the grind revisited

There's this thing I've been meaning to do for months. It was a promise I made to myself (and to my uncle, who first suggested it) when I transferred schools. It carried over to my New Year's resolution list. And now, especially since there's no more pressure to outline every weekend in anticipation of a trip to New Zealand, I should really sit down and do it. Or at least get started.

Here is my goal: to make a bona fide effort to write on to law review.

Yes, just a bona fide effort. It would be easy for me to craze about needing to Make It On for my goal to be satisfied. But that's not the approach I want to take. (From what I understand of it, the actual work people do for law review is every bit as photocopying-fun and cite-checking-entertaining as El-Dubyar was.) It's just about giving it a shot, purely for the participatory value. I can't graduate from this law school without at least having tried to make varsity. It'll be gravy if I actually can.

I think there was a general interjournal writing contest for 1Ls last spring, much like at my old school, but that was a one-shot deal and I missed it. And I'm not allowed to play make-believe and do this year's competition along with the 1Ls. But that's OK. There's a separate process for 2Ls and 3Ls interested in writing-on, and in a way it feels rather more productive than the bench-memo-fest in which I participated last year: here, one earns admission to the team by completing a publishable note.

I like the idea of producing something publishable. And it's particularly choice for me to go through this process as a time trial rather than a race: it's not about writing a better bench memo than someone else, or getting better grades, or some other similarly pointless barometric exercise. This is about personal performance rather than competition. Can I pull it off, just me, in a context of my own choosing? I'm curious.

Completing a publishable note is not as simple as sitting down and writing one, though. The preemption vetting is intense: your concept goes through at least two stages of proposals and filtration before you begin writing the actual text of your note. Thus far, I've made it up to the first phase; submitting my short proposal at this point will signal that I'm actually on track to do this instead of just talk about it.

This weekend, I'll write it. (maybe.)

thus spake /jca @ January 23, 2004 03:32 PM