Daniel's Summer Blog

The way scheduling worked out this year was quite foruitous, I missed very little class while going home for all of Pesach chag (and shabbat chol hamoed). Because of further scheduling quirks, I only had a handful of classes before the school went into lockdown for exams. While exams are well-spaced for 1Ls (a consequence of our fixed schedules), I am already fearing next year's exams. At the moment, both semesters include back-to-back-to-back days of exams. While it will be within my power to have at least one of the exams moved, it's still not something I look forward to. Thankfully, Pesach appears to once again be fairly innocuous, and the High Holidays are conveniently placed on Shabbat and Sunday, forcing me to miss three home football games, but no class. While I have not checked Purim for next year, this year it fell squarely into spring break, allowing me to go up to NYC for a very short but fun visit. After exams were over, we were given one day off before the joint journal competition was unlocked. The JJC is an optional competition which puts the entrant into consideration for one of the five journals offered by the law school. I found it far more difficult to be motivated for an optional competition than for required exams, despite the huge prestige associated with being on a journal. While I have no suggestions for the improvement of this system, I think it could benefit from a change either in timing or necessity.

I celebrated finishing the writing competition and my first year of law school by going to my first trivia in over a month, then taking advantage of Buns's late hours to finally eat dinner somewhere past midnight. The next day I grilled at Hillel to earn admittance to the moonbounce and the Seniors' Event. Mena and Ryan came to see Elie, so I hung out with them, played badminton (might have gotten the birdie, racket and a hula-hoop stuck in a tree at one point), and bounced around the moonbounce. Afterwards I scored some hot dogs to have with dinner. Shabbat Dinner was something of an exercise in cleaning and improvisation. As my last large meal I wanted to get rid of as much food as possible, or at least cook it all and give it away. In addition to pasta, rice, three boxes of hors d'oeuvres, and challah, I also mixed bbq sauce, honey, and brown sugar together and simmered the dogs in the mix. The result was poured onto the various starches for flavor and color, with pleasing results. For those of you who were worried, there was just enough ketchup to go around, thanks to a strategic purchase just before exams. The next meals were simply an effort to clean up the leftovers.

I went to game 6 of the Canes-Bruins series which was quite fun other than losing. Thankfully, the Canes won in 7, despite my expectations that they would get swept by the top-seeded Bruins. However, as I write this, these same Canes are on the brink of elimination in the Eastern Conference Finals. We have been subject to repeated beatdowns by the Penguins whose offense unfortunately far outstrips our own. Maybe this will be motivation for revenge next year.

For June I will be at camp, July and part of August I will be in DC for an internship.