Troxel v. Granville. Or, "Come Softly To Me."

Marie Claire made law review. She gets to be on the masthead of an academic journal, something that is much cooler than it sounds. I, on the other hand, now have to weather the psychological torment of having been surpassed by my little man. Much like the episode of Family Guy where Peter learns that Chris has a donkey dick and spends the remainder of the show compensating by way of passive-aggression. I kid, I kid.

But Claire’s new academic distinction did bring me back to my law school days, and why I never did a journal even though I attended a school with 4 of them (meaning that if you wanted to do it, you could do it). Just to clarify: law review is better than all the other journals, so although there are enough of them out there for most to participate should they so choose, participation in the lesser journals doesn’t make you as pimp as Claire. For instance, U of I’s Journal of Elder Law—what the fuck is that?—is nothing to toot your horn about. But anyway. After finishing my last exam of 1L year, I diligently picked up my journal competition packet. Our submissions were due only six days after finals. We were asked to write a note about how the freedom of association guaranteed by the Constitution impacts grandparent visitation rights. There was a pending Supreme Court decision on the issue, and our assignment was to gather the precedent that the Court was currently considering, and infer what it would do. I think. This was over five years ago and my memory is not good.

Completing my submission would not have been too difficult, but my initial review of the materials confirmed that the assignment would be tedious. Most things in life are tedious to me; that is the cross you must bear if you’re lazy. I decided to put it off until the weekend before it was due. That weekend happened to be Dillo Day and, me being me, I decided on Dillo Day itself that I could party during the day, and slap some shit together through the night. I don’t remember what the break down was in terms of grades vs. writing competition, but I recall feeling confident that any old piece of shit submission would do, because my first semester grades had been good (this was a faulty assumption; I later learned I had bombed second semester). After a long night of drinking, I tried, in vain, to write something serviceable from 2:30 AM to 9:00 AM. I am a fucking idiot. You don’t draft a journal competition submission over the course of one night; not even a steaming pile of shit submission that you’d normally be embarrassed to call your own. On the other hand, I did get drunk with Rahul for the first time ever. That night, I also learned that: (1) Guinness is not exactly the beer of champions when served in a plastic cup; (2) plex lounges have locks; and (3) the first liter of a $12 Vendange cab tastes like shit, but the second does not.

It was not worth it. I now have to deal with the ignominy of having the equivalent of “LAZY” tattooed to my forehead, a method which conveys the point almost as directly as a resume with good grades and no journal. So the moral of the story is Claire’s a hard-working little fucker. And if you don’t do a journal, you’ll be LAME (like me).