Capturing Time

(I really liked how Sarah included photos in her post, so I was going to do that too, but then most of my items ended up being things I didn't actually physically have, so I decided not to bother)

The first item I would put in would be a list of all my best friends that I hope I'm still friends with in 10 years, along with photographs of all of them to remind me just how much I love them, and their current contact information in case I need to try to track them down. That way even I'm not in touch with some of them any more I can reminisce about all the good times I had, and try to get in touch with them to catch up.

I would want to put in a copy of my last NaNoWriMo novel. This would remind my future self that this is what I wan to be doing. Also hopefully it will be a reminder to her of how far she's come (and besides, maybe she'll actually be able to do something worthwhile with it).

I would put in this gavel I have that's made of duct tape. It's from where I worked last summer, a lot of people had summer birthdays and we had a tradition of giving everyone presents made of duct tape, so at the end of the summer they gave all the students a duct tape present that was somehow related our education/interests. So I got a gavel. I want to put it in my time capsule in case my future self needs a reminder that I was at one point excited about going to law school and that I was a bit of an idealist about it and how I was going to help people. Plus it would remind me of that job and those people and all of the duct tape shenanigans and the silly pranks.

I would also include a copy of my first ever YouTube video. Joining a collab channel was a pretty spontaneous decision and I was really nervous about it at first. But it ended up being a lot of fun, and I've become good friends with the other people involved and no one has said (yet) that my videos were stupid or anything like that. So it's a good reminder that sometimes I just need to be brave and put myself out there.

And the last one would be my jar of shells and beach glass. I've always lived very close to the ocean, and I can't imagine ever living far away from it. I want my future self to remember that, and plus they'll be a comfort to her if she isn't living near the ocean. Also most of them I collected during a beach day with some friends, so they have nice nostalgic memories, too.

I feel like there should probably be more things to go in there, but that's all I can think of for now, so I guess that will have to do.

Some Musings on Exams

I'm going to come clean about something here: I enjoy writing exams.

I hate everything leading up to them. I hate the studying. I hate all the stress. I hate the pressure of having most or all of my mark come from a single evaluation. I hate not knowing what's going to be waiting for me in the exam room.

But once I get there, that all fades away. It's just the right amount of pressure to push me to an ideal mental state. When it comes down to just me and the exam, it's nothing but a fun academic puzzle that I get to sort out. I love it.

I'm especially enjoying exams right now because most of my classes are 100% finals, so I haven't had many opportunities to test my knowledge over the course of the term. But now, when I went in to write those exams, I had the sudden, whooshing realization that I actually did learn a lot of stuff this year. It was really satisfying, especially since I've been questioning all year whether law school was the right decision, and that realization went a long way toward making the decision feel justified.

I also had this moment while I was in the exam room where I just became very aware of everyone around me and how hard all the 100 or so people in the room working at that moment. Everyone, at the same time, pouring their knowledge onto the page, answering the same questions, seeking the same answers. Even though it is a competition, even though everyone hopes at least a little bit that everyone else does poorly to push themselves higher up the curve, at that moment it really felt like we were all in it together. Whatever differences we had throughout the year, whatever anyone thinks of anyone else, when we were in that exam room, we were all on the same team, we all wanted the same thing. It was a really powerful and positive feeling and I wish that education, or even just life, could have moments like that more often.

Catch-up

Well, since I didn't post the last time we had a free week, I guess I'll do a little update on my life in the past few months.

Law school got a lot harder this semester. Apparently after first semester we're supposed to "get the hang of it" and be able to do more work in the same amount of time, but that's just not how things work. Yes, I've gotten used to reading cases and can work through them a little bit faster than when we first started out, but it's not a significant enough difference to make up for the amount of extra work they've piled on. It does help somewhat that everyone else seems to be just as overwhelmed and stressed out as I am, so at least we're all in it together.

This semester we have to do a "moot court," which is basically a fake court exercise where we're the lawyers and one of our profs is the judge. I'm really nervous about it, but at the same time it's nice that we're getting at least a bit of a taste of what it's actually like to be a lawyer. At the moment, though, it's mostly just stressful, because the written part of it is due on Friday and I'm not nearly as far along as I should be.

Other than school, I haven't been up to a whole lot. A few weeks ago I went out of town for a few days to go to a friend's housewarming party. He's 22 and has been out of university for less than a year, so I'm super impressed that he has a house already, and he's the first one in our group of friends to buy a house, so it seemed like a big enough occasion to justify the trip.

Next week is my reading week and I'm really excited. It turns out that a bunch of my friends at different universities all ended up having our break at the same time, so a few of them that are normally in far away parts of the country are coming home for the week, and I'm looking forward to seeing them. Plus I'm pretty keen on the chance to get caught up both on school work and sleep!

Anyway, I guess that's it for me. I hope everyone is doing well, and that you all had a lovely Valentine's Day.

There are a lot of things that I know I should do, but I don't.

Some of them I don't do because I'm just plain lazy.

I know that I should get more exercise, both for the health benefits, and because the endorphins will help increase happiness and reduce stress, which would probably make some of the other things on this list easier.

I know I should start doing homework (especially major things like studying for exams) ahead of time so that I don't end up scrambling at the last minute, but I just have a really hard time motivating myself to start things when it feels like I still have lots of time left.

Other things I don't do because I'm too busy.

In this category, mostly I don't spend enough time with my friends.  I know I should see them more, and I'm always happy when I do see them, but I have a hard time justifying taking the time off when I always seem to have a massive to do list hanging over my head.

There are a lot of things that I don't do because I'm too scared.

Fear gets in the way of my social life a lot.  I eat lunch quietly in the atrium before rushing into the library, instead of going to the student lounge to hang out with everyone else.  When I go into classes I tend to sit down in the first empty seat I see, rather than looking around to see if there are any seats near the people that I know and sometimes hang out with.  And I don't like to go to any of the big social events organized by the school because they all tend to be the loud-noisy-crowded-drunken-mingly type things and I get too worked up about people being in my personal space and I worry that I won't know anyone there or that the people I do know will have more interesting people to talk to and that somehow I'll end up hovering around awkwardly by myself.  So that's probably something I should work on.

There are also things that I avoid doing for all three of these reasons.

Mainly, this is creative things, like writing.  I really love writing and I enjoy doing it and in my idealistic dream world I would be able to make a career of it someday, but I really don't do it very often.  Partly I'm too busy and always prioritize my schoolwork first.  Partly I'm too lazy and just don't write because it's so much easier to use my downtime to watch TV.  Partly I'm too scared that I'm never going to be good enough and I'll never make it as a writer and so I just don't do it because that way I'll never have to confront failure.

Okay, I feel like my post was angsty too.  Maybe this is just a really angsty theme.

Where I'm At

As of the beginning of September, I moved back out of my parents' basement and returned to Halifax.  This is a good thing.  I love my parents, and it's not like they're strict or even tried to control my life in any way at all, but after being independent for several years, moving back in with them was kind of brutal.  So I'm glad to be back out on my own.

Most of friends graduated with me last year, and have moved away to jobs/further education in other parts of the province/country/world, including both of my roommates.  And all of the friends who did stick around kept the same living arrangements as they had before, which left me kind of stuck for housing options.  I considered living completely on my own, and that was always the back-up plan, but I'm scared that if I lived alone I would just become a complete hermit, and never leave home except to go to class, and talk to myself all the time, and fall out of touch with all of my friends, and just generally not be in a good state of mental health.  So instead I moved into a house where all the rooms are rented out separately, meaning that I now live with three total strangers.  Well, I guess they're not entirely strangers any more, since we've lived together for a few weeks, but it's still weird.  They're all really nice, but it still seems odd to be living with them.  Living with strangers is just a completely different way of life than living with friends (or parents).

I love the house, though.  It's bigger than my old apartment, and it's above ground instead of in a basement, so having enormous windows in my room feels like such a luxury and I love it.  Also there's a nice backyard with a deck, and the "furnished downstairs" includes a PIANO in the dining room, which is really exciting.  Plus it's closer to campus than my old place, which is nice (and will be even nicer once winter hits, I'm sure).

Of course, the reason I'm back in Halifax at all is because I've just started law school, which is also weird.  I can't even decide yet whether or not I like it.  It's just all so completely different than anything I've studied before that it's hard to get my head wrapped around it.  On the bright side, I was sort of expecting the profs to be strict and stern but they're totally just regular profs, and the other students aren't as competitive and snobby as I was afraid they would be, so that's all good.

Other than that, at the end of summer my friends and I went on our annual backwoods camping trip, which was excellent, and we went for five days instead of just three like we usually do, so it was extra-excellent.  This past weekend I went rock-climbing for the first time, which was fun but also difficult and somewhat frustrating.  I would really like to go again, because by the time I felt like I was starting to figure out the strategy and technique side of it, I was getting too physically tired to actually do it.  Also this weekend I went to the Word on the Street Festival and appreciated all the books and all the book/writing/literacy related organizations and all the people being interested in and excited about books, and I picked up a copy of Ransom Riggs' Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, which I'm really excited to start reading.

I think that is everything important (and a bunch of things that aren't).