Category Archives: Graduate Education

words in my head

Holly Doyne Posted on by 8

don’t do me anywhere near as much good as words on paper (which, in today’s world translates to words in an electronic document). I have come to acknowledge that putting off finishing the requirements for the two outstanding incompletes from grad school is not doing me any good. In fact, it more resembles the garbage left too long under the sink. The longer it sits, the more it smells. The more it smells, the less you want to deal with it. At some point, the nose is held (clothespin optional) and the stinking container is emptied, washed, and put back with all good intentions to avoid this cycle in the future.

Then the future rolls around again.

Please understand – I don’t give a flip about grades, all I want it is “met enough work to warrant a pass.” Having said that – it is hard to imagine putting in hours of work researching and writing for no good reason if the end results could possibly be of benefit.

It is the old Tikkun olam. Build the world a better place.

So… the background to today’s public health challenges include the following:

  1. San Francisco is an extremely expensive place to live
  2. The tech boom has resulted in an increase of 100k jobs over the last decade and the loss of 30k in housing in just the last few years
  3. The weather in California is not as bad as many of the other parts of the country
  4. changing demographics have resulted in marginalization of portions of the population.
  5. San Francisco became the mecca for a number of lifestyles starting in the 1960s

 

Now, back tracking to 2008-2009, there were several medical publications that discussed Hepatitis A infections and risks in homeless populations. Those discussions centered, of course due to the standard medical tunnel visions, on immunizing everyone to avoid disease.

So why was everyone in both city governments and public health circles so stunned when an epidemic of Hepatitis A started sweeping through homeless & IV drug user communities (and yes, there can be an overlap between the two). I fail to understand why anyone was surprised. Or, even more stunned to be in a situation where a normally mild disease most often seen in childhood in most of the developing world, various institutions was causing hospitalizations and death. This epidemic was recognized, not because of the obvious failure of the city, the infrastructure and public health to recognize the failure to provide for a vulnerable population but that hospitalization costs were skyrocketing.

The solution? According to the CDC – we should adopt the 2009 recommendations (hello, this is now 2017….) to add homelessness, IV drug use or MSM* to the list of peoples needing HepA immunization.

For those of you who don’t remember the history of Hepatitis A – this was the food/water borne version of hepatitis for which you (as a citizen of a developed country) received a large shot of gamma globulin in a major muscle group (usually gluteus maximus). 5cc is a significant volume, trust me. In 1995, the first versions of HepA vaccine became available. Every military member with a brain in his/her head was more than willing to get immunized. One shot with maybe a booster vs large/painful shot every 3-6 months while deployed? Other than the military, most of the other developed world citizens at risk of HepA were tourists indulging in street food while visiting developing countries. With the usual transmission being the fecal-oral route, it was obvious to everyone concerned that sanitation was as important to breaking the infection cycle as immunization.

We seem to have forgotten that bit of intelligence. It doesn’t matter if you immunize the whole world against a disease. That is one disease. As anyone who has every had noro-virus, salmonella food poisoning or one of the hundreds of other possibilities, the key to not getting diarrheal disease is availability of toilet facilities accompanied by strict adherence to hand washing. Which takes us to a city where there are no 24 hour public toilets, hand washing facilities are limited, no one wants homeless encampments, there is not enough shelter space for those who need it, and serious money is spent on a daily basis on power washing human excrement off the sidewalks.

Yes, we can immunize everyone. But it is not going to solve the sanitation issue.

I am making some basic assumptions. The first is that most people do not chose to be homeless. That they don’t set out to be vulnerable, dirty, and hungry. That, if they had the money to have food and shelter, they would. But San Francisco has teachers in their schools living in cars because they can’t afford a place to live.  I also make the assumption that mental health, substance abuse issues, and physical health issues impact lives to the point where many become homeless. And those problems don’t become better by being without a home.

<two hour break in which I spent digging through PubMed. Surprise, surprise, all the public health people, when discussing issues related to the HepA outbreak mentioned and repeatedly mentioned that sanitation was a serious issue and one of the most difficult to resolve. Having said that – it is no where in any of the CDC guidance. Just immunizations. Go figure>

I finished off the draft memo – sent it on its way, and spent sometime working on a Hitchhiker variation in a lovely yarn color called – magic unicorn.

 

*MSM= men who have sex with men…

 

two days, 20 hours

Holly Doyne Posted on by 2

and 33 minutes had expired out of the 72 hours allotted for my take home exam when I uploaded it and hit the submit button.

Of course, ten minutes after that I started thinking about what else I should have said, or how I should have said it. But then, stick a fork in me, I was more than ready to be done with exams.

It is not to say that I am done with the semester, just with the exams and deadlines. I still have two papers to turn in. One is a combination project of a cover memo with draft legislation/ordinance – the other a position paper. I have drafts for both but have not been able to drum up the energy needed for a concerted effort on either.

The last day of exams is tomorrow; half of my friends are slotted for that very last exam period.will not complete their last exam until late afternoon. I can’t really decide which I detest more – in class exams where your whole grade depends on the final, in class mid-terms and finals, take home exams, or whole grade hanging on a writing assignment. They are all ugly options.

Why am I doing this to myself anyway? Oh, yes. GI Bill with Uncle Sam paying for everything plus providing me a living subsidy…..

I really should be

Holly Doyne Posted on by 1

working on that take home exam.

Which is why I am playing computer games and otherwise procrastinating. Like puzzles –

just those last few pieces

which means that I finished –

all 524 pieces

 

and an area where you can see the details –

no two pieces alike

 

Otherwise? I finished Questions 2 & 3 on my take home exam, leaving Question 1 – probably the most difficult, for tomorrow

Quietly insane

Holly Doyne Posted on by  

is what this particular take home exam is driving me.

5 May afternoon

which may be why I am spending time working on the puzzle. Unfortunately, the easiest portion is complete. From here on in, criss-crossing tree branches. And more branches and more branches. I am not sure that this puzzle is not also going to drive me around the bend (and that is not really all that far since I can see the curve from here….

Avoidance of study

Holly Doyne Posted on by 1

Since I have an exam tomorrow morning, bright and early (0830 in San Francisco) it means that I should be diligently studying this whole day, right?

Instead I find my mind wandering. It is that awful feeling somewhere between–I know this stuff and I don’t want to over think it– and “I don’t have a clue, much less a reason for why I am doing this to myself. It might be why I was more than happy to take something for my headache and go back to sleep for a number of hours this morning. Or why I spent sometime sorting out paperwork. Or looking at furniture for the back deck. Or working on a jigsaw puzzle that had been put away for months.

Winterland

I am sure that I’ve mentioned Liberty Puzzles before. Wonderful small firm located in Boulder, Colorado. Wooden puzzles, all laser cut for accuracy, with whimsy pieces and challenging shapes. I have a lot of their puzzles, accumulated over the years. Not cheap, but challenging, durable and interesting. Plus, they are not 1000-2000 piece puzzles. I want a challenge but something that can be completed in my life time.

I don’t actually remember when I started this particular puzzle. It has to be more months ago than I want to admit. Perhaps after we reorganized the living room furniture but maybe not. I had tucked it away in the puzzle keeper I had in order not to lose the small bit of progress that I had made. Challenge of dark colors, not as much light as I would like and older eyes in the evening. Enough said on that, if you don’t understand, you are just not there yet. Just wait.

Anyway –

the foreground

has some identifiable plants below the house (easiest part as the colors are pretty obvious) before heading up into trees, trees, and more trees.

and not making much progress

as so far 8-10 pieces a day seems to be about as much success as I have been able to accomplish.

Having said all of that – I need to get back to my Admin Law outline. I just shouldn’t be that hard, right? Rulemaking, Adjudication, and Judicial review, along with about a dozen cases which I should make a serious effort to remember. It would be nice if the entire grade didn’t hang on this one exam.

Oh, right – Administrative Law. For those in the US – it is the area of law concerned with all those pesky US government agencies from how they make rules and regulations to how they decide (adjudication) everything from licensing to customs fees to Social Security/Disability payments (who gets what and how much). For those not in the US – you have a similar system in one way or another.  Your government has to set the standards for licensing, or benefits, followed by a standardized application process which results in a determination. There are also likely set rules and procedures for appeals and renewals. It all falls into the category of Administrative Law. Normally there is count oversight with more or less deference given to agency decisions depending on challenges of interpretation (substance) or procedure. Since the US is a common law country (also UK, Australia) previous court decisions have a weight of precedence on subsequent determinations. Frankly – I much prefer countries that just have legal code. If a court is involved, the judge makes a determination for that case. The result applies to that case, and that case only.

Anyway – the devil is in all of the details and I have procrastinated long enough….

One down

Holly Doyne Posted on by  

First of my three exams was this morning. Oh, thrill. Not.

It seemed like a huge pain, travel into SF for a single, one hour exam.  One credit course, one hour exam.

To top it off, the exam had been scheduled for Saturday. Out of general principles, I don’t take Saturday exams.

So there I am, first having dropped over to the library to return a number of CDs and books and finding that several books I had requested were now available. Since I had been trying to be good, I thought I had placed a “pause” on all my holds. Not so, as it turns out.

Then it was down to the lockers since phones and smart watches aren’t allowed in the exam room. Large clock on the wall plus the proctor does 10 and 5 minute warnings. Right before the exam starts, one of the records office people stops by to tell me that there is a change on the exam – not to worry about the first question, answer the second and do the best possible on the third (apparently somewhere along the line there was an issue with the exam). Ok – I can be more than happy with only two essays questions rather than three.

Then it starts and I look at the exam. Ok – Question #1? Easy Peasy, I will answer it anyway. Question #2? No major issues, in fact it looked an awful lot like one of the practice exams. Ok – I can answer that as well. Then I drifted down to the third question. Note, I still had 45 minutes of my hour to use. Question #3? Hey this is not all that complicated – and pull out the list of everything possible from one of the charts, going down the line, I can fake this.

(Sorry lawyers, but I have less than any interest in Torts, common law and other adversarial systems that aren’t decided by an adult (read judge).

From there it was off to Cal and my afternoon lectures. Perhaps it is the last two semesters, but there is precision in words. The bacteria, toxins and virus are BioAgents. The evil idiots who want to spread death and destruction? Those are terrorists when non-state agents and evil empires when state agents. Bioterrorism is one of many methods of seeding fear, panic, hate, and distrust–along with massively interfering with people, plans and infrastructure.

Never mind, you really don’t need the rest of this particular soap box.

Day off

Holly Doyne Posted on by  

On every other Friday morning I have the option of staying home, Or I can head over to Hastings and spend two hours sitting in on a class I am auditing. This morning when the alarm went off, I thought about it. Seriously thought about it. Then decided that my time would be much better spent sleeping.

Knowledge is always good, but sleep is really precious.

One done, another to make

Holly Doyne Posted on by  

Apron apparently appreciated, the other worker this morning replied that she would love to have one. So that will be on my list of things to do this evening.

Otherwise, I was in the firing line this morning in Admin Law. It should have been last Thursday and as I mentioned, I might have been overlooked completely. But no, I should have the “learning opportunity.” At least I was challenged with what was the easier side of a discussion of rule making under the APA, section (can’t find the symbol) 553.

For anyone who hasn’t yet fallen asleep, The Administrative Procedures Act was passed in 1946. It covers what administrative agencies (US Government Executive Branch organizations that are set up to “administer” a particular set of rules, law, or organizational requirement). If it is an alphabet soup agency – with rare exceptions, it falls under the APA. These agencies have two main ways of accomplishing their mission: they can make rules, they can adjudicate. We have been on the rule making for a couple of weeks in excruciating detail and may be there for a while. And, by alphabet soup – I mean those agencies which are usually known by their initials rather than names (FDA, EPA, IRS, CMS – you get the idea). The administrative arms which were created to handle implementation of a specific area of law. The easiest and clearest for every US citizen is the IRS – Internal Revenue Service. They take the tax code passed by the US Congress and turn it into “clear” rules and create forms. Those forms are processed, monies handled. Audits are effectively adjudications – the application of the tax law to the individual/firm/corporation to determine whether or not “they” have complied and paid in what was owed.

All of this is a long, round about way of saying that I was hit with describing why, with an implementing section that effectively said to (1) provide notice, (2) accept comments, and (3) publish rules, there were now a whole set of procedures that have been added over the years (mostly the 1970s) by the Courts.

The requirement of giving Notice can be tied directly to the wording in the law. By extension, one can make a case for what giving notice entails (subject, information, data, length of comment period). The same case can be made for what needs to be in the substance of the final rule. For example – is it reasonable to want something said about the comments being considered?

Ok, you are now bored out of your mind. So am I. Maybe. Since I spent decades working in a rule driven environment, all of this makes sense to me. Admin Law is common sense in a way that Constitutional Law never was. I have been the proponent for regulations. There are forms, procedures, and feedback to those who bothered to provide input. I can say that it is all driven by regulation. Or, in my case, since I wasn’t receiving thousands of opinions and useless bits of information, I just thought it was common courtesy to let someone who had made the time and effort to submit improvements/corrections know that their comment was appreciated even if not incorporated into the final document.

What all of that means is that I could rationalize the Court (even the Supreme Court) clarifying procedures. Heather already had her turn so the chore of answering the flip side (why shouldn’t the court be adding extensive procedural requirements to what Congress intended to be informal rule making?) passed up to the second row. This is the fourth week of class. Sitting in the back might have been smart since only ten have been through the wringer so far. I don’t know that everyone will “have the opportunity” to play.

If I could see from the back, I might have considered sitting out of harms way….

Dodged that bullet

Holly Doyne Posted on by  

You have heard about the “socratic method” of teaching? No?

Explanation: (lifted from criticalthinking.org)

In Socratic teaching we focus on giving students questions, not answers. We model an inquiring, probing mind by continually probing into the subject with questions. Fortunately, the abilities we gain by focusing on the elements of reasoning in a disciplined and self-assessing way, and the logical relationships that result from such disciplined thought, prepare us for Socratic questioning.

So that means that question follows question follows question until everything that could possibly be wrung out of the teaching point.

A Socratic questioner should:
a) keep the discussion focused
b) keep the discussion intellectually responsible
c) stimulate the discussion with probing questions
d) periodically summarize what has and what has not been dealt with and/or resolved
e) draw as many students as possible into the discussion.

The professor announced at the beginning of the year rather than random calling, he would just go down the rows and call on students one after another. Today it was my turn. So I sat through the beginning portion of the class. Not really worried, but I would rather not open my mouth unless I really feel that I have something to offer.

The hour progressed. We started on the cases. Not deliberately, but for whatever reason he thought I had already taken my turn and moved on to Heather. She looked at me, I looked at her. She was prepared just in case and handled the questioning. When I thanked her for stepping up right after the end of the class, the professor over heard me. He thought I had had a turn. Not to worry, I can be first up on Monday.

As if Monday’s aren’t enough fun on their own……

Avoiding assignments

Holly Doyne Posted on by 2

in spite of all my good intentions, I am heading to bed without completing an assignment due at 1420 tomorrow. On the surface, it seems to be an incredibly simple thing: take a list and turn it into an outline/table of contents. What turns out to be tricky is deciding what goes where, and why.

No problem – I can just take my favorite Army regulation and use that as a pattern – right? Except that civilian lawyers, especially those who have worked for various international organizations and NGOs just don’t think the same way as those of us who are steeped in the tradition of admin regulations.

And, as it turns out, the military is one of those exceptions to the APA (Administrative Procedures Act, 1946) so some of the standards which all of those who are US law school trained just don’t apply. One of the other students in this 8 person seminar has spent time related to military regulation drafting, he understands my point of view. But, being a law student, his attitudes are probably a bit more flexible than mine.

The upshot is that I knit four more rows on my Wild Swan – starting from here –

End of Chart F

Unlike a number of those in the KAL, I am not going to run out of beads. I have lots and lots of beads. Some of them are the wrong size or color, but I have the 250 that I will need to finish the shawl.

Yarn? That is another question. I think I have enough for maybe two more rows + the bind-off. The problem is that there are eight rows plus the bind off. I thought this might happen, so contacted Fierce Fibers two weeks ago and have a bit more on order in the darkest color. But it isn’t here yet…..

And then there was the embroidery tonight. Got through the pattern in spite repeated thread breakage (but no needle challenges) and bobbin snarls only to find that the last two colors shifted themselves right from where they belonged by about a cm. It is obvious. Really, really obvious since those two colors complete a frame around the main pattern. I am just glad it happened on a napkin. Not that expensive, I can try it again. But first – I need to figure out if it is the embroidery, the machine or me. Not inclined to repeat the same mistake.

And, oh, gee – it is too late to finish that outline. Or wire diagram. Or whatever the H it is.

Morning?

Sunshine

Holly Doyne Posted on by  

Today started at 0615 (not counting the snooze alarm on my phone) and it will end with the conclusion of my last class at 1840.

So why am I talking about sunshine? Because there is sunshine and decent weather today. I am taking a break literally outside in front of 198 McAllister sitting at one of the cement picnic tables. Admittedly, it is not the most comfortable place to sit, but the sun on my back feels wonderful.

My first class was 0830-0930. From there I found a comfortable chair in one of the reading rooms. Now, figuring out how to get to the upper floor of the Gold reading room was a bit of a challenge. Officially it is on floor 3M which is somewhere between Floor 4 and the ground level. Now, 2M is between the ground floor and Floor 2. So I would have expected that 3M would fall between 2 and 3. Wrong – so much for logic. The elevator came down from 4, picked me up at 3M, then stopped to let off about five people on 3 before continuing its descent. The only positive portion of this experience was that one of the students mentioned that he usually took the stairs between these two floors.

Stairs? Where are the stairs? Would you believe the stairs connecting the upper gallery (3 Mezzanine) with the main portion of the reading room are outside the reading room.

All of which is too completely confusing for me. As I sit here with my back being warmed by the sun, I counted the floors since I am facing the building. Not counting the ground floor, there are four tiers of windows facing McAllister. The ground floor is not G, it is 1. I will leave it to the convoluted thinking of some architect as to why this was a good design for a building that houses some offices, numerous windowless seminar and classrooms in addition to endless rows of lockers in the basement.

It is time to review a bit more before I slog into the afternoon (Public Health Law, US Health Law, Legal Drafting). I am trying to decide between caffeine and chocolate.

Rainy Day Market

Holly Doyne Posted on by 2

Just the title should let you know that once again it was raining. This time in both Berkeley and San Francisco.

Wednesdays are either great or terrible depending on the week and my attitude. Today, I am on the positive side. Only one class which doesn’t start until 0940 giving me both enough time to get to Hastings and an early change to get home. That will change next week when classes kick in at Cal. But I will still have enough time between morning and afternoon to stop at my favorite Burmese Street Food Restaurant in Berkeley for lunch.

Today’s schedule was a bit different. Because of the holiday next Monday, there are classes that will not happen. Since this is essentially a Law School (writ LARGE) there are certain rules and regulations that must be followed. Part of those rules seem to be the number of hours sufficient in a class of a certain number of credits in order to be able to grant that class status. What does all of that mean? Make-up classes. Yep, can’t completely skip, especially if there are two hours of the same class involved which is the case for my International Human Rights Course. So today, after spending a painful hour going through several treaties (UN on various aspects of human rights) we had a break till  noon. There was a presentation scheduled with an invited speaker which was going to count as one of the two hours which will be missed next Monday.

[Of note to me, Cat and maybe a couple of others. Having a network of people around the world is wonderful. When a question came up on one of the treaties as to why Australia was not electing to play, Cat knew where to find the answer. Even more fun, the answer made total and complete sense.)

After all was said and done in the morning (skipping delayed flights leading to a delayed guest speaker) I wandered through the Wednesday Market set up at UN Plaza on my way to BART. I found orange beets, multi-color carrots, fresh spinach, onions and a very interesting version of a citrus fruit which I can’t pronounce.

I skipped running errands with the guys and elected to attempt a reorganization in my studio. By the time I was part way through, it looked worse than when I started, so pictures are being held until I can share the end results.

And it was still raining at the end of the day.

Dragging along

Holly Doyne Posted on by  

My first class on Tuesdays is 0830. Just to let you know that up front.

Backing up in time, I have to leave about 40 minutes for BART (safe siding) + about 15 minutes to get to BART, not counting the BART schedule. Then add in whatever amount of time I need at home to run around like mad finding everything, getting dressed and pouring that first cup of coffee down my throat. All of this means that I am up somewhere between 0600 and 0630.

My next official class is 1640 in the afternoon.

Yes, you read that correctly. Between 0930 and 1640 I have nothing official scheduled. Having said that, I am auditing a class at 1420 and another at 1530. It would be insane not to since the two classes (Public Health Law and US Health Law) are interesting and had lectures that conflicted with other courses on my schedule.

I am trying to treat those intervening hours the same way I did back in 1984-5 when I had some similar holes in my MPH schedule at Johns Hopkins. Every hour spent studying/working on assignments/usefully occupied while at school is one less hour out of my precious time at home. Right?

The end summary is that by the time my last class finished at 1840 I am done. Cooked.  Stick a fork in me. All I want to do is go home. I can’t imagine how horrible it is going to be once the baseball season starts and there are Tuesday night games. (2, 16, 23 April). Probably the only way I will survive is by not having to be at UCHastings until 0940 on . Wednesday.

I got home. Skipped dinner in favor of ice cream and went to sleep extremely early.

and today is?

Holly Doyne Posted on by  

It was partway through the day when I figured out that one half of the email list was dated correctly and the other half stated it was “19 Jan 2019.” Now obviously that was not true. What was probably worse was that I originally thought that the 13th was the incorrect date.

Something tells me that I was not feeling as well as I would like to have imagined.

It was obviously a slog to get to school. I made in through my two morning classes, the return through BART and was grateful for a pick-up by George. I was going to use the excuse of being completely brain dead as to why I wasn’t really studying for the rest of the day. But really, is knitting a complicated lace something I should be trying in a brain dead situation?

Through Chart E

the left “wing”

I won’t bother to tell you how many corrections I had to make on the return rows to finish the last portion of clue 3. Let us just say that there were a lot of yarn overs and beads involved.

Yep. Gave up. Went to bed with the intention of getting up early….

Doors open at 0700

Holly Doyne Posted on by 1

I am not sure why I thought that the UCHastings Buildings would be open early in the morning. After all, the school is located right off Civic Center, the UN Plaza and the hotbed of drug sales on Golden Gate Ave. Nope, the doors open at 0700 to both the classroom building (198 McAllister and the main office building – 200 same).

Since I have been bopping in and out now since August, I pretty much know all the morning security guards by both face and name. It was one of them this morning that reminded me that the only building open early (and security desk staffed 24/7 is that of the Towers (AKA dorm area)). OK, I can deal with that. George very kindly waited while I ran into PEET’s for coffee on the way to BART so my caffeination process was already well underway with the addition of a muffin in my backpack for later. I also have knitting – both a cowl I started while on the Rhapsody

~ lace weight gradient

as well as the Wild Swan shawl. And beads. And crochet hook. And pattern. And extra stitch markers.

You see, I have this huge gap in my schedule today, a very late class and a prospective dinner related to the J.P Morgan meeting. Can you spell – long day?

Back to the grind

Holly Doyne Posted on by  

Well, classes have started up at Hastings for the “Spring” semester. The only thing remotely spring like is the rain (well, for anywhere else, spring = rain. Here rain = winter). But the weather is just a digression. To put it bluntly, my schedule in this new year sucks. I have two classes on Monday morning at Hastings. On Monday afternoon I need to be at Cal for the Intro to Public Health Infectious Disease course that I am a contributing lecturer. Tues I have one class at 0830 and the next is not until 1420 in the afternoon. Then my last seminar is for two hours starting at 1640. Wednesday is one lecture at 0940 followed by the trip back over to Cal.
Thursday starts with an 0830 lecture, then a seminar at 1420 for a couple of hours. Friday morning is two hours starting at 0940.

To summarize, I have to BART to San Francisco every blinking day. I have huge holes in my schedule. If I am smart, this means time spent in the library and I should have absolutely no need to do much of anything outside of all of those extra hours so kindly furnished me by the scatter shot schedule.

If my original choice of courses had not been cancelled, I would have been done by 1530 on Tues/Thurs and might have avoided that Wednesday morning completely. Argh.

In better nows – I am making progress on Wild Swan

Through Row 78

as this is a gradient yarn, just the first bit of shading from natural to pale blue can now be seen

Last Exam for now

Holly Doyne Posted on by 2

After reviewing a couple of hours, which was a break from packing – I downloaded and took my last exam. This is a timed open book exam. Not that having an open book is of any help at all. I had extensive notes, but there simply isn’t time to find, cut and paste as apposed to simply answering the question/s.

It seems like all law school exams are essays – which may explain the definite faculty preference for computer over blue book. With an open book/on-line exam, there isn’t much choice, it is going to be computer.

Of course, it also helps if you remember to either convert your document into Word (ick) or PDF it.

Pages is my standard. The above is mentioned because I forgot to convert the exam so had to immediately send a copy in the right format. The upload software doesn’t let you upload again/replace whatever you send.

I would rather scribble in a blue book….

I should be studying

Holly Doyne Posted on by  

At least that is what I am telling myself. So far I have reviewed five pages of outlines, several misc. documents, read through my notes, played computer games and skimmed some junk genre fiction.

So much for good intentions.

And there was also the Cal’s Women’s Basketball game this afternoon (they pulled off a win, but their % from the floor left a bit to be desired. Had the opponent been one of the PAC-12, it would not have turned out so well). But the Straw Hat Band was there, tho not in numbers. I gifted out the first batch of pins made from Miriam’s design

thought about studying some more, but had dinner instead and going to sleep relatively early.

First Exam

Holly Doyne Posted on by  

Law schools make a huge production out of exams. Seriously huge. I don’t remember anything, including National Boards or Specialty Exams that were this much of a production. Of course, those were also in the paper/pencil days and did not include essays.

Law schools LOVE essays.

Option one – Download Exam4 software on your computer and type your essay. This has good and bad points. On the good side, there is ease in grading for the professor as there are no issues with handwriting. For students, there is a built in spellchecker and the ability to cut and paste. The last is significant it terms of reorganizing a several page answer. On the downside – there is the significant issue of installing someone else’s software on my computer and I really think a higher expectation on the part of the faculty member as far as organization and extent of answer. There is also the “baffle them with bs” that many of us tend toward when. we run out of something useful to say. It is oh, so easy to do this with a word processor. You also have to be extremely familiar with the software in order to have it function properly.

Option two – hand write in blue books. The downsides are obvious: you have to be organized, coherent, and have decent handwriting. On the plus side, if you do it properly, you can write less. You also don’t have to deal with a software program that wants to do strange things while you are writing. No worries about losing one’s answers or not having it upload properly

It might not make sense to you, but I will always pick blue book (handwritten) over a computer generated exam. My handwriting is not that bad and I want concentrate on the content of what I am writing and not on the form of the exam (making it look pretty on the paper). The blue book rules are one side and every other line. I can work within those parameters. And yes, I have been dealing with computers since 1968. That doesn’t mean that I have to use them – they are a tool – and so is a pen.

This particular professor set a word limit for the essay. The total exam is 3 hours – there are going to be 20 multiple choice questions and then an essay for the last two hours. Word limit is 3000, and page limit for blue book is 27 (assuming about 110/words/page). This particular version of WordPress provides a word count for each post as well as autosave and update on a regular basis. To this point I am at ~ 440 words. Slighly more than 10% of what would be allowed for a 2 hour essay. Frankly, that is a lot of words in a relatively short time. More than I would want to generate. More that I honestly could generate.

(update, my blue book answer certainly didn’t use 27 pages. At 12 usable pages per blue book, I finished before the end of the second. It would have helped if I had used a simpler outline and remembered to place all the points in the correct order so I wouldn’t have had to back track/fill in. Next time….)

Con Law II

Holly Doyne Posted on by 1

The first of my final exams for the semester is this Wednesday. I haven’t even bothered to look and see if it is morning or afternoon. It doesn’t matter at this point and by then I think all the material is going to leak back out of my brain, run out my ears and puddle on my pillow. If I get any sleep. The specific class is Constitutional Law II – which mostly focuses on the Constitutional Amendments. Since I have never taken Con Law I, Torts, Property, I am at a bit of a disadvantage whenever a discussion starts with “as you remember from…..

I mentioned years ago (War College – 1997-1999 concurrent with command in Würzburg and the frolic and detour to Bosnia with TFME) that there is a lot of reading, only if you do it. I haven’t read as much of the assigned Con Law reading as I probably should have. Frankly, I don’t get it and wading through it left me more confused than if I asked fellow classmates and took good notes during class. Notes taken on paper with pen, thank you very much, not typed where the words hit your ears and are transferred to your fingers without processing. If you play any musical instrument, you know exactly what I mean. You need to see the notes and have your fingers do what they are supposed to do – there is no time for thought.

The actual text book for this course, in hard copy is somewhere around 1400 pages, plus a couple hundred page supplement with the most recent new Supreme Court Cases.  I have made the occasional notes in the textbook – electronic version that you can carry without back ache are great – the ability to annotate is even better. The supplement is paperback. For some reason, the organization is better and I can distinguish between the authors commentary and what was ACTUALLY found or held in the case. Not so much in the main text. There is an awful lot of “if you could say it in 100 words, a few thousand would be soooo much better.” I am thinking some of that might be left over from when any judge was a practicing attorney. Lawyers bill, right? By time increments in the US is the current practice. If you write more, it takes longer and you can charge more….

Back to studying. The first class was third week or so in August. Since all the lectures are recorded, I can review the lectures (1.5 speed) while checking my notes and filling in whatever handouts the professor might have furnished. (I will hold off on the “OUTLINE” rant, that would just be overload). Having reviewed a fair amount as we went along – I am on the “month a day plan.” I’ve been through August and just finishing up Sept. Tomorrow I will get through Oct and then that just leaves me Nov.

After all, who wouldn’t want to devote extensive hours to determinations of level of scrutiny, equal protection, due process? Oh, and let us not forget – the incorporation doctrine which definitely has to include the III Amendment. None of us want troops billeted in our houses.

Oh wait! I was one…..