Christmas Catch up

Merry Christmas Everyone!

It has been such a long time since I've posted and the reason for that is I had no idea how difficult juggling studying and full time work can be when a depressing labour market forces you to take a Brummie based job and move back in with your family who have no understanding of why you might possibly appreciate some alone time in which to squeeze in a few hours of studying so as to pursue a life long dream of a career that you've already invested most of your life in rather than once again watching a Hollyoaks-Emmerdale-Coronation Street-Eastenders marathon "as a family". It's a right blog blocker. Although for anyone out there that cares, I think Janine did it. Oh and I'm also "Team Andre" in the Jordan v Peter saga, wanted Joe to win X-factor and "Team Jacob/Werewolf" in the Edward v Jacob debate. Just so you know... (*shoot me! PLEASE!*)

It's not all been mindless distraction though. Since my last post I've been marshalling, mooting, studying, had 2 teaching weekends, arranged 2 mini-pupillages, started a new job in London, started an accompanying part time job in London, then started a newer job in Birmingham instead. Oh, and I got my loan!!! So I can now actually pay my course fees and get to sleep at night :)

BVC-wise, things are going pretty well I think. I'm noticing that despite my interest in Criminal Law and my lack of enthusiasm for Civil, I'm finding Civil pretty easy but Crime more of a struggle. In Advocacy, I'm getting good feedback but in all honesty I just don't feel that satisfied with myself, whereas in Conference I think I'm doing well but then the feedback doesn't live up to how I felt at the time. I was pretty nervous about Conference to begin with, but actually, my tutor is brilliant and I think if anyone is going to help me figure out how not to be too slow talking about the irrelevant things it will be him.

Opinion Writing is still the best taught subject, and so clear and, at the moment at least, no trouble at all, which is good because I have an assessed Opinion to hand in next session. Legal Research becomes more of a nightmare as time goes by. I thought, foolishly, that it would be fine, instead I handed in an 80 page UNFINISHED mess as my Mock Assessment and genuinely can't wait till the next session to be put out of my misery and find out where on earth I went wrong. Generally I'm pretty pleased with how things are going, it isn't all smooth sailing obviously, but all the same, I am finding it much much easier than university. Which is strange considering the amount of work there is, but doesn't surprise me because I'm much more dedicated to this than I was to my degree.

Oh, and my classmates are still fantastic people, and nothing like the idiots I went to university with. I feel really lucky. The only thing is that there is one absolutely crazy cat lady who is a shakespearean tragedy all to herself. She doesn't do the work, and then disrupts the class and interrupts to ask the tutor why she doesn't understand what he is talking about, or whether or not she read about such and such a case that was in the newspaper last year. I noticed that she had become a bit of a pariah (it's not hard to imagine why) and attempted to make nice and got my head bitten off and last session, she stormed out of a classroom mid lesson. It kills me to think that she might somehow land a pupillage. The pupillage system seems so random, it could actually happen, and if she did, I think I might have to stick pins in my eyes to block out the pain.

Will try to post again soon, but not only do i have the family time/soap opera gauntlet to run daily, I also got Rumpole and Kavannagh QC DVD box sets for Christmas. Which is for Advocacy studying purposes of course...

Day 1 of BVC

... was brilliant :)

All of the other PT students that I got chatting to seemed down to earth, nice friendly decent people. All of them are working as well and all of them had personalities. Not a Law Zombie in sight. Given that my experience of other law students at university was quite a negative one, this was such a relief and I'm over the moon about how nice everybody was. A few people seemed absolutely insane, commuting in for the course from the far reaches of the globe (!), and given that so many of them have families and children as well as a full time job to juggle, I don't feel nearly so hard done by with my unclear employment situation.

The course itself is exciting me no end. The only bit today that seemed a bit dreary was Civil Lit which doesn't surprise me, I'm a Crime girl at the end of the day. But even that was exciting in the sense that everything is relevant, it is all about how you actually go about being a Barrister rather than the academic studying of the law itself. It almost made me giggle a bit at one point from sheer excitement. It just seems so surreal that all of a sudden, I've started the BVC. At one point at uni I never thought I'd make it, and with all of the bad luck I've been having with work and housing, I haven't had time to worry and be nervous about it beginning, I just kind of turned up to register and there I was, in the lecture theatre starting the course!

Networking

I have done some soul searching recently and realised that I have been holding myself back. I've been adamant that I will find a way to pay my own way through bar school, support myself completely and not owe my eventual success (positive thinking) to anyone but myself. There isn't necessarily anything wrong with that attitude, except that I've been letting this determination get in the way of taking up opportunities that will help me when they present themselves. Where people have offered to help me I've turned them down. A family friend offered to pay my BVC deposit as a Birthday Present and I said no. I drink with a number of Barristers on a weekly basis and I have never once asked them to help me with work experience or CV advice or anything else because it feels a bit like begging.

Part of it has been my not wanting to be hypocritical. I go on and on at length about the advantages placed at the feet of rich kids who know all the right people etc etc, so to use my own networks surely isn't much better than that? But really, I've just been being too proud to ask for help. I think it has a lot to do with my upbringing, not just in the sense that I'm from a poor background, but also because I don't have the nicest mother in the world, and she has always tried to take my achievements away from me and make out that I owe her something because I did well at school. So I have a bit of a fear that if I accept help from somebody, in 10 years time, it will come back to haunt me.

On Friday, I finally saw sense. Barristers are self-employed. You are a "business", and there is nothing wrong in my mind in making use of networks for business opportunities. I do it everyday in my 9-5 job and it is what gives our company an edge over the competition. So I have decided to try and let go of this particular hang up, because the reality is it doesn't make a difference to anyone but myself whether or not I accept the help of others.

Within hours of making this decision, I have been able to arrange a mini-pupillage and a week's marshalling and got some advice about my CV. So from where I'm sitting, not a bad decision. If it is hypocritical, and I'm not sure it really is, at least I've not been paying Oxbridge Law to apply for pupillage for me! That would be hypocritical, and very very sad.

On another note, in my last post I mentioned that I wouldn't be posting for a while as Lovely Boy is staying with me and I wanted to keep the blog a secret... I failed miserably, caving in to him yesterday. He's so stuck on which GDL provider to go with (he has a choice between BPP, CoL and Kaplan), and I've been giving him advice based on what I've read from other blogs, which has confused him because he had no idea where it was all coming from. Plus I just can't keep secrets and was desperate to tell him as soon as I clapped eyes on him! I'm so weak!! If anyone has any advice for me to pass onto him, please drop me a comment. I'm sure he'll start reading this blog now to check up on the horrible things I have to say about him anyway, so he'll definitely get it.

No colouring in for me...

I got accepted onto the BVC today :D

BPP were down as my first choice, and they've offered me a place on their part time course. I know many of you have your opinions on the merits of each of the schools, but I'm going to go with them. City don't offer as good a part time course and CofL, well, rejected me (on the grounds that I'd put them as my third choice).

So, colouring in or no colouring in, my decision has kind of been made for me; for which I am sooo grateful, as I would have spent weeks agonising over whether my instincts about BPP were wrong. Now I can still agonise over that, but at least I wont have a choice about where I go!

Last week I sat a FRU exam thing, which was an experience... Made even more memorable by the (ugly yet seemingly intelligent) GDL guy that decided the end of the exam was a good time to hit on me... Thankfully I had to get home to the cat.

The exam itself was very odd I thought. I constantly felt like I wasn't giving them what they were asking for, and had no idea how much they expected to be written for each response. It was a bit bizarre being around all those students as well. Not because there was anything wrong with them, but the fact that I found their company quite pleasant. I had been expecting to find them all as annoying as they were at uni, but they weren't. There was even very little bragging about work experience and superiority complex induced conversation. In fact, had the cat not been waiting for me at home in need of feeding, love and attention (which it hadn't received the night before as I didn't go home) I might have even taken up ugly but seemingly intelligent boy's offer of drinks. My boyfriend is currently in another country with his ex-girlfriend (!), and I could do with some jealousy inducing anecdotes to pass onto him. I've been collecting them recently.

I'm also not sure when I'll find out the result (of the exam that is, not the jealousy inducing anecdotes; I don't know when that will be sorted out either though...), but it could go either way. Weirdly, if I haven't passed, I don't think it will bother me. I'll just sit it again and see what happens. There was a girl who announced before the exam that she was resitting and it was the hardest exam she'd ever done in her life, which was oddly reassuring.

In the mean time though, I'm set to vegetate at home as I seem to have come down with the flu. :( I'm desperately hoping my immune system kicks it out asap as I have a tendency to take ages to recover from stuff like this and I have a mini-pupillage next week!

Multiple Choice

I got an email today from City Law school, inviting me to a BVC open day 2 days before the accept/reject emails are sent out.

This has thrown me slightly, as I can't figure out whether this is:

(a) a good thing, because surely it would be cruel of them to invite me to an open day unless they were planning on accepting me;

(b) a bad thing because as my second choice, they will have only gotten my application if BPP have decided to reject me (is this the way it works or have I made this up?);

(c) a test. If I don't apply to go, will they reject me. (Common sense tells me that this is not how it works, but all the same, I have a suspicious mind).

(d) none of the above. I should stop speculating and let life unfold as it pleases.

I has also set my mind spinning about whether or not I want to go to CLS. Aside from the fact that it is only one initial different from CLG (positive) their part time course is no where near as appealing as the part time course at BPP. They have week night sessions rather than weekends, and the whole reason I decided I would be able to do the part time thing was because of the weekend sessions, and yet I decided to put CLS as 2nd and College of Law 3rd.

I know why I did this, it was based on all the good things the Barristers in the pub had to say about CLS, and the lack of anything positive that I've heard about CoL. This could well be because the Barristers that drink in the pub all went to CLS, and are therefore biased, and I've only met LPC-ers from CoL, so who knows whether that was a good reason to base my choice on or not.

What I am absolutely clear on now though, is that it's BPP that I want. This goes against my initial instincts completely... I thought I would absolutely hate going to another institution that feels as corporate as LSE (which the Open Evening they had proved to me that it does), but they really do offer the best deal for part timers. Even if it is the most expensive, it just seems to offer the most flexibility and support for part timers like myself. Oddly, I also found the corporate feel quite comforting. I may have hated my university for most of the time I was there, but I know I managed to do well (enough) there, and it made me feel more comfortable! Plus the Law Zombies all went off to do the LPC. Surely they wont have infiltrated the BVC, and of those that do, surely they wont be part timers like myself?

So, fingers crossed, on the 2nd March I'll get the offer I'm after. But maybe I should register for that open day...