places is that they often don’t have the best of beer selections. That said, Giorgio’s was pretty decent.

Oh, except for one small detail. All of those are bottles or cans. Not a single draft in the entire house. I was not thrilled, but its not like a bottle or can ruins a beer. I’ve had beer from cans that was far better than a beer on draft, for instance. But the point is: “Going out and paying a lot for beer = I want draught.” But I wasn’t paying, lol. So my beerfag emo rage lasted all of 2 seconds and I quickly settled into:

5. Hoppy Feet – Clown Shoes

Yes, a beer called “Hoppy Feet” by a brewery (from Ipswich, MA) called “Clown Shoes” – how could I not get it? It was a delicious Black IPA.

6. Indie IPA – Cisco Brewers Inc.

I actually wanted to go with a white IPA (Wasatch Ghostrider White IPA), in order to get that black-to-white IPA contrast (which I’ve never had before) but naturally they were out of it. However, not one to be thrown off I my beer tracks, I quickly diverted course onto a standard IPA. This beer, from Nantucket, MA was a nice “mid meal” beer, though I’d like to have tried it in a bottle.

7. Birra Moretti – Birra Moretti (Heineken)

By the time dinner was winding down (and I was quite stuffed) I decided that I need to try at least one Italian beer, since we were, you know, eating Italian. I went for Birra Moretti (not realizing that it was actually owned by Heineken – but hey at least its made in Milan, Italy), which turned out to be a nice end-of-meal beer, but was pretty average compared to the Hoppy Feet and Indie IPA. It wasn’t bad, it just wasn’t super memorable either.

Back on the Fall track – Fall is good for more than just food or beer, it’s also good for football. Sure, football is hard to separate from food and beer, but it’s still its own category. Fortunately SB and I finished up Breaking Bad (2nd time for me, first time for her) before too deep into football season since we rarely have time to watch both a football game and a show. However, not all football we watch is professional, in fact we watch a fair amount of college football these days (and by watch I mean have it on while we do much less enjoyable things than watch football). So, since last year we had watched Harvard slaughter Columbia, this year it was Boston College’s turn. It turned out to be quite a nice day for football.

Whereas Harvard’s athletics are fairly secondary, BC on game day felt much more akin to the “Big Ten” experience I’m used to (or at least used to living next too).

BC was taking on the Northern Illinois University Huskies. It was also “Parents Day” weekend for the babies.

While our seats weren’t to the caliber of the 50 yard-line front row seats we’d had at the Harvard game, they weren’t bad either.

The game started out pretty slowly, as in, very slowly. During this time we spent more time trying to spot and keep an eye on Baldwin the Eagle than we did watch the game. However, things did eventually pick up and got pretty interesting! In fact the final score was 17-14 with BC coming out triumphant.

Unfortunately by the time the game was over our side of the stadium was in the shade, so I was freezing (I was actually shivering) thanks to Mr. Reynaud – but once I was back out into the sun things weren’t too bad. All in all it was a fun day and our team won!

So, that constitutes most of the fun stuff I’ve done in the 1/2 month the blog has been silent. Unfortunately there has been a lot more “not fun” stuff.

2L has been incredibly busy. I mean, as crazy as this is to say, it’s been more busy than 1L. Now, it’s not been the “OH MY GOD I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT TO DO” kind of busy-Hell that was 1L. But rather the “OH MY GOD I KNOW WHAT TO DO BUT I NEED 50 HOURS IN A DAY” kind of busy-Hell. To be fair, this was exactly what I was told to expect.

In fact, over a year ago I mentioned this old adage:

1L: The first year they scare you to death
2L: The second year they work you to death
3L: The third year they bore you to death

Now that I’ve entered the second category, I can definitively say that so far the saying is holding up very well. 1L sucks because you have no idea what is going on. Then, because you are on a sinking ship of anxiety and misery in which everyone is forced to compete with each other, the whole thing just kind of explodes. You are busy, yes, but its sort of a whirlwind scenario. 2L you have a much better idea of what is going on (e.g. you have started to give no shits about the small stuff). The thing is, 2L is also when you start to “specialize” – and because you are specializing, you start taking on A LOT more work in a specific area. Now, in theory, the idea is that you’ll enjoy the work, even though there is more of it.

Yeah that is a nice theory.

And maybe it would be true if you could just focus on the stuff you like. But you can’t. You still have loads of other responsibilities. So while its not really a whirlwind train-wreck like 1L, it’s still an overloaded night train barreling down the tracks with a ghost crew. So, if I spent 1L worrying about things. I’m now spending 2L doing things. The result is that I have no real time to myself. I’m not just saying that either. Sure, sure you say – “but you’re sitting here writing a blog post” – yes, fair point. But it’s been 17 days since I touched this blog and I haven’t been doing the “me-time” things I like to do on the weekends, because I just haven’t had the time. For instance this past weekend I practically missed the entirety of the Blood Moon Eclipse (even though we had clear skies) because I was so busy. I was able to see a bit of it, but of course my phone sucks at pictures after 4pm, so it just looks like a blob.

Spooky once-every-twenty-years blood moon super eclipse, or street light? The world may never know.

My lack of time is mostly cumulative, rather than stemming from one specific thing. For starters, classes have been consuming more time than I would like, one of my seminars is consuming far more time than I think it should for a two credit class. Then there is just all the time spent trying to parse more complicated material.

If you’ve ever wondered what a Harvard Law education looks like, this is it. Yes this is a real photo of the chalkboard from Environmental Law. This was used to explain a complicated statutory issue of preclusion vs. preemption within federal common law nuisance claims at the state level.

Now, to be fair, my Environmental Law professor is actually really good. But her chalkboard “diagrams” well, I just had to share one, that is how bad they are. But really, the time black-hole has become my clinical work. Unfortunately I can’t talk much about it on the blog BECUZ OF MUH PRIVILEGE [TRIGGER WARNING PTSD-FROM-THE-INTERNET MICROAGGRESSIONS SAVE-ME-TUMBLR]. But really, it actually is confidential information. However, what I can say is that the project I thought I was getting, was not the project I got. So I wasn’t super pleased about that. I’m still getting substantive experience, it’s just eating my waking hours like a termite. But such is life, at least I’m part of an organization that does good stuff, like figure out ways to get zero-cost solar panels.

Then, you throw in the journal (including my essentially-forced promotion) and then there just isn’t a whole lot of time left in the day. While having “slaves” (as Tristen would say) on the journal now is kind of nice, the increased workload for me personally is not offset by the addition of minions.

Then the school stress has been compounded by the fact that SB and I’s “luck” has officially ran out as far as neighbors go. While we’ve historically had some issues with the person below us, be it extremely loud phone conversations or BLARING music, it was never too late at night. Fortunately she hasn’t been too bad the past couple of months. However, a swarm of obnoxious #&*@ moved into the building adjacent to us and have proceeded to make so much noise (including one girl’s soul-curdling laugh that makes you want to curb-stomp her) over the past three nights after 10pm that we can’t even hear our TV over them. They also have a lamp that is so bright and pointed straight into our window that I can reflect it back with a mirror. We’ve already called the cops once on them. I have a feeling it will not be the last time.

Of course, the silver lining to all of this back-to-school stress, is that I at least I’m back to getting lots of free food.

That will be 55,000$.

Free food always makes things better. Of course there is no such thing as a free lunch, but at least my grant actually got increased this year! Woo slightly less poverty! 😀

Until next time,
-Taco

P.S. – Squirrel

2L Week One (Burgers and Beers and Random Pies)

September 14, 2015 by Taco

Well I now have the first week of 2L behind me, and, as with most things, it wasn’t quite as bad as I was fearing it would be. I’m still not feeling the best, but I have a decent grasp on most things that are going on school-wise. I say decent because my journal is about to reactivate and I still haven’t had my Monday night class yet, but I’ll reevaluate once those obstacles show up (e.g. this week, Monday and Tuesday respectively).

I will say that my clinic is going to be an incredibly large amount of work. Easily the equivalent of a heavy part-time job. What I didn’t quite realize is that when you do the clinic you are an actual practicing attorney, you just operate under your supervisor’s license. So, you can go to court, you can represent clients, draft motions, etc. Essentially you can do everything, it’s just your supervisor’s head on the line. So yeah, I have a client and I already have due dates. Oh and on Tuesday I have to give a presentation of my project to the donor of the clinic. Like, literally the person (e.g. the millionaire) who the clinic is named after and who spends a lot of money on the clinic. So I’m a bit nervous about that since I have been told in very clear terms to “Not mess up.”

I actually find it kind of funny. I tend to get passed up for awards, am told my writing isn’t very good, get offered consolation positions, etc. But when it comes time to actually present something to a live audience, ole’ Taco has a habit of getting selected to do it. It’s actually kind of infuriating when I think about it too much.

Anyways, one bonus to school starting up again is that once again free food and drinks fall from the heavens!

Tristen drinking some of his free rop’ – Bro.

Of course it will taper off a bit once the “newness” of the year fades (at least the free alcohol will taper off, food remains fairly constant, thankfully). But for now I’m enjoying it as much as possible with my busy schedule.

SB and I have a history of “celebrating” the end of the first week back. To be honest we “celebrate” the beginning of things, the middle of things, and the end of things. We like excuses to celebrate things. So for our Friday night out, SB took us to a place called Bukowski Tavern which is up in Somerville. To be entirely honest I don’t even remember how SB found out about it, but they are known for a large beer selection so it seemed like a good place for us.

We got a nice table right next to the big open window.

It turns out they actually do have a pretty big selection of beers. Unfortunately well over half of it is bottles. In fact SB and I actually ordered bottles at first, not realizing that we were ordering bottles. Sure there was a big huge sideways “BOTTLES” label on the page, but we aren’t the most observant. Luckily SB was able to catch the server in time and we instead changed over to the draft menu, which was smaller but still pretty impressive.

We ended up going with:

1. Smoke & Dagger – Jacks Abby Brewing

2. Billy 18 Watt IPA – Single Cut Beersmiths

First up, it’s pretty obvious which of these two beers goes by the name “Smoke & Dagger” (hint it’s not the one on the left). Smoke & Dagger represented two new things for me. First, it was a nitro beer. Second, it was a “black lager,” though to be more specific it was a Rauchbier, which is German for “smoked beer.” It should all be coming together now in regards to the name. If you were curious about the nitro, it changes a lot, but basically it results in a creamier beer than does CO2. Overall, Smoke & Dagger was a good introduction to both of these kinds of beer, with smoked malts and roasted hops it definitely reminded me of Guinness, but had a whole lot more going on, and with a 5.80% ABV it was pretty drinkable.

On the other side was SB’s beer, the Billy 18 Watt IPA, which hails from a brewery I had never heard of before, Single Cut – of course that is rarely a bad thing (and calling yourself a “Beersmith” is pretty cool). The Billy 18 Watt IPA has a taste with a big citrus punch of lemon, grapefruit, and then some clean malt on the end. The beer has notes of a West Coast style IPA (e.g. it’s fairly crisp and light) which is probably highlighted even more-so by the fact that it’s sessionable (5% ABV). It was good, and the tropical notes blended well. However, given the “weirdness” of the Smoke & Dagger, this IPA was a bit less memorable for me, but I’d definitely buy a six-pack of it.

In addition to beer, Bukowski Tavern has some pretty good burgers and tater tots. In fact they have one of the most eclectic burger selections I have ever seen.

Venison, Antelope, Boar, Brisket, Turkey, Elk, Lamb, Bison, Duck, Yak, Tuna, Portobello, Lentil, Avocado – if they don’t have something you like you are probably a zombie.

SB and I went with the Turkey and Yak burgers, because how often does on get Yak.

The next day we decided to jointly capitalize on the Harvard free food by attending a welcome back BBQ hosted by the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences GSAS. If you were curious about what GSAS constitutes, it seems to be a “catch all” school that has everything from Engineering, to Music, to Biology. Of course what it doesn’t have is law. So SB and I were kind of.. ehm.. “spiritual” GSAS students for the BBQ. Hey, we have undergraduate degrees that would fall within the program. And besides, they weren’t checking and we were hungry.

But we weren’t the only ones drawn in by the nice weather and free food. Not in the least.

This was the line to the grills, it took us about 18 minutes to get up to the serving area.

However, the food being free, the wait was well worth it. In fact the food was really good in and of itself.

You’ll also notice that they were providing beer with their cookout. Sadly it was a bit on the warm side, and the Harpoon UFO White was forsaken by not being served with an orange slice (it even says so on the can itself!) but free beer is free beer and while UFO wasn’t quite as good warm and in a can as when it was cold and on draft, it held up surprisingly well and so I’d safely recommend it as a cook-out approved beer. After getting our food and beer SB and I retreated away from the crowds and went to the dominion of the law school to find a picnic table. It was a nice little lunch.

Later that night I continued with the “approaching-Fall” beer theme and had yet another (of soon to be many) Oktoberfests, this time it was:

3. Brooklyn Oktoberfest – Brooklyn Brewery

While I do indeed have a history of being a Brooklyn Brewery fanboy, I was sure to approach this Oktoberfest from as neutral a perspective as possible. And, to no one’s surprise, this turned out to be a really good Oktoberfest. Now, I have to say it’s not a bold or a strong Oktoberfest, but it does maintain that unique “Munich” flavor. In fact, it seems to balance itself between the usual bite of an Oktoberfest and a Märzen on the lighter end of the scale (remembering that Oktoberfest is a kind of Märzen). There is a slightly above average carbonation to this beer (for an Oktoberfest) but it’s countered by the balance of the caramel lacing and body. Although it’s 5.5% ABV, this might be the most “sessionable” Oktoberfest I’ve encountered.

Tonight I switched out beer for pie. Well, I’ll still have beer, but the pie was the major theme. SB and I had bought a half apple pie from Whole Foods on Friday since it was on sale. After making it last two nights our (my) pie tooth wasn’t satisfied I guess. So I used the craving as a convenient excuse to break away from studying and to whip up a pie for us. Unfortunately, we lacked most of the traditional ingredients for a pie. Additionally, I didn’t really have a recipe. So, I gathered what we did have and pretty much just randomly started throwing stuff together. It was made entirely from scratch, from the crust to the filling, and I didn’t use a recipe for any of it. Given that we were missing some ingredients and that I have no actual idea how to make pie (aside from a mental image of what a pie is) I think it turned out pretty good.

No it’s not burnt, I used whole wheat flour, we hardly ever use flour anymore and when we do it’s usually whole wheat.

As for the filling, it contained strawberries, an apple, a pear, orange juice (for the reduction), stevia, and honey.

In the words of SB, it tasted “Like strawberry pear applesauce.” I don’t know if that means that the pie would be of the variety found in a convalescent home or if it was good. Perhaps they aren’t mutually exclusive. Either way, for a literal “throw things together” pie (and I do mean literally, I measured nothing) it was good.

All the ingredients:
Random amounts of whole wheat flour that expired three years ago (lol)
Random amounts of olive oil
Random amounts of baking powder (not soda, powder)
Random amounts of unsweetened vanilla almond milk
Random amounts of egg whites
Random amounts of Raw Massachusetts Wildflower Honey
Random amounts of orange juice
Random amounts of stevia
Random numbers of fresh strawberries
A red apple
A pear
A lackadaisical attitude

To make:
Cut up the fruits, process them, make a reduction of fruits and orange juice, throw things in bowl to make flour, smear what would normally be pancake batter into a pie pan, smear fruit paste inside, cook at a temperature of your choosing for however long you like, listen to the polar bear’s advice, cool pie in the window making sure that the cat in the other building knows that it can’t have any, serve and enjoy.

Voila, you’ve made Convalescent Home Pie. Don’t knock it until you try it.

Until next time,
-Taco

P.S. Here is a frog-buddy from the OPIA office, he was having dinner with us as we discussed OPIAy stuff (further proof that PI people are best people).

Back to School – 2L Begins

September 8, 2015 by Taco

So my summer has finally come to an end.

While I know that I’ve done all sorts of crazy stuff this summer, from temporarily moving to Denver, and working for the Department of Justice, to taking business school classes, to hiking in the Rocky Mountains, taking a train up Pike’s Peak, visiting Lexington and Concord, and so on and so forth, it actually doesn’t feel like I’ve had a whole lot of summer. I suppose that is the downside to being so busy, time tends to fly.

In light of this and some other factors, I’ve been a bit down lately. I’ve also literally been down, but more on that in second. By “down,” I also mean unenthusiastic about law school. Things I was previously looking forward to I now dread, that sort of thing. I’ve really been questioning my law school path lately, so it has trickled into pretty much everything else going on in my life, even those things completely unrelated to law school itself. However, I’m being proactive about this and trying to see what can be done and then I will evaluate it from there.

As for literally being down, I ate bricks today (9/7). I was out for my run when my foot caught one of the many uneven bricks that dot the Boston landscape, and I just plowed straight into said brick sidewalk. To make matters worse, I was running downhill. So not only did I fall into uneven bricks, I slid on them. I quickly got back up on my feet and hobbled back home (fortunately I was only about 5 blocks away – which seems a lot longer when you are bleeding).

Luckily I had no major damage. I sliced my left hand pretty good, and I had cuts and scraps in 7 or 8 other places. I also had more than a couple bruises and some spots of road-rash. My left hand, right knee, and elbow took the blunt of the impact. Of everything, I’m most worried about my knee as it is still pretty painful and a little swollen. My right wrist is still just a little bit swollen, but it’s gone down over the course of the day. While I’m lucky I didn’t get hurt-hurt, it’s still the worst fall I’ve had while running since at least childhood. I can now say from experience that bricks do not do a very good job of breaking your fall, especially when those bricks are uneven.

But, not everything has been ho-hum leading up to the start of the semester (which is tomorrow, 9/8). SB and I have been having fun where possible, even if its something as small as getting Biscuit and Gravy flavored potato chips.

Yes they are a thing and yes they actually taste like biscuits and gravy.

We’ve also had more than a couple beers around the ole’ apartment, including a tasty and bold (if not quite strong – 7.1% ABV! – and it isn’t even a double) IPA from none other than Great Divide.

1. Titan IPA – Great Divide Brewing Company

I thought it was funny that I’d never had Great Divide before I went to Denver and then it “followed” me back to Boston. And as if one Colorado beer wasn’t enough, we also tried a single from the Left Hand Brewing Company (located in Longmont, CO).

2. Left Hand Oktoberfest – Left Hand Brewing Company

It had a mild, yet enjoyable, Oktoberfest flavor, which was surprising given the decent ABV of 6.6%. I was a fan.

However, we weren’t content to only have a Colorado Oktoberfest, so we of course had to get a hometown contender. While Samuel Adams might be the “King of the Hill” for Oktoberfest in Boston, we decided to wait a bit longer for Sam and give Harpoon’s Octoberfest a try.

3. Harpoon Octoberfest – Harpoon Brewery and Beer Hall

Being Harpoon it of course didn’t disappoint. However, I did think it was interesting that even though the Harpoon’s ABV was quite a bit lower than the Left Hand (5.3% vs 6.6%), it had a much more stout Oktoberfest flavor than did the Left Hand. Both were good and I’d recommend each of them, albeit for different reasons.

In addition to drinking beers at home, we also crossed some more things off our Boston Bucket List, such has having a picnic at Boston Common!

A fresh bluefish roll, apple cider doughnut, and unicorn blood (yes unicorn blood) – a perfect picnic on a nice summer day.

Plus, to make it even better, all those items came from local vendors, courtesy of the Boston Public Market!

After eating our yummy picnic, we headed over to Cheers, which we had been meaning to do for quite some time.

Of course we had to have some beers while at Cheers (yay rhymes!), and we went with a Samuel Adams Summer Ale and a Samuel Adams Brick Red, both of which are tried-and-true favorites of ours.

I’ll leave it up to you to guess which one is the Brick Red.

We were pretty fortunate to even get a high-top table, even at 2:30pm Cheers was PACKED, and I do mean PACKED, and we weren’t even eating. But I would guess that Cheers manages to stay pretty busy and based on their prices they need only sell one french-fry to make a profit on any given day. But it’s kind of against natural law to not get a beer at Cheers if you live in Boston.

On a rare completely-not-related-to-alcohol note, we also revisited Pleasure Bay and Castle Island. This time it was a bit less about history and a whole lot more about being lazy in the sun, and fortunately the weather was very cooperative (plus we didn’t even have an public transit issues!).

While relaxing on the beach we met Walter, a seagull, who in addition to making meth also enjoys bread.

In fact one could say he probably enjoys bread too much. Once we stopped feeding him he just sat there (until chased off by a small child) telling us his sorrowful stories of woe and misfortune. It was actually pretty funny, he was clearly communicating with us that he wanted more bread.

After a bit of sunbathing we walked the 1.84 mile loop around the bay.

Which brought us out to Castle Island and Sullivan’s, where we had a light lunch. On the way we also passed Fort Valentino, a gift of King Tristen.

Later that night, we were sitting in the living room relaxing when we started hearing loud bangs outside, after convincing Tristen that war had not started (much to his dismay), we realized that it was the Labor Day fireworks out over Boston Harbor. Sadly we couldn’t see them from where we are, but we could definitely hear them. However, a local TV station remedied the visual problem.

Watching fireworks live on TV while hearing them outside was an interesting and cool experience. There was about a 2-3 second delay between the explosions on TV and us hearing the sounds. Once you factor in the distance traveled by the sound wave, it’s crazily impressive that a camera can send a signal to a satellite, then a satellite to a station, and that station to a broadcast tower, and that tower to the cable lines, and the lines to our TV in a matter of seconds. It’s easy to forget how wild technology is.

Today (Labor Day) was set aside as a productivity day. I have a job interview tomorrow (it is actually supposed to end at the same time that this will get posted) that I had to prepare for (in addition to homework for my first classes, amounting to about 170 pages of reading) so it was sadly time to buckle down and work. Of course becoming one with the brick sidewalk put my productivity on hold for a bit, but all things considered, I ended up getting just about everything I needed to done. We even had time to go up to The Biscuit (Ritch) to have some coffee, sandwiches, and a plumb-ginger scone – that we shared with some of the little birdie buddies (the only downside was that it was just so hot out)!

It was really good, not too sweet – just right

So, that was really all I had to share. I just wanted to touch base now that my summer is officially in the rear view mirror (at least as of this getting posted). Unfortunately I can’t report that I’m very excited about that prospect, but we’ll see have things start to unfold once my schedule normalizes, since between my clinic and new classes and a new position at my journal, things are going to be very chaotic for a bit. My hope is that this down period is just a phase, but we’ll see what happens – the first thing on the list is getting through my interview tomorrow, and I’m less than thrilled about having to walk 1.5 miles in a suit when it’s supposed to be 92 degrees, but at least I have a job interview I suppose – I just wish it hadn’t fallen on the first day of classes and that I hadn’t battered myself up this morning (will make getting the suit on a fun time).

I’ll likely share more about 2L, my clinic, and my classes in an upcoming post.

Until next time,
-Taco

Burning Exams & Bridges – Part II

August 27, 2015 by Taco

Continued from Part One. As a reminder Part Two has nothing to do with HBX CORe.
————————————————————-
Part Two: Law School

[Incoming Rant Warning]

So what about those burning bridges I also mentioned in the title?

Well, EIP has come and gone here at Harvard Law School. As a reminder, EIP stands for “Early Interview Program” and it’s HLS’ version of OCI (On-Campus Interviews). It’s called an “Early” program because it tends to be a bit earlier than other law schools because lots of employers (and by employers I mean firms) are eager to come here. In fact, EIP is the largest OCI of any law school in the world. Yep. Firms come from all over the world (mainly the US, but international firms are still plentiful) to interview HLS students. In fact, they pay to come interview students. Yes, imagine a situation in which an employer pays for you to just interview with them. Sure you don’t get the money, Harvard does, but it’s the point.

Let me describe EIP at Harvard Law for you, so that you have a better idea of what the process is. EIP at Harvard is practically a guaranteed summer job at a firm for your 2L summer. What that means is that before you even start your second year of law school, you have a job your second summer. Not only that, in most markets you’re going to make about 33,000$ for a summer’s worth of work. But it gets even better. Assuming you have a pulse and are a good drone, that 2L summer job will turn into a real job after you graduate. Yes, do well your 2L summer and you get an offer to come back, for realsies. Oh, and you’ll make 160,000$ with yearly raises of 10,000$ or more (up to 20-30 thousand per year at some firms) and annual bonuses.

So, to bring this home for you. EIP is a practically guaranteed ticket to a job where you will start at 160k and be well on your way to 300k or above by mid career, and if you make partner at a good firm, then high six-figures (or above) are not out of the question. All you have to do is send in your resume to Harvard, bid on firms, have an interview, then go on call backs. Now call backs are great, so much so that I have to explain them. A “Call Back” is basically when a firm wants to date you, but they need you to meet their parents first. So a firm gives you an all-expenses (and I do mean all expenses) paid trip to come to their location, be it LA, New York, Dallas, London, Hong Kong, Hell, you name it, they will take your there. Once there, you have an interview with even more important people than those who came to Cambridge to interview you the first time, then you go out to lunch and laugh at poor people, then they fly you home. If they like you, they then call you a few days later and congratulate you on selling your soul to Lucifer and welcome you into their loving arms. I’m clearly not biased.

But bias aside, that is pretty much the process, and, at three schools (HYS) you pretty much have the firm jobs to lose. Its unfair in some ways, but the jobs that students at lower ranked schools have to practically kill themselves to even have a 10% chance at, are the baseline for HYS students. So, for good reason, pretty much everyone and their mother does EIP.

I mean if someone came to you tomorrow and said, I want to employ you. I will come to you, I will pay for you to visit me, and oh yeah here is 33,000$ as a hint of all the money you will make. Would you say no?

I did.

I can almost feel the confusion across time, space, and the interwebs.

Because here is the thing. Firms aren’t stupid. Do you really think they’d be paying newly graduated students, many of whom are silver-spoon babies with no experience whatsoever, 160,000$ a year to start and then giving them yearly raises above a lot of people’s entire salary if there wasn’t a catch? Well you guessed it. There is one HELL of a catch.

As much as it pains me to link to a Yale page, given that we are bloodsworn to kill each other on site, you should really go read this to understand what firm life is like.

The Truth About the Billable Hour

I know you probably don’t read half the stuff I link, but really, you have to read that page if you want to have a better understanding of what could possibly be wrong with getting 160,000$ fresh out of the gate.

So, not only do you not really have a life, let’s be real, your existence has been reduced to making the rich, richer. Now, in fairness. There are “Public Interest Firms” out there who don’t solely make the rich richer, but these firms pay NO WHERE near 160,000$ and they are still more business-oriented than a true public interest group. Either way, most firms aren’t there to save the world, they are there to make money. Bottom line. It’s about money. If you want nothing than to have money at the expense of everything else, then a firm is the life for you.

Now I know someone out there, likely a baby boomer or their spawn, is thinking “Well, my friend is a partner at a law firm and their life is nothing like what you describe.”

RANT WARNING

Yeah, Eat. Shit.

Old Economy Steven pretty much sums up how I feel about most 40+ people’s advice on my legal career.

You and your friend are so woefully disconnected from what law is like for new lawyers right now, that you can honestly contribute nothing to the conversation unless said friend started their career in the past 7 years. The legal profession literally died and was reborn as a shell of its former self for new attorneys. So the old lawyer’s (and by old, I mean even if you graduated 8 years ago you are clueless) bootstrap tale of wisdom and triumph is a about as useful to a new graduate as a pile of shit.

If I sound angry, it’s because I am. The fact is, unless YOU are a NEW lawyer, working in THIS market, which is where you STARTED, and unless YOU are working for a LEGAL-SERVICES EMPLOYER, then you really, truly, need to shut the hell up with the boomer-stories. That kind of bullshit is what leads so many people to go to law schools where they will never find a job.

The truth, and I daresay I am in a position to know this, considering I’m at, you know, the most powerful law school in existence, is that it is hard as holy hell, to make that 160,000$ a year, and you will mostly likely, hate your job and your life, while you are doing it. Precisely because your entire existence as a lemming in a giant pyramid scheme will be to ensure the status quo is maintained and to make old powerful rich people even more powerful and rich, at the expense of your life and health, until one day you find yourself old, powerful, and rich – but have devoted your life to furthering all the problems we have. Don’t believe me? Just read up on how satisfied with their lives all those lawyers are, despite making 300,000$+ a year.

All of this ranting was mainly to say, if you were confused as to why I would ever turn down a practical guarantee of so much money, it’s because of the reasons I just mentioned. So please, if you know me in real life, and if you want to accuse me of making a “mistake” by refusing to jump on the firm boat, prepare yourself for an argument.

I am, going to school to learn how to argue after all. 🙂

RANT OVER (Mostly)

So, with my huge self-righteous deluge out of the way. What does this mean?

Does it mean ole’ Taco will never have a job and has wasted three years of his life? Well, maybe, but that is unlikely. You see, while burning the EIP bridges makes you look sleezy to firms, it makes you look like King Arthur to public interest organizations, because it proves that you actually care about PI, to the point that you turned down a career lined with massive amounts of money.

Even though it looks good to PI people, I’ve still burnt a bridge, and a major bridge at that. You see, if you “Firmly Refuse” (as we PI people call it) to participate in EIP, then you are seriously taking a gamble. By essentially flipping the bird to the best firms, you are saying “I am PI, hear me roar.” Subsequently you are moving from a “Practically Guaranteed” job, to an “OMG I MUST APPLY TO ALL THE PLACES AND PRAY TO THE FLYING SPAGHETTI MONSTER” kind of job. Yes, here is the scary part. Of those few people who don’t get jobs at HYS, most of them were those who were trying to do Public Interest.

Because here is the secret. It’s easier to get a Firm job, because your life will suck. It’s incredibly difficult to get a public interest job, because they have no money. Yes, if there is one thing the good ole’ US of A does well, it’s put money in all the wrong places. The same is true for our legal system. Ever heard of public defenders? Yeah, those extremely important people who are essentially the backbone of legal defense for most of the United States. Yeah, those guys & gals who are required to not only be lawyers, but social workers, therapists, friends, and shoulders to cry on (if they want to be good PD’s anyway). Guess what? They make about 30,000$ on average. Yes, even the ones who live in places in LA and New York. But if you want to go merge some corrupt corporations, enjoy your 160,000$ + massive bonus (I’m talking up to 100% of your salary massive) + yearly raises of a minimum of 10,000$.

Get my drift?

The rich can pay new lawyers a lot of money, because no one would do their mind-numbing, no weekend, 12 hour a-day, every day work if they didn’t make a ton of money. Public Interest organizations on the other hand, which are the only area where lawyers report higher than average life satisfactions, are woefully underfunded, to the point that most of the time they can’t hire anyone, at any salary.

See where this is going? It’s harder to do good in the world. Funny how that works.

But I want to do good, namely I want to do good for the trees and the friends, because it’s entirely our fault that they suffer as they do. Call me a tree-hugger (I’m not), call me a liberal animal activist (I’m not, at least not in the same way that PETA is – I hate PETA, fyi), heck, call me misguided (I’m not), but it’s what I know I want to do. But its not an easy field to get into. So, I will have to work harder to make a comparatively pathetic amount of money compared to my classmates.

Its entirely likely, heck, its probable, that I will be in the solid bottom 1% of incomes for people coming out of Harvard. But that is ok. Because I’ll hopefully be doing what I want to do. Not what was easy to do and paid a lot.

Moving forward. I still have to find a job for next summer. See, unlike firms, there is no huge interview program where I can just roll out of bed and get employed. Nope, I have to apply the old fashioned way, and any expenses incurred will be mine to bear. I’ll also make about 1/7th of what my firm-bound classmates make in a summer. So us PI people not only have no interview program to the scale of EIP, we don’t even get to start trying to get jobs until after all the firm people are bragging about their employment. It’s pretty cool.

But, to Harvard’s credit, they have the first and largest career office devoted to public service (OPIA – Office of Public Interest Advising) of any law school. Plus, my advisor, Catherine Pattanayak, is freaking AMAZING and one of my most favorite people at the law school and she gives me candy, but not in the “come into my van” kind of way.

I’ll be sure to write more about the job search once it gets more underway. So far I’ve only applied to one place and my number one choice doesn’t even start take applications until October.

Anyways, this post turned into a bit of a rant, which I wasn’t anticipating. I just wanted to talk about my CORe exam and not doing EIP, but what can I say, I have feelings on the subject (Tramadol fueled feelings, but feelings nonetheless). So, in closing, I’ve burnt one heck of a bridge, but I haven’t regretted it for a moment.

May the bridges I burn light the way.

Until next time,
-Taco

Burning Exams & Bridges – Part I

August 27, 2015 by Taco

Update: This post gets A LOT of traffic and is by far the most visited post on this blog. It seems to be linked to my HBX CORe info/rant. If you are here for that, welcome! However, keep in mind that I was only the second cohort to go through the program, and the first law student cohort to ever go through it. So a lot of what I speak about below might be irrelevant or outdated now.
Update 2: So this post has continued to generate a lot of traffic and I get a lot of messages asking me for favors or information. As such I have separated this information out into two distinct posts, rather than just two parts. Part One is focused on HBX CORe, while Part Two part is more about what was going on in law school around that time. Part Two was a rant which was written to be tongue in cheek, so I’ve separated it out from the HBX CORe portion in Part One.
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Part One: Business(ish) School

Last night (8/25, so last night as of my writing this, not when it is posted) I finished my business school classes, courtesy of a 3 hour long exam. To be technically correct it was three, one hour long exams with 10 seconds of “break” in between them. There were no actual breaks, which meant if you needed to go to the restroom the clock kept ticking. Additionally, you could have no food or water. It was pretty awesome. Even the freaking LSAT lets you have a bottle of water.

So anyways, I don’t know if I ever actually explained my classes. Maybe I did, but if I did I’ve definitely slept since then so it doesn’t exist to me. So what were the classes I was (stupidly, more on that in a moment) taking this summer? Well, they were through the Harvard Business School, specifically from their “HBX Program.”

What is an HBX Program you might ask? Well, it literally just means “Harvard Business Online.” HBX is just the “online classroom” extension of the Harvard Business School. Traditionally HBS had no online classes as business schools were, ironically, slow to offer such things. HBX meant to rectify that, but it actually ended up expanding well beyond just a few rudimentary classes, in fact it turned into its own program. Eventually, HBX created the “CORe” platform (don’t ask why the “e” is lower case, I have no idea). HBX CORe might best be described as a “Baby MBA,” or as some have described it, all the difficult parts of an MBA program without all the fluff and cocktail parties. CORe consists of three courses: Financial Accounting, Business Analytics, and Economics for Managers. Each class is composed of “Modules,” which might best be described as “Chapters” and within each Module are sections, such as sections within a chapter. At the end of each module is a quiz. In addition to the Modules, there is an overarching “Weekly Assignment” which pulls from all three subjects (whereas the modules of each subject focus primarily on that subject, rather than broader topics). Then at the end of it all, you take the three exams.

You move through this 11-week long process with a “Cohort.” Apparently this is a thing for some Master’s programs, but I’d never heard of it prior to HBX. The Cohort is like your class. In my case, we had the largest cohort in HBX’s short history, I can’t remember how many there were exactly, but it was like 900 people. Since the Cohort is so large, they further divide you into Sections (kind of like law school). My section was “Mellon.” They were a bit opaque on just how large the sections were, but given the nature of the platform it doesn’t matter too much. The way a section mattered was that “Participation” was very much a part of CORe (arguably a huge part, since it heavily effects your grade). This meant that you had to answer cold calls, interact with people, respond to comments, engage in group projects and discussions (much to my massive dismay). So your section (for me Mellon), mattered in that they are the people you moved through the course with, and they are the people you will be graded against, rather than the Cohort as a whole.

So yeah, about that, CORe is curved, but unlike the hell-on-earth “hard” curves of law school, CORe uses the soft curves of a business school, which are much more similar to what you imagine when you think of a curve (in that the highest grade only sets the curve, it doesn’t set a hard failure floor with a set number of grades).

As mentioned, these classes are entirely online (except for the exam, which has to be taken at a Pearson center), which is why I was able to take them while in Denver. What this means is that you don’t interact with your professors in the same manner that you do your section-mates. Rather, you mainly just watch videos of your professors that are interlaced throughout the case studies you work through. That said, the professors are still the backbone of each course, even if you don’t ever actually speak to them, or email them, or have a chance to go to their office hours, or really prove to yourself that they aren’t robots, you get the drift. So who are the professors?

There are much better photos of them, but I like this one precisely because it’s not super staged. On the left, is Professor Bharat Anand. He teaches Economics for Managers (EM) which was my favorite class, and he was by far my favorite professor. In the middle is Professor Jan Hammond. She teaches Business Analytics (BA) which started off as my favorite class, but ended up being a freaking nightmare. I was not a fan of her voice. On the right is Professor VG Narayana. He teaches Financial Accounting (FA). Financial Accounting was just the middle ground between EM and BA, as was Professor Narayana between Anand and Hammond. But those are the people I stared at for 11 weeks.

Well, to be fair, I stared at data and information a lot more than them, as well as just the platform in general. When you first log in you go to the “Map” screen, which shows you who is logged in and from where, as well as any announcements or notifications you have.

My super secret identity revealed

From there, you progress to the “Course Dashboard” which is where your pick a class, start your modules, do the weekly assignment, etc.

As you can see, approximately 15% of my section failed to even finish the class, let alone those who finished but had dismal scores.

Beyond that screen, are the actual module screens, but I signed a thing saying that I wouldn’t distribute CORe material, so you don’t get to see where the magic actually happens, but trust me, unless you are interested in things like “Exploring Attribute Differentiation: A Multiple Regression Model” then you aren’t missing much (and yes, that is an actual module title).

So last night (8/25) I got to go to a lovely Pearson Center in central Boston, complete with more security than an airport. I have to have more IDs to take a test than you do to fly. Plus I have to do lots of little things, like getting my photo taken, getting my hand scanned, proving my phone is off, the list goes on and on. Its kind of comical really. If we cared as much about more pressing issues in our society as we do about people cheating on a stupid test then maybe things wouldn’t be so bad. But anyways, I digress. The biggest issue was 3 hours of no water, and also the room was freezing. But I got everything taken care of and passed my security trials and gathered Smitty Werben Man Jensen’s spatula and was able to start my back-to-back-to-back exams. I ended up finishing them all, with literally seconds to spare on each. But, I really don’t know how well I did.

It could be up to 60 days, from September 19th (the last day you can register for the exam) before I have my scores. I got zero feedback on the exam itself. So I could have got every single question wrong and I might not know it for nearly 3 months. I didn’t feel the best about the exams, but that didn’t surprise me because I didn’t have much time to study. I had banked a lot of time on studying before this past weekend (Lexington and Concord trip), but then, due to a massive bitchfest by the last-minute-lazies and a technical problem, they extended the course deadline by 24 hours (despite the site only being down 2 hours) which pushed back my ability to access the exam case study by 24 hours, effectively killing 50% of my study time, and since I had registered for the first day the exam was available, I was kind of screwed (oh and you of course can’t reschedule your exam unless you die). So I did not go into that exam as prepared as I would have liked and it showed, especially during Business Analytics. Across the three topics I had to guess, a lot. So, at this point I just have to hope that the curve is good to me and my fairly decent performance in the modules and in participation can carry me.

I actually don’t care what my grades are, so long as I pass by .01% I am good. If I don’t pass, I have to pay the full 1,800$ for the course. Yeap. The law school subsidized the cost down to 250$, but if I fail, I have to pay the full price. Fun times.

But it is done. And I would never, ever, do that again. To be fair, the largest issue was my HORRIBLE internet in Denver (GOD MY RAGE BUILDS JUST THINKING OF IT). But really, 12 credit hours of MBA-level materials, coupled with a 40 hour workweek, ~6 hours of commuting a week, living with strangers, and trying to explore a new city was just too much. Life lesson learned. It was a bad idea. And if I end up failing, it was also a bad idea that cost me 1800$. I’m glad I had something to keep me busy on most nights, but 3 credits would have accomplished the same thing, or you know, joining a club or something. Point is, don’t work 40 hours a week and take 12 credits from one of Harvard’s Professional Schools, just don’t do it. I’m not saying you can’t do it, I’m just saying its not good life management.

I’ll be sure to blog when I find out if I passed or failed. If I fail you’ll know because it will be a massive post of emu-darkness and seething, putrid rage. So kind of like a Deviant Art post, but just with no artwork. [Update: I passed everything, but one of my exam scores was LOL-bad, I’m talking 30th percentile bad].

Either way, HBX CORe is over, the exam is burnt and behind me.

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Part Two: Law School

So what about those burning bridges I also mentioned in the title? If you are interested in reading a law school-related post that is a weird hybrid of introspection and satire, then please continue to Part Two. If however, you are only here for HBX CORe, then my coverage of that experience ends here.

Until next time,
-Taco

Busy Bees in Fall

2L Week One (Burgers and Beers and Random Pies)

Back to School – 2L Begins

Burning Exams & Bridges – Part II

Burning Exams & Bridges – Part I

Search all of Dinosaur Bear

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