Much Ado about To Do's by Violet

July has been a complete whirlwind experience. Somehow, all of my to do lists for the summer have gone straight out the window. I think the main reason being that I expend all of my intellectual energy at work and then simply want to sleep and eat and run when I get home from work. Well that is all going to change today. Today I am going to be super productive when I get home, and bring the same work attitude home with me- with the assistance of caffeine of course.

At my clerkship I usually knock out a couple of small projects today and chip away at the large research projects that keep my open hours still busy. Not only do I research specific issues, but today for instance, I put together a spreadsheet of all the expenses and incomes of a guardianship proceeding (something my MBA comes in quite handy for- now if they could only know of the potential benefits of my power point expertise). I also looked up to see how to get a Oklahoma joint counsel attorney licensed for the 9th circuit court of appeals in Beaumont. But the majority of my day I spent researching constructor’s liability limitations in RCLA, the Residential Construction Liability Act- one of the less interesting projects that I have worked on while here. But I still love the work, reading, reading, writing, and more reading. So now, I want to project that “love” of doing something, to my to do list.

1. Study for the MPRE: In two weeks and a day, I take the MPRE, the ethics portion of the Texas Bar Exam. Most people take this right after they take the Bar, but I wanted to get it over with, and study when I had the time. I’ve been half-ass studying for about an hour or 45 minutes a day for the last 2 weeks, skipping only two days- I think. I need to kick in gear, listen to online lectures and work practice problems. I should be just as enthused to do this as I am to kick start a work project given to me by a partner.

2. Clean my room: I am a full fledged mess. My room continuously looks like not only a tornado went through it, but 4 other natural disasters of different proportions and effects. It was more exacerbated by the May move of my brother into the room where I normally kept half of my junk. Yes, May, three months ago. So another goal of mine for the past two week has been to put up a little of my room every day: throw away sheets of paper, hang up clothes, run loads of laundry. But what actually ends up happening is the very next morning I throw all of the clothes on the floor getting ready that I hung up the previous night. So it’s a constant state of disarray. And it’s not even to a point where I could hire someone to give it a once around- I don’t think anyone would actually be able to get in there to do that. Hi, my name is violet, and I’m a hoarder.

3. Read for Practice Court: My hardest two quarters of law school are only 4 weeks away. I can already feel the fire and hear the gnashing of teeth. I don’t normally get intimidated by other’s warnings that something is “hard” or “stressful”, and usually wait to find it out for myself, while working a part time job. Practice Court, or PC as it is more affectionately termed, is different. I have been hearing the woes of PC since I was considering Baylor law school in undergrad. And I have to say, I have lived with a PC student, been friends with many, and they look like absolutely death for the 18 weeks that they are put through this education hell. My friend Brent Ivy, would actually throw up in the mornings before 7:45 class because he was so terrified of being kicked out of class. Two girls last semester were actually carted away from the room because they fainted when called on. The two practice court professors actually make grown men cry during class. Every night a range of 100-400 pages of reading is assigned, on top of advocacy exercises that take anywhere from 4-10 hours extra starting at 4 in the afternoon once or twice a week, this is besides the 5-8 hours of school a day (depending how long the professors keep you). And the kicker is that if you do get called on, and you do not perform to the expectation of the professor on that day, you receive a memo, which is a write up on the subject that you could not effectively expound upon- these are then re-written again and again until the professor is satisfied with the answer. Needless to say, I desperately need to get a head start on the reading so I can work away the nerves of the unknown.
I have been telling my family about this anxiety ever since summer starter but no one in my family ever believes me- they think I am crying Wolf- or channeling Chicken Little. But I found a write up of a recent Baylor Lawyer graduate that explains the experience very similar to all the stories I have heard:
“If you spend a few minutes researching Baylor Law you will undoubtedly uncover the mantra, “Baylor Law School is the boot camp of law schools.” The Princeton Review first wrote that line in their brief summary of the law school. At most law schools, the third year is the easiest, but at Baylor the third year is by far the most intense, because all students are required to spend two quarters in “Practice Court.” Practice Court is the crown jewel of Baylor’s juris doctorate program, consisting of about six months of exceedingly intense study of civil procedure, evidence, and all aspects of trial procedure. In the program, students frequently have daily reading assignments in excess of 300 pages (and when we are talking about statutes and cases, that takes a long, long time to read). At the same time, there are trial exercises to prepare the students to handle all aspects of trying a case. When a student graduates from Baylor Law School they know precisely what to do from the time a client walks into the office door, to filing the paperwork for a trial, to participating in discovery, to selecting a jury, to trying the case, to writing the jury charge, and even what motions to file once a judgment has been rendered. Baylor students know not only the law and theory behind all of those aspects, they actually done it. There are few educational experiences that will define and shape who you are and how you perform the way that Practice Court does. At times, the tremendous work load is feels like it is simply hazing—when I sit down with any Baylor Law graduate, the first thing we always do is compare Practice Court stories (for example, I once heard this exchange: “Well, you may have gone three straight days without sleep, but when I was in Practice Court, the old Professor Underwood became so irritate when I couldn’t dictate a proper ‘no-evidence motion for summary judgment’ that he threw his coffee cup across the room! He called on me for the next five straight classes!”).
- AND THIS IS A POSITIVE SLANT! I hope you all are feeling very bad for me right about now. I will be expecting food delivered to me in the Fall.


So my to do list turned into a worry list, at least it will light a fire under my butt and get me to be active once I get home. My mom often makes fun of me, because in my head, if I think about the “to do” action, I sometimes cross it off as done, just because I have given it a single thought. The actual doing is the hard part for me- I can make lists all day long. I simply cannot waste time sleeping anymore, I need to ACTUALLY do my TO DO's.