Final's hangover

The relief of the end of the semester has been shadowed by a nasty stress hangover. I think I have been carrying the pressure of the last few weeks around without feeling it, but as soon as it was over it all came rushing in. I have had a stomach ache since before the last exam and I have taken a couple of naps today. Basically I am pretty exhausted. It feels like a hangover. Goes to show that stress is a toxin.

The last final was my favorite of them all. One of the questions asked us to write an essay on the way statute and common law bled together and it was fun, as fun as a final can be, to be able to think generally about what law is and the way courts apply the law. Policy is my cup of tea. I want to take the philosophy of law classes and law and literary theater. It is not that I do not enjoy the process of applying law to fact, which most law finals test, but it does not come as naturally to me yet. I have always been plagued by needing to think about "why" things are as they are. How is it that we have decided that we all walk around with a duty to "act reasonably" and that there is an institution that will enforce the breach of this duty. Most studying at law school is not helped by asking such foundational questions. Most tests test your capacity to know which law to apply, and I think this is important, but for me I do not see how to apply law if I do not know where the law came from. I like learning the law through the case law meathod. Of course the board wants to know that we know the black letter law, but I like to see how this developed and why it is that the law changed.