Law school is both exactly what you expect it to be and nothing like it at all.
Attorneys, movies, and books will tell you law school is all consuming, stuffy, full of people who live and breathe the law at all times.
And yes, law school is your life. It has become a huge part of my identity. When I cancel plans, it’s almost always because of my law school reading, review, and work. I work hard, read thick textbooks and caselaw for hours a day.
But law school is not stuffy in the slightest.
My professors come from different sides of the law and are so passionate about the subjects they teach that they sometimes call judicial opinions “beautiful.” My classmates are diverse in backgrounds, experiences, opinions. We have in depth discussions about the ethics and morals of what we study, and why the system works the way it does. We also talk about tv shows we watch when we take study breaks and books we want to read (not just our textbooks). We go out to eat together, we go hiking together, we laugh and have fun.
For Halloween, my criminal law professor had us all dress up as our “favorite defendants” and my writing professor just let us dress in costume as whatever we want! We had a costume parade and contest.
Most surprisingly, to me, is how – for the first few months – no one has any idea what is going on.
In movies, law students know the answer all the time. If you don’t know the answer, if you hesitate for one moment, you are ostracized, and the rest of the movie, you’re fighting to be seen as worthy.
In reality, my first year of law school has been full of questions that I don’t know the answer to. That’s why we come to law school in the first place – to learn the answers! (Okay, maybe not all the answers, but still!)
When I’m called on in class and do not have any clue what the answer is, my friends and classmates are all too happy to help me out. And at the end of class, no one even remembers that I stumbled.
I won’t lie and say it’s not intimidating because it is. It’s ~law school~. But we’re all learning. It’s why we go to class. It’s why we’re in school. And we’re all growing. Three months in, I still don’t always know what’s going on. And that’s the fun part.