It never ends!

I have not posted in a while because my plate is never endingly full. Jessup finished. Left a gapping whole of empty in my previously Jessup occupied life but then work filled it. Check out the post on survivelaw.com that pretty much outlines what happened.

I am only just getting into the Law Student Society where I am a competitions director this year (I underestimated the sheer amount of work that will need to go into this). I have started to try and get through the work but every time I go to log into an account the freaking password has been changed – this is bugging the poop out of me.

Amungst this I am Torts Peer Mentoring again, but it is something I genuinely enjoy. Law school goes back on Monday, I am so not ready for it 

I am still loving my job. Many funny little stories such as almost knocking myself out with the ‘dolly’ while moving floor in the building. I have been given a desk that is mine, ALL MINE! This is kind of a big deal, since I was sharing with someone who worked organised chaos! You know the type, a thousand documents on the desk but they know where everything is. Whilst I prefer the 5 file on the desk max rule.

Also and further, I will attempt to being posting once a week (LOLS).

Jumping Jessup Stress

Jessup memorials have been handed in, I have jumped out of a plane, closed a million dollar sale, been smacked down in court and yet the adrenalin that was pumping before it was due was just as insane if not more so.

Some highlights:

It expired when?

We have access to the tea and coffee room after hours, this is a good thing as we needed to be fuelled on caffeine beyond the normal end of semester/exam period. One morning a team member said ‘this coffee tastes like dirty Windex’ this particular brand of instant coffee is actually pretty damn good, so it needed some investigating.



Note the expiry on that bad boy …. It expired TEN years ago! No wonder it tasted horrible..

Why you no smell?

When you don’t leave the law library for about 4 days people tend to get a little funky. This team has hygiene down to a fine art. I was sent for supplies that included; towels, soap, tooth brushes and paste, conditioner, and other assorted shower goodies. However, by the time we have access to the shower it was only cold water. Fun stuff, it worked out in the end as after a cold, cold shower we were all WIDE AWAKE. Showering at about 3am at the university was interesting; it felt like some twisted academic boot camp.

I AM GOING TO KILL YOU

We are generally a pretty cohesive team, when the memorials are due in 1 hour and stuff is still not started tempers and thresholds for bullshit runs a little low. I am not, I repeat NOT a violent person, however this twerp was so close to pushing me over the edge. All is good now but I will never, ever work with this person ever again.

Not over yet.

Now the oral practice beings.
Again, it feels like we are starting at the bottom of a long climb up massive mountain.

In other news (Kitchen talk)

I finally did it, three years of silently copping my head chefs bad temper and snarky attitude and I lost it. This is the moment I have been playing out in my head for years. It went almost to plan, almost. I grabbed a huge roll of plastic wrap and SLAMED it down on the bench, got it attention and (here it where it deviates from the plan) said a few coherent words to the effect of ‘enough, stop acting like a child, enough throwing pans, fucking grow up’ then I started making sounds miming out the his bad attitude… yup any effect I had at that point was lost as I looked like a crazy person who had lost his mind. Smooth.

However I did save my dignity as a person afterwards, when he asked if ‘everything is all good’ I told him, in a calm even tone how this was not a onetime offence, his behaviour is grossly out of line and it affects everyone in the kitchen and to check himself.  There is much more to it but this is a law blog not a ‘I hate hospitality’ page.


Back to the wondrous fun that is Jessup (this is a lie, I am lying. There is nothing wondrous about this competition)

Also. Mr Ovum came out. Things went O.K not badly, not well either. The Mother is the issue, but she will come around in time.

Jumping Jessup

Jessup owns me

If I am not in the library working on the migraine that is Jessup I am at home thinking about how I should be at uni working on Jessup. Even my dreams have been pervaded with dreams of pleading tables, international law and how grossly under prepared we are.

Uni Results were released, I passed… just, actually 2/3rds of the year failed trusts but then they bell curved it and I only passed by 1%. That freaked me out quite a bit, usually I get great marks but this was a terrible experience I never want to repeat.

I know where I went wrong, I assisted in court for a few weeks full time in the pointy end of semester and worked extra days through SWOTVAC (because I was asked to). However I don’t think I would change it, the actual hands on experience was worth it.

My pitiful marks:

Trusts: Pass

Property B: Pass

Policing diversity: Pass

Crime Prevention: Credit

WTF! A credit for crime prevention? Two assessments where all I did was 2 days before it was due was look at the power points briefly, check the criteria sheet and then start bullshitting… what a joke.

Christmas was good, until I went to Mr. Ovums house and was introduced as the ‘house mate’, four years and they still don’t know, they should but they honestly don’t. Mr. Ovum plans to tell them in the next few days that should be interesting to say the least…

I have been voted onto the Law Student Society as a competitions director for 2012, if nothing else it should be lots of fun. Out of 40 something votes I got 30 something. All the people vying for the position got up and spoke for 2 minutes on why they should be elected. I had nothing prepared (why so surprised?) spoke about how much I enjoy mooting and how this excitement would come through in how I went about by position. It worked.

I find all the good things that have been happening to me a touch funny, you see these things were never supposed to happen, not to me. I am not a stellar student, I procrastinate and never sew myself being ‘one of those students’ but here I am. Trying to keep it together and not have it all blow up in my face in a spectacular manner.

Back to the mind rape that is Jessup – Obiter

More than I can handle

The job generally is really, really good. The team I am with is both supportive and fun, could not ask for a better position. However I was given the option of being sent to a different town for a month and being ‘instructing clerk’ for a large trial. How could I say no! Even though it is the pointy end of semester and I have more that I can poke two sticks at anyway. But I like to cause myself as much stress as possible so the obvious answer was HELL YES!

I regret that. Now I have the ICC moot, Jessup, trying to write weekly for Survivelaw.com, Exam notes and preparation on top of being in a different city 4 nights a week. If work was only 7-5 or court hours it would be fine, but as I am living with the barristers I am their bitch 24 hours a day. I loathe it. There are two barristers a Senior who has been practicing for 20 years and a Junior who has been doing it for a whopping six months. The Junior is making my life a living hell it goes beyond the arrogance of the barrister and solicitor crap to a personal level where he treats me like scum. I have worked with horrible people but this douche takes the cake.

I am so eager to make both of them happy tho, I do not have any carriage of the case so in court the best I can do is hand them pens or a folder if I can find it first. Because of my almost total uselessness I am going over and above in every respect and the Junior is abusing it and me. The result is I am very, very highly strung and it is taking its toll. I have managed to leave the Senior barristers luggage somewhere that was not the unit, so he had no clothes in the morning…oh yeah I fucked up.

Then the week was peppered with other minor mistakes the Junior has blown out of proportion in a bid to get me the sack (this guy is apparently a homophobe). But the best one is where I crashed the work car into the car front of me on the way to court, to be fair it was only a bump and there was no major damage caused. However the Jnr is crying whiplash, he even had me book a doctor’s appointment for him... what a cock. The thing that really gets me is that I was sure my foot was on the break! Stupid European car, my car may be a bomb but it least I know how firm the peddle is when you break to a stop.

I hate this so much. I have had a really good run of things the past few months but everything is now taking a turn for a not-so-good. I am sure I will bounce back, I always do but I am just not feeling it right now.

There has been so much good stuff I wanted to blog about but I have not time 
I have too much to do to be writing a blog – Obiter Ovum

I did this to myslef. I did this to myself. I did this to myself

The moot problem came out. It just had to be a criminal case didn't it?! Torts I could ace, Contracts I would deal with, Property I would survive but Criminal, that is just cruel.

I have a love hate relationship with the criminal code, it has been like that since first semester last year. On the other hand this time I actually care about the issues and I am probably learning a whole lot more about the issues than I did in a very, very superficial way when I was actually getting marked on the subject.

When I read the problem I had little panic attacks that went a little like this.

Good Law Student Obiter: This is great, see a problem get overwhelmed then work your way through it bit by bit. What a great experience.

Bad Law Student Obiter: SH*T! what have you done? you have all this work to do without this crap to add to it. Anyhow your barely smart enough to bluff your way through classes, what do you think is going to happen when your under the spot light being quizzed on stuff your too dense to wrap your head around?

Good Law Student Obiter: Well on the weekend you read an entire book on mooting skills. Between the book and what you learned last time it has to be better. You will be more prepared and under control. GO TEAM!

Bad Law Student Obiter: Just shut the hell up! do you know what you got yourself into? Remember last year? First question from the bench 'what is conversion' and you honestly had no idea...none. Your screwed.

Good Law Student Obiter: Rah, Rah, Rah GO TEAM! Because of last year you will never forget that conversion is the dealing with goods in a manner inconsistent with the rights of the true owner!

Bad Law Student: Misery loves wine, drink red bull then have a wine.


Kinda a bit pissy, definitely a lot hypo right now - Stoopid cases on common purpose need to be understood if I am not going to publicly humiliate myself... again.

Where did that come from?

Yesterday I was looking out the kitchen window at the park across the road, a care taker was removing tree limbs from the creek. He looked happy. I thought I could be happy doing that kind of work. fleeting thougths of throwing it all in and calling it a really long bad joke ran through my head.

Today while sitting in the libary it felt like it was all over, like I had failed and it was time to leave. I got really depressed (for about 5 minutes).

Not ready for this to be over.

Guess first year wasn't the only time is all feels too much - Obiter

Maybe I just need some sleep...

My default attitude is happy and optimistic, right now, not so much.

I am only in year 2 of 5.5 so I have a while to go before I get to honestly stress out about where my career will take me. However I have goals, I hate not reaching goals.

The reason I am in law school is because ultimately it is a skill that people will pay for. As a salesman I would often work very, very hard for a client and have it all blow up in my face "oh, sorry XYZ firm had a better product, I am not ready to go any further right now, I just want to think about it" all common objections that I would often be able to work around. I am not a 'gun' sales person, however I have great at building rapport and relationships. Still you can put hours and hours into a deal only for it to go nowhere. With legal skills they pay you for a knowledge they don't have/abilities they don't have the training for. Early in my working life I discovered a deep seated dislike of working for others, hard work to make some other person wealthy. I hated it.

Being realistic, I understand I will have to put some time in to working for a firm before starting my own. Its that small period that gives me the shivers. I am not a brilliant,top achieving student. I am a credit student, and I hear stories about the 6.7 GPA (.3 from the very top) not getting jobs, or the 5.5 student still working in the place they were when at uni. It scares me. If I am not a brilliant student should I really be considering opening my own? All these questions I am so uncertain about.

'Your going to spend 5.5 years of your life for nothing' is going through my head a lot recently. I am sure it will pass. Over the summer I have an unpaid clerkship lined up, more than most of my cohort I guess. Next year I go back to 50% law 50% other degree, that will be good for my mental health.

Taking a nap in the hope of waking up with a better attitude - Obiter

What is stress and pressure?

Stress and pressure is:

1 x Client File
1 x Research log
2 x Client Memo
1 x Advocasy
1 x Criminal back up

All due in the next two weeks. I would be on edge as it is with all that due, but to top it off, Mr. Ovum wants to go away for three days for his birthday. I have had to shuffle my working days to get the weekend off, this means on the week most of the stuff is due I am working full time. Last semester I took time off and it finacially screwed me, unlike most of my fellow students, I am not getting a cent of help from the government (who recognise gay couples only so far as to not entitle us to help if we are de'facto - thanks..) so I have to support myself 100%. I have family commitments thown in there as well. I am on the verge of a melt down..

On the other hand I went to the law ball... I promise to blog ALL ABOUT THAT later (some twats were honest to god smoking cigars and gwaffling)

Feel like I have been micowaved - Obiter

Yeah.. well, I think your a princess...

The heat is on and my patience has run away with my mind.

In 20 days I have 5 pieces of assessment due, does not sound too bad.. but on top of normal classes, 25-30 hours a week of crumbing schnitzels, the law ball, maintaining a relationship and everything else, there is not much time left to play house keeper.

I use the kitchen, quite a bit. I am also the only one who cleans the kitchen up after everyone else. The last few days there has been no time. The flat mate who we will call Princess Bambi as he is the stereotype of gay that many people believe gay men are* (clean and neat freaks, this guy uses a saucer when he has his herbal tea...wtf), is throwing little bitch fits. I apologised for the messy kitchen and all I got was a filthy look...

I wanted to scream the following:

When did you last scrub the shower - never
Clean the toilet - never
Sweep/vacuum the floors - once... 5 months ago!
Mop the floors - NEVER!
Who cleans every inch of this house because you and Mr. Ovum are lazy and think that all the mess is made by anyone but yourselves? ME!!

Give me a *&^ing break you little twat (bring on the google hits).

Yes in the time I took to write this blog I could have washed a dish or two someone else dirtied, but that does not give me the same satisfaction as this little rant has.

limiting the cutlery, glasses and dishes to one of each - Obiter

* Princess Bambi is an ex-dancer, is about 5ft nothing, has a serious superiority compelx and a nasty attitude.