First week

Work has been good so far.  Busy, but good.  I've been doing exactly what they said I would be doing -- intensive research for the staff attorneys.  They days go by pretty quickly just because I'm doing something all the time.

The Institute

I'm in a room with a few of the other clerks/interns.  So far everyone I've met has been very nice.  Obviously there will be hiccups when I'm first learning the ropes, but all of the attorneys that I have done research for so far have been very accomodating.  My official title is litigation clerk at the Goldwater Institute's Scharf-Norton Center for Constitutional Litigation.  I would talk more about what I do, but considering the various confidentiality rules I'm probably safer just saying that I do legal research and aid in evaluating potential cases.

The gym near my apartment

I also joined a gym near my apartment.  The complex has a little gym which is nice enough, but I just like having a gym to go to.  I'm going to be spoiled this summer, it's an LA Fitness and it's got all the nice stuff -- locker service, pool, hot tub, saunas, etc.

I have yet to go out in Scottsdale or Tempe at all, as I don't really know anyone here outside of work and I'd rather not be the creepy guy trolling bars by myself.  I have a few friends that are going to be in and out of Phoenix over the course of the summer though, so I'm sure I'll have a few chances to go out.  Also, I think that once all of the clerks arrive there's going to be some stuff for us to do.

Tomorrow I'm going to court.  Two of the senior attorneys will be arguing a case and a few of the clerks are going to go watch.  Should be interesting.

First Day of Exploration

It's nice to naturally wake up at 6 a.m. because of the time change.  I'm hoping I can just stay on this sleep schedule for the rest of the summer, but we'll see if that happens.  Waking up so early allowed me to get quite a bit done today, including running some errands and doing a little bit of exploring.

Thanks to the Trader Joe's up the road, the apartment is fully stocked with all sorts of breakfast foods.  After a good breakfast, I went and worked out in the complex's gym, which was surprisingly bustling this morning.  It's weird living somewhere where there are people outside the age range of 18-25.  I forget how much of a bubble Athens is sometimes.

Cartel Coffee Lab's location in Scottsdale

My first goal of the day was to find somewhere to sit and get some work done. Thanks to Foursquare I found Cartel Coffee Lab, which is a few miles north of the apartment near Old Town Scottsdale.  It's a nice little coffee bar, and it also serves some food, beer and wine.  It reminds me a bit of Walkers back in Athens, just with long tables instead of booths.  Also, I think Cartel has a few other locations around Phoenix.

I spent a couple hours there just going through the Goldwater case docket.  The stuff Goldwater is working on sounds right up my alley, particularly cases like this and this.  I'm probably going to have to whip out my Con Law I outline to refresh my memory on some of this Commerce Clause stuff.  I've actually taken Con Law I, Con Law II, and State and Local Government -- the three courses I likely will be drawing on the most this summer -- with Prof. Lori Ringhand.  Good thing she's an excellent professor.

After heading home to make lunch and running a few errands, I scoped out my morning route to the Goldwater Institute.  The drive takes about 20 minutes without traffic, so I'm planning to give myself an  hour to get there in traffic on the first day.  Normal office hours are 8:30-5, but they asked me to come in at 9 a.m. on my first day, which is this Tuesday.

At the moment I'm at the Starbucks across the street from my apartment complex looking at the last few cases on the Goldwater docket.  The plan after this is just to go back to the apartment and chill out for the rest of the night watching Mad Men and cooking dinner.  The girl who I'm subletting from has all kinds of cool kitchen stuff in her apartment, but frankly I'm too scared to touch a lot of it for fear of breaking something at the moment, so I'm keeping it simple for now -- most likely chicken and veggies or something of the like.

T-minus two days to the start of my clerkship.

Welcome to Arizona

Yesterday I made the trip from Charlotte to Phoenix with the obligatory layover in Atlanta.  After a few hiccups with the car rental, I made it to the apartment that I'm staying in for the summer.  Interestingly enough, I've never even actually spoken to the girl whose apartment I'll be occupying this summer, but based on a mix of communicating through e-mails/facebook and being surrounded by the books/movies/decor that fill her apartment I get the sense we'd get along pretty well.

This is only a few miles from my apartment.

The apartment is in a great location, as I'm right in between Old Town Scottsdale and some other area that is supposed to be cool.  I really couldn't have asked for anything better.  The complex has a really nice gym and several pools.  Obviously there's no squat rack as it's a 24-hour gym with no permanent staff, so I'll have to figure out some other leg stuff to do this summer, but it probably wouldn't hurt me to learn some new leg exercises anyways.

I still know very little about Phoenix (I'm actually living in Tempe and working in Phoenix, but for the sake of simplicity let's just call it Phoenix).  The best way I can describe the feeling of being here so far is just that it is weird.  I've lived in France twice, and yet for some reason being here sometimes feels more foreign than being there.  I think part of it is that at the moment, I know literally zero people within 500 miles of me (unless you count the guy in the apartment complex gym who said he liked my indoor soccer shoes).  I don't think I'll have trouble meeting people though, I've already put out some feelers on that front.  I also am not used to being in a foreign environment where the culture is still my own.  When I travel it's almost always to a foreign county, as while I've visited placed like Romania and the Czech Republic, I have never visited places like New York City, Los Angeles, or Chicago.

The plan tomorrow is to finish a few little housekeeping items and then find a cafe where I can just sit and get some work done.  I start work at the Goldwater Institute Tuesday, and I need to review the institute's current case docket before starting work.  I'll probably put up a post with some more details about exactly what I'll be doing sometime soon.  If I have time, I also have some reading to do in French on the conseil constitutionnel for my research with Prof. Wells this coming fall.