Not many days in the life of a law student are blogworthy...despite all the exciting law student characters created by the likes of John Grisham, law school is actually quite repetative and mundane.  Yesterday however was an exception.

In describing what happened, I have visions of every 80s highschool movie I have ever seen...like Sixteen Candles or Farris Bueller's Day Off, etc....you know where there are dream sequences in which someone comes to class and is totally blind-sided by a pop-quiz or a presentation that they are not prepared for...well...this was sort of like this...but I didn't wake up...

As a matter of self defense, I just want to say I am a meticulous deadline recorder and day timer enthusiast.  In my Comparative Law class I have been anticipating the due date of my paper for quite some time.  We talked about it a couple of times in class and I wrote down March 28 in my little day timer and planned accordingly.  Our professor never gave us anything in writing describing what his expectations were or when this beast was actually due.

I started this paper over the weekend and had made plans to work on it until Wed at midnight when it was due.  I went to class on Monday where everyone kept talking about the papers and how we were confused about what we were supposed to do, how we were supposed to cite, and how people were not finished yet.   I wasn't as panicked about this as some other people in my class because I figured I still had three days.  My professor even talked about the paper and how glad we will all be to have it in and done with. 

I went to lunch as I usually do on Mondays and the law school friend that I go with asked if I was in the class where the nasty paper was due.  I replied that I wasn't because my paper was due on Wed.  Then she asked me if a certain person that she heard lamenting over it was in the class.  I said yes....and as I was putting together what she was getting at....I said...SHIT!

I had not apparently written down the correct date and now had only hours to finish my paper, cite all the sources correctly, and make some kind of profound point.  I can't believe I talked to a million people who knew the correct due date but it never came up.  After the rest of my classes I raced home and typed furiously...and handed it in at 11:53 in the online drop-box. 

I have scarcely been this stressed out about a paper ever in my life.  Sure, in undergrad I cut some deadlines pretty close, or even handed in a few things late if I had competing deadlines.  I would even rush through papers and hand in things that were less than profound.  Now the stakes here are higher, the research is more complicated, and the expectation is much higher as to what I should be able to produce. 

I hope the paper was at least coherent....that's really best case scenario here.  Yikes...at least it's done...there's no such thing as a "late policy" here...