Don’t blog about law school
That was one of the many lessons I learned this week during orientation at the UI College of Law. That, and not to put things on your Facebook page like “I like to smoke weed” or “the internet is for porn.” Which kind of begs the question as to the general intelligence or at least presumed common sense of the incoming student body. After talking with many of my peers, none of them seem stupid, per se, so I will chalk this one up to the fact that it’s law school and they feel a need to cover their butts more than, for instance, the School of Religion.
But there was a lot more to it. In fact, my brain has never worked so hard in my life. The boot-camp aspects weren’t lost on many of us, as they combined an afternoon of manual labor (my group was re-grading flood-ruined yards with shovels and rakes) with 50 pages of deep reading that same evening. Up until 1am and up again at 5am was standard for the week. I was starting to worry about permanent damage to my back from slouching over the fine points of loss-of-consortium claims by Wednesday morning.
Besides these key insights on molding my online identity (“Did you know that you don’t even need a .edu address to get on Facebook anymore!?!”), and feeling my spirit crumble, I did learn quite a bit. We all went through a 1-credit course called Intro to Law & Legal Reasoning, which in nine sections over five days pretty much blew me away. Taking that class, realizing what the Socratric method is all about, briefing cases and having to not regurgitate the information, but actually synthesize it all for a test on Saturday morning, was amazing.
I’ve also learned that there are definite benefits to the ways in which I’m a non-traditional student. The average age of my class is 24, I’m 27. Not a big gap there. But think about what people generally learn in those few years as far as professionalism, life lessons of marriage/family/finances, adult relationships and all that grown-up stuff. I’d say I have a definite edge over members of the just-graduated-from-the-dorm-life crowd.
So far I’ve met one other married first-year student, and one other person with a child. In my case, Nick’s presence means a lack of living-expense loans, which is huge. And although I just about punched a guy the first day for saying, “Wow, a kid! That’ll be a good study break;” he was right. While so many of my classmates are living at the law school and drowning in stress over tests that are still months away, I have the most perfect and tangible reminder of what is important in my life. Every day Evelyn will remind me why I want to be a good student and someday the right kind of lawyer, whether or not I ever practice law.
I know these are cheesy and probably obvious revelations. But just two weeks ago, I had so much doubt about leaving my job, not having income and committing to doing something that would be competitive and actually take effort. As of today, I feel like I made the right choice. Ask me again around finals…