Q&A with Huma Rashid: Part II

In Part I, Huma Rashid, a a second-year law student at John Marshall Law School in Chicago, IL tells us why she went to law school and what she wants to do with it. In Part II, Huma shares her tips for 1Ls and tell us how she does it all.

How do you balance blogging/studying? I blog sometimes on the train, if the LawSchoolBFF isn’t taking the train home with me. I usually blog as a study break. It doesn’t take me very long to put together a post; an average BCS post, for example, takes 20 minutes to put together with all the writing, scouting out clothes, image editing, and linking. A more serious post about actual legal topics takes about 10-15 minutes to put together. Basically, I carve out little pockets of time during the day to blog because I’d go crazy if I didn’t. This is just a way to get my inner crazy out so I don’t run around setting things on fire.

Did you blog as a 1L? Yes. I started in the middle of my 1L year, I think.

Are you ever afraid future employers are going to Google your name and read through your posts? Yes and no. I’m not particularly afraid of employers Googling me and finding things like my Facebook or Twitpic because I don’t have a single picture up of anything even remotely questionable. As for my blog, I swear a lot, but I limit that (generally) to posts that are less serious and far more conversational in tone. If anything, I’d hope that my blog posts would constitute a tally mark in the Charming category and not the Call the Cops NOW category.

Your advice to 1Ls? Once again, I’m going to steal this from my LawSchoolBFF. He contends that I steal everything brilliant he does. I think he’s being quite liberal in that assessment. Anyway, he said to me on one of our many train rides home, “Look, I’m not in competition with you. You’re not in competition with me. We’re both just in competition with ourselves.” You’re going to have classmates who will try to psyche you out by saying they spent 20 hours on their Torts outline and it is IRON CLAD, and implying that if you spent any less time on it, you’re totally going to fail. Others will actively sabotage you. (Oh, the horror stories I’ve heard!) Don’t buy it, and don’t do it to anyone else. You have no reason to accept that kind of crap from your classmates. Study, outline, review, do it all. Push yourself to do your best, and don’t worry about what the others are doing. What works for the goose doesn’t work for the gander. And since I love animal metaphors, I’ll leave you with this last one: You’re a racehorse, trying to make it into the homestretch and under the wire. And racehorses run wearing blinders so they won’t see the competition. Put on your blinders and just get ‘er done.

Weirdest professor you’ve had? I’ve been lucky; I haven’t had any truly weird professors. I had one professor who was basically a drill sergeant, who yelled and freaked out and bullied all his 1Ls. I wore neutral colors to his Tuesday-Thursday 2-hour class, and he didn’t call on me for a month when he always called on every person at least once during each class session. Another professor gave really silly examples of torts, often featuring strange trash talk, like, “Get out of my face, so-and-so, you…stink to me!” It was pretty funny. My Contracts/Labor Law professor loved the 70s, and would always talk about Led Zeppelin lyrics. How we loved him. And my lawyering skills professor in the second semester of 1L was an AUSA for the DOJ across the street at the federal courthouse, and he was just the best. He showed up for a Friday class in the first week of the semester a little sluggish, a little quiet, a little red in the face, and in the elevator on the way down, confessed that his “weekend started a little early.” He was amazing – laid back and fun, but he knew his stuff and made sure we did, too.

Most interesting professor you’ve had? The most interesting professor was probably my ConLaw II professor, but she was strange in the best, most brilliant way ever. She was this tiny little old lady, cute little grey bob and glasses, thin as a rail. She’s a civil rights superstar, and worked with Justice Rehnquist on a case where she represented the smallest of seven or so land trusts in Hawaii and he represented the largest. She grew up hanging with “those Kennedy boys” and going to state functions on the arm of “little Joey Lieberman,” who had been ordered by her uncle to escort her to such parties. This professor went to law school when most women didn’t, mostly because her uncle was a politician, pretty wealthy, and strongly “suggested” that she become a lawyer. She’s snarky, hilarious, punchy, and a little hyperactive. She gets up at 4AM to work out every day, loves her Diet Coke, and claims she only teaches so that she can travel. As soon as the last class is over, she’s out the door to travel the world. I think she’s in Prague right now. Good for her.

How do you deal with gunners? I ignore them. I became Facebook friends with this one notorious gunner before I knew he was a gunner, so he sees all the rampant stupidity propagated by my Facebook profile, but we rarely interact. I think I’ve said 10 words to him all semester, two of which were “happy holidays” and the other eight being used to explain to him how he needed to log into ExamSoft for one of our finals. Gunners thrive on acknowledgment. They want to hear how awesome they are, and they want to be able to expound on their random legal opinions. They want to tell you that they spent 30 hours working on their Property outline, and for you to express amazement. If you don’t bother and barely dignify their attempts to fish for compliments, they leave you alone because they don’t get the kind of reinforcement they seek. Don’t be impressed by them and don’t ridicule them to their faces. Just let it all go and they won’t bother you one way or another.

Have you ever wished you were Internet-anonymous? Not really. Where would the fun be in that? Plus, I’d always worry that I’d somehow let some clue slip that would enable someone to identify me. That sort of thing isn’t uncommon. There was recently a situation at a Chicago law school where a young woman was blogging anonymously, and a well-meaning reader put together the pieces and somehow her name got out, and the law student blogger was almost fired from her position in a legal clinic team for blog content about a case they were working on. I’d be too paranoid about leaving a trail of clues. I allow myself to be myself online, but I also build up a little bit of a persona. People are always surprised when they meet me in person, after having gotten to know me through my blog, and always say that they expected me to be much louder and more boisterous.

Have you ever been harassed online? I got an annoying comment or two on my high school blog that caused me to just get fed up with people and shut it down, but after that, I can’t remember that I was. Granted, back in high school, my skin wasn’t as thick as it is now. If I got the same comments today that I did back then, I’m sure I’d just laugh. It takes a lot for me to feel like I’m being harassed. Random drama and disagreements don’t count.

Favorite law movie? This is such a cliched answer, but To Kill a Mockingbird will always be my favorite law movie. The book and the movie are both excellent, a rare feat to manage. Gregory Peck is sublime, as is Robert Duvall. That film upholds so many values, like community and honesty and dignity, but it also restores/upholds (depending on how you look at it) the nobility of the legal profession. If any movie will make someone want to be lawyer, it’s TKaM. It’s hard to resist the raw power of human dignity and self-awareness as embodied in Atticus Finch. Almost everything about him is so admirable that practicing the law is just naturally elevated along with that. Ugh, I told you this was going to be a cliched answer.