My Life (non Clinton version)

So at this very moment I am sitting in my Global Financial Regulation Seminar. The entire class is full of LLMs (for the non law students, that means foreign students getting a masters in law. For the law students, there’s only one Chinese guy. Shock!)

I thought I’d keep it simple: Here’s what I do these days….(I guess this is what a blog is actually supposed to chronicle right?)

1) Executive Editor of the Int’l Law Journal (I just spent 7 hours last night from 7-2am writing emails and selecting staffers). As EE, me and my co-EE are basically in charge of the whole editorial side of the journal. (The journal has a submissions side, a editorial side, online journals, an online blog of current events, yearly symposiums, and various outreach programs. I imagine my position is roughly approximate to EiC for journals that just do publication.) We select the Article leaders, the intermediary editors, and direct the editorial process from selection to book. In short, my time is completely consumed by this. I applied with the hale and hearty belief that I was underqualified, under experienced, and totally not going to get selected. The interview was awful on my part, the worst I’ve ever done. But here I am…slightly overwhelmed but still standing.

2) Taking Federal Courts and the Federal System, a 5 credit class generally understood to be the “hardest class at HLS” (avg. time reading for each class = 6 hours). This class is unreal. Incredibly dense, incredibly arcane, and full of each and every gunner that walks the halls of HLS…(basically everyone in this class intends to clerk for a federal judge…which means they have the grades, the determination, and the ambition to actually acquire one.)

3) Taking Secured Transactions with one of the driest, old, slow-talking professor who assigns problem sets (last night was 20 problems with 15 cross references to statutes in the statute book.) Every day. And continues to cold call like we’re 1Ls. God I hate that.

4) Taking a Global Financial Regulation Seminar which basically involves doing several independent research projects, writing several papers, and producing original research. The course is a year long advanced international finance seminar. (How the fuck did I end up in there?!)

5) Agreeing, ambitiously and stupidly, to work as a research assistant for a bigwig Finance professor at HLS. I will be writing a chapter for his textbook on China’s Financial System. The first piece about the Chinese Banking system will be due in November. The second piece, laying out the Chinese securities system, will be due in March. Exciting? Absolutely. Time? No. (I walked out of his office with his “China Files” as a starting point. The stack of papers is 2 feet tall.

6) Reading Julie/Julia, a lipstick memoir about a secretary in Queens who decides to cook Julia hild’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking in one year. I try to squeeze a few pages of this in everyday just to maintain my sanity. That being said, it’s not that great. Incidentally, she also blogged about her cooking project…which I now will do with my cooking as well, as soon as I get my life back. Or every once in awhile. What shall I cook? One of my friends (my college roommate sophomore year “K”) has decided it is one of her favorite hobbies to bake pies. She just bakes lots and lots of pies. And that’s awesome. I think I’ll just make lots and lots of meat.

7) Phone calls to StL. when the time permits, even if I have to lose a little sleep. (sorry!)

8) Flag football! I’m the tall (and wide) receiver. We got our asses handed to us last year. It’s going to happen again.

9) Working out 3 times a week if I can find the time.

10) Trying to spend some time with people at school so I have some semblance of a life

11) Apparently I find the time to blog?

In spite of all of this, I’m fairly happy. I’m exhausted, sleep-deprived, and can’t believe I’ve only been at it for 5 days….but I’m not unhappy. Maybe I’m just too occupied. Go figure.

Anyhow, that’s all for now. I figured I’d give an actual update about my daily life instead of more garbage about fat people who eat popcorn and play with golf ball retrievers.

By the way, you DID watch the second video right? With Star Wars Kid and the laser shot deflections? So good!!!!!