Law School Life

 

14-20: walk with me, I think we’ll find a way by Hunter Schenewark

Yikes! I'm falling way behind. This will be a quick recap:

Monday December 14th,  I felt completely free - done with school, and now left with an unexpected week in Utah instead of Massachusetts, with absolutely no plans. Julie didn't have work, so we did a double date in the afternoon, being joined by her sister Rachel and my friend Kobe. We used little teacup candles and made mini-smores, out of cereal, mini-marshmallows and chocolate chips. I was skeptical, but it ended up being lots of fun, and really tasty too. Much better than normal smores in my opinion. Plus, the weather was quite frightful, or at least freezing, so being inside was nice.

Not my hand, for the record.

 Wednesday was book club - for the last meeting of the year, we finished De Animus. Afraid I still didn't quite understand most of this book.

Friday we had another double date. This one was with Rachel again and Alex. Alex is Reigen and Kobe's roommate who I met hot tubbing a few times, and then ran into him unexpectedly at the plasma donation center. It was a little strange being with him in a normal environment given our previous interactions. Curiously, in his words, since he's only seen me lying on a gurney, or immersed in a hot tub, I was much taller than he expected. Wasn't my favorite date all-in-all. We made gingerbread houses, then went caroling and delivered them. An impromptu snowball fight also broke out.

Saturday, I went up to the Capitol in SLC to help Carson with some film projects. When he was done, he snapped a couple pics for me.

The Capitol is only 10 minutes away from the Keller's house, so I headed over there to meet up with Jules. We had planned to go to the Cheesecake Factory. They don't take reservations in advance, and we knew it would be busy but holy moly, that place is doing good business. We got there at 5, put our names down for the list, and then wandered City Creek Mall for 2 hours. The hostess hinted it would be a 2-2.5 hour wait, so we snacked on some chick-fil-a first to tide us over. We returned to some benches outside the restaurant and waited for another hour before we went inside. Despite such a long wait, it was worth it. The food was amazing! I'm glad we could go, and Jules was nice enough to pay for everything. It was late, but before leaving to head back to Provo, I went back to Julie's neighborhood for a little. It was a really fun date night! Wandering around the mall was a blast, and after dinner we also had time to converse over some deep topics I'd been wanting to talk about and bond more.

The Mall's giant Christmas Tree

Temple Square was closed due to the construction happening, but some lights were still up, including these by the Conference Center.

I found out this week that my old boss, Ben S., quit from ListReports. That was unexpected news. He's still the best boss I've ever had, and I am so thankful for the time I had to learn from him. A few weeks ago, I went to lunch with Vinny and Tanner, two old co-workers. We met up in Lehi at Vinny's favorite place to eat, Jersey Mike's.

 With Ben's exit, it feels like the end of an era at the company. Reportedly, he left because he was tired of feeling like he didn't have much of a voice or say in the company's decisions, with the CEO deciding everything his way. I'm sure most of the Utah sales team will start to drift away. Ben was the glue that held it all together. However, I think that the Board of Directors realizes that the Utah employees will leave without Ben, which makes me think that they are ready to close the door on what has been a less-successful experiment than expected here in Utah.

I love this scripture in Hebrews 12:2 --

Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God.

I know that Christ suffered for all of our sins. He endured unbelievable pain and agony for each and every one of us. But, it was because of the eternal joy that would be possible that he endured. Similarly, I know that if we keep in mind the eternal joy that is possible, we will have greater fortitude to endure and make it through hard times.