Conferenced Out - November 2, 2007

I did not fall asleep until 5:00AM. I just could not sleep. I have no clue why I was restless, or why my brain would not shut off. I had nothing due, no tests were pending, nobody yelled at me or disturbed me. I was relatively relaxed given the state of things.

I was supposed to get up at 6:00AM (one hour later) but nothing is that easy. I know my alarm went off, I just do not remember when, or how many times I turned it off. I do know that I was enjoying a cruise in the Caribbean when my phone began to vibrate incessantly. Michelle was on the other end of the phone.

"Are you on your way," she asked.
"On my... oh crap!" I replied.

Not only had I slept through part of a make-up torts class, but I was supposed to have missed that part of the torts class to be at the conference for my fellowship. It was 8:40AM. I was supposed to be at school at 8:00AM. I took the world's quickest shower and shave - a talent in itself - and rushed to my car. I had to decide which way I would take. One is quicker when there is traffic, and the other is quicker when there is no traffic. It was 9:00AM on a Friday, so I figured traffic would be non-existent. Of course, there was a very bad accident that took up all three lanes of the parkway, so I moved 10 feet in 10 minutes. I was going crazy. Had I taken the other way, I would have bypassed the accident altogether.

The conference was spent keeping Michelle awake and trying to act like I was paying attention. Both are much harder than they seem.

The panel discussions on juvenile justice were decently interesting, but on three hours of sleep, all I wanted to do was close my eyes and get back on my cruise ship.

The most interesting part of the conference was listening to a panel of youth who had all been in the "system" and come out productive young men and women discuss and shatter preconceptions about the juvenile justice system.

It turns out that the two tort class make-up sessions that were held while I was in the conference were somewhat important; perhaps not as important to my professor as it is to the legal profession, but important nonetheless.

Palsgraf v. LIRR was finally covered, though my professor apparently did not stress it nor spend nearly the amount of time on it as we had all believed he would. The Palsgraf case is heralded as a landmark decision in the world of torts. It is a good thing I have a father who knows all about it.

Overall, it was a half-decent Friday. I definitely needed one of those.