Well here I am, hot as blazes sitting at my cute little desk in my cute little apartment in my cute little San Diego neighborhood with my ugly huge books and my ugly huge homework assignments and my ugly huge financial aid notifications. According to my "Plain English for Lawyers" textbook that sentence is rife with stylistic flaws...
I've just finished my second day of pseudo class in my first year of law school. The last two days have been split between "Intro to Legal Studies: Writing" and "Intro to Legal Studies: Analysis." I'm so grateful to begin my legal study this way. Classically your first year in law school is characterized by the terrifying experience of being made to stand in front of your peers and be forced to brief a case about something you do not understand for a professor who is very very scary, and by your terribly expensive books and your starving student fancy microwave dinners. This will not be me in my first year at Cal Western School of Law. Instead, very much to my liking, we spend our entire first week split into small groups of about 20 terrified first years learning the very basic skills we will need to be successful in our first year: how to read a case, how to brief it, how to study and make outlines, how not to listen to our fellow students who are neurotic and brag about being "a week ahead in the reading for civ pro" but are actually lying to make themselves feel better. I've just finished briefing my third case and to be honest, I feel just peachy.
I've met a few cool people in my section who I will be with for the next three years of school. To my pleasant surprise people have come from all over the country to attend school here in San Diego! I've met people from Columbia University, University of Colorado, Washington D.C., Connecticut, and allegedly there is even someone in my class from Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, Canada! How aboot that, eh? So far that is one of the better parts of this experience: knowing that no matter how nervous I may be about succeeding in this endeavor there are 334 other students in my first year class, many of whom very well may be more terrified and clueless than I. And let me tell you...THAT is a comforting thought. We are all in it together. My class schedule is exciting and my mountain of books is looming ahead in the distance, I can't wait to tackle this obstacle!
My happy little apartment is a slice of heaven to come home to. It gets quiet (aside from the airplanes flying overhead) as I'm here on my own so I bought two little cacti to talk to about my day. (Side note: it doesn't bode well that I'm hardly two days in and am already speaking to plants...I need to get out...). I've gotten along fine here snacking on snap peas and starting to develop what by the end of these three years will be the recipe for the MOST FABULOUS peanut butter and jelly sandwich you will ever try. My neighbors are nice, my bus mates are nice (a bit smelly as it is a public bus, but just as nice as the next person) and I am very happy.
I hope to keep this account of all three years in school so that one day, while I'm sitting in my cushy leather chair in my corner office suite relaxing after a long day of ordering file clerks around, I can look back with a smile on my time at Cal Western. I'm ready and rearing to go and can't wait to dive in!
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