Post-Exams

Anyone in law school will tell you that exam time is awful. The stress levels are high. Sometimes you feel like you could cause a major meltdown by dropping a book in the library. Everyone finds ways to deal with their stress, and for me knitting is one of those ways. However, I don’t usually get much knitting done during exams. I’ll do a row in the morning, a row a lunch, and maybe a row in the evening. But really, when I sit down to “take a break” from studying, its all I can do to focus on the story line of something like “House Hunters.” (Think- reality show that “recaps” what happens so much that the actual content of the show probably takes up 10 minuets of the half hour slot.)

But after exams, that’s a different story.

I actually have a really hard time with stress after exams as well. It’s a different type of stress but its still there.

I finished exams at about 11:00 on May 10^th, came home, and panicked. I put off so many things while I’m in exam mode for 3 weeks that I come home and realize there is so much else to do. My bathroom is gross, the grass looks like a jungle, I have appointments to make, and some of my family members have left voicemails that are demanding I contact them so that they know I am alive. But, where to start! In the past I have often started a non-fiction book, diligently highlighted it and taken notes on it, just so I would feel productive while on a plane ride home after exams.

This year I came home to a huge passel of tasks that I had put off; plus I had a paper to finish. I officially planned to go back to work on the paper on Monday, so I had to let that one go. But what about the other chores?

I decided that taking the dog for a walk was the most important. It was a pretty warm day so when we made it back I sat down on the couch…picked up my knitting…turned on the t.v…and apparently didn’t move for like 3 days.

I started a new project, a tank top, and manage to complete a pretty decent portion of the front between Friday and Monday morning.  So much for the chores. But I did feel a lot better. I had been productive that weekend but I had also relaxed.  It was nice that the knitting was different than exams but still productive, and it was way more fun then cleaning.

Then on Monday- I tackled that paper.

Knit one. Purl one. Knit one. Purl one.

Law. Facts. Law. Facts.

Two years ago my mom taught me to knit over Christmas break. I picked up the needles and haven’t put them down. Sitting still has never been easy for me and suddenly I had a way to keep moving. Moving while I talked, moving while I watched T.V., moving while I waited. Not only did I have an excuse to keep my fingers going, I was making wooly, useful, creations. 

But, okay. I have put my needles down. I am a law student and I have yet to figure out, and not for lack of trying, how to successfully knit while reading text books or how to knit in class. I also have my dog,  my cat, and my husband who all think they need my attention. ;) But really, I took to knitting much like a bird takes to the air. That is, with some mistakes, and some falls, but in the end, great success.

I’m pretty sure that my mom thought the knitting bug wouldn’t stick. After all, she tried to teach me as a little girl. I remember red yarn and long pointy needles that hurt my fingers. I was seven and what I remember is being in the back seat of a bouncy, old, white, pick-up, clutching the needles and desperately trying to make the loops like she did. She probably had me working on the stitches before we left my grandmother's house but I only remember trying to knit in the pick-up. An old family friend was taking us out to pick out a Christmas tree on his ranch in New Mexico. We came home with a Christmas “tree” that looked more like a bush. Such is the nature of the native evergreen, the piñon. 

It was cramped in the back seat and I struggled with the yarn and the loops. The yarn just didn’t want to do what I asked. My natural Type A personality was very upset that I was not succeeding, and even more offended that they yarn was not bending to my clear desire for it to behave. That irksome experience in the pick-up in the back woods of New Mexico was the end of my first tryst with yarn. So after many other craft fads that quickly fell by the wayside, when I asked my mom to teach me to knit when I was 21, she did not see it going very far. 

(Above is my first project, a scarf. Took me about a year to finish but that is a story for another day.)

But the habit stuck. Knitting brings challenges and small victories. It has been the perfect way to help keep my life balanced in law school. Law school is all about a single grade at the end of each class. I take about five classes a semester (give or take, mostly give) and my grade is usually based solely on my execution of a single exam for each class. The feeling of achievement—or disappointment—is drawn out to the very end. Knitting projects on the other hand, you can finish in just a few days, a few weeks, or even months. But most importantly, each stitch is a small accomplishment in and of itself. One more visible step towards a finished product. 

Knitting is just two stitches, knit (K) and purl (P). You eventually learn, make one, yarn over, different cast ons, and different cast offs. Regardless, all of those are just renditions of K and P. These two stitches are worked together again and again and again, eventually creating a masterpiece. Even if you are the only one who recognizes it as a remarkable feat.

Legal reasoning is much the same. Its built up of two key elements—law and facts. You take your facts, find the law that applies and knit them together to build you argument. This can be done orally or in writing. The concept is the same. Professors will tell you that there is also a conclusion and a question; but these other elements are really built from your facts and the law. Nothing more. When its done right, a lawyer has seamlessly knit their facts together with the law to make a winning argument. 

Hence the title of the blog. I hope that writing about my knitting, or really just my life outside law school will help to encourage me to develop my legal reasoning skills in the other half of my life. Knitting reason from facts and law; knitting to keep me reasonable. 

(Above is an scarf-in-progress picture of a scarf that has sense been finished.)

(The picture in the previous post was my lastest completed object. He is a little owl ornement that I like so much he will probably live on the bookshelf till next year.)

Writing is a skill. All skills should be practiced.
In high school, I had the good fortune to have an amazing English teacher who took the time to teach my classmates and I how to write, and then, how to write better. She had us write two-page essays four nights a week with one night off in anticipation of a timed write during class the next day . The more I practiced the better I was at putting my thoughts on paper in a concise and organized way. In college, after professors read my papers they often though I was an English major (my major was Diplomacy & Foreign Affairs). I took this as a compliment, and I credit the source of their assumption to the quality of writing I produced because of the regimented practice I experienced in high school.
Now I am in law school. This is a whole new writing game on a whole 'nother level. I am starting this blog so I can go back to that regimented practice and hopefully bring my writing up to snuff again. The blog will be more casual than true legal writing, but it should be sufficient to give me practice in word use, organization, and clarity.
I will make an entry once every two week.
I'm writing that down because I heard once that goals are more likely to be achieved if they are written down (possibly from 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens, a book I only remember because of a useless class in middle school). So there it is, a goal, in writing. If I can write more I will, but I think that is a reasonable goal for someone who spends about 50 hours a week or more studying.
Coming soon in a blog near you (aka, this one), why the blog is called "Knit Reason." Here is a picture hint...

Happy New Year.