So life has been crazy. The craziest thing was being called for jury duty during my finals week. At first i considered using my finals as a reason to get out of jury duty. But I decided to try and stick it out and see how it would all turn out. The case was supposed to last 3 weeks...crazy isn't it? IT was a civil case where 4,000 employees were suing Nebraska Beef for what they believed was unpaid labor. Doesn't sound too bad right? On Monday we had jury selection. Usually the jury is selected by 12 pm...our jury was finished at 5 pm. The next day the judge read 20+ pages of instructions to read into the record for us. Then we finally made it to opening statements. After lunch we finally started questioning. The rest of Tuesday was spent questioning one person. This might sound like we actually got somewhere. But we didn't even get through the prosecution's questioning. We still had 3 more rounds of questioning for this one person. The judge told us that they would try to speed things up the next day.
In leu of all of this I was trying to reschedule all of my finals around jury duty. It looked like I would not be able to take my final for one of my classes till the jury duty was completed. So I was getting super stressed. Additionally, jury duty was messing up my summer school and my future camping trip.
Now comes along Wednesday. We were told to be in the jury deliberation room at 8:20 am. We were not brought into the court room until 9:20ish. We were told that we did not need to bring in our note pads (we used them to take notes about what was going on in the court room). The judge tells us that there has been a snafu with the evidence. He let us go for the day so that they could work through some legal stuff so that we could actually finish the case in 3 weeks. We were also told that there was a possibility that we could be called back in.
I was super excited because now I had an opportunity to take the final that I was having issues rescheduling. I emailed my professor and setup a time to take the final. Later that afternoon I headed to go take my final. While waiting to take the final my phone began to wring. I didn't recognize the number. When I answered it was someone from the court house. She asked me how my final went. I responded that I had yet to take it...I was scared that I was being called back to court before I could take my final. But she gave me different news...the trial was done. It had ended in the mistrial. I was OVERJOYED! God had made everything amazing: my plans for summer school and camping were now back in action AND I was able to experience jury duty.
One of the coolest things about jury duty was getting to know the other jurors. Within three days we were getting comfortable with each other. We were all going through the same experience. We came from many different backgrounds. Some were parents, others grandparents, and two of us were college students. It was crazy that within two days some of the adults were helping each other by giving advice about dealing with angry teens. A few of the adults started passing around family pictures. I think that it was a great to spend time with my fellow jurors. A little less important was seeing how real courtrooms work. They are NOTHING like what you see on tv. The judges and lawyers are very careful about everything in case someone tries to repeal the case.
Now I am done with jury duty and finals. Overall, I'm feeling pretty good. Random note...tonight will be the end of my facebook fast. At 12:01 am I will log on for the first time this entire semester. I really don't think that I'm gonna like it it as much as I use to. But thats ok. There is more to life than facebook.
Thats my life as of right now. I hope your life is amazing...and learn from my experience...God will make everything workout! Have a great day/night (pending on when you read this) ;p
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