3 p.m.

So, I mentioned that I was working on my Motion to Compel Discovery (again...whatever that means). As of 3 p.m. today I had put about seven days and fifteen hours into an eight-page paper that is only worth 5% of my grade. Many of my classmates claim that they were not putting a lot of effort into it because it was only worth 5%. I don't believe them. These are the same people who "just don't want to be lumped into the middle of the class" with the rest of us commoners. So today I was feeling pretty good: I had the motion written. The only thing left to do was to revise. So at 3 p.m. today, I thought: This might be the boost in my grade I needed since all of the other 10 percenters were slacking on this particular paper. Uh...WRONG.

At approximately 3 p.m. today I just happened to re-read the instructions: Eight page limit. Check. One-inch margins. Got it. Double-spaced. Duh. Times New Roman. I hate Arial. Check. Check. And ...Check. Write in favor of the Defendant. Defendant? Defendant???? DEFENDANT??? Holy....freaking...crap! I had just spent seven days and fifteen hours researching cases and writing in support of the Plaintiff.

My heart dropped. I cried. I think I yelled at Jackson. I panicked. Ten minutes later I finally took a deep breath. The paper was due at 6 p.m. sharp; no exceptions. I furiously began writing and revising. My whole argument was wrong! The only thing that kept me from completely flipping out was the 5% price tag attached to the paper, but I still flipped out because I needed that 5%. This was my chance to get over on Sally (FLASHBACK: Sally was my fictional character in my pre-Atmospheric Science classes ...definitely an engineering student...that always set the curve), but once again Sally still had the edge.

I won't write about my two hours of furiously writing and changing "can" to "cannot" and "does" to "does not" to satisfy my argument in favor of the Defendant. In the end, I covered my mistake with a band-aid: It won't cover the whole injury. It will eventually come off. When you pull it off it hurts. And when the injury still exists, which inevitably it will because a band-aid is not a cast, you still have a cut.

Law school is an EXPERIENCE. Just when you think, "I'm smart." "I GOT this." Law school is there to tell you: "No" and "No...you don't."