On Tap for Today

As I said last night, we're going to the Mariendom Cathedral for mass this morning. After, our plans include "wandering around" though it's supposed to be cold and rainy ALL day. My plan is convince my new friends to visit one of the three museums I want to hit up before leaving town: the Lentos (a new Modern Art museum made of glass sitting on the banks of the Danube), the Ars Electronica Center (a self proclaimed museum of the future where you can sample future technology now, i.e. in the future you might be able to print your clothes and stuff online. Apparently, you can design a purse and then print it up on a computer there), or the Schlossmuseum of Linz (which I'm pretty sure is just a Linz museum, but it's built on the old Linz castle so it's half modern, half crumbling wall.) I'll keep you posted on what get's accomplished.

Tonight, I will most likely grab a drink or two from the SUBSIDIZED! bar on the first floor, bring them back to my room, and study. It kinda stinks - unlike my time in Swansea, I have to actually do school work while I'm here. Who knew law school required work?

On that note, though, I'm getting pretty excited about Mediation. I got to speak to a bunch of different professors and a few students with experience in it yesterday and it sounds right up my alley. All the things I love about the law minus all the things I despise about it, namely, quality of life is more like a normal job than the demanding 100+ hour weeks many attorneys put in. Plus, mediators don't have to answer to judges or courts telling them that December 26th isn't a holiday so you better be in court! Instead, I would get to help people make their own autonomous decisions about their problems instead of wasting lots of time and money just to have some judge that doesn't know you, doesn't know their problem make the decision for them. And, I've heard from multiple sources (not just here - back home as well), that mediation and arbitration are the wave of the future because the model of spending decades of time and millions of dollars on litigation is faulty and no one wants to do it anymore.

I have heard that the course materials on this trip are dry - or at least presented dryly, so I'm trying not to get my hopes up about that. But I think it's pretty cool that I can get the dry boring stuff out of the way, and then I get to go home and practice it with my externship in landlord-tenant mediation at the Fulton County Court House next year. At least I'll know for sure if it's something I'm interested in pursuing post law school. Or not. We shall see.

Okay, off to breakfast, then mass! More tonight as I'm sure I'll be stalling studying!