Thoughts on law school orientation & first week of classes

Since I'm now done with my first week of law school, I thought I'd go back and recap my orientation and first week experiences.

Orientation was held on a Thursday and Saturday (presumably so that the day and evening student orientations could be combined-- apparently it's better to get us day students up at 6 am on a Saturday than to have the evening students take a day off work). The first day of Orientation was pretty much useless. We had welcomes from all of the Deans. They were all pretty much the same. Congratulations on getting accepted. You're all really smart (but not smart enough to get into a first tier school). Work hard, but not too hard. Law school is important, but not the most important thing. After an hour's worth of speeches, we went to Legal Methods, which is basically an intro to law school. Our Legal Methods professor gave us a speech similar to that of all the Deans (although she was the first one to come right out and admit that she had gone to our school because she didn't get good enough LSAT scores to go to a first tier school). We then went around the room and introduced ourselves. I found that most of the people in my section had taken at least a year or two off before starting law school. Some even had impressive career accomplishments including road managing for well known bands, acting credits, etc. I also realized that I was one of a very small number of people not originally from California. Only 5 people out of the 100 person section had not gone to UC something or other for undergrad. I felt a little out of place when I realized how many people already knew one or more people in the class.

The second day of Orientation was much like the first. Speeches (including some good lawyer jokes like: How is a lawyer like a sperm? ---- Only one in a million does anything worthwhile.) and Legal Methods. The second Legal Methods consisted of watching a tape of a lecture and seeing if our brief that we had written the night before matched up. All in all, there was nothing about Orientation that couldn't be gained by reading a book or blog about law school. The most useful part was learning where all the buildings were and getting my sign-in information for the law school network. (I got to print out my syllabi and start my reading. Joy!)

On Thursday, I overheard someone say that she couldn't remember not being in law school. I feel the same way. The first week of classes felt like a lifetime. By Wednesday, it seemed that everyone was in their routine: read, go to class, read some more, sleep, wake up, repeat. It will probably take me a week or two to figure out how to best schedule my time so that I don't have to read right up until bedtime every night. (I did manage to fit in some relaxation time on Thursday-- the husband and went for a swim and I watched our new Ren & Stimpy DVD. I was so exhausted that I fell asleep after the first episode.)

I also went to my first club meeting. One of the best things about my law school is that they provide free lunch at every club meeting. I didn't go just for the free lunch though. The Law School Democrats had emailed me earlier in the week to see if I was interested in joining (I guess they looked at everyone's voter registration records. My Mom was kind of creeped out about that.) I figured that since they asked nicely, I might as well go. The meeting was pretty quick. The club seems worthwhile and the executive board members seemed friendly-- plus I'll get free lunch ever time there's a meeting.