Kayla Finley

Most people that I talk to from other schools are allowed to use their laptops in all of their classes. At Kentucky, it’s actually rarer to use your laptops. 1L year I only had one professor each semester (outside of our research/writing classes, obviously) that let us use our laptops in class. All of my professors let us use laptops in the fall of 2L, but only one out of 5 in this most recent semester. They said that they find the students are more engaged and pay better attention when we don’t use laptops.

I tend to agree. In some classes, the material is so dry or the professors are so boring and stuck on themselves and the material rather than teaching us that laptops are an absolute necessity if you don’t want to absolutely die of boredom. For other classes, there are outlines and information that have been passed around through the years that it’s easier to have those in front of you while you’re learning in case you’re called on. In others, the classes are so packed and we’re all right on top of each other, so there’s just not room for a casebook, a laptop, and possibly a supplement. It’s easier to shuffle if you have a casebook and a notebook.

For the classes that are really case-heavy, I think it helps to have a laptop – most of the cases are briefed online, and I hate briefing on my own. It’s a waste of time, but then again, you risk getting called on and asked obscure details of a case that really don’t matter but the professor wants to know if you’ve read – and of course they think their class is the only one that matters, so even if you’ve read 70-100 pages for class that day, it’s only reasonable to expect you to remember that the defendant wore a red hat that day. But for something like secured transactions, a laptop would have been absolutely no help.

If the professor allows it, I usually use my laptop and don’t miss it much if they don’t. I really don’t take great notes either way. Sometimes I listen better without the laptop, but other times I zone out and watch the clock, so it’s not a huge benefit or deterrent.

Ultimately, I think the students should be allowed to decide if we want to use them or not. We’re the ones paying exorbitant tuition, so if we want to pay attention or shop for shoes, that should be our choice. I’ve heard of professors that make their students put their hands in the air and then the professor walks around the back of the room to see if they were taking notes. I think that’s absolutely ridiculous to do to students in our mid-twenties, but I’ve also learned that some professors will never respect their students – and they don’t garner any respect in turn, either.

Tags: opinion, school, thoughts

I have a good friend who has some of the same struggles I do, and we have some really thoughtful discussions. I’m thankful for her help through the last couple of stressful years, because her situation is so different from mine yet she’s understanding and usually very present when I need her. I also think she’s one of the few people I’ve actually been useful to in return these past couple years, and that makes me feel like I’m not a total waste right now. Anyway, she really inspired me to start thinking about an important concept that I feel like I should share.

I’ve known a few people who struggle/d with self harm, most alternately thinking that it helps and feeling guilty for doing it. I’ve never been one for it, probably because I’m too vain and too much of a wimp, but no one ever talks about mental self harm.

I cut myself down daily. It’s almost a constant mantra of how useless I am, how much I drain people, that I’m not worth anything, that I never help anyone. If there was some mental equivalent of cutting, my mind would be scarred beyond recognition. I remember these really bad feelings when I was in elementary school, when that song, “nobody likes me, everybody hates me, guess I’ll go eat worms” played through my head constantly. Who would ever create such a song? It’s ridiculous. But it stuck with me, and I convinced myself that it was true.

I got past some of this a few years ago, when I was in college. And honestly, it was because I was listening to Joyce Meyer sermons more days than I didn’t. But I haven’t done that in a long time. She preaches a ton on the mind and thoughts and how they have an effect on our lives. Her ministry tagline is “Enjoying Everyday Life.” Which I haven’t done in a while either. I haven’t been training my mind to think about how I was in the eyes of Jesus. I just haven’t been thinking right.

When you think about yourself this way, it’s exhausting. You know it’s wrong but you don’t have the energy to fight because you think you’re not even worth the effort. In turn, you want to reject everyone else’s help because you feel like it’s a waste. It’s an awful cycle, and when something bad happens, you have absolutely no defense against it.

Mental self harm is just as bad as physical. It’s paralyzing. I know I need to stop, but it’s become such a habit that it’s going to take some serious work to break. Yet I want to break it – there’s a voice that, however softly it whispers, is telling me that I’m worth it. That I’ll be so much better off if I fight.

Tags: thoughts

I’m not going to make this blog all about law school, but there are a few things I’ve been thinking about discussing, so here goes!

So apparently at some schools, professors don’t use the Socratic method after the first year. Either you don’t get called on much or you have an “on call” list and you know that you could be called on that week. That DEFINITELY doesn’t happen at Kentucky. Most of my professors call on people routinely, and in all of my classes you can be called on at any time. In some classes, you can tell roughly when you’re going to be called on after the first time. In others, you might be called on three weeks in a row or once or none at all. When you have a class of 70 people, it’s a crapshoot. And when you have a class of 15 people and a professor throws out frequent small questions or asks for your input or thoughts, you’ll be called on every week. The more formal regurgitations of case law might be over (except in my PR class, where that happened in 1L fashion), but you’re going to get more questions applying the law to hypos or problems.

I hate the Socratic method. I think that summaries of cases are useless. I know that professors often use it to make sure you’re still reading, but it’s pretty nonsensical. I’m not paying an exorbitant tuition to hear my classmates stumble through facts and law when they really have no idea what they’re doing. We’re here to learn from the professor.

So yeah. I don’t get who started law school out this why or why it’s a good idea or why we’re still doing it this way in 2L and 3L. I wish we had on call weeks. Would make life so much less stressful.

Tags: opinion, rant

Since I didn’t get this full time job, I made a decision for the rest of the summer. I’m sure you’re all awash with anticipation. I’m in 2 classes for our 4 week summer session, and then in the 8 week session I’m going to do a bankruptcy externship and that’s it. I’ll have to be in court a few hours a week, but other than that I’m going to rest. I’m pretty sure I have some degree of adrenal fatigue, and I need some time to rest and relax before 3L year comes at me, followed by bar studying. I have an option of taking another 3 hour class, but considering that you pay for tuition by the hour during the summer and it’s not a class I care about, I’m not doing it. And if I end up taking another 2 hour class next May to get my 90 hours in, it’s not the end of the world.

That said, if a part time job comes up, I’d take it.

The money thing sucks. I feel like it’s going to be a really long time before I get some financial independence. Had I gotten the job I wanted, it would have happened quickly and I could have been pretty well set up through next year and bar studying time. It’s a hard pill to swallow.

Another thing that makes me need more time this summer is that I’m moving! An opportunity came up for me to move in with my boyfriend’s sister’s friend, who I had met at said sister’s wedding last fall, and I took it. It’s going to save me a good chunk of money on rent alone each month, and I’ll still have plenty of room and privacy. Emilee, the roommate, seems very sweet and she’s in dental school so she understands the pressures of a professional program. She and the landlady are making the whole process as easy on me as possible, and I’m getting excited. I think it will be a positive thing for me to have someone else around, even if we’re not interacting all the time. Sometimes I get so sucked into my loneliness and then I don’t want to do anything that I, well, don’t do anything. I’m a little nervous about navigating the roommate relationship but I don’t think it will be too daunting.

I feel pretty good about all of these things. The two classes I’m in right now are absolutely great, and I think I’ll like watching what happens in bankruptcy court. If I find that I love it, great! And if I can rule it out for the future, that’s not a bad thing either. I’m so tired, so so tired, of reading cases and doing nothing with them. I want to see what happens in the real world.

Tags: decisions, direction, moving, roommate, school

I had an interview yesterday for a great position that I really wanted. I thought it went well, but I knew I was at a disadvantage because of my lack of experience. The people I met that I would have worked with were friendly, intelligent, and welcoming, which makes the rejection even more regrettable.

I have a hard time with hope in these situations. I’ve noticed a pattern in my life – whenever it seems like I have no opportunities or I get really worried about nothing working out in the future, stuff pops up. It might be a specter of an opportunity, or the mention of one, or an idea that might come to light in the future. For a while, it was comforting, like God was reminding me that He can make anything happen and that we can’t see the future, etc.

Now it’s just frustrating.

Also frustrating? That the school holds law loans for a week after the summer session starts to wait for grades to come in and that you’re still in good standing. At least neither of my classes require books. However, I still require food.

Tags: rejection

So, one day, I tried to write a post and my website was completely gone. Apparently it just got deleted. Ernie (boyfriend and creator of this blog) got the basics back up, but the content was gone. Poof.

I was pretty devastated. It’s not that I thought I had contributed some glorious substance to the internet, it was just that my journey was gone. Vanished. Personally, I have no idea how it could happen that easily, and how the hosting company could have no idea what happened and just say, “Oops!” and do nothing, but apparently it’s that easy. It can just disappear.

Thankfully, a really great person that I don’t even know in real life went through the trouble of finding the cached pages and sent me all of my blogs. I am so, so grateful to her generosity and thoughtfulness, and it proves yet again that Twitter is totally awesome. I’m not going to repost them, although I might eventually go back through and put up some especially important ones to me.

I’ve been wondering for a while what direction my blog should go in. It’s strange with one foot in the Christian world and one in the legal world. Most of the law types I talk to on twitter want nothing or very little to do with God, but Jesus is so important in my life that He creeps in to whatever I do, write, or talk about. I want this place to be an authentic accounting of my journey, not feeling like I need to censor myself to please a certain group of people. I don’t ultimately care about my popularity, but I do care about how I’m represented here, and I want to figure out how to best do that.

Starting over can be overwhelming. At first, I thought about just taking down the site and not writing anything for a while. But it feels too important not to try.

Tags: courage, direction

Hey everyone, we had some pretty serious issues with our blog recently and our database was corrupted.  We lost all of our previous posts, but we’ll do our best to get some more content on here as soon as we can.  Thanks for your patience!