Over!
July 2008 essay subjects:
1) Torts (negligence) / Property (landlord-tenant tort liability) / NY Practice (standard for judgment as matter of law, comparative negligence)
2) Partnership (fiduciary duties, liability of partners & partnership on contracts) / Contracts (substantial performance)
3) Criminal Procedure (search & seizure, right to counsel) / Evidence (hearsay, Confrontation Clause)
4) Wills (valid execution, adoption issues, anti-lapse, ademption) / Secured Transactions (gifts of secured property, priority of liens)
5) Domestic Relations (divorce) / Agency (power of attorney) / Property (easement by necessity)
Hard or easy? I heard both views from people who had already taken the exam. My impression: the overall experience of preparing for the exam and taking it is hard, but the exam itself is relatively easy (assuming you've prepared).
Hard because there is a lot of law to learn during the two months of preparation.
Relatively easy because the legal issues to discuss were not difficult to spot. And because the bulk of the test covered the major areas we expected to see--my nightmarish scenario of staring at questions without any idea of how to proceed did not play out.
But only relatively easy--not easy--because a number of points in the essays turned on minor, specific rules within the major subjects. Sometimes rules that weren't covered at all in Barbri. I'm assuming that making educated guesses at the correct rules in these areas was good enough to pass. If not, I'll have to change my assessment of the whole exam to very hard. We'll see.
Thursday, July 31, 2008
Wednesday, July 9, 2008
Memorable TV
I remember watching these two events on TV:
(1) Mike Schmidt's retirement and
(2) the Tiananmen Square massacre.
I forgot they happened within a week of each other, May 29 and June 4, 1989. I remember crying with my baseball hero in the first. I forget my reaction to the second.
(1) Mike Schmidt's retirement and
(2) the Tiananmen Square massacre.
I forgot they happened within a week of each other, May 29 and June 4, 1989. I remember crying with my baseball hero in the first. I forget my reaction to the second.
Thunderstorms Likely
My gf is getting her hair cut short tomorrow. I'll have strange dreams tonight and poignant dreams tomorrow night. Highs in the 90s, thunderstorms likely.
Thursday, October 4, 2007
Genji & Alternative Explanations
After an alternative explanation for the epithet of Ganji ("Some say that the name of Hikaru the Shining One was given to him in admiration by the Korean fortune-teller"), the translator notes: This touch is reminiscent of early chronicles such as the Nihongi, which delight in alternative explanations. In the subsequent chapters such archaisms entirely disappear.
Friday, September 28, 2007
Summer Reading
It's pathetic how little I read this summer. I was working, but still.
6:17: I see a rainbow over Harlem. Its red band, on the left, should touch down near Yankee Stadium. Now I see its base: it looks like there's been a fire at some chemical plant in the Bronx.
I still remember: the first time I saw Harlem from my apartment, moving in here in Aug. 2005, it reminded me of Florence. It must have been the hodgepodge of tan buildings, around what's probably 128th Street and St. Nicholas Terrace (according to google maps), that reminded me of the Florentine buildings I saw from the far bank of the Arno (the side opposite the Ufizzi). I'm sure it was something I saw, and not just a play on "Renaissance."
The highlight of a generally unlettered summer was my subway reading: Alexander Theroux's The Primary Colors and The Secondary Colors. (Ironically, my commute was probably the worst part of a pleasant summer. I plan to move somewhere--anywhere--that eliminates or substantially reduces the subway ride.) These two books of essays are perfect for a commuter's stop-and-start reading habits. Theroux's prose is like a fireworks finale that just goes on and on. So you can appreciate any paragraph without remembering--without even having read--anything else in the book. I had bought and read parts of both books before moving to New York. I'm glad I thought to take one with me one morning, to take my mind off the misery of riding the subway to work, soaked in sweat.
I took Henry James' The Wings of the Dove with me to Paris. And I read the first chapter, for the second or third time in my life, but got no further. It also took me several tries to read The Ambassadors and The Spoils of Poynton, both of which I read my last time in France. My perseverance especially paid off with The Ambassadors. (I expect The Wings of the Dove to be similar--at least, both are among James' "late novels," I think. So I'm not putting down The Wings for good.) Ditto with Washington Square, though that false start came in high school, which shouldn't really count against me. But I had no problem reading The American, The Europeans, The Portrait of a Lady, and The Aspern Papers, all while I was in Lille. A Turn of the Screw I read for a college class.
The American was the first James novel I read in France, and outside the classroom, and I was surprised at how much it read like popular fiction, in a Victorian Gothic vein. This was the snobbish, mannerly expatriate?
The Portrait of a Lady: approaching it as James' masterpiece, I was a little disappointed. Just get the hell out of there, Isabel Archer! I prefer The Ambassadors.
So much for French reading. But I bought two books in France:
-- Char, dans l'atelier du poete, Rene Char, Quarto Gallimard.
-- Marguerite Duras, Romans, cinema, theatre, Quarto Gallimard.
I did not, however, return with a Pleiade volume, as I'd planned. But I made up for it somewhat by winning an eBay auction when I got back, getting these three Pleiade titles (in 1950s editions):
-- Antoine de Saint-Exupery, Ouevres and
-- Roger Martin du Gard, Ouevres I and II.
And a fourth 1950s Pleiade volume just yesterday: Baudelaire's Oeuvres.
For my trip in August, I bought two used books: Tolstoy's Resurrection and Joinville & Villehardouin's Chronicles of the Crusades. I read 100+ pages of Resurrection on the flight over and marveled again at Tolstoy's mastery. But in a fitting end to my summer, I lost the book somewhere between Seoul and Tokyo.
6:17: I see a rainbow over Harlem. Its red band, on the left, should touch down near Yankee Stadium. Now I see its base: it looks like there's been a fire at some chemical plant in the Bronx.
I still remember: the first time I saw Harlem from my apartment, moving in here in Aug. 2005, it reminded me of Florence. It must have been the hodgepodge of tan buildings, around what's probably 128th Street and St. Nicholas Terrace (according to google maps), that reminded me of the Florentine buildings I saw from the far bank of the Arno (the side opposite the Ufizzi). I'm sure it was something I saw, and not just a play on "Renaissance."
The highlight of a generally unlettered summer was my subway reading: Alexander Theroux's The Primary Colors and The Secondary Colors. (Ironically, my commute was probably the worst part of a pleasant summer. I plan to move somewhere--anywhere--that eliminates or substantially reduces the subway ride.) These two books of essays are perfect for a commuter's stop-and-start reading habits. Theroux's prose is like a fireworks finale that just goes on and on. So you can appreciate any paragraph without remembering--without even having read--anything else in the book. I had bought and read parts of both books before moving to New York. I'm glad I thought to take one with me one morning, to take my mind off the misery of riding the subway to work, soaked in sweat.
I took Henry James' The Wings of the Dove with me to Paris. And I read the first chapter, for the second or third time in my life, but got no further. It also took me several tries to read The Ambassadors and The Spoils of Poynton, both of which I read my last time in France. My perseverance especially paid off with The Ambassadors. (I expect The Wings of the Dove to be similar--at least, both are among James' "late novels," I think. So I'm not putting down The Wings for good.) Ditto with Washington Square, though that false start came in high school, which shouldn't really count against me. But I had no problem reading The American, The Europeans, The Portrait of a Lady, and The Aspern Papers, all while I was in Lille. A Turn of the Screw I read for a college class.
The American was the first James novel I read in France, and outside the classroom, and I was surprised at how much it read like popular fiction, in a Victorian Gothic vein. This was the snobbish, mannerly expatriate?
The Portrait of a Lady: approaching it as James' masterpiece, I was a little disappointed. Just get the hell out of there, Isabel Archer! I prefer The Ambassadors.
So much for French reading. But I bought two books in France:
-- Char, dans l'atelier du poete, Rene Char, Quarto Gallimard.
-- Marguerite Duras, Romans, cinema, theatre, Quarto Gallimard.
I did not, however, return with a Pleiade volume, as I'd planned. But I made up for it somewhat by winning an eBay auction when I got back, getting these three Pleiade titles (in 1950s editions):
-- Antoine de Saint-Exupery, Ouevres and
-- Roger Martin du Gard, Ouevres I and II.
And a fourth 1950s Pleiade volume just yesterday: Baudelaire's Oeuvres.
For my trip in August, I bought two used books: Tolstoy's Resurrection and Joinville & Villehardouin's Chronicles of the Crusades. I read 100+ pages of Resurrection on the flight over and marveled again at Tolstoy's mastery. But in a fitting end to my summer, I lost the book somewhere between Seoul and Tokyo.
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