School - AGAIN

My 2nd year of law school is about to begin on August 18th. Mason starts back to school the same day (2nd grade) and he's excited as well. I feel fortunate to have made it through my grueling first year of law school, but I also feel that I didn't live up to my potential. I was very busy with work, the kids and a new found family crises. Although those items aren't going away, I at least think I'm in a better place to navigate around these obstacles for school and end up high in the class rankings.

My classes this year are:
Civil Procedure - Monday
Criminal Procedure - Tuesday
Real Property - Thursday

TOUR DE FRANCE time

The 2008 Tour de France is underway and as always it's been entertaining. If you want to watch or listen to it online the best site to visit is www.cyclingfans.com. I will try and put some links to what I use also.

Mike, Rob and myself will also be picking the finishing placings and we already have two days results under our belts. Today's stage is the 6th stage and here are our picks. (Rob has failed to pick anyone yet...I'll make his picks today)

Mike:
Ricco
Frank Schleck
Stein Devolder

Tyler:
Stefan Schumacher
Kim Kirchen
Valverde

Rob (via Tyler)
Cunego
Menchov
Millar

Law School - one year done

My first year of Law School is now complete with Criminal Law, Contracts, Torts and Professional Responsibility. Criminal Law final took place in February (I passed) and the other three classes concluded in mid May. Just yesterday I received my Torts grade for the final and my overall score. I PASSED! I did well on the final and just "okay" overall; But since my midterm score wasn't good at all I am very pleased. Now I just have to wait for the results on Contracts and Professional Responsibility. I felt pretty good about both of those tests and I had a good grade going into the final.

There isn't much time to rest however, as Monday (06/02/08) I start in with summer elective classes. I think I'll be taking Family Law and Bankruptcy Law. This will work me over pretty well as the classes only go for a month but are M-Thur (each class being two nights a week).

Stay tuned.

Tax Day

Taxes are due today. I can't wait to see a few broadcasts tonight showing people dropping off their forms at the post office at midnight. Why are these people not filing their taxes online?

I thought a Ronald Reagan quote was appropriate for today ~

Republicans believe every day is the Fourth of July, but the democrats believe every day is April 15.

Tour of California - 2008

Stage 1 - 2008 TOC. Awaiting the field at the sprint spot in Tamales, CA. (John, Mike, Rob and Tyler). We rode from Sausalito, 55 miles.

Criminal Law Final - DONE!

Our first final was last night in Criminal Law. We had 3 questions to finish in 2hrs and 15 mins (45 min each) and the test was worth 70% of the overall grade. It felt like it went really well as I completed it with time to spare (to clean up the test and fix mistakes) and after talking to my classmates I felt that I hit all the issues and with some depth to my analysis. Hopefully I did good enough and it would be great if I did really well.

Now I have a few months until my Contracts and Torts finals.

Midterm update and Finals prep

We have got all our midterm grades back now and here is my breakdown. Just a note: the midterms are only worth between 25% to 30% of the overall grade and the remaining 70-75% will be left for the final. So a poor midterm won't really break your chances if you do well on the final. By the same token, you don't want to do so poorly on the midterm that you are forced to do overwhelmingly well on the final (which seems impossible).

I passed my Criminal Law midterm and did the best on Contracts. Torts, however, I did the worst on and I am at the low end of passing. I made some stupid mistakes on the Torts midterm, so that grade is very much salvagable. Also, the Torts midterm was only 25% and therefore the final is big.

On February 6th, I have my Criminal Law final. I am feeling prepared. We are encouraged to turn in previous exams to our professor and he will grade them. I've been getting high B's on them, so now I just need to transform that to the actual test. Wish me luck!