Don’t find fault. Find a remedy.

This quotation is by Henry Ford, and it couldn’t be more true.  When a problem arises, it’s so easy to dance around the issue and not discuss it, but blame others instead and say things like “Well, she did that, he didn’t say this” and so on.  It’s their fault.  Hey, even if it is, what are you going to do?  Let it drag on forever?  Sometimes we need to grit our teeth, and deal with adversity head on.  It’s so much better than having unanswered questions and tense situations.

Mandel has ruined my life with tons of crim reading.  I feel like I’ve been doing readings all day and still haven’t finished the LP assignment.  Tomorrow will be absolutely brutal, and I wanted to go out with my mom in the afternoon and do something.  Maybe I’ll stay up late, get ALL my readings done tonight and then only have Q5 of the assignment to deal with tomorrow.

I went for the most beautiful autumn run today up to the train tracks and feel great.  Love running.  Helps clear my mind, and does it ever need clearing these days.  This week has been far too emotional with too many ups and downs.

Appreciation

Coldplay often is my number one choice to study to, and today Strawberry Swing comes on.  My favourite line from the song is “Every moment was so precious.”

It describes one of my favourite views on life in general – carpe diem, seize the day, etc.  Every moment is precious, because you never know when those moments will end.  So enjoy them and don’t get caught up on being too concerned about what may come to be.  I should take my advice more often.

It’s one of my biggest flaws – getting too concerned about what will happen, to the point where I forget about what IS happening.  Then I make reckless decisions because I get angry, and then everything ends up being a big mess.  Maybe I should have the song on repeat all the time to remind myself about living in the moment.

That being said, life’s been rather interesting lately.  It’s far from perfect, but I’m trying to figure things out.  Criminal law is providing me with an excellent distraction from all of it – it’s hard not being in control, having limited knowledge and wondering what the heck is even happening.  I can’t stand moodiness/immaturity either.

In other news, I have to go see the dermatologist.  I’ve got this weird spot on my leg that Dad wants me to get checked out because of the skin cancer issues in our family.  It’s been around for a month and resembles an old scab, I’m really hoping it’s just a slowly healing scar or something.

Can’t wait to get this midterm and the legal process assignment out of the way!

In a daze

I have so much running through my mind I don’t even know where to begin!  I need to compartmentalize.  Also becoming concerned for crim (on Tuesday) – I really need to start editing my summaries and will need some serious help from pre-existing summaries, as our professor really loves getting lost and going all over the place.

Wednesdays suck.  Last night (for some odd reason) I could not sleep and spent the vast majority of the night sitting on mobile MSN messenger with others who were in the same predicament.   Point of that story is that I’m running on lack of sleep but for some reason am again …. not asleep and it’s nearly 2 am.  I blame MSN?

All in all, everything is great.  Happy about how everything is going, I’ve been smiling/laughing so much lately and just want life to continue this way.  Looking forward to our Oz Halloween party tomorrow night downtown!  Photos will be posted

 

Things I learned in criminal law today.

DISCLAIMER:  Those statements in bold are not my statements, they are my professors.

1.  Canada has a flat-tax system under Stephen Harper.

My Response:  What.  The.  Heck.  Are you kidding me?  I know you’re leftist but I now will dub you Communist. I bet if you told everyone in that high income bracket who get over half their income taken away by the government, they would disagree.

2. The law shouldn’t take common sense into account.

My response: This one requires a bit of background for non-law students.  We’re going over mens rea and one case (R. v. Creighton) discusses how there are two subjective elements for the mens rea.

Element 1: What one ought to know depends on what one did know.  (Everyone agrees on this one)

Element 2: According to what standard should one ought to have known.  (Disagreement)

Basically, with element 2, McLachlin writes for the majority that individual circumstances are only relevant where a person shows a lack of capacity to appreciate the nature of the consequences. This is based on fundamental values of equality that everybody should be held to the same minimum standard.  The dissent states that individual circumstances should be taken into consideration and thereby alter what the reasonable person standard is.

We went over one case where a young mother abused her 11 week old baby (skull fractures, vertebrae fractures, serious injuries) and did not procure medical treatment for him.  According to my professor, we need to take into account her inexperience, age and so on.  I, of course, disagreed – I don’t care if you’re only 17, there’s some element of common sense you should have!  Take the kid to the hospital.  However, the professor disagrees and thinks she’s blameless.  Unbelieveable.

3. It is appropriate to compare The Common Sense Revolution to the common sense I mentioned above.

Yes, the common sense of not allowing your baby to die was compared to the Common Sense Revolution.  I don’t even need to comment further on how ridiculous that one was.

I can’t even go on more.  Ridiculous.

It feels surreal.

It’s the first Thanksgiving I’ve ever had without my parents.  I know it’s really not that big of a deal, but it’s a first for me.  They’re having a great time in Greece and it’s about time I stopped being a homebody, but still!  However, I still get the big dinner, just in Hamilton at my roommate’s house.  Looking forward to it!

School is busy but fantastic.  I finally am studying things I find interesting and useful.  No doubts about this career path at all.  I’m doing my first moot on Thursday which incidentally is also my birthday  We’re going out in the evening for cake (because life is too busy for much else) and then our section is doing Pub Golf on the weekend, so that will be a psuedo-birthday too.  My parents return on the 17th which means I only get to keep my kitty another week.  He can be the most irritating thing ever (read: waking me up at 7 am for breakfast) but god, I love him.  He currently is asleep on the couch and looks really cute.

There’s been a bit of frustration/drama I’ve had to deal with, but it’s ok now.  Heather wrote me a birthday card that said “Be humble and forgiving for no one is perfect.”  What incredibly profound advice.  She knows me the best, and knows that I can be intolerant and can hold a grudge.  It’s not something I’m proud of and I do try to be a bit more understanding.  But hell, I’m not perfect, no one is.  So I took her advice (that was difficult) and I now I’ve done all that I can do.  But it’s really frustrating when you want to slap someone and say, “Wake up!”, especially after you didn’t make a big deal about something they did.  Jeez.  But, I did what I felt like doing, and that’s it.

I’m also very close to being finished The Lost Symbol and it is incredible!  I love Dan Brown.

Happy Thanksgiving all!

I have this great idea…

It’s called “Do your job, or you get fired.”  We’re just reading some cases for an assignment about accommodating drug addictions in the workplace.  While I get all the reasoning behind it, what happened to the good old days where if you abuse alcohol/hard drugs and always have then you clearly are not performing properly and your job should be given to someone else.  The only one  I really agree with (out of the three) would be Kelly as he was clean before, was exposed during undercover operations and legitimately tried to deal with the addiction.  A little slipup that you take responsibility for makes more sense to me than refusing treatment, counselling, help and so on and then claiming your rights were violated.  Good thing the courts agreed.

Going to try to update this more frequently.  It’s been rather busy here but it’s so much more interesting than undergrad was.  At times I miss McGill but generally I don’t – North York isn’t the most exciting but that’s a good thing considering the amount of work we have to do.

Also irritated with human behaviour.  I’ve got another great idea – how about you just say it like it is?  And, oh here’s another novel idea: COMMUNICATE.

Parents in Greece so the cat’s staying with me.  Currently asleep on the bed and looking incredibly cute

…and it’s over.

Orientation is finished as of yesterday’s semi-formal.

What a fun night!  We had a good time getting ready, went to the OC to pre-drink, hopped on buses and went over to the hall.  Great times socializing, cheering, making up awesome dances, eating, and drinking.  I still maintain we deserved to win, but whatever, I had enough to drink that I didn’t really care by the end of the night. (happy drunk, not sick drunk!)

So orientation is over and we have so much reading to do this weekend, I’m getting there though (with these nice little breaks in between where I blog/browse the internet.)  I hope to get out to Yorkdale tomorrow, I went through all my clothes before I moved and realized that a lot of them suck and that I need some more.

The first week of real classes

I was supposed to update this over the weekend, but that didn’t happen.

Friday: Scavenger hunt and pubcrawl.  The scavenger hunt involved us going to all these different locations over Toronto and we apparently weren’t allowed to use public transit – so we walked/jogged everywhere.  Of course there was the token person on our team who whined the whole time and refused to run – that was frustrating.  But, all in all, it was a ton of fun and helped me get to know some of my fellow classmates.  Afterwards our section went to this one pub where they had $3 mixed drinks … that was great.  Then, somewhat tipsy, I made my way to the Madison where all of the sections met up.  Section B boatrace winner, anyone?  Thanks for the training, McGill!  Met many more people and finally got home at some ridiculous hour which made Saturday pretty much a write-off.  The rest of the weekend wasn’t too exciting, except for the part where Sabrina came home earlier than expected at 1 am, turned on the shower and I freaked out thinking she was a robber.  Apparently I never will live that one down…

So, real class started this week.  Every professor has taken it upon themselves to give us their own walkthrough of how to brief a case, or, in the case of Contracts, take us through the development of the 18th century British legal system.  So it hasn’t been too complicated but readings have been assigned.  Have a fair bit of crim that I have yet to do, but at least these readings are relevant and interesting, much unlike my political science readings of undergrad.  We have our semi formal tomorrow – looking forward to that.

Just got home from the gym, so onto those crim readings.

Osgoode orientation

We’re almost finished orientation week – it has passed so quickly!

Great people, great school, having a fantastic time.

Monday: Meeting the section, assembly, BBQ, Old Osgoode tour.  Dennis O’Connor shook my hand, gave me an Osgoode hat.  A judge toured us, showed us her gorgeous office, and we had a class photo taken.  Quite a fun evening!

Tuesday: A little less – Legal Process and Ethical Lawyering, followed by a lunch.

Wednesday: Class in the morning, I can’t lie, Ethical Lawyering isn’t my idea of a great class but I suppose it’s a necessary evil.  Sports and games in the afternoon was awesome!  Granted, I hated the softball aspect of it but once we hit the tug of war, egg toss, egg and spoon, sponge race and impromptu soccer scrimmage afterwards I was in heaven.  I really needed to get out there and run around!  Afterwards, we had a wine and cheese which was good too

Thursday: We had Ethical Lawyering, then a brunch, then I got my gym membership and worked out.  There was a CNE trip tonight but Sabrina and I ditched that one to just relax … I was quite burnt out.  Tomorrow will be it’s own new post.

All in all, I love law school!

Last day at EY

I’m on the GO train headed for my last day at EY. Sort of sad. Sure – I will miss it but am too excited for law school to be too sad. Plus, I’ll be living close enough to come back and visit! My desk is almost clean and we’re going for (another) goodbye lunch today.