The Merits of the Case

Just a warning that things will probably be quiet here for the next week or so. Spring semester starts tomorrow with a week-long trial practice intensive. I'll be in class every day from tomorrow through next Saturday from 9:00-5:00. Add my daily 5 hours of commuting to that and you get little time for posting....or anything else! The laundry is done, the family schedule is semi-organized, and the pantry is stocked with quick and easy meals for the family. Let's hope we all make it through the week.

Posted by Kim at 08:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

I think the whole blog has been hijacked by the spam bots now. I can't seem to get any comments to work. If you've tried to leave a comment and you received a message that said the comment was being held for approval, I didn't get it. I'm only getting spam comments right now. (E-mail seems to be working fine, though, so you can always e-mail me instead.) I'm trying to work on the problem periodically when I have a few moments, but it's low on the list compared to studying so a fix may have to wait until after finals.

Posted by Kim at 07:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Las Vegas was sunny and warm and as relaxing as we could make it. We spent a lot of time eating and sitting by the pool and a little time walking around. We had a couple of excellent meals, saw Kà (a Cirque de Soleil show) and stayed in two different hotels (that story to follow in another post). Neither Randy nor I are gamblers, so the extent of our gambling consisted of the $15.00 I lost within 3 minutes while sitting at a slot machine in the MGM casino waiting for Randy to pick up our show tickets. My legs held out for the limited walking around that we did, although my feet suffered a bit from the cute shoes I wore to the show and to the scholarship award ceremony.

Before we left, I threw my brunette wig in the suitcase thinking that I might want to wear it instead of a scarf if I dressed up for dinner. And indeed, when I got dressed on Wednesday night I decided that the scarves I had just didn’t work with the outfit I was wearing so I put the wig on. It was great to have hair for an evening, even if the wig itself drove me crazy all night. I spent a lot of the time worried about it slipping backward or forward and was so relieved when I was finally able to take it off that night. It was a strange experience to wear it since I have hardly worn a wig at all since I lost my hair. Apparently I have gotten used to people looking at me because I definitely noticed that they weren’t looking at me that night.

Every time I see this I think it’s a picture of Randy and my sister, Molly.

Randy and some chick he picked up in Vegas.

The award ceremony (or what I thought was going to be an award ceremony) was held at the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino on Thursday night. I was told to be there at 7:30 p.m. and that my award would probably be presented around 9:00 p.m. that evening. Not knowing exactly what to expect, I dressed in one of my favorite lawyer uniforms complete with pearls, pumps and pantyhose.

Randy and I arrived at the Hard Rock early, so we snuck into Nobu for some champagne and sushi (which was amazing) and then sauntered over to the designated room around 7:00 p.m. or so. As soon as we got there I recognized Daniel Kovach, the man who runs CollegeScholarships.org, and introduced myself to him. We talked with him for a few minutes and got the run-down about what was going on during the evening.

With Daniel Kovach.

Continue reading "Las Vegas Recap" »

Posted by Kim at 04:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (17)

…That’s my new favorite number, since it is the number of votes that put me well into first place and that makes me the winner of the $10,000 Blogging Scholarship.

And the very first thing I have to do is to thank YOU.

The reason I won is because of the immense outpouring of support from all of you--friends, family and complete strangers all over the world. This award could not have come at a better time for me and my family, and we are all deeply grateful. I plan to use the money to pay some of the principle and interest on my student loans. As one commenter said recently, although $10,000 is a drop in the bucket of law school debt, it’s a pretty good drop nonetheless. And every drop helps!

I know that many of you have been sitting in front of your computer screen watching the votes and comments roll in over these past three weeks, and I appreciate your company. It has been astounding for me to watch it all happen, and is far, far beyond anything I expected or could have predicted.

I came upon a post somewhere about the scholarship accidentally one day a month or so ago just a few days before the application deadline. Later that evening, I sat on the couch, composed my essay, and then submitted it to CollegeScholarships.org as required. I mentioned to Randy in an offhand comment that night that I had applied for the scholarship, and then I forgot about it for a few days. You can imagine how excited I was when I opened my e-mail in-box on October 8th and found out that I was one of the 20 finalists for the scholarship.

That morning I composed an e-mail message which I sent out to 50-75 friends and family and to about 25 “cyber friends” thinking that maybe with their help I could get a couple of hundred votes. I had no idea what it would take to win or if I even had a chance.

And then it started. You all took it and ran with it. You sent it to the people in your address book, they sent it to the people in their address book, and then they sent it on. Some of you posted it on your blogs, and then more people posted it on theirs. I have received hundreds of e-mails from people all over the country telling me their stories and offering encouragement and support. I was surprised and encouraged by the initial reaction, and then I was stunned at the power of the internet and of word of mouth as the days progressed. The $10,000 pales in comparison to the amount of support I have received from all 9,150 of you in the last three weeks while watching all of this unfold.

Shelley Batts and Jess Kim, the second and third place contestants in the contest, will both receive $1000 and the remaining 7 of the top 10 contestants will each receive $100. I had the pleasure of exchanging e-mail with both Shelley and Jess during the contest and think they are both very intelligent and kind young women who will go far in their chosen fields. Both of them have excellent blogs and I encourage you to visit their sites, as well.

Daniel Kovach, the man behind the money, has invited me to come to the Blog World and New Media Expo in Las Vegas next week to accept the award. Thanks to some of Randy’s left-over points from his travelling days and help from our parents, we are going to be able to go and to spend a couple of days there, as well. It will be one of the most slow-paced, conservative visits to Las Vegas ever since I get tired so easily and can’t walk far, but it will be nice to get away for a couple of days.

Thank you all. My gratitude knows no bounds.

Posted by Kim at 08:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (34)

Not that I’ve been watching the vote count or anything, but my vote totals have been skyrocketing today. That’s what happens when all the famous people start blogging about you. And it’s not only them, of course. It’s all of you. I have no words to tell you how stunned I am at how all of this has played out over the past couple of weeks. I am humbled by your support and willingness to help, and I can’t quite believe how many people all over the entire world have voted for me. More on that soon. For now, I want to tell you about a few of the amazing things that have been happening this week.

Last night I was checking my site stats to see who was visiting and from where, and I noticed hundreds of hits coming from this website and from this YouTube video. Curious, I visited the site and watched the video, only to hear my name mentioned by someone I had never seen or heard of before in my life. It was a little eerie and so I e-mailed him to thank him and to try to find out the connection. As it turns out, it wasn’t so mysterious—John is a good friend of a friend of mine from school. So I guess I am officially a nerdfighter now. And proud of it, I might add.

I keep thinking that this whole word-of-mouth vote-getting that has been going on is a little like six degrees of separation. With so many people getting in on all the fun, it seems like eventually someone is going to get the e-mail from more than one friend or from friends from two different circles or something like that. This evening my sister called me to tell me that she has been telling her friends and co-workers and some of her customers about the blogging scholarship. Molly said that today she told one of her customers about what was going on and the customer said that she had already voted for me this morning…but had no idea that I was Molly’s sister. She said she was reading the blog of one of her favorite authors, Jen Lancaster, and came across Jen’s plea for votes for me. So she followed the link and voted, having no idea that the person she was voting for had any relation to anyone else that she knew. Talk about a small world!

I also discovered that there is an English teacher at a Catholic high school (I think) somewhere in Canada (I think) who has come up with an excellent way for his students to practice structured writing. He has a blog where he posts writing topics and it seems that he has set up a blog for each of his students where they can write their responses and then turn them in by tracking back to his blog. One of his recent assignments was to have his students look at the blogs listed on the blogging scholarship website, choose a blog to vote for, and then to write about why they chose that blog. I think that is such a brilliant use of 21st century technology for a bunch of English students, and I have really been enjoying reading their essays. Mr. Sader’s assignment post is here and you can read the students’ essays by clicking on the list of trackbacks at the bottom of the post.

Posted by Kim at 08:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

I’ve mentioned that I had a blog before I started posting about my breast cancer journey back in April of this year. It was a completely anonymous blog where I wrote about being a mom and about being a mom in law school. I started it in November 2003 and took the whole thing “off the air” in August 2006.

I initially began writing about my law school experience because when I was in the process of applying to law school there was only one other law school-related blog being written by a mother (From Engineer to Lawyer, who was pregnant at the time) and one blog being written by a lawyer who was a mom (Angry Pregnant Lawyer). I desperately wanted to know how other moms were handling the whole experience and thought that maybe I could help someone else by sharing my experiences. As I became more and more worried about the potential negative effects blogging might have on my future legal employment, however, I made the decision to take the blog down. Most of you never knew about that blog, although there are quite a few people reading who remember me from “the old days.”

Since I am blogging again, I have recently been tossing around the idea of re-posting some of those old posts on the off chance that maybe some other mom applying to law school might find them helpful. Today I looked through the old posts and found one that was written exactly three years ago today— the day I officially became a law school applicant. I will start out by posting that one, since it was essentially the beginning of my official path to law school (although the path itself actually began a long before that when I first thought about the possibility of becoming a lawyer). I will pre-date the posts with their original posting date, and hopefully will have some time to add more over the next few weeks.

Posted by Kim at 03:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

When I received the e-mail on Monday morning telling me that I was a finalist for this blogging scholarship, I decided that I would post the information on my blog and that I would send out an e-mail to my family and to a few friends in order to try to drum up some votes. I envisioned that maybe I would be able to get a few hundred votes, but had no idea how many I would need to win or if I even had a chance to win. I was so happy with the supportive responses I received from those family and friends and I was grateful when they told me they were going to tell their friends. I never expected the incredible response my little vote request has received in the past few days, though. As this has gathered momentum it has grown and grown and it just takes my breath away.

You can read the comments I have received on the blog, but what you can’t see is the hundreds of e-mails that have also flooded my in-box. I have heard from people whose mothers or sisters or friends have had breast cancer. I have heard from many breast cancer survivors and from some incredible student mothers. I have received e-mails from friends I haven’t seen in months or years and from so many more people all over the country and the world, both people I know and people I have never met.

Many people have posted a link to my blog or to the voting page on their own blogs, including complete strangers. I am continually astonished at the number of people who have gotten behind this, even if they don’t know me.

For the first few days I tried keep up with all the comments and e-mails by responding with at least a thank you, but I am now so far behind that I don’t know if I will ever catch up. I am still hoping to be able to respond to all of you, but it may be awhile before I get through all the e-mails.

I don’t know how to begin to thank all of you for this amazing outpouring of support. My family and I are so grateful to each one of you for your efforts to help me win this contest. Your response has been quite stunning and I don’t have the words to tell you how it makes me feel. With or without this scholarship, just knowing that there are so many people willing to rally around us at a time like this makes me feel like I have already won.

Thank you.

Posted by Kim at 02:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

Thank you for coming to my defense against the negative commenters here and on the scholarship site message board with your own comments and supportive e-mails. You all are incredible.

Since this is my blog and I get to have the floor whenever I want to, I want to take just a moment to address my own reaction to these people. I have chosen to ignore them (other than this post), and you all should do the same. Your time is much, much too valuable to waste responding to their vitriol! I have the ability to delete their comments, but thought I’d leave them up for my own and your entertainment.

I knew when I hit the submit button for this contest that I was opening myself up to the possibility of such negativity. I knew when I applied for the scholarship that public voting was a part of it and that it meant that whatever anonymity I had left would probably be stripped away. (I had no idea that your response was going to be as amazing as it has been, however!) I have been reading the blogs of some of the other finalists, and many of them have experienced similar kinds of negativity. That is to be expected, though. After all, there’s a lot of money on the line, and the promise of cash seems to bring out the worst in people sometimes. It’s interesting that it’s not bringing out the worst in the other finalists, though, but instead in other people who are not even in the running for the money.

Please rest assured, however, that these comments don’t bother me at all. There’s too much that’s positive in my life right now for me to find them at all hurtful. I actually think they’re kind of funny and as Mieke said, those commenters get my pity vote as much as anything. To take the time to come to my blog, read some posts (if they even read any of them) and then to leave a comment about the ways in which they think I am undeserving of this scholarship tells me that they definitely have too much time on their hands. How bereft of love and happiness must their lives be that they feel they need to express their opinions about a complete stranger in that way? It’s really sad, truly, and I think they deserve our pity more than anything else.

That said, I’d like to respond briefly to their comments.

Dear robo man, I hope that no one has you tied to a chair in front of a computer screen displaying my blog, forcing you to wade through the “wasteland of uninteresting content” day after day. Short of that, one great thing about living in the United States is that you don’t ever have to subject yourself to my writing. You have a choice, and can avoid reading what you don’t like by not visiting my blog. Just close the screen and move on. Seriously, dude, it’s no skin off my back.

And Chone, sweetheart, I’d like to set the record straight by pointing out the fact that the Blogging Scholarship requirements listed on the CollegeScholarships.org website required applicants to be current students in a post-secondary education program. Whether or not you want it to, law school does indeed fit that description. If the decision-makers thought that my blog was not eligible for the scholarship, they probably would not have chosen me as one of the finalists. In addition, I am not the only graduate student finalist. And although I don’t owe you any explanation, I’d also like to let you know that I am planning to practice public interest law after I graduate. That's not exactly a lucrative area to work in as an attorney. I can predict my eventual income within a few thousand dollars and it will be a mere fraction of that of many of my law school classmates, although my student loan balance will be exactly the same as theirs. It sounds like you might be a little jealous of the supposed earning power of the legal profession, in which case I suggest that you enter it yourself and take advantage of what you see as easy money.

And my dear friends, thanks again for your support and for your wonderful defense of me and my blog. You guys are too cool.

Posted by Kim at 10:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (18)

There’s a fall chill in the air here in Chicago already which has laid all my bold bald plans to waste. I planned to spend the day at school yesterday without a head covering, but I ended up staying covered up all day. I knew it was going to be a problem when I left the house in the morning…the thermometer read 54 degrees and despite my hat, it was painfully cold walking through that train station parking lot. I am amazed at how much heat my hair held in and at how chilled I felt all day long without that hair. I think I’ll just have to be bald in pre-arranged…and warm…places for the next couple of months.

I did start out in class with nothing on my head. I sit in the back of the room and I noticed that throughout the first several minutes of the lecture my professor kept looking up at me in the back row. I kept getting the sense that she was intrigued by my bare head…she’s only seen me in a scarf until now. We were discussing a case about optometrists and opticians (Williamson v. Lee Optical for my fellow law students) and at one point she made a statement about the regulation of eye care. However, she looked at me just before she uttered that sentence and it came out as “hair care.” She was a bit more flustered about her mistake than she should have been which confirmed my suspicion that she was definitely paying attention to my look. I couldn’t help laughing about it and I was sure to point out what preceded her mistake to my friend Kristi sitting next to me.

I only made it through about 20 minutes of class, however, before I realized that there was a serious…and cold!..draft in the room. Luckily I had thrown a scarf in my bag in the morning, so I walked down the stairs to the front of the lecture hall in all my bare-headed glory in order to go to the bathroom and put the scarf on. I am pretty sure that the professor must have noticed the number of eyes that drifted from her face to my head during my trek through the room.

Other than being cold all day, it was a rough day for me yesterday. I found myself so exhausted that I had a hard time concentrating on the class discussions and by the time I went to my second class I had a hard time staying awake. I continue to be concerned about my ability to handle school throughout this, but I do notice that I feel much more confident about it the week before my treatment when I’m feeling better than I do during this week after. I am sure that my level of confidence is directly related to how I feel on any given day, so I’m going to continue to soldier through for now and hope that I am able to keep up with everything.

Today I was back at the oncologist’s office for a blood test and as always my white and red blood cell counts are low….surprise, surprise. (Today’s waiting room music selection was The Doobie Brothers crooning China Grove.) I’m looking forward to getting over this hard part and getting on to feeling better as the week progresses.

(Note: I'm in the process of trying to change the look of the blog. Each change is a slow, painful learning process for me, however. If you stop by and see some weird looking colors/fonts/layouts, etc., just ignore them. Hopefully I'll have it figured out in the next several days.)

Posted by Kim at 08:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

I have a ton of reading to do for school, but in the interests of procrastination I’m bringing you a couple of blog posts instead. I do have my casebook open next to me while I write, so that counts, right? Granted, it’s open to a non-printed page that I used to take notes during my chemo appointment yesterday, but at least it looks like I’m working on law school assignments. Even though the only beings in the room other than me are the two dogs and the cat and they couldn’t care less whether it looks like I’m working or not.

On to the important stuff. Or not so important stuff.

Several people have recently informed me that if you search for my blog on Google it comes up with a warning that says that visiting it might harm your computer. After some research into this warning and some help from my favorite blog guru, I’m pretty certain I can assure you that my site won’t harm your computer. Without getting into too many details, there is a random image file somewhere on the server that is causing it to look like my site is hackable, but it’s probably just a conservative warning. The site administrator will be looking into it eventually and will fix it, but for now rest assured that it’s okay. He’s a busy man, though, what with his work defending individual rights out in Montana, so it might be awhile before he gets to it.

If you need to search for my website on a search engine, for now, you can use one of the others although you may have to dig for it a little bit. While searching for The Merits of the Case brings up my site as the #2 listing on Google, it’s buried way down on page 18 as listing #173 on search.yahoo.com. It is listed on page 9 of ask.com, on page 17 of altavista.com, and as #14 on dogpile.com. But there are no warnings listed on any of those search engines.

Ah, the joys of the internets.

Posted by Kim at 11:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

There seems to be a glitch in the comment function right now. I'm working on it (and if anyone has any ideas of how I can get it fixed, I'd appreciate them! I'm using MT and I think I have the comments set up properly...but maybe not). In the meantime, there's a link to my e-mail address over on the right.

UPDATE: With many, many thanks to the imbroglio, my own personal computer technician savior, comments are now working!

Posted by Kim at 06:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (9)