Con Law is not about Conning people!

I am going to warn everyone right now, this is going to be a long post. To start off I wanted to get a little deep though. I was a little bummed out after last semester, it was hard to come back to school after having such a fun time with the fam. Plus, I had not gotten the grades I thought I had worked hard enough to get. To put it succinctly, I was bummed out and not really ready to face another tough semester. I also had more class hours and the classes seemed harder. I know. Wo is me. Anyway, the philosophical part of this post is an idea about choices. If you are religious you might call it agency, anyway you look at it, however, it comes down to making choices. This life is full of choices, you cannot avoid them. As Geddy Lee of the Popular rock trio Rush put it "if you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice" (thanks for the quote Puls).
The thing that we need to remember about choices is that we need to make the difficult ones and stick to them. I feel like I have been turning a corner in my life recently and this has helped me to see why. Sometime we don't want to make difficult choices, so we decide to just kind of let our life slide by easy. If we do that, however, we are missing the chance to change our lives for the better.
I remember in ninth grade I made a conscious decision to be more outgoing and to say the things that I thought were funny out loud. That has helped me to be more of a people person and to show my personality when I first meet people. All from virtually one choice. While there are some things that we have no control over, we can control certain things. Our attitude for one, and our work ethic and our personal relationships. If we want to be happy we need to make that choice, and make the changes that will make that choice possible. That is the other thing about choice, once we make a choice we need to do the things that make it possible. Works, works, works.
OK, this was leading up to something and here it is. In order to fix my attitude this semester I decided to make a few choices. I started with normal things, get enough sleep, eat healthier, and exercise regularly. That took care of the physical, and it has helped my mood. I also made sure I was spiritually healthy. Finally I focused on school. I took a new class to help me with the day-to-day skills of law school and talked to some people to learn what I could do to improve. Trust me, I do not like to ask for help, but once I made the decision to do whatever I could to improve, I did it. I started typing my notes and am still looking for ways to improve.
Now the real reason for this huge post.
So school has been better the last couple of weeks, but my Con Law (Constitutional Law) class has been really tough, the professor is hard, the material is hard, and it is early in the morning. Needless to say it was my hardest class. After class on Monday, when I felt like I understood less after the lecture than before, I made a decision. I decided that even though it might take me significantly more time, I was going to outline my reading and do whatever I could to understand and be successful in that class. So Tuesday I outlined the class, and Wednesday I went in prepared. I don't know if it was inspiration, but I got cold called in Con Law. This means the Professor calls on you without warning, in my hardest class, which I had felt absolutely lost in everyday. I was prepared, however, but the question was from the last class' reading, I answered it poorly, but adequately I guess. I had done all that work and it hadn't helped. I was actually hoping he would come back to me. Of course, this is my hardest class, so he came back to me. I totally killed it. It was awesome. I owned the case, every question he had I owned it. I felt so good, my outlining not only helped me to understand the material but it helped me when I got Socratically bludgeoned in class. Like ten people actually complimented me on how well I had answered the questions. My choice really paid off big time, and quickly. I actually have been having a really good week this week. I also got cold called in two other classes on Monday and Tuesday too. It's like a joke in my section how I have been called on so much lately. It's all good though, don't worry Tracy, I'm actually starting to enjoy it, and I have been making more comments in class too, so I know I am understanding more.
So the moral of this story? Keep it real and make the choices you need to to be who you want to be and to be successful.
Peace.

Fear and Loathing in SLC

The world must know! I hope someone got my joke from the title, and also here is Brook's and my Christmas card, sorry it didn't get out sooner.

The Fashion Just Hit the Fan

ATTENTION! The new Harrison Fashion blog is up. It is a work in progress so bear with me. The link is at the top of my links and it is called, Fashionably Harrison. Now, I realized that if I just add photos of myself it is going to be pretty lame. It will only be good if other people post and comment and we just have a good old time. Email me and I will add you as an author, this is not going to be restricted to just Harrison's either, if someone wants to get on the fashion train climb on board buddy. Besides that, just keep the comments nice, we don't need a (dare I say?) family feud on our hands.

Oh the Humanity!

Some of you know that when I was ten years old Nate Burt (my best friend from first grade, but not kindergarten, we hated each other then) and I were in an accident where a whole lot of voltage was shot through our bodies. It was scary at the time but we were able to rebound and have actually managed to live fairly normal lives. Feel free to insert any "except for the obvious brain damage" jokes here. Anyway, there was one setback that I suffered at that tender age. I lost something that has haunted me every since, I lost the ability to wear toe socks, you know the ones that have a little space for each of your ten toes. It was my hidden shame. People would flaunt their toe socks right in my face. I learned to cope with it . . .


Well, NOT ANYMORE!!!!! Thanks to my wonderful sister Brooke I too can now rock the toe socks, so take that all you hatas.

Sweet Ride Brought Back to Life!!!!

So some of you might know that Grandma Jenkins let me have her old awesome Olds, it was like a dream come true, such an awesome car. Well, it got me to Cali (and I kid you not I had so much stuff in that car they almost couldn't get it on the tow truck), but as I drove to my house in San Fran I had to go up a big hill and the next thing I know it's billowing smoke out from under the hood. All I knew was that it was leaking transmission fluid, and then I got so busy with school I didn't have time to check it out. I just took public transportation and feared the worst. Well, I talked to a Mechanic (our ward's second counselor) and he told me to check something, and I fixed the leak today with my roommates help!!! So I'm back in business, but I haven't decided if I am going to keep it or not, but it at least I have it if I want to visit Kim in L.A. and it will be easier to visit the Blodgies in Walnut Creek. So it's good new anyway you look at it. Thanks again Grandma and Grandpa Jenkins.

p.s. A new blog might be starting soon, look for Fashionably Harrison to come your way!

Here's a resolution

So Tracy and I talk about law school sometimes, mostly since no one else wants to talk about it. I guess I can understand people not wanting to talk to you about your exclusive club that they are not a member of, but whatever. The point for this post is twofold. First, Tracy told me that she tries to go to all the speakers they have at her school and I think that it is a great idea. There are always great people coming and sharing and a lot of time they have free lunch, so we need to take advantage of this unique time in our life to enjoy these opportunities.
The second part of this post was that I went to a talk by one of the Judges from the 9th circuit court of appeals which is I think the largest circuit court in the federal system, not to mention fairly liberal. The meeting was on Religion and the Establishment clause. I was surprised to hear that this justice supports mixing religion and politics as long as one church is not supported more than another. I just thought that this was interesting to hear in a time where many people think that there should be more separation. I think the key idea is equality, as long as churches are treated equally it is fine. For anyone who knows someone very religious (and I consider myself to be such a person) they know that those people cannot separate religion from any part of their life, in some way it permeates everything.

Here's a wordless Wednesday for ya!

Takin to the Slopes

I just thought that everyone might want to see how good the snow was and how cool we all are. Now that I'm back in San Fran and the weather is in the sixties, that's right I said sixties, I feel comfortable reliving some of my cold Utah memories from during the Christmas break. The truth is though that even though I liked snowboarding, a lot, seeing the fam was the real treat and I miss them a little out here. Hopefully they miss me too and will come out and see me soon. We have about a million H&M's out here people, I'm not even joking.Yeah, good times were had by all and it was a sick pow pow day. Oh well, next year is right around the corner. Hope everyone has a good year and enjoys all of their school and work.

Hold your horses

There are varied and sundry posts on the way but I didn't have time today because I was writing in my journal (love ya Mom).

Oh Yeah . . .

I guess I could be more humble, grateful, considerate . . . all those little tiny things. I guess.

Resolve re-solve

How about some new year resolutions? I'm not big on these things really, I think that we should be honest with ourselves and make changes as they become necessary, but still sometimes it is easier if we make a goal and set a time limit.
From what I understand a resolution means we resolve to do or not do something, if you break down resolve, it becomes re-solve, so just solve all of the problems in your life again for the new year. I told my Mother that I don't really have anything to resolve or to solve in my life, except maybe to get married, and you really should not put a timetable on marriage so that's out as a resolution. Seriously though, I guess I could resolve to at least be more proactive and outgoing when it comes to relationships. That's just the type of vague resolution that I can keep.
Besides that I guess this is a good time to reaffirm decisions in my life. To strive to be kind and friendly, to follow the spirit, and to remember the choices I have made and the reasons why I made them. I really feel like I am becoming more of an adult and I am not sure if that is necessarily a good thing since I am already very responsible. I guess I resolve to think about the things I do. Way back in high school I decided that our mental abilities define what we can be, so I am going to try to make sure that I am who I want to be and that I understand why I am making the decisions that I make. By doing this I hope to avoid being swept along by the fickle winds of fate, I can at least control my attitude and my outlook. I also resolve to find ways to enjoy myself in whatever I do, man is that be might have joy. Once more I just want to clarify that these are not new things really, this is just a good time to make sure I am acting in accordance with what I know to be right and true. Merry New Year to all and to all a good year.