I I.U.L. 1

Well, here is the first installment of the Law School Letters.
I'll start chronologically and try to stay true to that format. To start with, I hate moving. You take your perfectly (close enough) ordered life, put it in boxes, drive it across thousands of miles, throw it in a big heap, and attempt to find new places for everything. Luckily I had no causalities on the drive out. This was quite an accomplishment since the truck I was driving was an uncontrollable drunk in a past life and had no sense of balance or will to work. The drive that was supposed to take 23 hours 15 minutes took 35 hours and more gas than I want to think about. Beyond the difficulty of getting here, Bloomington has been great. The community seems quite welcoming. Our ward is small right now, but they are estimating 30-40 families will move in next month. (Thank goodness we are not on the Elders Quorum President’s list yet.) Thanks to my wonderful wife, our home is actually looking like a home and not a random collection of toilet paper, paper towel, and copy paper boxes.
So what is law school like? If you have ever read a thousand page book for 5-6 hours a day (averaging 15-20 pages) without comprehending much, you have the general idea of what a typical day is. The difficult part is that when I do understand something, it goes against what I thought was right before. For example, my idea of Justice gets mutilated on a daily basis. It seems like the study of law, or at least the criminal law class that I am in currently, is a study in how to interpret a statute with out regard to the facts of the case. Overall, I feel I am starting to understand the material, but it is still very time consuming. (I wrote that yesterday, but today I am not so sure I do understand much.) Basically, law school seems to be a journey into the land of “it depends on how you look at it,” “read, don’t think,” and “it depends on the definition of the word ‘is.’”
Well, duty (reading my book to understand why a case about perjury is in an attempt section) calls so I will have to end letter 1. I hope all is well with whoever may be reading this. I will write again when fortune (free time) smiles upon me again.
Byram