It’s been one hell of a winter break this time around. Last year for winter break I didn’t have anything left to do after finals. Actually, after our last final I got on a plane and headed to NYC for a week and then to Las Vegas for Christmas. This year, my winter break sort of started at Thanksgiving… but not really. I ended up having no finals, but instead had a 30 page paper and tons of client work to wrap up which went on until this past Friday. It’s crazy how one year makes a difference.
Anyways it got me thinking about the past year and half of law school and how sometimes we only ever tell bits of the story on how our journey is going.
As you’ll see in the chapters below, things can get pretty tough, twisted, and turned upside down. Only bits and pieces of the story is sometimes told, the pieces we want people to know, the parts that make us look a certain way, the parts other people hear and retell.
Chapter 26- The Second Task
This is how I imagine the planning of the second task went:
Bagman: “Let’s bewitch children and put them underwater and then tell the ones that love them that they will die unless the champions save their lives!”
Crouch: “Do whatever you want Ludo.”
Bagman: “I think Dumbledore will love this idea. Oh and mermaids!”
Who the hell was like, let’s do this?!? AND BETTER YET, WHY THE HELL WAS DOBBY WRITTEN OUT OF THIS SCENE IN THE MOVIE?!? Sure, I get it maybe it was to make Neville start to look like a real hero, the silent nerdy hero that he is… BUT REALLY?!? Sorry to break it to you movie fans who have never read the books: DOBBY GAVE HARRY THE GILLYWEED. Nevertheless, the champions go to save their loved ones, Harry’s hero complex strikes again, he saves Ron and Fleur’s little sister since Fleur never shows up. And the rest is history, Harry comes in second place even though he is the last one and well out of the time limit. Oh and guess what, Dumbledore would never have let these kids die is the champions didn’t save them. So joke’s on Harry for believing what authority figures tell him…he should know by now, you can’t trust anyone, including people who aren’t supposed to lie to you like ever.
Chapter 27- Padfoot Return
Well we all now Ron has a need for attention and in this chapter he surely flaunts what his mama gave him, exaggerating the story of what happened in the lake. Well, he exaggerates until Hermione sets the story straight in front of crowd of people. Anyways, as the title of this chapter states, Sirius aka Padfoot aka Snuggles is back. He’s living his best life in a cave outside of Hogsmeade. The trio go to visit him and then they all chat about the Malfoys and Barty Crouch… did you know Barty Crouch put the Lestranges and his own son in jail without even a twitch in his eye. Fun Fact. Here’s another one: Barty Crouch was like the big bad judge of his day putting all the death eaters away… he was ruthless… he was mean… he did his job… including putting away the disgrace of his family. The trio leaves Snuggles in the cave to head back to Hogwarts… the end of the chapter.
Chapter 28- The Madness of Mr. Crouch
Upon finding out all the juicy deets on Mr. Crouch, the Trio goes to ask Percy about Crouch’s whereabouts… since the old man has certainly been absent from the social scenes lately. Upon doing so they run into Dobby, who tells them about Winky, so they go visit Winky who drunkingly alludes to some mischief happening at the Crouch residence over the summer. There’s some Rita Skeeter drama and Hermione, being her latest subject (which I failed to mention last chapter about Hermione “dissing” Harry and “turning away” his “love for her”), is now getting hella howlers and hate mail. The champions get invited to check out the Quidditch field where the next task will take place. When heading back to the castle, Krum asks to talk to Harry about Hermione. They head over tot he edge of the forest near Hagrid’s hut only to be bombarded by a crazy MR. CROUCH. And when I say crazy I mean 2007 Britney crazy… he’s giving orders to a tree and talking nonsense. He may not have an umbrella, ella, ella, hey, hey, hey, to beat a car with, but might as well with the way he’s acting. Harry leaves Crouch with Krum so Harry can get Dumbledore, he gets Dumbledore and they run (can you imagine Dumbledore running in his robes? I can’t!) to the forest. Crouch is gone. Krum is stunned (like with magic, lying on the ground). And everyone is mad that Harry and Krum were where they were and start blaming each other. Next Chapter.
Chapter 29- The Dream
Harry debriefs Hermione and Ron about the night’s happenings. They go to classes. Harry falls asleep in Trelawney’s class and starts to dream. In the dream he hears good old Voldey giving Wormtail orders and letting Wormtail know the Wormtail’s misdeeds have been cleaned up. Nagini gets no dinner. Wormtail gets a “crucio!” straight to the heart and Harry wakes up writing in pain. Of course this happened in class so he’s become a spectacle again. He goes to talk to Dumbledore only to hear the end of a convo with Fudge. Moody tattles on Harry eavesdropping from outside the door.
During winter break, every time you talk to someone from home or someone you haven’t spoken to in a while the same conversation tends to happen. It looks something like this:
Person: “How’s law school going?”
Me: “Eh, it’s alright I guess.”
Person: “What kind of law do you want to do again?”
Me: Names a type of law
Person: “What does that look like?”
Me: gives a 20 minute description of what that type of law looks like, why i’m interested, and explains difference from the type of lawyer portrayed on tv. “How about you? What’s new?”
The thing people don’t get to know in this conversation is all the really cool projects I’ve been able to work on and all the really interesting things that I’ve experienced or seen. And that’s partially my fault. Much like Barty Crouch, I don’t like to share every part of my life with the world. For years I’ve been known as the anxious, cynical, tell it how it is friend, and so I feel the need to keep that reputation going strong. The thing is, that means that no one gets to know more than the little tidbits that I share like: “Oh law school is hard. I hate the people for the most part. My professor is so difficult. I probably will never pay off my student loans. I want to do an obscure niche part of law. No I don’t want to litigate and I suck at legal writing.” That’s about the gist of what I let people know about law school. 
Sometimes it’s because I know that’s what people expect, other times it’s because I’m too afraid that I might actually be enjoying this because my grades say that I need to really need to work a little harder, and then most of the time it’s just easier to tell people small tidbits about law school as to not bore them. Here’s the true story though.
Law school is rough but it’s actually very interesting and I like it a lot. I’ve met so many brilliant people who all want to do something totally different. I know people who love water law, public finance, patent law, oil and gas, natural resource law, and so many other types. Everyone has a passion, and if its not for a certain area of law, they have a passion for the law in general. For me, I want to do food law. It’s terrifying though, and I’m not trying to be dramatic at all, it’s legit a newer field of law, so there’s not a clear cut path like a lot of other people have. Yet, I’ve found some really awesome opportunities on this path. I’m the president of our school’s food law society which means I get to lead a group of passionate students and connect current food lawyers with students on campus. We also get to educate students on food policy and law issues, which is pretty cool. Law school is tough, but it’s pretty cool. This past semester I became the student attorney for two actual clients through a school clinic. Getting to see how my work, research and all, gets to help clients is pretty awesome. So yeah, things aren’t so bad.
Thinking about all of the reasons we tell people snippets of our lives, small pieces that we approve of, sometimes only negative and sometimes only positive, is because it’s the story we want to tell ourselves. For me, I tell negative stories, because I’m scared that if I get my hopes up and admit that I actually enjoy something, it will disappear, or it won’t work out, or I’ll disappoint someone else who would rather see my life be something else. Here’s the real truth, I self-sabotage things because I’m afraid to live my best life. Now I know that sounds crazy to say, but I think deep down people who have a background like mine can truly feel this way sometimes. For so long I’ve lived this one storyline, been this one person that change, even good change, makes me feel like a fraud to who I’ve been.
I mean, we’ve all seen that story, the one where someone rises up from their sad shitty life and they become this great person, this well-off magnificent person, but everyone back home hates them or thinks they are a fraud, or they all say “oh what? You think you better than us now?” That’s what I’m afraid will happen. And sure, people will comment on this post on Facebook and be all like nah girl we love you and we want you to live your best life, but when friendships fall apart because of distance and change, when I do live my best life the things we all say now could change…
For so long I’ve been afraid of that. I’ve been afraid to leave people behind, been afraid people will tell stories of me like they do of Barty Crouch. Afraid people will no longer even want to be my friend if I change too much… but the thing is, change is inevitable. The story can’t stay the same forever, the story has to change, and as we will see with Barty Crouch’s story in later chapters, it’s not always a happy ending, but sometimes its a story worth sharing.
That’s what I’m planning on doing for 2018, both writing a new story and sharing it with the world too.
Until Next Time,
Mischief Managed
Have you ever watched those Real Housewives shows? I know you have, don’t try to freaking lie, we all love to watch these rich ladies get plastered and argue and fight with each other over silly things. I mean who wouldn’t love to be one of them?? Personally I live for the escape from reality into “reality tv” or really any dramatic television show. I love these scripted shows where you can tell the writers have been sitting in a small room pouring their mind power out to create a script full of “unexpected” tricky twists and turns… the joke of it all is if you watch enough tv or read enough books, these unexpected twists are pretty predictable.
A mixed metaphor is my absolute favorite english device in the world. It’s simple really, you take two metaphors and mix them together. For example: “Don’t go in there with cold turkey on your face.” The separate metaphors are: 1) Going cold turkey; and 2) Don’t go in there with egg on your face. See? Simple and cheeky. Alright, so how does this simple english device relate to law school, television, and Harry Potter? Well it’s simple really. Life is one large box of unexpected and expected mixed metaphors. Sure, sometimes life is just a single metaphor: “an endless night;” “anger bottled up inside;” “battle of the egos.” Those are expected. We all endure these… until we have “an endless bottled up battle of the egos.” Then we are like WTF is happening in my life!?!
The things about the second year of law school is everyone can start to deep dive into what they are passionate about. For me it’s Food Law, an up and coming part of law that most people scratch their heads at… except the 200 people I just spent a weekend with this past November at UCLA. The Food Law Student Leadership Summit, put on by Harvard and UCLA, is a conference where students from all over the country meet to tackle food policy issues as well as learn form some of the top food law professors and speakers in the United States. It’s an amazing conference that tackles all food related issues, from agriculture to labor laws, from foraging to SNAP programs. I met so many amazing people who want to tackle food issues! It was so nice to be surrounded by people who are also passionate about food topics.
Ron of course is still not talking to Harry and everyone hates harry like normal, now they just have pins that say ‘Potter Stinks’. Nevertheless Hagrid the friendly giant shows Harry what the first task will involve. Hagrid fancies the giantess leader of the Beauxbatons school and also shows her the first task. Harry is like “whoa what the heck, I’m a little boy, those are big dragons, this is insane, i’m going to die, boohoo.” Then he tells Cedric and Ron acts moody.
With the first task behind him, everyone celebrates. Ron becomes Harry’s friend again (dammit Ron why are you like this?) and Harry opens the egg to only hear screeching. (I get that this synopsis is weird, but this whole book is weird…and not one of my favorites because teenagers are so freaking moody, but so are law students so I guess it works.) Rita Skeeter bothers everyone, goes after Hagrid for an interview. Fred and George tell Hermione how to get to the kitchen where the House-elves are and she finds Dobby and WInky (Crouch’s old house-elf) working int he kitchens. She’s bothered by this. Hermione becomes even more determined to help these house-elves get paid and respected, even though Winky and every other elf besides Dobby don’t want to be paid. And then everyone laughs about Percy being a stuck-up brown noser.
In this chapter, Sirius arrives back in the country (hidden of course). Beauxbatons, a french school (of BOTH girls and BOYS, unlike the movie) and Durmstrang, a school who doesn’t want anyone to know where its located arrives! Of course that means Viktor Krum, Bulgarian Quidditch star also arrives. All of the Hogwarts students are of course still in awe… and Hermione is still trying to get people to buy her S.P.E.W. badges to help her cause, but no one is biting.
OMG everyone is in shock… how dare Harry put his name in the Goblet and how dare the Goblet name four champions? Clearly nothing bad or weird has occurred here… this is normal. Oh and its a magical contract… interesting the way wizarding laws work. Anyways from this chapter the masterful Old Dumbledore vs. New Dumbledore casting crisis of the movie is born from the line “Did ya put your name in the Goblet of Fire?” My good old friend Hank loves to use this line as evidence that the old Dumbledore was far superior to the new Dumbledore. Anyways everyone is upset and Ron starts acting like a jealous twit… end of the chapter.
So, first semester sucked, reality of poor grades made second semester worse… then the summer happened, my GPA rose and so did my pride. I entered into the second year, a little less likely to put up with people’s shit, still insecure, thinking I was independent, alone and didn’t need anyone telling me otherwise… the thing is, the universe doesn’t put up with that crap. The universe will be the first one to knock you down… hence why pride is the killing curse, because if you become prideful, the universe will knock it out of you. So here I sit, trying to figure out what to do next.
The Wizarding World of Law School 