Ô douceur! ô poison!
Being a yuppie is hard. I had to jump out of the shower this afternoon to catch the UPS guy, a day later than promised, delivering my suit. It wasn’t entirely his fault, as whoever in Shanghai wrote the commercial invoice put down West Vancouver, as opposed to nth Avenue West, Vancouver. (They also claimed the suit was a sample worth $45 dollars, but that’s what happens when duty’s included). It didn’t turn out as badly as I’d feared, but it’s not a masterpiece by any means. In the great tradition of Chinese tailoring the sleeves were an inch and a half longer than I’d hoped for, and so I made the familiar walk over to my own tailor to persuade him to shorten them (we’re cool, he’s used to it by now).
The bigger problem was that, at this level of customization, there’s just no getting around my disproportionately square (and apparently mildly uneven!) shoulders, and so there was slight bumpiness across the yoke. It wouldn’t have been as noticeable but for the unexpectedly tropical-weight wool (who knew that’s what they meant by “thread count”?) I could have returned it, but I honestly just needed something to wear to all these career centre events apart from that old Eaton’s suit I got in Kensington with Josh (and yes, apropos of your postcard, I did get your Temple of the Golden Pavillion reference). When those lead to a job, then I can get something fancy.
While I was out I also dropped a good $130 at the cobbler’s. Got a mild scolding (I assume—It was in, I think, Cantonese) for not coming to them sooner. Given Vancouver’s weather I don’t think they really need the extra work.
Anyway, the real reason I’m writing is, natürlich, to get my mind off studying. Closely related to the travails of yuppiedom, Law School is also hard, or at least not easy. My first exam, Constitutional Law, was on Monday. Four normative essay questions, open book, 1 hour. I felt confident going in, to the point of annoying my fellow students with trivia (quick: where did Abel teach?) and I think I did moderately well, but you better believe I had pen to paper for 95% of the time allotted. It’s not like undergrad humanities, where they give you 2 hours to do a question which, for a top student, would take an hour, and which to physically write would take 45 minutes. Open book is also a misnomer, because if you’re looking at your textbook you’re doing it wrong. Much better to condense everything you have and to occasionally refer to those notes to make sure you haven’t missed/mixed a key point (are we talking about Bell #1 or Bell #2?)
Tomorrow I have Criminal Law. The fun part about that one is we don’t really know much criminal law yet: our exam will assume the accused are found guilty, and we’ll have to sentence them. I’m struggling to see how more than 10-15pp of our 400pp of assigned reading so far is directly relevant to the task. The bulk of it was designed to knock us out of our assumedly white, assumedly middle class complacency, and expose the shocking over-representation of aboriginal Canadians in all areas of the criminal justice system. Of course, one element of complacency is that you don’t necessarily think too much about the matter at hand, so as we’ve all become at least tangentially exposed to details like what constitutes a “major” versus a “regular” sexual assault, students are polarizing as to the merits of overarching themes like restorative justice, and more specific programs like daycares in prison—and not necessarily in the direction intended. I guess all the Professor can hope for is that more end up on his side than would otherwise, and it’s probably fair to say that those most resentful of his relentless campaign were never his to win. For my part, I’ll just say that, Rosie Dimanno notwithstanding, if the Toronto Star is a fair measure of my middle class complacency (and after some experience consuming Vancouver media I think it is) then I don’t think the Prof. ever had to worry about me.
Come December 20th I’m looking forward to sitting back in la Ville Reine, drinking some Creemore, and reading that Walrus I bought the other day at Caper’s out of pity. Or, finishing that Virgil I got in the bargain bin at Chapter’s. Or, maybe, to further cement my Canadian middle class credentials… first edition!
December 7th, 2007 at 11:51 am
Brenda made fun of the random German. Apparently it’s “pretentious”. I should point out that I uncomfortably often, perhaps in an attempt to justify those German classes I pretentiously took, will say things to the effect of “Do you want some soup, or as the Germans would say, Suppe?”. Point is I didn’t think it thematically out of place, but there you go.