Anne Stevenson
Anne Stevenson is a 1L from Concord, New Hampshire who moved to Miami in June to attend UM Law with her six year old son Reece. She graduated from Tufts University in 2007 with her Bachelor’s degree in Political Science, and worked as a legal assistant after college. As a Miami Scholar and proud mother, she does not have free time to partake in any hobbies (aside from writing her Res Ipsa blog in the middle of the night when she can’t sleep). However, back in the olden days you could find her doing political and legal aid volunteer work, reading books at the beach, taking Reece on adventures, teaching Sunday school, playing softball, running, doing yoga, exploring foreign countries, eating a quality breakfast at the best hole in the wall in town, or doing her beloved crossword puzzles. Anne would like to pursue a career in Family Law and start a non-profit agency to provide single mothers with pro bono legal assistance in the court system.
11.17.09
How to strategically pick your spring semester elective based on the likelihood that you’re smarter than most of the people included in the class grading curve.
Why lie about it right? After spending every lunch hour and evening dry heaving into a paper bag due to my fears of failing out of law school, I decided to go with the “least likely to fail” approach with choosing my elective for the spring.
ANNE’S FAIL PROOF ELECTIVE SELECTION FORMULA:
( Liberal professor likely to keep my attention – person whom I prefer not to hear their comments) x (least amount of conservative students likely to annoy me) + convenient class time + (generous grading curve/most students less likely to be as smart as me or do the work) x some sort of applicability towards my legal area of interest = Anne’s 2010 spring elective.
Although technically I am undermining my own fail proof formula and jinxing myself by sharing this flash of genius with you, I just want you to see that I too am still figuring things out. I do the reading and the work, yet somehow I am under the misguided presumption that I need to do more because everyone else is. Like most of the other 1L’s in my section, my hair is falling out, I put on ten pounds, and my boyfriend frequently finds himself the centerpiece of a rant beckoning Armageddon for stuff like forgetting to put the toilet seat down. This is not someone I want to be. As a result of this, I had to start this blog so I could relieve stress by making fun of myself when I can’t sleep in the middle of the night. We get caught up in the competitive law school atmosphere, and so I hope other people will be able to relate to my experience and laugh at themselves too.
It is so ironic that the same people convincing us that our first year is a slice of hell and encouraging us to wear adult diapers everywhere so we don’t miss an instant of studying time are also telling us to have friends and hobbies outside of law school. To take a step back and remember to breath. The reality, however, is that most of us just moved here and we don’t know a soul in Miami, and the only people we do know are in our section and directly competing with us. And when we do see these people, we feel the need to “keep up with the Jones’s” by putting in 15 hour studying days. If I did a 15 hour studying day on a regular basis, I would probably die from ADHD related injuries. A hot bath and a manicure are not going to ease your anxiety about getting tossed out of law school and having to pay back steep loans in this scary economy. Neither will getting drunk and sleeping with your classmates (which I haven’t done but have cringed while others have completed their walk of shame).
I recently noticed that several of my classmates had dropped out, and the other day I busted the one person in class who I thought was the least likely to be having trouble bawling her eyes out over an assignment. An ungraded assignment that no one but the teacher will see. You can generally gauge how well you understand a topic by the amount of computer keys clicking after you comment in class. However, the lack of keys does not necessarily signify that everyone else gets it and you don’t as I had once assumed. This person always has the keys clicking.
In a desperate attempt to say something to make this person feel better, I realized that law school isn’t asking me to be top in my class by reinventing the legal wheel, it is only requiring me to be a better writer and a tinge smarter than the majority of my classmates. I always tell my dyslexic son that having the best handwriting doesn’t make you the smartest kid in the room, it’s who creates the best story that’s important. The same can be said for law school where knowing the statutes is only useful if you can apply them in a convincing and entertaining way. This is why I chose a large class for the spring semester. If the quest to be at the top of my class is making me snap and drop out of law school, then maybe I just need to focus on following my interests and the hope that I am smarter than the majority of my classmates so I can be a lawyer.
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When I get my JD, we are going to follow around Suzie McGillicuddy and make BILLIONS in negligence torts cases!
HALLOWEEN 2009: Miami Rules, But Little Girls In Sexy Costumes Is Just Not Right
This year marked my first Halloween in a warm climate and it was glorious. My son went as the Crypt Keeper from “Tales From The Crypt” and my boyfriend and I went as vampires. Reece wore that costume every day for four days because there were so many parties at school and in the city, and we didn’t want to miss any of them. We trick or treated for hours in 75 degree weather and only went home when our feet were tired. This is evidenced by the fact that I am now wearing the hoards of candy we collected that night.
I love Halloween in Miami. Half way through the night I had to take my black wig off because my scalp couldn’t breath and my head was sweating hot. My plan is to keep that wig for ski season because it is way warmer than the hat I got at Target last year.
One thing that concerned me about Halloween in a warm climate was seeing little girls in sexy costumes. Standing in the costume store looking at the packages in the pre-teen section made me feel like I was watching child porn. I am not a prude by any means, but when I saw 13 year old girls out showing their bare butt cheeks which were garnished only with fishnet stockings under the guise of a flight attendant’s costume, I was disturbed. I wanted to take these young girls aside and help show them some positive ways to gain attention that did not include exploiting themselves. At the PTA fundraiser at Reece’s school, parent actually wore an orange prison jumpsuit costume, which made me want to crawl out of my skin and burn it.
Back in my day, my mom wouldn’t even let me wear red lipstick. In Boston, there’s a good chance it will snow on Halloween, so you can’t show skin without risking chapped cheeks or frost bite. Being a Brittany Spears school girl in a turtle neck and long johns is a huge waste of money. It is true, the three most popular costumes in my day were the un-PC choices of hookers, homeless people, and a cardboard box made to look like a TV. This horrifies me now, as mocking poverty and the exploitation of women in the sex trade is not the knee slapper it once was. I grew up in NH, so if I walked into a lingerie store and tried to buy my costume there the owner would have called my mom. Kids these days order their costumes off the internet, which allows very little supervision.
In this day and age where our daughters are sexualized at increasingly younger ages and pressured to fight nature to look “perfect” like Hollywood role models, it is our obligation to help them find better ways to garnish positive attention. As a single mom, I can tell you that girls often become teen moms because their confidence stems from looking good and being a good girlfriend. A big part of a woman’s success depends on her ability to draw confidence from her independent accomplishments, such as meeting career and educational goals, but also feeling like she contributes to helping other people have good lives too. There is always going to be another girl in your class or your life who is smarter, prettier, and has more friends, so it’s important to help girls feel comfortable in their own skin to deter them from getting false confidence from other places.
This is where you come in. If you are at UML, you can use your success story to help a young girl discover her path to success. I can tell you from experience that most of the women I have met who end up in situations that compromise their integrity (domestic abuse, drug abuse, depression, etc.) could have a whole different life if someone like you stepped in and said “I think you are really smart and you have a lot of potential. What would you like to be when you grow up? Let’s make a plan.” Just by spending a couple hours a week with a girl one on one and making it about her could enable that girl become a doctor or yes, a LAWYER, instead of a waitress.
For opportunities to make a different, check out the HOPE website:
http://www.law.miami.edu/hope/site/current/programs.php?op=1
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Here is my good friend Booger from “Revenge of the Nerds” who may well have been suffering from increased mucous production due to undiagnosed swine flu, preparing lunch for someone who may as well be me. If you look closely, you can see his friends are holding citations for their crimes against fashion.
Are class attendance sheets covered by an implied warranty?
I was thinking about this in class the other day. Due to my seating assignment, 99 other people get the sign in sheet for class before I do, four of whom I know have swine flu. If I want to get credit for showing up for class, I have to sign in, which in turn exposes me to swine flu.
I should be able to reasonably assume that signing the class attendance sheet won’t kill me, and that by enrolling in school I have not waived my right to contest any harms that are caused by my doing so. Under common law, isn’t that a blatant breach of warrantee of fitness for a particular purpose? I mean, it’s not like I am going around licking door knobs and bathroom faucets in the Wellness Center. Although UML has never explicitly stated that they won’t dip attendance sheets in anthrax or ebola, I’m pretty sure that they expect me to sign in regardless.
I could use the Purell dispenser in the front of the class, but is it reasonable to expect 98 other people to do the same without pissing off the professor? By the time class is over, I have already picked my nose and cleaned my teeth and signed up for a swine-o-rific finals season. I could just get vaccinated, but I can’t find “Area 4” where I signed up. As a matter of fact, I think it may be located near Area 54.
According to Florida’s adoption of the Restatement (Second) of Torts under United States v. Stevens, No. SC07-1074 (Fl. Oct. 30, 2008), a business that handles ultra hazardous materials has a heightened commensurate duty to protect the public from any foreseeable harms resulting there from. So if UM KNOWS that tuition paying students have swine flu and are riddling the attendance sheets with germs, they also have a commensurate duty to protect the nose pickers from the foreseeable event of contracting H1N1 virus. And keep in mind that the professors are the last ones to get the attendance sheet, so if they get sick can they claim Workman’s Comp?
I think we should give the TA’s the seating charts and make them responsible for checking people into class. In fact, we should just do away with attendance sheets all together this late in the semester where our last pool days are so numbered.
11.3.09
Last week, the hanging death of seven year old Gabriel Myers was ruled a suicide by Broward County Medical Examiner’s Office. Gabriel was a foster child who was recently taken from his mother due to child abuse allegations, and had been put on psycho pharmaceutical medications. On the day of his death, he was sent home from school for being disruptive and seen by a psychiatrist and a social worker who said he was fine and sent him home. He was found hanging in the shower covered in bite marks and bruises. The psychiatrist said that the “suicide” was a cry for help and unintentional. Sadly, that cry went unheeded and ignored by the many adults who in his life. I can only imagine how powerless, frustrated, and scared he must have felt to die alone this way.
Who is going to hold anyone accountable for the death of an unwanted and neglected child like Gabriel? Who would sue on his behalf? Sadly, he will be forgotten.
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/broward/story/1307501.html
As a mother of a six year old little boy, this culture of apathy and indifference for the emotional needs of little boys is frightening to me. Unlike our daughters, we stop physically nurturing little boys when they are young. We want them to be empathetic to others, yet we teach them at a very young age that showing vulnerability and emotion is a weakness. We give them drugs to control their emotional displays, even as in this case, when it is trauma related, and they don’t learn to deal with their emotions. When a boy cries, we call them a baby and tell them to toughen up like a man instead of acknowledging their hurt, frustration, and fear. How do we expect our sons to learn how to care for others if we do not attribute value to their feelings ourselves and reward stoicism?
With the rising influence of violence portrayed on the internet, cable television, and better special effects in the movies has come a responsibility for society to reiterate to our little boys that their value comes not from domination over others, but their contributions to society and personal achievements. There is no value in being a masculinely stoic inmate rather than a caring father. We need to start raising the emotional IQ’s of little boys through emphasis on the value of their emotional needs and awareness.
When we read articles about teen violence, we have a tendency to want to label the perpetrator as “evil” and ask “where are the parents?” There are no “bad” children, just children who adults have failed to arm with the tools necessary to learn emotional intelligence. For a little boy who isn’t properly nurtured, that’s like trying to play basketball against LeBron James without knowing the rules of the game or having played before.
We need to start pressing our schools to incorporate an emotional education into the curriculum. My son spends ten hours per day on school grounds, and three at home. We can no longer afford to have the sole focus of our schools be surviving standardized testing. In the face of over crowded classrooms and budget cuts, it is much easier for schools to label a kid a “bad apple” and punish him for acting out rather than to take a moment to ask him what he is feeling and offer him solace and guidance. We would rather spend money on foster care and bigger prisons rather than education and families it seems.
This short term investment may save a teacher the hassle of taking time from the rest of the class to do so, but it also puts a child at risk for gaining his self esteem from hurting others as he has been hurt, turning to drugs to mute his emotions, and a life of crime as an ostracized member of society for the rest of his life. Rather than defining these little boys by their positive strengths, we emphasize their weaknesses and teach them to hate themselves and their inadequacies.
Maybe you are reading this and thinking “what does this have to do with me?” As UML students, we have enjoyed incredible privileges that most will never know, and as such we have a duty to pay it forward. Gabriel may not have died had one adult stepped in and listened to him and helped him by acting as a big brother and an advocate. The simple act of one adult keeping tabs on him may have been enough to put his caretakers on notice and provide them with an incentive to better care for him. An hour out of our week to do this for him may have been sufficient.
We are often discouraged to participate in formalized volunteer work because we feel that if we can’t solve all child abuse, the effort to save one child is useless. These children don’t have names and faces, and we have nothing to personally tie us to them. But they are just like us when we were kids. We tell ourselves that if Justice Sotomayor made it, so can everyone else. However, her story is so great because she is the exception and not the rule. Exceptions need mentors like us to redefine the limits of their potential that society has imposed upon them by listening to them, nurturing them, and helping them plan their dreams.
The main reason I came to UML was the opportunity to use my legal skills as a Miami Scholar to help mothers in the family courts through the HOPE Program. The HOPE Program offers students an opportunity to give what they can when they can to help others. Spending a couple hours per week reading with a child in the “Books and Buddies” program or the “After School Reading Program” is doable. Helping with the “Empowering Children With Disabilities” program would give a kid something to look forward to, a child who may otherwise spend a large part of their day focusing on their educational shortcomings. “It’s Your Life Financial Literacy Project” helps teens leaving the foster care system learn basic money management skills. “Legal Up” helps parents understand their rights and advocate for themselves. This is important because while nobody would deny the criminally accused representation, when it comes to advocating for your family in our complex legal system we offer parents almost nothing. Stability at home is everything to a child, which is why family court legal agreements are so important.
It is not true that you must choose between helping others and making money in order to make a difference. Public service is not only a resume builder, but your small effort sets off a chain reaction that changes many people’s lives. Even small acts of benevolence instill a sense of worth and gratification in our lives, which in turn fosters enthusiasm and energy in other areas of your life, like making money. Here are some opportunities for you to get involved:
http://www.law.miami.edu/hope/site/current/programs.php?op=1
11.2.09
As a recent transplant from Boston, I have found the adjustment to Miami living fairly easy. I chose to enroll in the University of Miami School of Law because of the magnificent opportunities offered here to further my education without the possibility of ever having to shovel another flake of snow. I think I may have even notified U-Haul of my move before calling my family and UML to tell them the great news.
During my first week of orientation, I discovered that the social scene here was going to be challenging for me because I am from a different background than most of my classmates. One of the reasons I chose Miami was because of the diverse cultural aspects of the region, however, it would have been helpful if UML had actually included the number of Yankees fans in some of the brochures that came to the house before I enrolled.
At orientation, nobody knows each other and for an entire week we were in small talk hell. As a Bostonian, I am a professional small talker. Next time you go on Facebook, check to see how many of your Boston friends post status updates about traffic, food, the weather, and sports. Especially the sports. However, I didn’t move to Miami to talk about how bad the weather is in Boston. I deliberately moved to Miami so I wouldn’t feel peer pressured to go outside and “enjoy the nice weathah.” Miami traffic is another blog all together, but what I will say about that is put the cell phones down when you are driving, and as long as you are no more than the third car to blow through the red light you are fine. I am a broke student with no time to eat and an obligation to be bikini ready on the weekends when I hit the beach, so chatting about food would be just cruel at this juncture. So that left us with the topic of sports, which I was not going to broach in a sea of Miami Yankees fans.
As a mom to a six year old, I try to raise my son right by teaching him how to follow the golden rule, don’t do drugs, don’t play in traffic, and don’t play with Yankees fans. Everyone in my family owns a t-shirt that says “Real women don’t sleep with Yankees fans” or “Yankees suck!” This is because we know that our “dirty cousins” from New York do not subscribe to the same code of ethics governing loyalty and altruism that Sox fans do. It is my duty to save my son the heart ache of being cheated later in life should he choose to befriend a Yankees fan.
Think I am kidding? We Sox fans take our loyalties very seriously, and unlike other sports fans, we don’t cheer for other people’s teams. That’s the difference between us. I struggled with this when I moved to Florida when a friend of mine invited me to a Marlins game. I stood up to cheer for the locals and nothing came out because deep in my heart I know that it would be like mailing anthrax home to my family to have them see me do that.
A Yankees fan will cheer for anyone and not feel bad about it, and nobody would really notice. At the Church of Red Sox Nation, we know who has been attending services since before 2004 and we don’t call the “Johnny Come Latelies” members of our congregation. You know you are in a Boston law office when it’s the day before a big game and everyone is wearing team jerseys to board meetings, including the partners. Or God forbid, the day after a big game loss and nobody in the office is talking to each other and greif councilors are on site to support the staff. Let me tell you something, when the Sox, the Pats, and the Celtics won the championships over the last six years, Boston fans rioted in the streets. We turned over cars and burned them. People died and went to jail for Boston teams on those nights. We don’t get that worked up about the Patriot Act, but the Patriots losing the big game last year and coming in second was the source of some serious outrage. You just don’t see that kind of loyalty in a Marlins fan.
Last weekend, I flew home to Boston because my grandfather is very sick. First thing I did at Logan Airport was grab a cup of Dunkin Donuts coffee, then I reported my luggage carrying all my text books lost. For the next 24 hours, I relished the fact that the staff at the airport were willing to help me out simply because my Red Sox hat and townie accent gave me automatic trustworthiness credibility. When I got my bags back Saturday night, I discovered all my Lancome cosmetics had been stolen out of it. I blame the wicked retahded Yankees fans working in baggage on my lay over in Atlantic City for the theft for no other reason than the fact that I am geneticly predisposed not to trust them.
One of my only two friends in Miami is from New York, but is not a baseball fan. In preparation for writing this blog I asked her, “Kell, do you think it’s possible for a Sox fan to date a Yankees fan?” Kelly goes “Well my boyfriend is from Boston and he cheers for both teams.” So I was like “Oh, so he’s a Yankees fan then.” Note to self, I might have one friend in Miami after all 
10.07.09
THE ADVENTURES OF SUZIE MCGILLICUDDY
Are you familiar with Suzy? Suzy is a good friend of my torts professor. She is between the ages of 5-17 and she finds herself in a lot of dangerous situations which cause her to get hurt. She does bone headed stuff like wrap herself in bacon and jump fences with signs on them like “Beware of the Lions.” The neighbor’s rabid dog plays on her lawn and when she goes over to pet the nice puppy with the foamy mouth it mauls her. She often consumes cans of cola that contain decaying rats because Coca Cola didn’t want to incur the costs of making sure the cans were safe, despite all the rats running around attracted to the sugar in the vats of cola. She wears ear plugs and black clothing and walks on the train tracks at night with her back to the train traffic. Her parents don’t wash or thoroughly cook her chicken and she gets salmonella, and her favorite food is Pittsburg rare burgers from Jack in the Box that are riddled with mad cow disease. She gets hit by cars and bull dozers driven by unlicensed drunken handy men about 3 times a week as far as I can tell. She has been paralyzed about 900 times since the beginning of the semester.
I suspect her parents are not doing diligence on their obligation to supervise and protect her, but I have never heard my professor say anything about DCF intervening on her behalf. For some of these accidents she has health insurance and sometimes she doesn’t, so sometimes the doctors mess with her too. They mix up her chart and she ends up having cataract surgery instead of her tonsils out. She gets staph infections all the time because doctors sneeze in her wounds when they are stitching her up. When she wakes up from surgery, her legs are broken and she is missing her kidneys. This is much like being the first one to get drunk and pass out at a frat party and waking up with one eyebrow missing, only for clandestine Suzy it’s her internal organs. But no one is talking about what happened at that party either, so we have to apply Res Ipsa Loquitor to smoke out the perp in court.
And of course, the unlicensed back ally doctor doing lipo out of his basement with a vaccuum cleaner and cloriform has caused gangreen infestations in her thighs on occassion, which takes away her ability to compete in the “Miss Teen America” swimsuit competition. Her scalp is covered in scar tissue and she no longer has active hair follicles because of the time her hairdresser burned her head with bleach, rendering poor Suzie bald for life. Since she is a beauty queen by trade, they have to pay her for potential lost wages because there’s a good chance she might have been Miss Universe had it not been for these unfortunate accidents. Sort of like if somebody cut off the fingers of a concert pianist. Locks of Love has also offered her my friend Fernando’s dreadlocks when he gets his JD and has to shave them off to get real job.
I think her parents might be billionaires from all the lawsuits they have won. But when she loses the lawsuits, it’s usually because poor Suzie lost on a technicality or due to her pre-existing conditions. The older she gets, the harder it is for her to win.
If you couldn’t tell, Suzy is our example character in Torts class. As a 1L, I find myself taking law school way too seriously and need to remember to find the humor in my day to day life in order to keep me going.
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