Lethargy rules O....

It's official. It is a game of two halves.

Well at least a course of roughly equally halves.

Well, more 60/40 but that's pretty close, right?

(though saying that, if the College offered me a 40% mark as opposed to a 50% one I would be pretty miffed)

Anyhow, the point of all this drivel is just how much the compulsories have differed from the electives. For the compulsries, I reckon I was working about 50-55 hours a week-for these electives it seems much more like 25-30 hours.

And I don't like it.

No really, that may qualify as the most bizarre statement in a year of trying-but I really am not happy with the fact that the work has dropped off. The obvious reply is to spend more hours on each of my electives and push myself to the limit but there seems an infectious atmosphere of lethargy around. As if the College acknowledges that the worst is over and this is a time for those souls without jobs to be sending off applications.

The consequence is that all my bad habits are back with a vengeance. I try to get my work done as quickly as possible-there is no pride in what I do. I have to hand in some work for my crim tutor to look at this week but since it doesn't affect my final mark one way or the other, I've made a derisory attempt at it and no more.

Luckily this is the last week before half term. What? 'More holidays' I hear you cry. And this is an excellent indicatation of what I'm talking about. We had (just under) two weeks away from college before the exams, a week and a bit away after them and now just 4 weeks into the electives we are off for another 2 weeks (2 and a half in my case cos my last class is on Weds with nothing to Monday in mid-April.

I'm desperately hoping that I can work up a head of motivation during this period. I have a mental timetable where I spend an hour a day on each elective andf provided I do this seriously it should certainly help.

If only I didn't have my bad habits...

Oh well, as a famous philosopher once said, "if wishes were ponies we all would ride"

Right, back to the job in hand. Employment already has the feeling of a jinxed course. Second week, second different tutor-and we still haven't seen the proper one yet. (The rumour is now that she won't show for this week either-but we should have her back after Easter..).
We also have been set 'proper' tables (so I've been separated from Biff...shame!). The good news is that there are two members of my original tutorial group on my table. The bad news-neither of them showed up.

"I'm Jinxed, I tell yers"

Luckily, the tutor we had was a sight better than the previous one.

Slight bit of a problem in that it was the PLS tutor from my ill-fated stay on that course (and he remembered me) but we didn't overrun this week. Well, not by much...

It's kind of weird. We had a workshop on 'wrongful dismissal'; it took 2 1/2 hours and at the end we covered a tad more than in the Business Law compulsary workshop that also covered Unfair dismissal, redundancy and the free movement of workers.

There is a feeling that some of these classes may be a slight bit padded, shall we say?


Tuesday was a long day (by my pitiful standards). I left for school at 8.30. This is the only morning class I have had at the College and it still throws me.
I like to do a few hours prep in the morning before I head off-it fits nicely with my work style and I can go to class with the work lingering at the back of my head. The problem with early starts is that I have a tendency to day dream from about 4pm (the end of the workshops-see later)

Anyhow, Tuesday is crim day. I got to the class fairly early and took my appointed seat. I couldn't help but notice that I was the only one on the table. I am perceptive like that. The class filled up, all the other tables had 4 or 5 people and I was sitting alone. I naturally made the quick furtive movement to sniff my shirt. Hmm, not as bad as it has been...

Eventually, someone else turned up. Good job too, one of my nightmares is to be the only person on the table and have to answer every single question asked. Since I don't like speaking in public, I am having a growing suspicion that this may not be quite the right job for me after all...

The workshop began with a fun task based on our prep. We had been asked to review an interview between 2 police officers and a 'villain'. Sitting in on the interview was a solicitor who should object to particular questions or approaches by the police. They hadn't made a good job of it so we had been asked to point out places where we could intervene.

On our tables, each of the students was given a role in the script and had to read the interview aloud for the class. Then a neighbouring table would stand up and call out 'objection' at the relevant bits.

It's fair to say that there was a possible objection on nearly every single line spoken by the police but it was still good fun-whether playing it up on the script or making interventions on behalf of your client (and having to justify exactly what you were objecting to!)

Later in the class we were also introduced to a new problem type-the Critical Incidence Test. Some 30% of the exam will come from written versions of these and for those who want to qualify as an accredited representative at police stations they will have to do this to an incident played from a recorded medium.
The candidate then gets 30 seconds to think about their response before giving it first person to the examiner. These tests combine professional ethics with practical theory and some criminal law. We went over a few examples in class and I did a few solo this morning. They are tricky devils, no doubt-I'm sure that I will improve with practice but I'm definitely struggling at present.

Here's an example;
"You are your firm's duty adviser this evening and it is 19.20 hours when the telephone rings. the person on the other end of the line says;

Good evening, it's Sergeant Holmes from York police station. I've got one of your clients, Mr X, who is just about to go into interview but he wants a quick bit of legal advice first. I'll put him on now."

That's it. From that you need to identify what you believe the issues are and summarise your response to these issues. There should be about 4-8 responses for each.

The answer will be given next week (as soon as I know it!)

The large group lectures are not getting any better. A brilliant tutor but a bloody awful lecturer-shame. I've heard more interest and enthusiasm in the voice of the shipping forecast reader. This week, we touched on funding and spent a lot of time looking at bail and especially absconding (now that's a great word!)

I had put my name down for a lecture given by a prospective employer that evening, so rather than go home and come back (thus wasting 1 1/2 hours) I decided to work in the library and do my consolidation from Monday/Tuesday. With hindsight, that was one of those 'great ideas at the time' that when you do them don't work out quite as well.

I had quite forgotten just how loud the noise that people make when they're working quietly. (and that's not including those people who go to quiet rooms so they can have loud discussions without being disturbed)

To my credit, I did work right up to 5.45 and didn't once tell the noisy basas to 'shut the (word deleted for reasons of decorum) up'.

But I was sorely tempted...

The talk. This was presented by the confusingly named LPC, which I think stands for 'Legal Practice Clerks'. I say 'think' because now I come to look at the bumpf I picked up (including a free-pen) and the web-site (LPC-law.co.uk) there is no explanation of the acronym. How weird is that? The talk was given by two guys, one a smartly suited bloke who you just know has a side-line in used cars. The other was a younger man who had studied for the BVC (barristers qualification similar to the LPC) but had taken up work with this LPC (still keeping up?) and was now a senior advocate for them.

It was a fairly slick affair although it only took about 30 minutes (and that includes a question and answer session). There was a high proportion of the mature end of the spectrum-I guess we are all getting a bit desperate as the end of the course approaches...

This LPC are a sort of...legal sub-contractors, I suppose. Large law firms with more cases than staff or no staff in the jurisdiction of the claim hire advocates from this bunch. This works out cheaper for them than sending their own guys. They get a cut, LPC get a cut and the advocate gets a cut (no doubt the smallest cut for the guy who's actually doing the work...)

And that's it in a nutshell. LPC will get the cases for you then send you the paperwork with about 4 days notice of trial. You research the case and the law and then present it before a judge in chambers (not a courtroom). They reckon you should be doing about 4 a day. If you want to do a lesser week then you can do-you are self-employed and work as much as you can (or as little as you want). The only thing they ask for is six month commitment.

So have I applied? Not yeeeeet. I am still in two (or more) minds. It sounds good-not a training contract but excellent experience and they claim a lot of their staff go on to TCs-and that may be the catch.

• They seem to have a very high turnover of staff-about a 1/3 of their personnel change a year.
• Plus, there's the self-employed thing.
• Plus, it's work for big employers who want to repossess property, make people bankrupt and chase debts. All the things that I swore I would never do-that I wanted to protect the 'little man' and fight in his corner.
  

Question Principles are all well and good but is a roof over my head and food in the fridge more important?

Still, something to think about...


Back in College on Weds for Immigration. This is still a minefield of a subject for me-loads of room to put my foot in it. This is not helped by a non-standard start time (Every previous afternoon class has started at 1.30-This one starts at 1.45-and he still overruns..).
This means that by 4pm I'm in my sloooooooooow mode-but we still have up to half an hour to run. This is not a lot of joy for my poor classmates-who have to put up with the drooling vegetable that is me at that time who would be totally unable to tie my shoelaces-let alone answer a question on immigration legislation.

Interestingly we have been told that the legislation we are studying is already partly out of date and will probably be totally wrong by the time we get out into the real world. Oh good, just as long as I'm not wasting my time then...

Actually-with hindsight, 'minefield' is not quite the right term. It reminds me more accurately of an alleyway that I used to have to walk down to visit a former girlfriend in Exeter. It was not lit and was used on a daily basis as a doggy toilet. If there is ever an Olympic sport of 'doggy-doo dodging' then sign me up.

And that's it. During the last 4 days I have done a dribble of work a day. Keeps the doctor away I've been told-or something like that.

And the title? It's an old bit of graffiti-the idea is that someone was writing 'lethargy rules OK' but just couldn't be bothered...

The wheel is turning but the hamster is dead

It feels like this could be one of those weeks when I have little (no) inspiration-so I shall prattle on and hope that I can tie a few things together in the vain attempt of producing a coherent summary.

If that works, I shall stand back, say 'Ta-dah' and erase this opening.

Into the second week of electives, I am starting to get a routine going. It's not a very good routine granted but it's a start. I had been warned that there is a noticeable drop in work from now on and based on the last couple of weeks that this does appear to be the case. This brings problems of its own since I don't work as well unless the pressure is on. Sure, it's 'teeth gritted, moaning and swearing as I go work' but at least it gets done.

In reality all that's happened is that 4 subjects have dropped to 3-but importantly that's one less day at college. This is the big difference-without the big panic to get things done I'm doing dribs and drabs at the start of every day (Sundays included) and feeling a bit guilty since I'm doing the work but not feeling that I'm working anywhere near as hard. This has the knock on effect that I'm kidding myself that I'm not reaching the same 'quality standard' as for the compulsories.

So far, the electives have had an incredibly comfortable feel. In terms of prep I could even argue that I'm ahead of it. Yes, please sit down if you must, it makes me go quite faint too. That's not to say that they are easy. Immigration is still a nightmare-but more to come...

Monday starts with employment. For those that have read this from the start (not recommended if you have a dodgy stomach (or a life)) you will known that one of my major reasons for studying law was to do with the problems that I (and others) have encountered with the workplace. For those who have read more recently, you will know that I was dreading this workshop because my group had drawn the short straw and got the worst tutor in the place.

(disclaimer-the views expressed in this blog do not reflect those of the management. We acknowledge that Mr Salmon wouldn't recognise a good tutor if one bit him on the backside)

Now, I'm not saying she's bad-well I am actually. But the phrase 'wetter than a haddock's bathing costume' is entirely appropriate. True to form-at no stage did she take control of the group. We had a 2 1/2 hour workshop that contained about 40 minutes work-the vast majority of the time was spent on our 'tables' discussing the various exercises (both of them). In fact we spent close to 1 1/2 hours involved in this 'highly useful chat' (read this line dripping with sarcasm please).
As I have noted before, after about 2 minutes work related chat-all groups just sit and gossip.

My group (there are 5 including me) consists of 2 good students (not referring to me by the way) and Biff and Carla (not their real names).
Biff (or Brad if you like) is a good looking guy with pearly teeth, a deep tan, a weeny bit of a public school accent and a deep loud voice. You wonder where he put his surfboard. Carla knows him (for some reason) and spends the workshop staring up adoringly at him. Well, Biff started like a house on fire, taking control and answering the tutor's questions. By about an hour he was flagging-he probably hasn't done this much work for a few weeks. He then spent the rest of the workshop playing with his phone and letting Carla worship him.

Perceptive readers will notice that I don't care for him much.

This is an old fault of mine. He probably is a lovely guy-generous, kind, good to his mum etc. I just have a deep fear and loathing of people who are ultra-secure in themselves. I spend all my time hoping that they trip up over their self-satisfied smugness and end up looking like a pillock. I cannot imagine a world where I would have that degree of self-confidence. If I ever start to feel confident then I veer into arrogant. There is no middle ground for me.

And this has a dangerous flipside-alongside Biff's unbelievable confidence I start to retreat into a shell. I turn into snail-boy and become unable to speak. I took over 1 hour to contribute to our group. They must have thought that I was some form of mute...

Right, off the couch I get...

Anyhow, we stretched this feeble amount of work to fill the workshop-and overran!!! Yes, unbelievably, the tutor managed to stretch 40 minutes work to 2 hours and forty minutes.

But there was some good news. She will not be taking us again (please note that this was nothing to do with me), she is simply handing the reins over to a different tutor, who cannot (please god, no) be any worse.

Her final act was to hand out our first group assignment. I loathe these but it appears that they are very popular in the electives. Bugger.

Tuesday is 'grown ups' criminal. This starts early by CofL standards and involves me leaving the flat by about 8:15. the tutor is the man who takes us for the large group lectures and I was rather scathing of his lecturing style last week. I would like to take the opportunity to apologise (generally), he is a brilliant workshop tutor. We chatted a little before the workshop, during the break and after and I found him charming and authoritive.

He even let slip that giving lectures makes him nervous.

With this in mind I can see how I misread the situation. It certainly made him come across as more human. Even this week, when he was in discomfort (he had broken a tooth and when he spoke certain syllables his tongue would move across the tooth and be cut) he was still informative and helpful.

The big news from this class? Although I am separated from the two people that I know who are doing 'Big boys' criminal I am also separated from the two divs who I was dreading being in the same room as. These are the same two spods who helped squeeze me from doing the PLS route. So I lucked out on this one!

Incidentally, I walked back part of the way with one of my friends and he recited the woes that one of the div-brothers had inflicted upon his group and tutor. In fact I have reviewed my opinion since it appears that divvo number 2 is actually an OK person, so I shall give him the benefit of the doubt and not refer to him as divvo number 2 again (apart from then).

But divvo number 1, well he is a different kettle of fish (a strange expression now I think of it). He is early middle aged, single (obviously) and someone who simply must talk whenever he can. I was told that he had an opinion on just about everything-and was 90% wrong on every single one of his answers-but rather than sit back, take stock and learn from his mistakes-he decided to argue every point with the tutor (and his classmates)

The lecture that followed the workshop was OK but it was obvious that the tutor's tooth was getting a bit much and his heart wasn't in it. His lecture didn't have any bite.

Sorry.

It was a bit weird getting home by about 2.30-I'm not at all good at working in the afternoons having come back from college. Hmm.

Wednesday is the legal morass that is immigration. Last week, I was a tad scathing over the fact that all 8 of us were going to be split into 2 workshop groups. Yet again, the power of a good whinge on the net proved invaluable and the powers that be decided that all 8 of us should be in the same group. Hurrah for the little man and the power of the printed word!

**cough**

I was also scathing that the tutor managed to go half an hour over for his one hour lecture.

Luckily this week he surpassed himself.

He managed to go over for both his workshop and the lecture.

No word of a lie, it was getting close to 6pm when we finally left the campus.

And even though we are short on numbers, we still have to prepare and give presentations. I think that one of the reasions that I hate them is that always seem to be involved whenever we are late. I started brightly but faded fast. I'm not sure why-the room wasn't too hot, I didn't feel particularly tired-but I certainly didn't shine. Strange.

I do hope that this doesn't turn out to be a 'bunny in the headlights' class (although it is the same tutor...)

Thursday is results day!!!

The marks for interviewing, letter writing and solicitor's account were posted. These are purely pass/fail assessments and the good news is that I passed them all. They were posted alongside my old advocacy score (nope, I still failed that-damn, I keep giving them a chance to change it...)

I've decided that Thursday is to be my consolidation day-all the changes to my prep tasks are written up as well as word-processing the workshop exercise and writing up the large group lecture notes. It does take a time-could be 6-8 hours every week. But that does give me Friday and Saturday to get the following weeks prep done. As I said, not much of a routine but a start.

Friday was a really big day for me. I went out and bought a 'leatherette' swivel chair. This may sound a bit fatuous to be put in the blog but throughout my undergraduacy I studied in one of these. When it came to move the fact that it was a bit battered meant that I thought it best to pull it to pieces and get rid of it. I have really missed that style of chair and being the compulsive shopper that I am went out and bought one on a whim.

It had nothing to do with the fact that two of my 4 wooden chairs now creak alarmingly when I sit on them...well not much anyway.

The joy that I have now is to wheel myself across the carpet from the laptop to the desktop and to push myself backwards and rotate round and round to my favourite music.

Yes, I know that I am 42 and 5/6s

Well, that's gone better than I thought when I started. All I have to do is go back and remove that scrappy start.

Oooh, the doorbell...

Each morning is the first day of the rest of your life

Okay, it's the start of a new week (stretches arms wide, scratches bits and yawns expansively), what joys are ahead of me as I canter gaily (steady) into the elective part of the course?

Ah, I have some email-oh look it's from those lovely CPS people!

What can they be writing to me about?
but wait-I have an application with them! Could this be? Is it? Perhaps?

Eagerly and expectantly, I open the attachment and find

"Dear Candidate, (god, don't you just go gooey when they are so intimate?)

Thank you...blah de blah...we regret to inform you...blah

We do appreciate that this may be disappointing for you (no sheepdip Sherlock!)

And that's it-there is an address to write to if I want to be told why they thought I didn't cut it but that's a modern thing, in my day we just got rejected and displayed a stiff upper lip (before getting violently drunk and lamping a student), we had none of this touchy feely stuff.
I may write to them though since part of me is intrigued on which part of the assessment I fell down on (or possibly both). I would dearly love to have been rejected for the psychometric tests since this would give me a valid reason to get disenchanted and bitter and inspire me to work in criminal defence and make the CPS' life miserable.
Of course if the criminal part of the assessment let me down, then fair enough!


But why could they not have had the decency to write to me? It's depressing enough to get form letter rejections but form email rejections? That is so cheap as to be unbelievable! And then you get to worry if they might have made a mistake and rejected someone they should have accepted. I applied 4 months ago, went through 3 stages of application-spent money getting to an assessment (note, no offer was ever made to cover expenses), all things together it probably took about 10 hours what with the application/assessments and travelling-and used up a day close to my compulsaries-all this for a form rejection email!!!

So, that was Monday! I hope they're not all like that...

Contrary to popular opinion, I didn't rush off to get drunk. My new policy is drink to celebrate, not commiserate-besides I was back in school on Tuesday...

Very strange week this one, I only had to go to school twice-both just for an hour lecture. Tuesday was the start of Advanced Criminal Practice. A large lecture-well, sort of. The first thing that surprised me is how few people are doing criminal. My tutor group had done a straw poll in basic criminal (criminal for babies I shall call it) and there were just two of us. I took that to be disproportional-after all this is CRIMINAL!! This is the stuff of Kavanagh, Rumpole, New Street Law (yes, I know that they are all about barristers but nevertheless)-

This is epic, adversarial battle in the courtroom. This is the lifeblood of law! No one writes dramas about the cut and thrust of probate or selling property. This is the divine mix of the saintly and the sordid. This is life changing law!!!

Isn't it funny how you become affected by your loves...

Amazingly, there were only about 30 or so of us-and at least 10 of those arrived late. Two people arrived over quarter of an hour late-and made no apologies. How can you only have 1 lecture in a day and be that late? I was there early enough to put the chairs out (mind you, that may say more about me than them...)

Anyhow, this was a major letdown. Almost the entire hour was spent with the lecturer talking about what we would have to do to qualify as an accredited police station representative. Which might be great-but we are not going to get tested on it in an exam, so why bother?

We also got a repeat of what a solicitor should do for their client at the station. Which is lovely but not really representative. I have some experience of observing at the nick and in every case I've seen so far the advice has been the same

• To hassle the police
• To try to get the client out on bail immediately
• To analytically pick holes in the police case

Its all theoretical tosh.

Your average client seems to be either drug or alcohol dependant, completely guilty, usually admitting it in 5 seconds and ready to pay their fine out of their giro in weekly instalments (usually adding it to what they are paying already).
The police have come across as a decent bunch doing an awful job-who are not trying to stitch up honest, middle class citizens but trying to get through the day without breaking down or losing their minds.

If you were to enter THEIR station with the uppity attitude that the CofL is trying to instil in its future trainees then you are asking for trouble. (It would be interesting how many trainees develop cars that have repeated problems with dodgy lights and parking tickets).

And while I'm ranting a little-this weeks prep for the next workshop. Its just like 'baby criminal' all over again. 'Just read these 88 pages of A4 and prepare notes'. No indication of what is relevant-just do it all. Now, granted this is covering a lot of ground that we did in 'baby crim'-but it still meant reviewing and rewriting my notes. It seems that my (close to) £9k pays for a lot of 'just read the textbook' and we'll mark you on it at the exam stage'.

And the lecturer-a very nice man I'm sure.

But, he has a style of speaking that might be considered a tad....irritating?

When he speaks about the irrelevent stuff; asides/throw away lines or background information then he speaks a few words...

...pauses a while...

...says a few more words...

...deeply pauses, satisfied with his content and approach...

..and speaks some more.

And on the rare occasion that he said something of note:-

"Heranallhiswordstogethersofastastomakeyourheadspinletalonetrytokeepupwithhimwhilstnotetaking.

(He ran all his words together so fast as to make your head spin let alone try to keep up with him whilst note-taking)

Hopefully this was opening night nerves and not a permanent arrangement.

One nice highlight; is that for our education we have been referred to a number of blogs dealing with the life and times of a duty solicitor, a magistrate, a police officer and a probation officer. I do notice that there appears to be a space there for the jaundiced view of a mature student...

I shall make some enquiries

So that was Tuesday! I hope they're not all like that...

Wednesday is my welfare and immigration day. We start of with another large group. I have decribed this tutor as 'Tigger on speed'. Yes, it's him again. This may test my self control. He presents the large group lecture and is also my small group tutor. I am the first one in so we get a chance to reacquint. He says he is pleased to see me because I am a 'good student'. I then have a momentary pang of disquiet for what I have written about him-it passes quickly.

I am in the second row-this room is huge, we have 8 rows with about 12 chairs in each and I eagerly await the lecture. What I know about immigration I could write on a postage stamp-so this will be an eye-opener. He advises me to get a seat close to the front because some of his overheads are quite small. I move to the front row. I hear people come in and the tutor asks them to come to the front for the same reason. After a while he says it is time to start. I look around. There are 8 of us...

Eight-yes really, we are in a room set for about 90-100 people and we fill most of the front row. And this class will be split in two for workshops. Why? Is a class size of 8 now considered too large?
This is a guy who picks on students by name!
Where can I hide in a class of 3 others? (bunking off is going to be tricky!)
And if we are given a register to fill in I will flip!

Of course this being the CofL there is no guarantee that they will be two groups of 4, no probably more likely to be a 6 & 2...


The lecture itself was good though, Tigger has a easy-going friendly style (and he doesn't pick on people or make them give presentations in this format) It is going to be a tough subject-it relies heavily on deciphering statute and applying the provisions to specifics-especially regarding nationality and there are already a few anomolies.

For instance, a German could marry a Sri Lankan in Germany and move to this country quite easily (providing they came for a legitimate reason)-but a UK citizen could marry a Sri Lankan whilst the UK citizen was working in Germany and if they came back to the UK, they could exercise their rights as a UK citizen OR their rights as an EC citizen-but both would have more stringent tests for them than are in place for the German and their spouse. A form of discrimination against your own people! This sounds wonderful and the sort of ridiculous law I love!

Regular readers will remember my other gripe against Tigger-he overran frequently. And guess what? Yep, as on cue, we overran. By half an hour! Which is pretty good going for an hour lecture! But I shall not complain! I shall look upon it as a form of compensation for being short changed regarding tutoring elsewhere. Not a very good form, maybe but...

So, that was Wednesday! I hope that they're not all like that...

And that's it for the week really. I did some work Thurs/Fri/Sat/Sun but I'm not in a routine yet. This may take some time-I shall have to try some stuff this week and see if it works.

And lastly a thought inspired by the sunshine;

Spring appears to be on the way and with it new opportunities.

(this blog is sponsored by Prozac)

Random jottings from a disused mind

As I approach the start of the second (and smaller) part of the course and haven't anything new or exciting (as ever) to write I thought that I would put a few disjointed musings down.

This week I begin my electives-these are optional courses that are chosen to fit in with your career plans. By this stage it is expected that we can apply our rapier-like legal brains **cough** to the course of our future vocations.
And, to be fair; I have kept my elective choices the same as they were before I ever came to Guildford-so confident and positive I was before the course began. **double cough**

(As an aside I do have to mention 2 former class-mates who had their own (slightly eccentric) methods of choosing their electives.

• One chose the same courses as his best friend-the theory being that they might share some classes and at least he would be guaranteed good notes.
• The other asked my advice on how to use the on-line choosing system then without looking to see what the courses were about picked 3 at random)
  

The electives are the usual lecture/workshop combination that I've become used to. The lecture is either on DVD or a large group meeting with a real person. My dislike of the video tutorial is well known so I am pleased to say that I only have one of these a week and two large groups. People will no doubt be sickened to know that I will only be attending college for just 3 days a week and that my scheduled workload has dropped from 10 hours to 9 1/2 ('bloody sponging students', I hear you cry)

This week I only have the first 2 large group lectures to attend. This would be blissful (a whole 2 hours work to do) except I'm going to be spending more time walking to and from college than actually attending the lectures...

Being a good student I had planned to do some pre-reading this week on my new electives. The post-exam lethargy had stopped me looking at the criminal textbook but I did stare at the employment one and the benefits and immigration one. In fact I knocked off about 100 pages of benefits and god does that look dreary-it reads like one long shopping list of what a person can claim and what they can't.
However, with this preparation in mind I had a look at the first of our lectures.

It's all about immigration....

Wrong, Paul. Very, very wrong. How wrong can one dipstick be? I could have looked at the lecture notes before wading through the boring dross. But no, old simple Salmon thought that because immmigration is at the back of the book we would do it last. Silly me for assuming that we might do the book in order-like in every other bloody course to date!

Oh well, best laid plans 'n' that.

Well, what else did I do this week? Well I applied for another training contract. I won't say with whom since there may be others who read this who might want to apply to the same place but would realise that they have no chance alongside my massive intellect **coughing fit**

This did involve me submitting a CV-this is old hat for me, my CV has been distributed far and wide throughout my working career.
I used to make it a point of not using any businesses that rejected me for a job but by my early thirties I was limited to shopping at Anne Summers and Kwikfit so had to abandon that idea.
I wrote out the accompanying letter with the right mix of subservience and toe curling brown-nosedness and then hunted for my CV on the laptop.

Ah, horror of horrors. Close to the start of the term I had a laptop cockup and had to wipe the hard drive and re-install everything. (I lost all of my undergraduate work-but that was no major loss mind...)
But I had also lost my CV-granted it was written about 15 years ago and has not dated well (but who has?) but that meant I had to write it from scratch. Cue panic-mode, I hunted high and low for a single hard copy to use as a blueprint-I could not find one. Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgggggghhhhhh!

Then I came across an entry on my internet PC labelled CV1-only problem is that it was 4kb big. I transferred it to my laptop and.....it worked, my CV was safe. A weeny bit out of date but repairable. Job done.

The moral of this story? Don't bugger up the most important tool of your academic life.
OK, that's not much of a moral-but I try.

This week I also coughed up the cash for a place on a training scheme organised by the Free Representation Unit in London. (It does sound kind of like a 70s/80s political movement 'Free the Representation Unit One!'). The idea is that after a days training, I'll receive a couple of case files-and have to write up an assessment of them.
If this is done well enough then I'll get a real case file with a real human being and prepare and then fight the case for them at an Employment Tribunal. This is real 'brown-trouser' stuff for me-exciting as well though. (Although probably not as scary as for the client though-especially when they meet me 'this quivering wreck is your advocate-forget the goofy smile and crooked face, he probably doesn't eat babies')

If this is fun, then they have a second course to attend for Social Security Tribunals and I'll try to get on that one as well.

I have to submit my last piece of written work this week (excepting any retakes). It is an extended piece of legal research, we are given a scenario which raise a number of legal points and using the t'internet or books (yeah, right) come up with an answer that could be used by a senior member of our imaginary firm to give advice to the client.
The research took an age but I did find it quite fun (in the whole crossword/Sudoku aspect) of solving a problem with the tools at hand. I will have to write it up in the next few days and that part will be dull in comparison but ho hum.

And finally two confessions. I forgot to write last week that one of the reasons that the property exam freaked me out (apart from the questions being a lot harder than I expected) was that before the exam the presiding tutor asked us to carefully read the multiple choice instructions. When I did so I realised that I had not completed the 3 previous papers correctly. Oh, blox.

These papers are marked by computer to save time and if not completed correctly they will be discarded.

That afternoon I emailed my tutor for comfort-luckily he was on the ball and put me through to someone who assured me that a human agent was still used to check any papers to see if they had been completed. They also said that I would get all the marks coming to me. So that's another few in the bag (not many though since MCQs are hard, really hard)

And another embarassing story;

Leading up to the exam I had lost some weight from a mixture of good diet and stress. However, my weekends idleness and drinking/junk food scoffing had contributed to me piling it back on.

Determined to beat this curse I decided to go for a walk before lunch. I packed my rucksack with law books (I knew that they had a use) and set off. It was a chilly day but I set a brisk pace. A quick half an hour to get the heart pumping will do me.

I had planned to walk down by the river but when I got there I realised that the recent rain had turned this into a brown squelchy ice rink. After attempting a few hilarious Bambi-like steps I turned back and decided to go for a pavement promenade.

After about 20 minutes I had nearly completed my circuit and was heading home. Now I must stress that I had never walked this way before (I had done it just once from the other direction) but confident in my natural ability to sense direction I gambolled along.

When the road I expected to see didn't come into view I took stock. Oh, silly me, I must have taken a wrong turn-oh well, this is the way, so if I proceed along here I'll reach my destination soon enough.

Astute readers will know what happens next. I am hideously and hopelessly lost. I hadn't brought my A-Z with me and didn't actually know the names of the roads I was looking for. Undaunted I used my amazing senses to find me home. I live close to a VERY busy road, so if I focus on the loudest sound of traffic and head that way I'll hit the main road.

At this stage you will be thinking, 'how did this lackwit EVER get a law degree?' (a good question, I'll get back to you on that one)

About half an hour later, I finally gave in and asked a local man how to get back to Guildford. I recognised him as being ethnically from the Asian subcontinent-so my first thought was 'just how far have I walked?' But this kind gentleman put me on the right track and helped me to retrace my steps.

I soon came across a road that I knew from the earlier part of my journey and 'because I know best' departed from his instructions and decided to retrace my steps.

Astute readers will know where this is going (which is more than I did). I got further lost. By this stage my MP3 player was running low on juice and this meant desperate times. (I hadn't brought any money with me to get a bus home-who needs money on a gentle walk?)

Eventually, I found a road that took me into the main part of Guildford and I made my way home. At this stage I was limping badly, partly from blisters on both feet but also from pain to my right knee (it is not a good knee, it is only held together by string and bubblegum)

I crawled my way up to my flat and the glorious luxury of a hot shower.

I set off at 12 noon with the aim of a brisk half an hour walk-I got in at 3pm!!!

Out of interest I weighed the bag, it weighed exactly 1 stone (7 1/2 kilos) and I had lugged the bloody thing around for 3 hours!!

I mention this because I had always prided myself on having good direction sense, however the previous week a friend had dropped me off after one of the exams and chided me for directing her so badly. Being a sensitive soul (you must take your victim as you find them) I suffered badly from this slight and shall be issuing a claim against this woman for defamation, loss of faculties and my wasted 2 1/2 hours. I have instructed my solicitors from the firm of Withey & Moftir to serve the papers...

The good news is that I had sweated off the weight that I had put on over the weekend. But sometimes the ends do not justify the means...