Funny. Today I began reading a book about writing and the writing process. I have realized why I felt stuck in the writing process for the last year. I need to warm myself up before I begin writing. I need to let myself get out the mess and the stress becfore I can say something that is powerful. For some reason, I had become so overcome with a fear of the audience that was reading that I began writing horrible work product. 

The essay that I just wrote may have been the most powerful thing that I have written in the lest six months. Realizing this has been a little frightening, because my friend, I am in law school and I am writing all of the time. This realization means that what I have been writing has been crap, which is evidenced by my journaling for the past year. But yeah know, who is paying attention anyway? Law school is just biting off bits of my soul little by little.. oh well. Oh, and perhaps I should more heavily edit my material because I accidentally handed in a mid-term that did not have a complete sentence, and that one point mark-off means something here. 

Is it okay to turn a blog into a free writing catalog? I actually do not care what the rhetorical answer is because I am going to make it so.

Dear Committee

Thank you for presenting today during the lunch hour about admissions at UW. I am writing because when we were speaking, I felt that there was some tension. I just wanted to clarify my perspective.
As a first generation college student that was able to attend Stanford on through a targeted program, I have thought a lot about inclusion in institutions of higher learning. I am white, but I was also in foster care and my siblings are incarcerated.  I did not think that I was going to attend to law school, because I did not have any reverence for the law. I decided to come to law school the summer before my senior year of college when I advocated for change in the U.S. child welfare system. When I applied, I was not supported through the process and I did not study for the LSAT at all. I think many students that come from diverse backgrounds my struggle to find the time that it takes to prepare for law school admission. Not all people of color come from certain socio-economic backgrounds, but if we look at the spread of wealth in the U.S. it is undeniable that we may need to address issues surrounding poverty and inequality when looking to broaden UW Law's diversity in the classroom. (Especially if UW wants to be a leader in public service law, as well as a leader to finding new ways to engage disparately affected demographics of people in the legal profession).

Before I came to UW Law, I chose to take a gap year to work as a policy coordinator. I worked on issues affecting current and former foster youth. The majority of the youth that I worked with were transition aged (18-24) youth of color. When they came to the Capitol to give testimony they exhibited an initial resistance to government structures and a strong distaste for the police. If I talked to them about their future, many of the youth said that they would never be able to attend law school.

If we are serious about making UW a more diverse place we need to address support issues in recruitment and retention. We need to reach out to communities to see what they want to learn about the law and perhaps tailor visitation days to teaching around that goal and exposing youth to the legal profession.

Today was a day about reflection. When I engage with black letter law and legal concepts it is really easy to spot where the disconnect often occurs for various racial and ethnic groups, and socio-economic classes of individuals.

I received a phone call from an old place of work to give me an update. After hearing the news, I took to google. Researching is what new and lawyers-in-training do. I researched the name and the news was the first thing that appeared in my search bar. I looked through the other people who were arrested in the "sting." Unsurprisingly, the majority of those arrested were of color, and present in the population were a disproportionate amount of transgender people of color. Sad. Sad. Sad. I have serious doubts about policing practices in the U.S. and this only serves to further solidy my thoughts.

Mondays have a bad reputation. Yesterday didn't help that reputation much. After I had to complete a take-home mid-term over the weekend, I think I was ready to crash. My only evidence is that I was supposed to go to a dinner, so I went home to changing. Before I began to change, I laid down on the floor. Three hours later I got up, and I had missed the dinner.

Judge me. That is a judge-able moment.

I can't wait until tomorrow. Em will be here and I can make her do things to make my life easier for a few days. I am feeling overwhelmed by life right now. My introvert self is being extended in ways that are too exhausting.

In other news, it is looking like I will be taking a visit to the Deep South again this summer. I have two interviews with Federal District Court Judges in Tulsa, OK and Birmingham, AL. The universe is telling me to put my feet to the fire. I talk a lot about social inequality and racial issues. Where better to confront all forms of social oppresssion and socio-economic issues than the Deep South? I have my skirt suit ready. Hopefully, I can maintain some sort of verbal eloquence throughout the interviews. I also need to remember my biggest strength and weakness... I always forget when I am sitting in a chair across from someone I don't know. Maybe the distance of electronis devices will ease that anxiety.

Before I had time to post this blog, I had to send out emails to three of the student groups that I am in. Wow. Maybe that is where I went wrong. I need to reign myself in, or maybe it is too late.

State of the Union

Sadly, I will be unable to geek out and watch the State of the Union tonight. I will be sealing juvenile records in the U-District, but with some lovely people. While drudging to the 5:30 bus, I was thinking how in 100 years students may be studying the oratory of President Obama like we study President Roosevelt, perhaps even more so because Obama is the first black president and utilizes such skill in all of his high profile oration.

Now, I would much rather watch the State of the Union of Poverty, a talk that was given at Stanford a few weeks back, but I will take the State of the Union on podcast for tomorrow's morning workout. I can dig that.

I learn fastest when mortified. Proof- today. I had an interview with a U.S. Attorney for the 7th Circuit for a federal 1L clerkship, and of course, I mixed up PST and CST. It was comical how fast I went through the transition from nervous to blaise because I thought that I had ruined the entire interview process. Luckily, he was patient and moved me on to the next round.

Next round, judicial interview. Next interview with the ABA… Friday. Hopefully I move through the ABA so that I can ensure some funding for my summer.

Embarassment #2 of the day: Going out to the bar with other law students to review finals, ask the waitress for water, she goes to the public pitcher for everyone and pours your glass. Ouch, did not mean to seem privileged. Bam. The worst part is- she remembered me from previous visits and was being so nice… I just never ordered water before. (maybe that says more about me then her going to get me water…)

…..on that grind.

Vivid Dreaming

Alas, my dreams have caught up with me. Perhaps that is a slight exaggeration, but when I wake up at 5 am on the weekdays in order to go to the gym I always wake up during a dream cycle. This morning my dream was particularly violent, and although I do not always enjoy waking up at such an early hour, I was very glad to have this dream interrupted before the injuries that I was seeing become exposed in more detail.

The funny thing is, I have no idea where my mind gets this violent and graphic images from. As a child I witnessed violent things, but never to the extent that was revealed in my dreams. Maybe I caught a glimpse of injuries on the television, but this makes me wish that I hadn't. Why would you want to expose yourself and others to such trauma on a daily basis via media sources. I can't watch graphic violence in movies or on television anymore because I find it disturbing, but I didn't find it as disturbing in elementary or high school.

Ok, for example, my dream this morning featured a couple on a beach. The beach was somewhat of a geographic wonder. The winds were very strong and the beach was more like a series of cliffs covered with greenish yellow algea. There were a few other people out in the cliffs as the tide became to come in, but the couple had an argument and the male tried to leave. In an attempt to leave he jumped from the cliff hoping to drift in the wind. As soon as he jumped, the wind let up and he crashed into the rocks.

I have never seen a climbing ot rock accident in real life, and I hope never to see one. But how could my imaginiation be so vivid as to picture the damage that could occur from such an accident? Wild.

Conversely, maybe this is an extension of the nightmarish dreams that I have always had in association with the ocean.

Funny, because I just visited Wesport, WA this weekend and saw a coast line that is very different than the east coast and the Northern California coast.