Law school, OULES, and the Aeneid

[raven]

Okaaaay. I just clicked the submit button on three law school applications. Maria gave me a bag of Thornton's chocolate-covered caramel for Christmas and I have just munched my way through it all. These two facts are not unrelated. Argh argh argh argh argh I am crazy why am I crazy argh argh argh.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.

There's a thunderstorm going on, but the thunder is so deep you can feel it, in your bones and in the stones of the house, rather than hear it. It's good to be home. I went down from Oxford yesterday afternoon in horrible weather and it didn't really let up all the way here, but it's very cosy, sitting inside with large quantities of chocolate and lots of books - many people gave me books this week - and so tired that I'm viewing everything through a sort of cotton-wool haze. My mum is on nights, and will get back in about half eleven - I just need to stay awake until then and then I am going to bed, in my lovely bed with its overabundance of pillows and pretty Rajasthani covers. I am looking forward to that a lot. A lot. The window is open a crack so I can hear the rain and the wind and the sea all mixed up together and howling through the pines. A whole damn lot.

Despite the cotton-wool tiredness, eighth week was actually lovely. It's all in my head now as a succession of sensory impressions, all bright, all vivid (possibly something to do with my having been somewhat tipsy since Tuesday), and all mixed up a bit. It was a good week. I was on a protest, in a pantomime, inebriated and happy and overworked, so it was probably a good term, too. In that spirit, a few brief sensory impressions:

Firstly, the protest. I've had enough of the politics of it, and enough of the discussion, but as many wise people seem to have said, decisions are made by those who show up. I showed up. That was it, really. I showed up, and my friends and I ended up on Redwatch.* Nice start to the week. But in all seriousness, what do I ever do but what seems right at the time? I do, and I did, and that's my final word on the subject.

Secondly, OULES. The panto - Aladdin - started on Tuesday, and I was a pirate. Well, no, I was Thief #8 and jacinthsong was Thief #7. ("But you're the first one to speak! What happened to Thieves 1 to 6?" / "Oh, they dropped out in third week.") But it's apparently a little-known axiom of formal logic that thieves and pirates are co-referential, so we ended up with bandana and a cutlass (and a Baileys bottle labelled "RUM") and followed Ali Baba about whilst singing the Thieves' Pointless Song ("This song is completely pointless / but it serves to fill a gap / This song is completely pointless / In fact, this song is crap...")

It wasn't quite as much fun as last term's, because nothing is as much fun as playing a corpse, but it was delightful fun nevertheless. Full of dreadful puns, a pantomime dame who looks better in a dress than I do, a wonderful wonderful evil sorcerer of evil (complete with song entitled "Squashing Fluffy Kittens On The Road"), bespectacled henchwomen, dancing skeletons and two large buckets of foam, it was fab. I sat backstage on Tuesday night and remarked on a very Oxford scene: the last week of term, backstage, dim light mid-performance, and six or seven people piled up against the wall frantically reading. (Organic chemistry, international law, maths, conflict in Israel.) I love OULES so very much.

The cast party was also lovely. I was drunk. I feel the need to point this out before anything else, or indeed before anyone else does, because it is true. It was still the nice sort of drunk, though; the I love everyone and everything sort of drunk. Last term, at the cast party on Port Meadow, I was ritually adopted and cocktailed and wiped the wine out of my eyes to find myself an official Oule. For some reason Maria wasn't cocktailed then, so she decided she needed a set of parents - me and foulds, which is delightfully incestuous, considering he's also my OULES dad - a bottle of vodka and about fifty people yelling "A cocktailing, a cocktailing, there's going to be a cocktailing!" I remember this so vividly - the night sky, the alcohol-made-melodic singing, the smudged eyeliner around the hundreds of eyes, even through the cotton-wool. Later on I was having a conversation with someone about something - the details of who and what have inexplicably slipped out of my memory - when foulds jumped up, also very vivid, grabbed me and somehow or other I was being twirled around the garden yelling "We did it!"

We did, though; next term we shall between us be directing the OULES version of the Aeneid, which is yet another reason I'm crazy. (Term before Finals. Directing a show. Yep.) But I actually can't find it within myself to be anything other than very, very excited about it.

I'm going to America at the end of this week, and I have a to-do list that once again has "sort out life" on it, but now I'm going to eat more caramel and watch the first season of Buffy.

(Law school! The Aeneid! Eeeee.)

---

*Link goes to Wikipedia, not the actual site, because of, er, referral stats.

Comments

[minttown1.livejournal.com]

Congratulations on having applied! :D (You've made it further than I have at this point.)

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Thank you thank you! Because my LSAT was so disappointing, I'm not holding up much hope, but I figured I might as well finish the apps. How're you doing with it?

[minttown1.livejournal.com]

I'm making very slow progress with it -- too slow, really. I am doing that thing where I cross my fingers and hope that it will all work out, once I make the time to get it done. (Honestly, I've been sinfully avoidant about the whole thing, a terrible sort of denial.)

[sophiahagia.livejournal.com]

In my experience (applying to undergrad and then applying to transfer colleges), submitting the applications is 3/4 the battle. "So, go you!:)

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Thank you kindly! I do hate apps.

[skipthedemon.livejournal.com]

I'm sending so many warm thoughts your way about law school applications! I know how nerve wracking the process is. It's good that you got them in this early.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Oh, thank you, thank you. I need good thoughts. *loves* At least this bit's over.

[ra-sar.livejournal.com]

Congrats on getting apps in!
May I ask to which schools you've applied?

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Harvard, Columbia, Georgetown. Think will not bother with Yale, and I'll leave it at that, I have NO MONEY. *g*

[ra-sar.livejournal.com]

Well, if you end up at Columbia do let me know if you have any questions about it or moving to NY--I don't live far from the campus, I know an absurd number of people who go to school there (not for law, though) and one of my best friends even works in the alum office for the law school. Also, another one of my college roommates just applied to go there next year.

*pimps Cardozo anyway even though it's not quite in the class of the above three and applying to more schools is expensive because it's really really awesome*

On that note I leave you with what has basically become my own personal law school theme song which should also definitely apply to the application process:

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Hey, thank you! That'd be really cool, I need all the help I can get in this process.

And, ah, awesome. I feel like that a lot of the time. *g*

[jonquil.livejournal.com]

I love reading about your life.

Clue me: I thought one read law at Oxford rather than going to a separate law school?

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Thank you. :)

One can indeed read law at Oxford, but English law. I'm applying to American law schools, y'see.

[jonquil.livejournal.com]

Good luck and welcome then!

(As I understand it, it currently consists of "Whatever the President says", at least at the Federal level.)

[tmpe5t.livejournal.com]

Hurray! I want to be on an affronted nazi website! Must go off and make a green hammer & sickle chainring icon... :D

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

No you don't, trust me. :)

[deepbluemermaid.livejournal.com]

I might have told you this story before, but: I almost didn't apply to Oxford at all, because I'd already been turned down for the major scholarships. I figured there wasn't any point, when I couldn't afford to go and didn't expect to get in anyway.

It was my then-boyfriend who convinced me to send off the application, just before the deadline - he argued that at least I'd know whether I was up to the standard required. I got the shock of my life when I was accepted...and, well, here I am. I still can't quite believe that this is my life!

So, in conclusion, good on you for applying anyway and I hope you're accepted :)

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Thank you, dear! And I'm glad you did end up over here in the end! *g* When I get back in Jan, we should have a coffee or something, we still haven't done that.

[jacinthsong.livejournal.com]

Am currently kicking myself for my failure to at any point record "Squashing Fluffy Kittens On The Road". Think we can just kidnap L and force him to sing it on demand?

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

YES. Can we shrink him and stand him on the bookcase and poke him when we want him to sing?

[nerves-patterns.livejournal.com]

You are not crazy. Actually clicking the submit button is the hardest part of the whole thing. That and opening the letters when they arrive.

Congratulations to you! I expect we'll be seeing posts of well-deserved success in the future. :D

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much, dear. It's so nice to hear there's faith in me! :)

[the-acrobat.livejournal.com]

Go you!!

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Heeee! :)

[gamesiplay.livejournal.com]

1. Your Aeneid sounds so unbelievably awesome. Weren't you writing the script earlier this year?

2. omg come to Georgetown!

3. Speaking of which, where in America are you going this week? I would say also "omg come to Ohio!"... but really, I wouldn't wish that on anyone. :)

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

1. I was indeed! We were waiting for the committee to read it and agree that yes, what OULES really need at this point is silliness in hexameters. I can't wait, actually.

2. omg I would love to!

3. New Hampshire. I'm going to freeeeeeze to death. Then on the 20th I'm going to Indiana for a bit, to visit relatives over Christmas. I wouldn't say "come to Indiana", but, you know, if you went momentarily crazy and decided that was a great idea... *loves*

[gamesiplay.livejournal.com]

1. Ahahaha. God, you people are awesome.

2. I will speak to them, then. :)

3. Naturally, I'll (probably) be in Indiana over next summer, not this winter. Six months off!

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

D'you know, there's a distinct chance I may be in Indiana again this summer. Have decided that I will not resit the LSAT in this country (the delightful cognitive dissonance notwithstanding - I had a lovely, plummy English invigilator who asked, "Did anyone bring any firearms, oh, dearie me I hope not") so I may be well be sitting in a cornfield somewhere cursing the Admissions Council. *g*

[gamesiplay.livejournal.com]

I had a lovely, plummy English invigilator who asked, "Did anyone bring any firearms, oh, dearie me I hope not"

...That's both really sad (for us) and really hilarious. Oh, god. When I was in elementary school that question was once asked during standardized testing, and a kid said, "Does 'firearms' include hunting knives?"

If your being in Indiana is contingent on your not getting accepted, I won't hold my breath. *grins* However, I may well be sitting in a chapel somewhere watching my hyper-evangelical neocon of a cousin marry his hyper-evangelical neocon of a fiancée. WHOO. \o/ I expect the cake to be made of white bread.

[jacinthsong.livejournal.com]

"Did anyone bring any firearms, oh, dearie me I hope not"
Heeeee. I'm now imagining him as one of the Gay Englishmen from S&A whose names I always forget. <3

[foulds.livejournal.com]

Am MILES behind in emails and everything, and sorry if my drunken good natured celebrating came across as yet MORE Ionabuse, but I did mean well...

Also, we so did it! Still!