I haven't failed yet

I though I'd give everyone the update on how school is going since everyone seems to wonder what it is like, and really no one seems to have a clue what it might be like. I had no idea what it would be like either, so I don't blame you.

Anyway, I had my first ever law school exam at the end of October. It was for my Orientation to Law course, so I suppose I am oriented now. It was an unusual exam because it was oral, which means each of us had a 20 minute appointment with a professor who examined us by asking us questions off of a sheet. The topics covered were really varied because our course consisted of 6 weeks of guest lectures on a whole bunch of topics related to law from law societies, to ethics, to legal theory, to racism in the law.

When I went in for my exam, the professor spent a minute getting to know me and asked what my undergraduate degree had been in. I answered that I had done a degree in geography. He then proceeded to ask me a whole bunch of very abstract humanities and social science type questions about race and gender theory. I think he thought that since I had done geography I was a science person so he gave me those questions thinking they would be hard for me. Well he got me wrong! I could talk about critical race theory until... the cows come home? (I don't even know when cows come home... I assume they need to be milked so that actually wouldn't be that long... anyway, tangent).

Needless to say I passed. Law school is such a competitive place that when I was asked how I did immediately after the exam I said to a group of worried fellow students: "If that was a job interview, I just got the job". Oh how insensitive and competitive this place makes us. And how falsely cocky. Not that I wasn't that way already :)

I'm back in Vancouver in 36 days! Yay. I'll tell you all about it then I guess.

Today's Halifact: There is a fierce debate about ATV regulation and licensing raging here. The doctors from the local childrens hospital urged the province to amend their ATV regulations to make it more strict on young drivers. The province didn't really listen. Then two teenage girls died in an ATV accident and two days later a teenage boy spent the night out in the bush in a t-shirt after getting his ATV stuck in the mud. The province turned around and slightly amended their regulations, but in my opinion, they are still too soft. It has really polarized the city vs. the country folk here (and even most of the city folk agree with the country folk). ATVs are very important to most people here and most people have them. As soon as you get 10 minutes outside the city there are designated ATV trails along the sides of highways with their own little stop and yield signs and everything. It's crazy. If you know me, you probably know my stance on ATVs, so you can imagine how I'm reacting to all of this. What surprises me most is what is left out of the debate here. At home, the media would have brought up the environmental issues, such as the fact that ATVs pollute, that we are in a fossil fuel crisis, and the fact that ATVs are very capable of destroying wilderness habitats and ecosystems, and that they are noisy and smelly and hikers hate them. I haven't seen that in the newspaper or on the TV news once in the 3 week barrage of news stories we've endured. It's really a different mindset out here. If you want more info, here is a story from the CBC about a little bit of what is going on: ATV article. Gah. Rant over.