That's right. Tomorrow, I'm officially a 1L (well, officially here meaning taking classes rather than merely orientating). I'm sure that for most people that distinction is overly fine and relatively needless, but it's one I've always drawn: it's fine that one rise in class when one is already a part of a school when the prior class is no longer there to occupy it (cascading all the way down to the lowest class in the school in question), but I've never felt comfortable claiming community in a place where I've yet to have the communal experience (in schools, for those following along, that would be classes). So tomorrow I get to start being a law student. I've got three classes, each with an hour or so between them, that are MTW, and the first of which (Contracts) starts at 8:45 AM.
Frankly, I am terrified.
I've never really had to work seriously seriously hard in school before. It's never been that big of an issue: I've been smart enough to bounce and bumble along, doing what I feel I need to do and then doing more pretty well only when it interests me. And I'm used to having that be enough to carry my grades--they may not have been as good as they could have been if I'd been neurotic about it, but they were good enough to get me here. The scary bit is that first year (really, first term) grades are the most important grades in all of law school, from a job-search point of view. First, employers will want to see your grades. Second, journals have grade requirements--and since I want to clerk, being on a journal is almost a necessity.
Thursday and Friday are a bit more relaxed, with two classes (Crim, then CLR, aka Legal Writing), starting at 10:25. I'll be done no later than 3:30 any given day--at least, done with classes. I'm curious at how frequently I'll actually be able to get a free lunch, as opposed to how it's advertised (that is, it's possible to get it every day if you're a good little opportunist). There will be updates on this one.
So, that's pretty much how law school stands at the moment (except for the apparent hilarity/absurdity of some of the readings: a case on who owns a fox that was being hunted from common ground [property], a case of murder/cannibalism on the high seas [crim], a case of skin-graft surgery gone wrong [contracts], and a case of a mayor using his city credit card for video poker [CLR--our prof was actually the asst. atty. general arguing the case). Other parts of life... well, I still have one. I've been setting my apartment up a bit further.
I had an excellent excursion to IKEA last week with Jimmy and Jade, two other 1Ls in my section, wherein we were horrible people through the entirety of the largest IKEA in North America (seriously. It's dauntingly huge). I also achieved one of my lower-end lifetime goals: to--randomly and without provocation--do a forward roll in a public space, just to see how people would react. I got picture frames and bookshelves and potholders and scissors.
Now that I have books in one of the bookcases (I actually didn't have enough to fill more than a few books into one shelf of the other, so it's just waiting for the law books and few fun books I buy for non-law reading to fill them), my apartment has really come together. Having books--organized books, on shelves, rather than merely in boxes or piles--is something that not only makes me happy, but makes me feel comfortable and at home. So between shelved books and a few more things on walls, my apartment is really home, now. I've decided where the three posters I'm going to put up are going, once I find cheap frames for them that don't look positively hideous (where does one go for cheap frames of the 2' x 3' variety, or--worse yet--for the 18"x24" variety?). I got a couple other frames so some of the printer paper sized things (Free Lawyers, Lawyers for All!, Defenestration) are up.
I've decided on a name for the apartment as well--I had last time too, as noted by the title of the blog, but I failed to explain it last time. I'm on the 26th floor of this building, looking out onto a city, and the apartments central themes seem to be IKEA, books, and dragons (with a few gargoyles and one plush Cthullhu as additional mythological oddments). Discounting the first as necessary to cheap life, and the second as necessary both to me and law school in general, it really leaves an apartment full of dragons. Eyrie is defined as either the nest of a bird of prey (in fantasy, it's usually extended to gryphons and particularly to non-cave dwelling dragons as well) or as a high-altitude living place. My apartment seems to qualify on both counts.
Last week was a lot of meet-and-greet events, or else someone had organized some sort of bar-thing. You who read this know that meet-and-greets tire me out, and that I'm really not much for bars. The only worthwhile of the former type was the professorial meet-and-greet, where they were stationed in small groups around the law school with food tables and bars nearby and the students wandered around getting into conversation with them--or watching them hold court, in some cases. I was greatly impressed with all except for one of my profs as I went around and met them--once again, it was Property that caused me reservations. The prof in question was as outgoing in the evening as he had been dull in the prior morning's presentation. That wasn't the problem--the problem was his living up to his reputation as a Jekyll & Hyde type insofar as he was freely badmouthing the other professors teaching my section's classes. This really failed to impress me. As for the rest, there were a few entertainments as bars went--a polish dive bar (where I was drinking water rather than beer or chancing the grass-filtered vodka that reputedly tasted of cinnamon) at which I met a Carl from the class of '05 of whom I had never heard, had never seen, and for whom the same was true of me. It was rather a shock. He's a good guy, and better yet, in my section.
Yesterday I finally took my camera out for a thorough spin around Chicago. It was great. I covered probably five, maybe six miles of pavement on foot, and got a few pictures printed at a 24-hour kinko's way the hell over by the Brown Line (the Red Line is the nearer El Train line, about a 10-minute walk west. The Brown line is about twenty minutes farther west, but is where the Red is rerouted during weekends because they're adding a third set of tracks to the Red, have been for some time, and will be for the foreseeable future as far as I know), one of which--a naked tree on Farragut Square with a variegated cloud background in winter--is now up above Kyle's picture of the observatory in one of the good frames. I took some 70 or so pictures, mostly of architecture (because it's what I do) and reflection--I got a couple cool shots of tall buildings looking to sway and distort because of double-hung window reflections, as well as some nice shots of passing El trains. Mostly it was nice to be out, walking, with music, and not in the company of people forcing me to make small-talk. I'm so tired of having to come out--implicitly or explicitly--over and over that I could just scream.
On that note, however, there was an OUTLaw barbecue on saturday, which was great fun. Small gathering--two men, seven women, which was itself minorly noteworthy in my admittedly narrow experience. Good food, good conversation, and lots of meat jokes during the distribution of excess food on the way back (because I ended up taking home the excess brats, in someone's spare Lambda Legal bag, which I will now be using to get groceries). At the moment, OUTLaw and Habeas Chorus (the a capella group) are really the only student groups I'm terribly interested in dealing with. I was pleased to find out that Habeas graduated its basses last year. There may be hope for me.
Also, since Nik asked about why boys being stupid was worthy of note in my last post, here's a quick explanation. Because I failed to know people in DC, for the most part, and because I failed at the traditional ways of getting to know people in DC as well--from work, from established friends, from organizations, and from bars/clubs--I decided to join the wonderful world of internet dating (ha). It was mostly my being bored and finding that the site I'd gone to for years to take weird internet personality tests had turned itself into an internet dating site that (unlike eharmony.com, for instance) actually acknowledged that gay people exist. So I decided to give it a shot. Recently, I had started talking to a guy who was quite interesting, and cute, and intelligent, and so on. And who, it turns out, lived not in Chicago, but Cincinnati. Thus boys are stupid (him for living so, and me for not having realized it sooner). On the other hand, I ended up talking to another guy the night before last on IM for about three hours. So there's possibly something there.
I could be that stupid 1L who tries to start (rather than maintain--I'd say 40% of NU Law students I've met have been married or otherwise relation'd) a relationship while being 1L.
In any event, it is now 11, which suggest I should try going to sleep so I can get up at 7 with enough time to get to classes with breakfast and coffee from the starbuck's across the street from me (which, incidentally, is surrounded on its two interior sides--it's a corner shop--by a single Dunkin' Donuts amoeba). G'night, all. More when I have the time, the inclination, and the news.
Also. Those of you with blogs that are not LJs--could you comment with your blog's URL so I can post it up in my sidebar if you're interested in my doing so? Thanks.
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