 “Reluctantly crouched at the starting line – Engines pumping and thumping in time. The green light flashes, the flags go up. Churning and burning they yearn for the cup.” While those lines do belong to the band
Cake, they more accurately describe the racing anticipation, heart-pounding fear, and the painful truth that the first week of law school has been … well, let’s just say it sure as hell
hasn’t been cake.
Then again, nobody said it would be. As we meander around and tote our rolling backpacks like lost tourists in a Paris subway station, it’s becoming quite obvious that there are no bicycles allowed on this racetrack. Road burn hurts. Thus far, the hum down in the Pit Stop is echoing the heart-warming piece of orientation advice from our beloved Professor Sobelson – the Gunnery Sergeant of the rat-tat-tat one-liners. Allow me to paraphrase Professor Sobelson, “Don’t let law school consume you. If you exercise, keep exercising. If you’re married, stay married.” The emphasis on stay got a good chuckle from the audience of 1Ls and staff alike. Herein lies the problem. While we were sitting there grinning and giggling in our oblivious state of saturated euphoria, we were also secretly stealing glances at each other like, “is this really supposed to be funny?” Come on, man - like any of us are actually going to be able to survive a marriage AND be in law school at the same time! If you think we can, please help us understand why the professors who assign the most reading never discuss any of it. We’ve all taken copious notes, highlighted textbooks - proudly thinking, “Boy, the next person to get this textbook is really gonna thank me for highlighting all the important stuff!”. We’ve even been briefing our cases so diligently that they’re twice as long briefed as they are in the book. But you … you take our bouquet of flowers and set them aside like what you really wanted was the diamond cluster ring and matching belt buckle. If we have learned anything in this first week, it is that this is life as an attorney. It seems that the first lap around this track has proven very useful. Lesson learned. You get the checkered flag on this one. But we know what you’re up to. At this point, the common belief is that all of you teacher-folk got together before school and came up with this huge master plan of distraction tactics: assign all these pages, brief all these cases, make them tell us why we should buy Honda over Ford and then force them to tell us why Ford is soooo much better than Honda – hee hee hee. I think I’ve even got one professor who just teaches dicta! This class is a brain-fest of dedicated first year law students who want more than to just stay afloat on this bitter sea of reality; we want to drink that sucker dry and pee our name in the sand. The lanes are full, professors - two hundred and thirty-four drivers (You didn’t think we would all show up, did you?) - and we’re ready for the next go-round on this racetrack. So, obscure our windshields with buckets full of assignments if you want, but do not be surprised if this class blows right past your curves. |