In Which Our Heroine Heads Towards A Career In Academia
The great unpaid progress towards gainful employment continues on. I have now committed for the summer to writing a paper. The topic is totally unrelated to anything I have studied before, but never mind. I want to know, and there seems to be enough interest so that I can write a paper comparing Hearsay under the English and American Traditions with the concept of the Mutawadir under Islamic Sharia law. (Whenever it is finished, I will post it here for those who want to see it.) I spoke with one of my professors this evening. The deal seems to be that I will write the paper, and officially be titled as his "research assistant" although I won't have to pay for it, and therefore won't get credit for it. That's fine with me - between advanced standing and two concentrations, I don't have any wiggle room to play around with. But the professor seems psyched for me to do this, and is already suggesting tips to help gtet it published. Off to work I go this summer. So far as I have it figured out, the ladder goes a little like this: you pay them for course credit to write papers, you don't pay them to write papers, they pay you to write papers. I am trying to convince myself that I have moved up the ladder.

First though, I have to get through my presentation next week on Legal Actors in the English Legal System. We had the first of our class presentations tonight. The first one was done quite well, but was unfortunately limited in time. An amazing amount of Roman Law was crammed into forty five minutes. No props, nothing, just well organized legal presentation. But then we got to the next one, which was an explanation of the history of common law. Now, this is a vast topic, I will concede this. And she tried to do what she could to get it all into the presentation. But it was off the mark. There were a lot of references that *I* know why they were there, because I have studied this. But just taking the presentation at face value, it made no sense. It then veered off into the Pilgrims arrival in America. Now, this could have been an understandable detour, but it wasn't presented well. It has put the pressure on me to make sure that my presentation next week is much more coherent. But I think I will be fine. I suppose I should touch base with my partner on this, however........

Writing is figuring prominently in all this of late. The E-Commerce book. My new paper. The paper I already want to write after that - I already want to contrast the Anti-Terrorism Act in Britain and the fiat edicts that Ashcroft shoved through. Suddenly, in my free time I'm a comparativist.

My doctor did look at me askance this morning with my stiffness and bruises. I seem to have pulled a muscle in my neck/shoulder, so every time I try to turn my head to the left at all, or lift my chin, I wind up wincing. I think he finally bought my "story" that I "fell", which is of course what actually happened, but I suspect that I should not keep turning up bruised! That'll be fine with me!

Today is the 25th anniversary of the Blizzard of '78. I suspect that this is the real reason why the weather forecasters are going completly wacky on the storm that's coming in at the moment. Ok, there's snow. Which is hardly suprising for Boston in January. And ok, we're going to have about six inches or so they are predicting. We can do this. We do this all the time. We're New Englanders! So why have the weather men been in a froth since early this morning? This is not standard Boston weather operating procedure! Get a grip folks! Get a grip!

I always think of what I want to write here, and then I forget it. No wonder they're so dull! I shall try to be more exciting! Sex! Um, no. Drugs! I'm not sure anyone wants to read about my taking my prescriptions as the doctors ordered. Rock and roll! Well, I do have that, but I've been in a real Bach and Norah Jones mode the last couple of days, as I come down from the Neil and Rhett concert over the weekend. I guess I just ought to get writing.
Love,
Anne