End of the 1st day of the last semester

I already feel it- this semester will be great.

No more fun books to read in bed tonight.

Back to good ol' fashion law reading.

Chipping nail polish already. . .

Bonne Nuit!

rain, rain

via weheartit.com

It's pouring outside . . . as I'm studying inside with my warm cup of coffee . . . Carla Bruni quietly playing in the background . . . Christmas lights flickering . . . Finals week . . . trying to make it as bearable as possible.
Love,
Nat

stop and stare

Vendella Johanssen for Marie Claire Czech

Almost a week of yoga and I am slowly becoming more cognizant of my mind and body . . . I notice these storms of anxiety that clouds my mind or natural waves of worriness that overwhelms my body every time I hit some sort of roadblock in my studying.  I keep feeling there's not enough time or I'm going to succumb to failure . . . I've only been studying for 3 hours and I already need a break . . . I stumbled across this short clip (below) and it helped me put things into perspective.  I forget that finals is merely just that, a series of exams.  Important, but not enough to destroy today, Friday December 9, 2011.  I will pace myself for the next 6 hours.             

Study time. . .

Convenient study space (courtesy of the BF)

studying? what studying?

Mikaela Carlen for Velvet

Wow.

I never thought this day would come. I am finally finished with tax boot camp. 10 weeks of pure unadulterated torture. The first 2 hours of Partnership tax kicked my ass like a merciless bully beating me when I'm already down (note: 4 hours of sleep, minus 1 due to the bf's dreadful snoring, and on the brink of collapsing but barely saved by the 5 hour energy drink that pulled me through 5 hours of studying this morning followed by another 5 hours of testing). However, the last 2 hours of Corporate tax was like a kind friend making it easy on my bruised corpse to still have hope to walk out of the exam alive and content. Sounds like a bunch of nonsense because I haven't a grain of intelligence left in me at this point.

I have one interview to tackle tomorrow and then my vacation finally starts. . . I'm not going to beat myself up on this one though. There were interviews on campus today and upon seeing the back to back interviews these employers sit through, I think my chances of really landing this job is asymptotically approaching zero. I'm a realist. Not gonna bring my hopes up high just to see it fall hard. Besides, I'm probably going to have to go through tons of interviews to land the final job. Labor law is nice, but tax law is where I belong.

Anyways, each year I get about 1-2 weeks off. I'd say that's enough to recuperate and jump into the next battlefield. . . Learning to live with the stress.

After tomorrow, I finally have the time to dye my hair, do my nails, and shave my legs. I have to admit, it really is hard to be a smart scholar and a sassy socialite at the same time. I'll work on the latter in a year.

Ideally.

new title: "ballofstress 'n blahness"

I finally finished 1 of 2 exams yesterday. I pushed myself through the 4 hours+ of frantic, nonstop typing and made it through an hour of LA traffic, but when I finally reached the elevator of my apt. . . it all fell apart. I started to feel nauseous and I spent the rest of the night in bed with a headache. At first I was mad that I couldn't physically get out of bed to prepare for my mock interview later this evening, then I felt upset that I wouldn't have time to get all the studying done for my next exam, then I felt frustrated that I've been spending my life booking my calendar with goals and events that can make a normal person go crazy. When I finally stop worrying about one exam, I start to worry about being prepared for a mock interview (yes, a "mock" interview- it's not even the real thing), then on top of that, I start worrying about my exam next Monday, and to top it off, I freak out about how I won't be prepared for the interview of a lifetime on Tuesday. . . all this just added to the pounding sensation in my head. All I could do was lie in bed and cry until the pain went away and the voice inside my head would shut up. Quitting was never an option. . .why? because I reach the point where I want to raise the white flag always when victory is near. Never at the beginning and never at the midpoint, but always towards the end.

Nonetheless, I have a schedule full of things to do for the next 2 weeks, tons of studying and preparing to do today and I just needed to vent and calm myself down.

I keep thinking opportunity cost. What am I foregoing when I spend my days focused on landing a stable profession for the rest of my life? It's like selling my soul to the devil for 3 years to get to heaven. . . and I'm not even sure it's gonna be heaven outside these colorful Loyola walls. . . I just hope I won't regret all this and wonder what I did with my early twenties. . .

Tired.

I would much rather lie here than read those books . . .

Sleepless in the Summer

Today, I have no epiphanies, nothing intelligent to say, and no inspiration. Today I will complain.

An intense tax class that requires hundreds of pages of reading per week and review to be competitive in a small class of older and more experienced people than myself. A full-time research assistant position for a Dean whose a Harvard scholar who expects nothing but the best and on a subject I know absolutely nothing about- philosophical underpinnings of court rulings on executive compensation? A part time internship for a CPA-Attorney who gives me legal projects I have never dealt with and my need to prove that I can be better than the next intern. A boyfriend who thinks I invest nothing in our relationship. Dwindling friends who never see me anymore. Family who has no idea about half of what I'm going through and three dramatic sisters.

I am overwhelmed.

I always take on more than I can handle and I promise each person that I will give my 110% effort. But there are only so many hours in the day and there is so much I can achieve without burning myself out. When I spread myself so thin, I get mediocre feedback and then that brings me down and the hours I can be working on other projects I use moping and dwelling on why I performed so poorly. So I run in circles chasing my own tail and end up where I started with little progress.

It's easy to go about my life being the next average Jane and just be content with mediocrity, but I choose to be even more and drink more cups of coffee than the average Joe. I'm never content because I never accomplish my list of things because it's always so long and then I kick myself for being so idle by devoting only 15 hrs of my day and not 20 hours. My solution... Don't sleep.

Love,
Negative Natalie

A Heart Shelled Turtle

It seems like worlds away since I was last here. I finally completed my first year of law school and all I can say is... I have no idea what I've gotten myself into. For those nine months I was very robotic and serious. I had pages on pages of to-do lists and I stressed about each and every item until they were complete and replaced by yet another item. I kept checking off those little lopsided squares...but they were never-ending. My hair was getting nappier, my skin was getting paler, my friends were drifting further and my style deteriorating. It was just me and these little square boxes.

A little over a year ago, I had hit the ground running with enthusiasm towards the gates of law school. Recently, I just hit the ground like roadkill. I was exhausted. I had 10 days to recuperate before I started the process again with a summer class, a full-time research assistant and a part time internship.

Those 10 days I spent at the dullest place I know, yet it was the most gorgeous and revitalizing- the Virgin Islands. There was no hustle-bustle of the city...everything was calm...even the ocean waters stayed at peace with gravity. The days were slow and I was bored...but it was perfect. However, my mind wouldn't let me slow down and breathe. Like a war veteran, although I felt like I was home free, the nightmares of the battles kept sneaking into my dreams each night.

I realized that I couldn't live my life like this. There will be many more battles in the road ahead and if I kept letting myself breathe only when I was sipping coffee in the early mornings on the porch of a beach front hotel, I would be dead 99% of the time.

All this dawned on me when the hotel concierge gave me a coupon for a free gift at a local jewelry store. When I went to cash in on the gift- I wasn't sure how to feel...it was a sterling silver necklace of a turtle.

When I was around twelve, I had brought home a baby turtle as a pet. My now estranged father immediately told me to return it from wherever it came from. He superstitiously believed that turtles were slow and bad for business and life. From then on, I hated those slow dumb animals.

So how did I feel about this cute little necklace in my hand of a turtle whose shell was the shape of a heart and whose legs were loose enough to move around?

I was always the hare who tried to race to the finish line, who stared at the end, but never around me. I'm a lot further and closer to my goals but will I be able to finish the race at this pace? Didn't that turtle that I despised before ended up finishing the race AND I'm sure it enjoyed the view on the way there. So point taken, I didn't hesitate to wear the necklace and just like people coming in and out of my life, that anti-turtle notion left me forever too.

I know what path I'm taking and I know the road blocks ahead will be hard to maneuver, but if I kept my pace and learn not to treat trivialities as though they were grave roadblocks and to treat grave roadblocks as though they were trivialities... my heart shell will remain strong and those loose legs will grow stronger.

Love,
Nat

A Lawyer?! Why?!

This weekend I went home to visit my family in OC and upon running 'round town to run errands with my mom, I realized just how soft of a grip I had on my dreams for law school. I grew up in a small city full of small business owners, so it's one of those things where adults see you grow up and constantly ask you what you're doing with your life. Not too long ago, the word was that I was going to fashion school to become a fashion designer. So when we went to our dry cleaner's and I told her I was going to law school this Fall, she looks at me and asks "Why? You look too nice to be a lawyer! I thought you were going to go to fashion school? Why?" It was a rhetorical question not expecting an answer...also given she was a seamstress, it wasn't too surprising that she would be more supportive of a more feminine profession.

Upon going to my Mom's accountant to get her taxes done later on the day, the accountant tells us that her wonderful daughter is planning on going to med school and become a doctor...my mom comes back with a "Oh well my daughter is going to law school..." With a look of almost refrained disgust, she responds "Law school? Why do you want to be a lawyer? You want to argue for a living?" I was at a lost for words as it was hard to think and respond in Vietnamese- since I'm not very fluent...So here I was thinking- why do I want to be a lawyer? For a moment, I actually second guessed myself...

As the day progress, I still felt dumbfounded...After graduation, a part of me had felt stagnant and lost when it came to what I wanted to do with my life and I needed a leaping board to advance me further- I have to admit that like most people it was what you'd call an expensive "Default option." It was for a point, but as the months went on to the painful task of studying for the LSAT, to the application process, to getting my first acceptance letter I started changing my mindframe about the concept of me becoming a lawyer and the idea adjusted in my head. I really believe that law school will open new doors for me and expose me to a network of intelligent people who will challenge my intellectual capabilities and push me further in the right direction. Sometimes you gotta hit the ground running and have that blind faith that whatever's planned may go astray but you will end up closer to your realized dream than if you sat and pondered what ifs all your life...

A slow Monday at work...so may return with more thoughts...

Nat