when i was in grade school or high school i attempted to organize my books by creating a database with MS Access. my ultimate goal was to come up with a system wherein i could locate my books by typing the title or author and then the shelf wherein it is located would be displayed.

Unfortunately, the computer wherein my file was stored crashed and i, being the lazy person that i am, oh-so-conveniently forgot to make a back-up copy. i never quite got to reconstructing my book database the reasons being: 1. i'm a lazy pig, 2. i'm a slob and it's virtually impossible for me to come up with a relatively organized system, 3. i thought i could do it manually (i actually bought a book journal. it's essentially a journal that allows you to keep track of books borrowed/lent, favorite books and passages, books to read) but one year hence it's still practically empty.

luckily, i discovered a site that allows you to easily catalog your books online. it's pretty simple (for lazy people like yours truly) as it allows you to type the book title or its author and then a selection from amazon, loc, etc. comes out and you just click on the book you own. i have yet to make an comrehensive inventory of my books but this is a start. when i actually get to organizing them, i'll figure out a shelving system (in like, 500 years or so. hahaha).

this is my book catalog. it's incomplete as i'm too lazy to actually make a list but i've got to start somewhere, right? :) Next goal is to catalogue my brothers' book collections then on to my sisters' and parents'. good luck to me. our house is essentially one giant bookshelf pretending to be a house what with the endless clutter and books all over the place (we're a family of bookworms and packrats. to think i hate worms and rats. hahaha :s). give me the next century maybe by some miracle i'll actually accomplish that. oh well, wishful thinking. hehehe! :D

my next goal is to read at least one non-law book a week. i resolved to do so last weekend when i realized that i had bought 6 books in the span of 2 weeks. of those 6, i've only finished 2 (including harry potter 7!). that's a pretty bad record considering i have accumulated piles of books waiting to be read from college, possibly even high school which up to this point i haven't even started on. besides, i need some leisure reading. been feeling down and frankly even quite batty lately as i've been pretty engrossed in all things law school.

or better yet, maybe i should spend ALL my time studying, get high grades (yeah, right), become a lawyer, make tons of money, retire at, say, 30, and spend the rest of my life reading. hahaha. i wish.

unfortunately, i'm still iffy about the whole law school thing. the only thing i'm quite certain of is that if by some miracle i survive law school, the bar, and become a lawyer i don't think i'm going to get rich what with my lack of interest in the more-lucrative fields of law. so yeah, back to my one book a week goal.

Labels: books, law school, nothing and everything, pasaway mode

went around law this afternoon trying to inveigle entice people to buy tickets for the winlaw cake raffle. one of my batchmates laughed when he saw me and commented that whenever he sees me, i'm selling something. and he's right because conversely, whenever i see him, i am selling something be it pastries, t-shirts and other up law merchandise, or raffle tickets. such thought makes me paranoid. does that mean whenever people see me they get the urge to run away because they think i'll try to sell them something or other?

i hope not. though it is a funny, if not depressing thought. haha.

i made a promise to myself that after this sem, no more selling for me since i don't think i'm very good at it PLUS there's the change that i'm beginning to be associated with forcing people into buying stuff. then i remembered something. i won't be able to fulfill my promise because next sem, we have the winlaw flower sale wich my batch is in charge of. i'm quite excited but apprehensive because i know it will entail a lot of work.

oh well. after all this, i hope people won't look at me as a walking, talking selling machine of sorts. haha :p

Labels: law school, nothing and everything

i have acquired a new skill: booth-manning. it seems as though during the past few weeks, all i've been doing is manning some booth or other. it started with barops merchandise then freshie week voting then winlaw fund-raising. come this week, i'll be manning the winlaw booth yet again as well as the pvo sign-up booth and will probably end up manning the barops merchandise booth if no one else can. it's actually quite fun! you get to meet new people, catch up with friends, people watch (though after a while you realize that you keep seeing the same people. haha!) and even log in some study time. though it can sometimes get stressful especially when you have to be at two (or three or four...) places at the same time.

take last week, for example. i was manning a booth and i saw one of the freshies i know so i said hi. a few minutes later, i had booth duty elsewhere and i saw her again and greeted her. her response was, "arianne, you're everywhere!" and then it hit me, she was right. in the sense that given the simulataneity (and constant stream) of (mostly) extracurricular responsibilities, i sometimes feel that i HAVE to be everywhere all at once. and last i checked, such is not humanly possible hence the fast-paced walk, the sometimes incoherent and mile-a-minute speech, and the unkempt hair (haha). given the physical limitations, i sometimes have to forego one responsibility over the other (thank goodness for understanding friends and orgmates. hehe) but i have a hard time letting go of that nagging, guilty feeling.

it also happens during social events. the worst in recent months was last may wherein i was invited to three birthday parties in one night. i felt that i couldn't skip any of the three because all of them are really good friends of mine. so what i did is before leaving the house, i set a schedule and mapped my route starting from the place nearest to my house to the furthest. while i had an enjoyable time and ended up eating three or four dinners (plus take-home! hehe), i also felt really stressed since i had to keep checking the time and praying i wasn't TOO late while trying to drive at a reasonably faster (but not too fast hehe) speed than usual.

the situation got worse this sem in that given our six day school week, i don't have much time for socials. i've had to forego quite a number of reunions, parties, movie (non)dates, dinners, game nights (sniff), lunches, etc. because my schedule can't handle it though i try to do my best by fitting in as much commitments as i can possibly in one timeslot. two saturdays ago, for instance, i volunteered for freshie night but had to drop by my friend's birthday since after all, she is one of my closest friends PLUS go home at a reasonably early time because my mom had just arrived from the states. same thing yesterday. after class, went to my friend's house since it's her younger sister's birthday. we had dinner at the fort (ran's and cupcakes! heavenly. hehe!) but i had to forego dropping by the birthday of her other sister's boyfriend AND game night because i went to another friend's party. then there was the time we had a block outing in tagaytay so i had to forego my friend's surprise despedida. i guess it's really not a big deal. i mean i really cannot be in more than one place at one particular time but sometimes i really wish i could. i'd be a lot less stressed and a lot more productive that way, i think. i sometimes feel bad when i skip out on my friends because i always think they feel that i'm not prioritizing them or shrugging them off. but it's not the case. i just have to juggle so much all at once and TRY not to let any of the metaphorical juggling balls (if that's what they're called) fall. i'm just thankful that at least thus far, my friends have been really understanding and (hopefully) don't think i take them for granted.

i still want a clone. or multiply clones. that would be multi-tasking to the Nth level! hahaha!
but wait, i don't think the world is ready to handle more than one arianne.

scary thought. hehehe :)

Labels: barops, extracurriculars, haggardness, law school, life in general, orgs, winlaw

i saw a friend of mine from undergrad this afternoon whom i have seen around law quite often while i was manning the barops/freshie week booth with my blockmates. this is a non-verbatim reconstruction of how our conversation went:

me: do you want to vote for one of the ms. freshie candidates?
him: well, i don't really know any of them.
me: well, you can always vote for cinderella (1C's candidate. yes, i admit, i'm biased... Block C all the way! hahaha!). it's only five pesos per vote.
him: ahh.. you have to pay pala. maybe next time. so, what have you been doing?
me: well, i'm part of the barops team.
him: what's your designation?
me: (being very matter of fact) i'm the all-around slave.
him: of whom?
me: of everyone! :p

don't get me wrong. i'm not complaining. goes with the job description. plus i am enjoying it in a masochistic sense. haha. just kidding!:) but it did make me realize that, indeed, it has been a crazy first month of school (not to mention summer. hahaha)

to start with, my block's sched is crazy, to say the least. We have class from Monday to Saturday. And we (supposedly) spend the entire Sunday studying and preparing for yet another crazy week ahead. I miss our first year, first sem sched wherein we only had class on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Last sem's sched was even quite bearable wherein we had Friday to Sunday off plus the added perk of looking forward to Thursday game nights at Kaye's place. i miss those days... and my former blockmates, too. :(

plus, our classes are more demanding than they were last year. funny because a lot of my friends in the higher years keep telling me that second year, first sem is actually the easiest/lightest in terms of workload. i don't see it. it's been especially challenging given that i have to juggle acads with family, friends, orgs, barops, internship, and other commitments and the occasional emotional burden brought forth by factors which i will not mention. i guess i'm partially (if not totally) to blame for my busy-ness. if i hadn't said yes to certain commitments i wouldn't, well, be committed (for more redundancy. haha). so i guess if i spontaneously combust one of these days due to extreme over-commitment, i'll have no one to blame but myself. haha. but seriously, i enjoy being involved. it keeps me sane and happy in spite of everything.

in any case, i've decided that i need a time out.

so i'm imposing a twenty four hour time out on myself starting tomorrow morning. i need the alone time to rest, think, study, and finish some unfinished barops work (website, anyone?). so from now until tomorrow evening, it'll be just me, myself, and i save for the couple of hours i'll be in school tomorrow and my laptop and books. utter bliss. i can't wait. :)

Labels: law school, ramblings

in lieu of studying law in the "grand manner," i could be:

1. taking up my masters in international relations or comparative politics or political science in general
2. brushing up on my spanish, french, german, and italian
3. catching up on years and years of precious sleepy time
4. working in an NGO that focuses on political and electoral reform as i have always wanted to do
5. bumming around and watching tv to my heart's content (though i probably wouldn't last long doing that)
6. travelling the world and completing my "places to see before i die" checklist
7. reading the books i've accumulated but never read over the years which are gathering dust in my room
8. regularly taking muay thai and other fun classes
9. learning how to cook (dream on, arianne)
10. making time to catch up with my friends from grade school, high school, undergrad, etc.
11. making a difference (albeit small) in this world
12. doing all the things i've always dreamt of doing but never had the time to
13. getting work experience and figuring out what the real world is all about (funny, for me, poveda and ironically UP have been my sanctuaries for the longest time)

and the list goes on.

a few weeks ago, i sent my mom an incredibly emotional e-mail recounting what had been going on with me and my block. of course, my mommy was concerned. she reminded me of that time last year, when i told her i was going to law school and she asked if i was sure given the fact that our country's legal system leaves a lot to be desired. apparently, being the overly-idealistic person that i am (or once was?) i told her that if i didn't do my part to change it, nothing would change. or something to that effect. she even suggested i transfer to another-law-school-which-i-will-refrain-from-naming-but-has-always-been-the-law-school-where-my-parents-wanted-me-to-go (whew... maybe i should've just named it. hahaha) to avoid the whole messy situation. i seriously considered quitting because i couldn't stomach certain aspects not only of the law school system which i am a part of but of the legal profession in general. but being the stubborn person i am, i chose to stay.

i don't really know why exactly. maybe it's because i wanted to prove that i wasn't going to let WHAT HAPPENED get me down. or maybe it's because by some miracle i'm still hopefuly and idealistic that i could in my own little way contribute to change. but then, maybe it's because i'm a masochist and a glutton for punishment.

at this point in time, i'm really confused. there are so many things i want to do and i feel that my life has been put on hold. on the other, at least a part of me wants to become a lawyer especially after this past summer wherein i had a lot of realizations about what i want to do with my life. plus there's that added bonus about not thinking about survival in the real world for the next three years or so.

i really don't know anymore. one think i do know is this: something (or someone.. hahaha, just kidding!) has to happen REAL SOON to help me realize that i've made the right decision. if not, i'm a dead duckling who's just wasting taxpayers' (and my parents') money, who can't even pass crim 2, and who will be of no added value to the rest of society. that would be really sad. :(

Labels: law school, ramblings

first year law student.kid at heart.idealist.optimist (except about myself).hopeless romantic.daydream believer.dreamer.klutz(hehe).


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"I don't care if I never grow up
Don't want to shrink in a suit
Don't want live just to suck someones bones dry
I'd rather die."
- Chris Trapper, Waiting Watching Wishing

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