Nat Arem's Blog

Lots of pictures coming in early January 2007… http://www.thepokerdb.com/pics

Don’t go to see The Good Shepherd (imdb). It’s long, confusing and generally boring.

But do go to see Blood Diamond (imdb). Action packed and exciting.

Not much else to say except that I’m getting excited for the PCA! Can’t wait to get down there.

Am I baller yet? Sorry for the unprofessional photo, the digital camera sucks. Speaking of which, I need to buy a good one before the PCA.

I know, I know, my keyboard isn’t baller.

WOW, so close. Argh.

Tue Dec 19 03:10:00 PST 2006

Justin Bonomo Eliminated 7th ($152,230)

Mads Anderson raises to $240,000 preflop and Justin Bonomo moves all in.  Anderson immediately calls and shows 77.  Bonomo turns over AQ.  The board comes J642J and Anderson wins the pot and eliminates Bonomo in 7th place.

Still a great run, congrats to Justin on an amazing .

That’s a relief. The exam was 4 hours: 1 hour of 40 impossible multiple choice questions and 3 hours for essays. I think I may have missed some key points in my essays, so I’m not exactly hopeful for a good Torts grade. Hopefully I’ll pull out something decent.

Even though law school is usually interesting, exams are definitely way more draining than undergrad exams, for a few reasons.

First, it’s partially because of the pressure to perform well on a single test for your whole grade.

Second, it’s also because everyone here received mostly As in their undergrad. And my section’s undergrad schools are basically the top schools in the nation: multiple UPenn, Columbia, Duke, Emory, etc. So basically everyone is studying hard for everything and it’s really hard to differentiate yourself.

Third, there’s a lot more covered. In undergrad, we’d often have a midterm and the final would just cover post-midterm material. It’s so much easier to study for 1.5 months of material than 3 months.

Lastly, it’s really hard to meter your effort by class because you have no idea how you’re doing. In college I would usually run a spreadsheet scenario a few times a semester to figure out the optimal way to study based on how well I was doing in each class based on grades received. I know the spreadsheet thing sounds dumb, but I am a big believer in strategic academics and using spreadsheets was a primary tactic of mine. In return for an investment of 15 minutes, I would get a good feel for what each marginal point on each assignment was worth for every class, how I was doing and how much time I needed to put in. I rarely did more than 10 hours of homework a week, yet got mostly As with a few A-s. And the problem is, I can’t do that here. I still really don’t know how I’m doing. For all I know I’m a C law student. I could also be an A law student. Of course it’s much more likely that I’m a B law student. Just about the only thing I’ve gotten back is a Torts practice test on which I received an A. But that doesn’t mean anything except that I wrote a good exam that day… and it doesn’t count. So I’ve been having a really hard time trying to figure out what to study. I’m not the type of person who can spend 10+ hours a day in the library for a week straight during finals, so I have to spend my “good” study time wisely and I think I may have messed up how I allocated my time this semester. I needed to spend a lot more time on Torts and much less time on Civil Procedure. Oh well, I will see how the grades turn out when I get them back (in February! Law school profs take forever to grade exams).

At this point, I’m basically just glad to be almost done with the semester. It isn’t that I don’t like law school, but I am really excited to go home for a bit, spend a week in the Bahamas (PCA obv) and then get back to Atlanta and work on the db re-design.

These things suck. 100% of your grade in one test and you can be asked questions on anything from the entire semester. That’s a lot of stuff to know.

I took my Civil Procedure and Contracts test last week. I have my Torts test in about 2 hours. Then I have a take home exam for a random class called Legal Methods due on Thursday.

Then I’m done for the semester… and I’m looking forward to that.

GL to me today, Torts is my hardest class by far.