Tonight I mediated my first real case, and I’m hooked.

I enrolled in the mediation clinic this semester because the transactional clinic (helping small businesses) was full. Within the first hour of the 40-hour training course, I was pumped.* Mediation seemed like the perfect fit for my personality: you don’t take sides, don’t make judgments, don’t try to game the system to get ahead; you’re there to ask questions, keep everyone on track, and help people resolve their own problems.

Here’s one thing I’ve learned in law school: the more I hear about the lives of everyday attorneys, the more I want out. It sounds like hell, especially during the first few years. And lawyering can be . . . ethically challenging. Alternative dispute resolution, on the other hand, is something I can get behind. It patches up gaps in the legal system, frees up overburdened courts, and leaves participants feeling empowered. Unicorns and hugs all around.

So I figured I’d enjoy mediation. Heck, maybe I could even make a career out of it. But I worried that it would be hard to get started. Even though I’m certified to mediate, who would trust me, not even an attorney, with their case? Won’t they see how young I am? Some hard-ass would probably ask for my bar card, then throw me out of the room. Or some legal topic would come up from a class I hadn’t taken (or didn’t pay attention in), and I would be crushed under the weight of my own inexcusable ignorance.

(more…)

I happened to flip the TV to VH1′s 100 Greatest Artists of All Time at number 77, and I’m going to watch this sucker all the way to the end. I’m learning SO MUCH.

You think I’m joking, but I’m seriously clueless about music. I especially don’t know what different artists look like, which is why this show is so crazy and new to me. Most of what I know about music comes from reading about it in magazines and online and hearing people talk about it. I’ve never spent much time, you know, listening to music or watching music videos.

I understand the appeal of being super-deep into music, or at least I think I do. Music is powerful stuff. I like music. But the depth and breadth of the average person’s music knowledge blows me away. It’s like there’s a vast pool of cultural history that everyone knows about but me. They didn’t teach this stuff in school, okay?

We’re getting into the top 40 now. The Kinks? That’s a band? If you say so.

When Samson was a puppy he loved going to dog parks—he’d get the big dogs to chase him, then roll over and do the tiny-dog rip-out-your-belly attack, so that he’d inevitably come home caked with dirt and slobber.

In the last few years he hasn’t been nearly as social. When we visit a dog park, he mostly keeps to himself. First he makes a full round of the park, methodically sniffing and marking each landmark, and then he plops himself down next to me and waits until I’m ready to leave. Occasionally he’ll spot something interesting and trot off to check it out, but soon enough he’s back at my side.

Can dogs be autistic? Sam’s definitely abnormal. Sometimes I wonder what made him the way he is. It’s probably something from the first year of his life, before someone picked him up off the street and brought him to the shelter. We’ll never know.

Now that the weather’s cooling off, I brought him to a new dog park for the first time in several months. And for once, he seemed genuinely interested in the other dogs. Several times he threw himself into the pack with gusto and really tried hard to be social. I don’t think he understands quite how to play with other dogs, but it was adorable to watch him make the effort.

(more…)

QUESTION: You have a small-but heavy box (twenty pounds, say) and an uncovered paper cup of hot coffee to carry through a parking garage and up a flight of stairs. Along the way you will pass through two heavy combination-locked doors, the first of which opens away from you and the second towards you, and one lighter key-locked door. You are already carrying a laptop bag on one shoulder and a purse on the other. Should you

        (A) cradle the box on one arm and carry the coffee with the opposite hand, or

        (B) balance the coffee on top of the box so you can carry it with both hands?

(more…)