It has been AGES since I last updated, and I think, what has been sustaining the existence of this blog is just the fact that it has my name written all over the URL. Also, given the fact that I’m in law school, every blog entry will be a shameless use of time that I could’ve directed elsewhere, like reading cases. But since it’s Christmas, allow me to write some thing that just came up a little less than 5 minutes before 11:52PM. And I’ll probably be making a new blog solely dedicated to law school – what the heck. Okay, here it goes.

I started “dating”, or whatever is the oh-so proper word for it, when I was 13. I stopped dating when I broke up with my then-boyfriend mmm when I was 18. Ironic, it is. So I actually accumulated a mini-album of guys I’ve hung-out with for 5 years. Mini-album, meaning, I’ve dated 6 guys all in all. I won’t discuss them one by one for that would be disgusting, and more appropriately, nauseating to say the least. Just the significant ones.

I can honestly say, though, that guy #6 was probably my real first love. As cheesy and as get-over-it as it sounds, that at least, is what I’m sure of. I learned a lot from that relationship, and it wasn’t easy getting over it. Yes, I didn’t cry every night for 6 months, but the pain from the break-up still creeps up every now and then – almost 3 years in the running. I miss guy #6 every now and then, not because I want to be with him again, but because I couldn’t honestly say I’ve tried and done my best to work out the relationship. I know somewhere in my head and heart, we could’ve tried harder and shouldn’t have given up that easily.

It was the most turbulent, crazy, tiring relationship I’ve been in – it comes in third to my complicated relationship with my Mom. But then again, that period was one of the happiest in my life. I just seemed more stable then with guy #6 backing me up and grounding me. But unlike all love stories that end with happily ever after, love wasn’t enough to sustain that relationship. We were heading different to directions, and somehow, we just fell apart. HAHA. Actually, I don’t even know why we broke up since he was the one who broke off the relationship. HAHA. That’s funny. When our friends ask me why I ever gave him up, I can’t answer, because I’m not the one who gave up – he did. So we’re pseudo-friends – as if.

Let me just sum up guys #1-5 with these words: HUH. WHY. Mom was right! No offence, it was fun while it lasted. But looking back, I can’t even explain this to myself. Dear me, I apologize.

End of non-sense blog.

This question is, I think, one whose answer we expect to be profound or even impossible to understand. In any case, it appears to be simple. In some way. Watch this: Does God exist?

Here’s the conversation though
Did God create everything that exists?

Does evil exist?
Did God create evil?

A University professor at a well known institution of higher
learning challenged his students with this question. “Did God create
everything that exists?”
A student bravely replied, “Yes he did!”

“God created everything?” The professor asked.

“Yes sir, he certainly did,” the student replied.

The professor answered, “If God created everything; then God
created evil and, since evil exists, and according to the principle that
our works define who we are, then we can assume God is evil.”
The student became quiet and did not respond to the professor’s
hypothetical definition. The professor, quite pleased with
himself, boasted to the students that he had proven once more that the
Christian faith was a myth.

Another student raised his hand andsaid, “May I ask you a question, professor?”
“Of course”, replied the professor.

The student stood up and asked,”Professor, does cold exist?”

“What kind of question is this? Of course it exists. Have you
never been cold?”
The other students snickered at the young man’s question.

The young man replied, “In fact sir, cold does not exist. According to the
laws of physics, what we consider cold is in reality the absence of
heat. Every body or object is susceptible to study when it has or
transmits energy, and heat is what makes a body or matter have or
transmit energy. Absolute zero (-460 F) is the total absence of heat; and
all matter becomes inert and incapable of reaction at that temperature.
Cold does not exist. We have created this word to describe how we
feel if we have no heat.”

The student continued, “Professor, does darkness exist?”

The professor responded, “Of course it does.”
The student replied, “Once again you are wrong sir, darkness
does not exist either. Darkness is in reality the absence of light.
Light we can study, but not darkness. In fact, we can use Newton’s prism
to break white light into many colors and study the various wave lenghts
of each color. You cannot measure darkness. A simple ray of light can break into a world of darkness and illuminate it. How can you know how dark a certain space is? You measure the amount of light present. Isn’t this correct? Darkness is a term used by man to describe whathappens when there is no light present.”

Finally the young man asked the professor, “Sir, does evil
exist?”
Now uncertain, the professor responded, “Of course, as I have
already said. We see it everyday. It is in the daily examples of man’s
inhumanity to man. It is in the multitude of crime and violence
everywhere in the world. These manifestations are nothing else but evil.
To this the student replied, “Evil does not exist, sir, or at least it does not exist unto itself. Evil is simply the absence of God.
It is just like darkness and cold, a word that man has created to describe the absence of God. God did not create evil. Evil is the result of what happens when man does not have God’s love present in his heart. It’s like the cold that comes when there is no heat, or the darkness that comes when there is no light.”
The professor sat down.
The young man’s name — Albert Einstein.

Source

Accepted to Law School

No recits during Intro to Law

First week of classes

Reading the readings without any back-lag

First time called for recit EVER

Consummated recit

Frustrated recit

Attempted recit

Failed recit

Studied, but Freecut

Did not study AT ALL

Studying for Exams 

Right before Exams – sabaw

During Exams 

After Exams 

Pass Exams 

Failed Exams 

Last minute or surprise Exam

Release of Grades: FAIL

Release of Grades: PASS

Graduates from Law School 

Every New Semester:After First Week:After Second Week:Before the Mid-Term Test:During the Mid-Term Test:After the Mid-Term Test:Before the Final Exams:Once Able to Know the Final Exam Schedule:7 Days Before the Final Exam:6 Days Before the Final Exam:5 Days Before the Final Exam:4 Days Before the Final Exam:3 Days Before the Final Exam:2 Days Before the Final Exam:1 Day Before the Final Exam:The Night Before the Final Exam:1 Hour Before the Final Exam:During the Final Exam:Once Walk Out From the Examination Hall:After the Final Exam, During the Holiday:

We’re almost done with Midterms! Only one more exam and then we’ll be able to breathe.

Short hair once again! This is the reason why I haven’t exactly studied for our Constitutional Law I midterms. God, help. Time to hit the books.

Fate has been good to me today (Friday). It’s because Velvet (surprisingly) aired Legally Blonde. And it’s inspiring. In spite of all these latin maxims that need to penetrate my brain, I am quite amused I still find time to blog and be happy and enjoy things despite of the stress of law school. Midterms is almost half-way done. Less than 12 hours to go before our midterms for Statutory Construction and hell I am not prepared. Prepations seem futile at this point because apparently our exam is a guessing game.

Well, I’ll take my chances and do the best that I can. In the end, I won’t apologize if the result does not turn out as high as I want it to. I won’t apologize for doing the best that I can. My best might not be good enough, but it’s good enough for me. Burning eyebrows and pushing my body to the limit should be good enough for me.

In the end… RUAT COELUM! Let the heavens fall!

Having been a law student in the past two months, thinking of it now, it was inevtiable to be trapped in a bubble. With a number of cases, readings and just the idea of being called for a recit, it feels that time isn’t always enough. You cannot escape the feeling after every recitation or quiz that you could have done better, that you could have done  more given another chance. You wake up early in the morning, study until before your class, take your class, go home, study some more and then sleep. That pretty much summarizes the life of this law student. Honest to goodness, I enjoy our classes, the lessons and skills-training in law school. The problem is, we get so caught up in the world of law school that we have inevitably detached ourselves from the rest of the world.

Our professors keep reminding us to be updated with current events and to watch out what is happening with Con-Ass, the Congress, the President… Current events. But with homework piling up every single day, it becomes a task that we have to postpone, or unfortunately, overlook. Who cares about current events in law school? Isn’t it more important, and as a matter of surviving your first year, to be concerned with what the differences are between a void marriage under Article 36, 40, and a terminated marriage under Article 42, what the differences are between justifying and mitigating circumstances, and that the 1987 Constitution took effect on February 2, 1987, the day the sovereign people ratified it? Current events merely gloss over our subjects nowadays. Had I been a law student during the revolutionary government, I would well give a damn to current events. What the hell. If they were actually and already really changing the Constitution I would complain: sayang ang Constitutional Law units ko under THE Fr. Bernas. But it’s just that. Current events have been reduced to sex video scandals, which TV network a celebrity chooses to stay with, whether or not Manny Pacquiao will run as President next year. My goodness. Congress hearings in aid of legislation invite high profile individuals just so people would care.

That’s the thing. People don’t care anymore. We don’t give a damn. And that’s probably the reason why we choose trivial news over those that really concern us. That’s the probaly the reason why we make unintelligible remarks about the government: because we don’t know anymore. It’s either we don’t know or we don’t care. Nowadays, it’s more historic for Manny Pacquiao to win a boxing match than the passage of the law that protects our rights.

I am ungrateful, and I admit it. It’s because we were either born or we grew up without having to live under a dictator. It’s because we grew up with democracy just waiting in the wings that we don’t really know, comprehend and understand its value and what it means. Fine. I’m grateful to EDSA I, but I can’t completely know the significance of its consequences because I don’t know what price I would have paid for democracy. Kwento lang ni Mommy yan, at kahit anong kwento niya, hindi siya magiging bahagi ng karanasan ko: ng nakaraan ko, ng sarili ko. We don’t know the value of freedom of expression, because never were we suppressed and told by the government we’ve created to “shut up.” We don’t know the value of liberty because as far as we are concerned, imprisonment meant grounded ka. Democracy has been loosely used to mean doing whatever we want. It’s not.

It’s frustrating to see people complain about the government because they don’t understand – and the fact that the government doesn’t even do anything to make them understand is all the more frustrating. We have created and lived under an imperfect framework, and rather than address these imperfections, we only complain. Instead of complaining and complaining, isn’t the better question, “What am I doing to address these problems?” Isn’t it better to ask ourselves, “What have we done to make things better for everyone else?”

So a law student lives in a bubble, learning all these things about rights, values, norms and then what? We, law students have been brought up so high, but at some point we have to remain grounded. We have to remember to ground ourselves to what is important, what is relevant, and what is real. Just because we have a perfect exam, does not ready us to the real world. It is our responsibility to eventually become good lawyers, and we cannot become good lawyers if we continue to live in a bubble.

All it takes is one person. Be it Francis Magalona, Michael Jackson or Cory Aquino to remind us about a life outside and apart from law school. Even before being law students, or even just students, we are human. And to be human is to live life. A good recit doesn’t count as a good life.

Just because you’re tired and you get frustrated whenever you do something that you know you could’ve done better, it doesn’t mean that you don’t enjoy it, that what you do doesn’t make you happy, and that your effort is wasted.

Finally, I achieved one of my goals: to be called out to recite in a class and actually answer the question! Finally. Since classes started, I have been itching to recite just because I feel that my efforts in studying is completely being thrown out the window with every missed opportunity to actually use that understanding.

But despite the need to study at least 8 hours a day and sleep less than 7 hours a day, it has been fun and fulfilling. Apparently, people could see that even though I lack sleep and I’m haggard most of the time, you could see how happy I am with what I’m doing. It’s tiring most of the time, but you still go at it every morning.

In more instances than one, it only becomes a matter of perspective. If you really want what you’re doing and enjoy it, every little thing that appears to be a burden and even every hurdle, you only see as a challenge – something that you can actually overcome. It’s not even a burden. Nothing can and will bring you down because you love what you do and sometimes, even though people can’t understand why, you just do it because it makes you happy – no matter how crappy you look.

So excuse me if I have to wear make-up just to cover my eyebags and my pale complexion. It’s something I have to do so that I wouldn’t look like a Twilight vampire. Excuse me if I either eat a lot or none at all whenever I hang-out with other people. Excuse me if I have to dance the way I do just to keep myself awake. Excuse me if I talk to myself just to understand the lessons and memorize them.

But I love this. I really do. I wouldn’t leave it for a million bucks.

Honestly and seriously, this sucks.

It’s not the feeling that sucks, but the fact that I really hurt someone, makes me feel less like a human being.

I don’t regret what I said and did, but I never saw it from his perspective… Just like how he never saw it from mine when it happened before. I’m not exactly saying that we’re already “even,” or that I did it so that he’d know what it felt like.

I can’t believe how selfish that decision was. Selfish. But I wouldn’t have decided otherwise given the chance anyway. I took everything into consideration… except his feelings. Of all the things to forget, it was that. What an ass, I am. I know. Damn it. That’s the reason why it sucks.

Couldn’t even deduce why he did the things he did. Couldn’t even appreciate the 1am calls to help. Couldn’t even be thankful for being there without the need to be. Couldn’t even understand why he did the things he did.

So please, next time, if ever there will be a next time, no mixed signals please. Tell me your intentions and don’t do things that wouldn’t even tangentially meet the purpose of your actions.

I’m sorry. I’m really really sorry. How was I supposed to know what you’d feel and what to think of your actions when you left me because I felt that way about you?

But honestly, I’m happy with that decision. Just this. Tell me, what do you call what we had? And if you didn’t find the need to tell it to me back then, I just need to know, did you ever?