The First Day of School 2016-2017

Lu

ZZZ

My sleep this week

I'll Miss This

At quarter after midnight I called my Mom. She answered on the first ring, wide awake. That's something I'll miss decades from now.

I always enjoyed their sleep habits when they were on 18th, no matter the time of day or night, someone could be found wide awake LOL - Lisa

Pity Them

I feel a bit of pity - just a wee smidge - for those who don't relish an election year. The adversarial divisions, the angst , the nation's compulsive obsession with November and the abrupt end of it all on a cold Tuesday -- I relish it. I *wallow* in it? How can you not?

Smiley Quits Dance

Smiley has asked to quit dance and Lisa has acquiesced. I am in mourning. I don't raise quitters. I'm hoping he changes his mind.

[in response to a comment saying to let the kid do what he wants] That's entirely , fundamentally incorrect. If you only did what a kid wanted to do they'd do nothing all day but sit and watch TV - no school ,no extracurricular, no chores.

I'm in between on this.... Kids must be forced to do things they don't want to do, because they will grow up and have to do things they don't want to do all the time, better to get them used to it. But, I think his disinterest and ill feelings on dance has been growing stronger and therefore more legitimate and we need to support his decision. Hopefully he'll find something else physical soon to keep up his health. - Lisa

An Angry Morning

Holy shit** I woke up in a bad mood. In a prior life I would have just razed a village or burned a heretic at the stake to chillax, but since that's "frowned upon" nowadays, I'll just internalize it and die of stress by sixty.

The Nice Guys

Fun movie imo.

A medical update

I went to my physician today to follow up on the chest pain, but after a short wait he came out and told everyone in the waiting room there was a staffing problem and we'd have to reschedule. Swell. I wasn't going to wait and fret another week so I went to a local urgent care. A nurse hooked me up to an EKG and pronounced my sinus rhythm normal, showing no evidence of a heart attack, and said it was probably muscle strain combined with a bad panic attack. He said the dr wanted some more tests, and plopped me back in the waiting room. Ninety minutes later,still waiting but with class looming, I thought "F this" and bolted. I'm going with the panic attack/muscle strain theory, and thus will happily resume both gym and romantic activity.

My Thoughts

The American Bar Association has proposed withholding accreditation to any law school that has less than 75% of its graduates pass the bar exam within two years of graduation. The National Black Law Students Association has objected, expressing concerns it will negatively affect minority schools. In my opinion, the NBLSA stance only promotes the idea that minorities are incapable of doing the job unless given preferential treatment, which is insulting and ridiculous - and presumably not the organization's desired goal.

[in response to someone who commented that minority students attended simply to learn enough to defend their rights, not to work as attorneys] No one attends law school, at the cost it is, to simply know their rights. It's financial suicide. And the 75% pass rate applies ONLY to graduates that sit for the bar. In your scenario, the school wouldn't have an issue because those casual learners would not count toward the statistic. Law school is a trade school. A phenomenally expensive one, but a trade school. A school that fails more than a quarter of their graduates serves no one well, least of all the student mired in debt.

I think those are points are well said but merely rationales for the institutional failure. Arguing against the bar exam seems to occur, no surprise, only when the inability to conquer it threatens the livelihood of an academic institution. Even if it was the worst gateway possible, which I don't believe it is, it is THE gateway to the job, and you know that going in. Mandate part of a L3's curriculum be devoted to bar prep - one credit perhaps - and be done with it. And as near as I can tell from following tales of woe in The National Jurist over the last few years, there are schools that deserve to lose accreditation.