Whirlwind

It has been a whirlwind start to the semester.  On top of my course load, I have been doing a lot of work for the Georgetown Journal on Poverty Law & Policy, and my human rights fact-finding mission just finished the first draft of our report.  This work has taken up so much of my time that, lately, I've been wishing for more "free time"--not to go have fun, but simply to have time for both homework and sleep.

Fortunately, things should be slowing down a bit soon.  I am really looking forward to this weekend, because we get next Monday through Wednesday off for Presidents' Day, and my dear friend Christopher is coming to visit!  It will be so lovely to take a few days off from the frenetic pace of the semester to live the life of a DC tourist while knocking off a few items from my DC to-do list.

Before we get too far into the semester, I wanted to take stock of my classes.

Family Law II: Georgetown Law splits family law into two courses: marriage and children.  I'm taking the class on children.  It's been very interesting so far, to think about the rights of children, paternity/maternity issues, how to define parent, and financial responsibility.  While I don't anticipate working explicitly in family law, I know that many of these issues will be relevant in any public interest career, so I'm glad to be getting an overview.

Immigration Law & Policy: I am really enjoying this course.  It feels a bit strange to have waited so long to take this course, given that this is what I want to do with my career.  Indeed, I find that between my internship with the Arlington Immigration Court and the other courses I've taken, I already know a lot of the material.  Nonetheless, it's nice to have all of this information presented in a coherent matter.  Plus, our professor is very passionate, and we have a lot of great policy discussions.

Law & Development: This course is not what I was anticipating.  I thought we'd be looking at how developing nations use the law to develop.  Instead, this is basically an economics course.  Seeing as I majored in International Political Economy, everything covered so far has been a rehash of things I learned in undergrad.  Hopefully this is just setting the framework for the course, and we'll get into development policy issues soon.

Non-Profit Organizations: I was also surprised by this course.  It is a lot more technical than I expected.  It feels like my Corporations class from last year, but looking at the formation of 501(c)(3) organizations.  Yet, it's not a tax class--there's a different course that looks at 501(c)(3) status.  Although the material is a bit tedious, I think it is good to understand the laws governing the operation of non-profit organizations, because I will most likely be working for non-profits in my career.

Fact-Finding Seminar: This is a continuation of the year-long seminar for my human rights fact-finding mission, but we don't meet very often as a class.  We've broken up into two teams--report writing and advocacy--and I'm on the report writing team.  It will be exciting to get feedback from the advocacy team on our first draft!  It was a great feeling to meet last night to take a look at our compiled first draft, which is 47 pages long, single spaced.  We put in a solid amount of work, and I'm pleased with the results.