-8 days until graduation!!! in My life

It is officially over!!!

Funny, I thought I would write more once I graduated and then here I am, still stuck. Technically, it’s not like anyone really depends on my writing for their livelihood or whatever so really, no harms done if I don’t write. I’m not even a good writer. Look at that previous sentence. Why am I a lawyer? Or about to be. Well, I have recently learned that being a lawyer is a lot about just plagiarizing the heck out of things. One of my law professors, a rather cynical one actually, said that a lawyer who didn’t plagiarize committed malpractice. And it is so true. I’ve heard that advice so many time in different variations: “Don’t reinvent the wheel”; “Never start writing from a blank page” etc. The more I heed it, the better of I would be. If I find myself being stuck on something, I should rather google up some standard language. Recently when I’m drafting orders for my judge, I have learned to just look up similar cases on Lexis and copy the exact language, citations included, written by those appellate courts. Why bother if someone has done all the research for me? Ah, Lexis. What would I do without Lexis? I cannot fathom having to say goodbye to Lexis one day. Courts use Westlaw, and I’ll be with the court for about a year at least. Maybe big law firms give their lawyers access to both Lexis and Westlaw but I’ll never be in big law.

Anyway, really, where was I? I decided that if I’m to journal I would have to do the stream of consciousness thing like this, which infinite tangent lines and who knows where they will all lead. I really don’t have a talent for writing and I guess that’s why I just had to drop out of philosophy grad school, but then I enrolled in law school, which was another writing-intensive track. It definitely hasn’t been as bad as grad school, though (okay, other aspects are 100x worse like the fact that I absolute have have no passion for the law, whereas I did have a passion for philosophy; but regarding writing, writing has been a lot easier). When writing research papers I felt like I had to write my own sentences, my own expressions. In law, not so much. It’s important to tailor your language to the particulars of the case, certainty, but it’s as much important to have a lot of standard, tried-and-true language in there. It really alleviates a lot of the writing burden.

I should also write shorter entries so I’m more motivated to write more entries, so I’ll stop for today.

Last updated May 22, 2023