There are a lot of ways to answer that, but the simplest way to put it is, “A lot!” It might seem like “love” is too strong a word, right?

WRONG. I absolutely love Loyola and all of my classes. And, to be perfectly honest, I do love Loyola. Despite, or perhaps because of, the stress, the exams, the complex subject matter, and the long hours that I have to put in if I want to learn as much as I possibly can and perform to my full potential, I absolutely love Loyola.

(Just kidding about the “despite,” Loyola, you know I love you.) It’s because of the exams and because of the long hours that I love Loyola. I love the fact that the stress, when it does happen, is the kind of stress that comes from growing as a person and a professional. I love the fact that the exams come after a semester of support and feedback that points out where I am strong and where I need to work. I love the fact that the complex subject matter is made understandable by professors who obviously care about it. I love the fact that those long hours are hours well spent. I love that fact that I know that Loyola will prepare me to be the best lawyer that I can be.

I love Loyola because I am being challenged like never before and, every step of the way, I am being given the support, both from students and from faculty, that I need to succeed.

I am one of those people who has always been shy when it comes to building relationships with my professors. Before I came to law school, the mere thought of “having” to meet with a professor outside of class made me nervous. It’s not that they were mean or anything like that, just that “I need to see you after class” were words that I never wanted to hear. They were always an indication that something was wrong, not a sign that I had an opportunity to build a new professional relationship.

Some of my reluctance came from a cycle that I think is very common – someone doesn’t understand a concept, so she or he becomes too nervous to ask about it as time goes on because, beyond a certain point, having to ask about it indicates that you are “behind” and “behind” is a place that you never want to be. Of course, that was all in my head, and the secret to getting out of that cycle was in my head as well – I had to remind myself that law school is called that for a reason and that reason is because the professors are there to help you learn.

During my time at Loyola, that is exactly what they have done. My experience with my professors has been nothing short of fantastic. They are always there when I have difficulty understanding a difficult point. They are never intimidating, and they never look down on me, but it is always obvious that they know what they are talking about, having an extensive background in their specialty, and are willing to share everything that they know with me.

That was exactly what happened during my torts class that I took last semester. I was new to law school and I was unsure how to approach all of the work in this class. After midterms, I arranged to speak to the professor about my performance in the class and find out where I did well and where I could improve. Going in, I felt worried and intimidated but, after a clear, honest, and open assessment of my performance on the exam that lasted thirty minutes, I left with a very clear sense of where I did well and where I could have done better. Because I reached out of my comfort zone, my grade on the final exam improved significantly. Needless to say, my relationships with my professors have improved as time has gone by. Meeting with my professors is now something that I look forward to, and I look forward to strengthening those relationships as time goes by.

When it comes to the everyday academic grind, I’m a loner. I don’t share notes with other students, and I hardly ever meet with classmates outside of class to go over course material. I don’t even read at the library. I like to read alone, at home, where it’s quiet, and no one can bother me.

That all changes when finals come around. I do some exam studying alone, particularly when making outlines. But I also rely – nay, depend – on my classmates for support. I’m the kind of person who doesn’t really learn anything until I explain it to someone else. (I believe that most people are this way – some are just a little too shy or self-conscious to try it.)

The hardest part, then, is finding a group you can work with. If your group is made up of students you think are ahead of you, you might get discouraged – and that is NOT how you want to feel going into finals. On the other hand, if no one in your group is prepared for the exam, you’d be better off reviewing alone. The key is to find a group of friends who don’t intimidate you, but who don’t fail to challenge you, either. After the first two or three exams, I got my group pared down to a loose collective of buddies.

I’ve taken seven final exams now, and they have all gone just about the same way. By the last two or three days before the test, I’ve made my outline. I’ve asked my professors for help with the topics that have daunted me the most. I’ve made my flashcards, and I’ve found and re-read (or, yeah, read for the first time) the cases that have vexed me the most.

The last few days, then, are basically a protracted conversation with my group. We quiz each other, diagram concepts like supplemental jurisdiction or exceptions to the hearsay rule, and verbally explain concepts from different angles. For 14 weeks out of the year, I don’t need a study group. But for that final week, it’s crucial.

When I started law school, I had no idea what to expect when it came to the social and academic environment. On one hand, movies usually show a hyper-competitive environment and during orientation we were told about the dreaded curve. On the other hand, at admitted student’s day, I had met some great, intelligent people, who did not seem ready to go for each other’s throats. Once I started law school, I started to see that while everyone is competitive and extremely intelligent, we all wish to see each other succeed, and we understand that to succeed we must collaborate in learning.

People have very different strategies when it comes to study groups. Study groups are one of those things where you have to try a few ways before you realize what works for you. For me, it was about finding a couple people with study habits similar to mine. I tend to prefer smaller groups, as it is easier to focus. Generally, study groups are useful in helping me figure out what I don’t know, and they help me practice my reasoning. By having to explain what I know- or I think I know-, I am better able to grasp the material. Even when we are not debating or studying for a class, I enjoy working alongside my study group. Sharing a space with my friends helps me with accountability and it provides me with quick feedback when I have a quick question about my own work.

Ultimately, what I have learned about study groups is that you have to shop around to figure out what works for you and you have to be honest with yourself when you are in a situation that is not working.

My typical law school day looks quite a bit different than it did a year ago. For starters, I am only on campus two days per week, and the rest of the week I’m working at a law office. It reminds of my senior year in high school, when I got out of school at lunch. But instead of hanging out with my friends all afternoon or playing drums, my “free hours” now consist of legal work and raising kids.

My typical law school day begins the night before my class days, when I do my homework for the next day. That is usually just reading the assigned texts but could include writing or watching something as well. In the morning, I am usually awakened by my four-year-old daughter who now just comes into our bedroom and demands breakfast around 7am. I feed everyone, see my wife off to work (with our daughter in tow) and then head to class.

Since I’ve condensed my classes to just two days per week, those class days are long. I use the breaks in between classes to do coursework and catch up on other things. When classes are done, I drive home and sometimes catch a quick nap before my wife and daughter return. When they get home, my daughter wants to invariably play games or rough-house with me. We play for a bit and then I make dinner. After she goes to sleep, I will usually hang out with my wife and then play guitar and listen to music before I go to sleep. My off-campus days are much the same except that I go to work instead of school. Either way, my days are pretty full but not oppressively so. Even with a hectic schedule, I still manage to find some extra time to go to the movies, see friends, and keep up (somewhat) with my musical skills.

My Saturdays are filled mostly with studying these days. That’s how it was this past Saturday, too. My Criminal Law professor assigned a practice midterm (sounds fun, I know), so I spent about 6 hours, starting in the morning, doing some last-minute studying. Then, I spent 3 hours taking the test. I capped it all off by starting — but, alas, not even finishing — my reading for the same class, to prepare for Monday. By the time I walked out of the law library — the best place in town to while away an entire Saturday, of course — I was more than a little dazed. The sun had been down for several hours.

I put my books in my locker and caught a Lyft to Hollywood Forever Cemetery for their annual Dia de los Muertos Festival.

I got to the festival — which celebrated its 18th year this year — well after it started. The roads through the cemetery were lined with vendors, as well as with altars, which families had set up for their loved ones. I picked my way through the face painted crowd and found my friends waiting for Colombian rock band Aterciopelados, the final band of the night, to start playing.

After 12 hours of studying, it was a best kind of release. We sipped beers and felt the air, the first cool night of the year. Around us, a celebration of life and of the lives of family members who’ve passed on to the other side. It was a beautiful kind of perspective – a reminder that even when you’re buried in books, it’s important to get out and live a little.

Before starting law school, I heard about how cut-throat all of my peers would be. I was told so many horror stories about students giving each other the wrong answers on purpose and how people were so competitive that they would do literally anything to get ahead (I literally mean anything). I have asked a couple of my friends and they’ve all said they also heard several terrible stories before coming to law school.

Luckily, I am here to tell you that this is purely a myth at Loyola. When someone gets cold-called in class and clearly does not know the answer, people are there to help them out with a whispered hint. Someone is always around to answer questions (correctly, I might add) and people are always willing to study together and bounce ideas off each other. I just had my first midterm on Monday and when it was finished, there was collective relief that we had survived and joy that we had all made it through the first half of Property Law. We are competing for grades (the classes are curved and people who want to be lawyers generally like to win), but no one is out to get you or ruin your chances. If we all succeed, Loyola succeeds, and if Loyola succeeds, our degrees continue to help us get jobs (which is really the goal).

So do not worry if you have heard stories about people removing library materials or one of the many cut-throat law school rumors. People are far more focused on bettering themselves rather than tearing others down. It is a lot easier to get ahead by studying than by becoming a master saboteur!

In the summer in Los Angeles, electricity runs through the pavement. It pulls surfers to the beach, couples to the gardens of Griffith Observatory, families to the picnic grills and cool grass at Hollenbeck Park. I felt it this summer. On a few bright Sunday mornings, I brought crates of records to a rooftop restaurant to spin for the brunch crowd. I sweated through long, late shifts at the bar where I worked, then watched my friends make music in shifty, cobbled-together spaces. I visited Vicente Pedraza, the man who once ran the influential cumbia sonidera label Discos Barba Azul, at his Santee Alley stall. And Arshia Haq, who, visited Pakistan and came back to L.A. with her own deeply spiritual recordings of Sufi music. (Both allowed me to share their stories in L.A. Weekly.) I brought some of my favorite musicians together in the basement of a restaurant in Chinatown for one transcendent night of music. We stood in the back alley between sets, across from the restaurant cooks taking their breaks, smoking their cigarettes, and talked about our plans.

The news this summer was dire. We watched young people gather under a banner of hate in Charlottesville, then listened with dismay as our president validated them. Closer to home, L.A.’s neighborhoods boiled over with anxiety about displacement and gentrification. Our city’s homelessness crisis seemed worse than ever. It became clear that DACA, the federal program that allows those who entered the U.S. as children to go to school and work without fear of deportation, was the President’s latest target, with 100,000 of our Angeleno neighbors in the crosshairs. The freedom of a Los Angeles summer is intoxicating, but I start school at Loyola with profound excitement — the feeling that I’ll gain an education that will help me do my part to make this city even more just, more equal, more electric.

Not too long after I turned 22, I decided to go to law school.

That was seven years ago.

Back then, I had just graduated from Seattle University with a degree in English, and all I knew was I wanted to write. I had worked as the news editor at the school paper, interned at the local alt-weekly, wrote papers about American economic history, and blogged about politics. I thought I was off to a good start.

But I had also fallen in love with Seattle, and I felt certain I wanted to be a part of the city in a meaningful way. I knew a couple of lawyers, and I figured law school was the way to do that. If nothing else, it would give me plenty to write about.

In the intervening seven years, I learned that things rarely turn out the way you plan.

Seven years ago, I was working at a book store in Seattle and plotting my future. One night after work, I got a text from a friend who told me he could get me a job in New York City. One week later, I was on an airplane. Who could pass up a writing gig in the cultural capital of the world?

Things went from there. I made an adventure out of my 20s. I ended up working in radio in New York for a few years. As part of the job, I spent much of my time in cities like Shreveport, Yakima, and Utica teaching radio DJs how to blog. Later, I learned how to DJ myself, and gigged around the city; I worked as a bike messenger; I worked in bars; I played in a band. I got back to writing, which will always be important to me — it’s the way I find my bearings in the world — and when I moved to L.A. a couple years ago, I got to know the city by freelance writing about the local music scene.

L.A. reminds me of everything I loved about Seattle. It’s a big, complicated, strange city, a city of shiny dreams and stubborn struggles; of Hollywood studios and working class neighborhoods; of Kendrick Lamar and Raymond Chandler; of cumbia blasting from backyard parties and experimental music emanating from warehouse art spaces.

As I became absorbed in this city I was reminded of my original desire to be a useful part of something bigger than myself. I don’t regret a single weird minute of my ‘20s. But I couldn’t be more ready for what’s next.

The phrase “So tell me a little bit about yourself” has always given me minor heart palpitations. What kind of personality do I have? Are those actually my interests? What have I even accomplished? I live with myself 24 hours a day, yet get thrown into a panic as if I don’t even know my last name (did you read that as Carrie Underwood?). So, although I’ll have second-guessed this introduction of myself 32 times by the time I am finished writing, I will try my best to “tell you a little bit about myself” without giving up.

I graduated in December of 2016 from my undergraduate university with a B.A. in Political Science and minors in English and History (anything scientific gives me more heart palpitations than introductions, so just know you are my inspiration if you are surviving or have survived a B.S.) and was heavily involved in my sorority. While an undergraduate, I completed a legislative internship in a Congressional office in D.C., which, although an amazing experience, showed me that a career path in politics was not completely for me. After I graduated, I worked for the public school district in my hometown of Elk Grove, CA for the 8 months before law school started.

Although I have a background in both education and politics, as a law student I have found that I am most interested in Consumer Law. This may change (I am only a 1L), but I do believe that I will ultimately end up in the field of litigation even though my Criminal Law class is incredibly compelling. Something I have already realized about law school is that even if you are focused on one area of law, all of the areas are so engaging and expansive that it is hard not to be interested in all of the fields.

On the non-legal side of my life (which still exists, though barely), I enjoy spending my time reading, watching television, clothes shopping, and trying new foods. All of those interests seem so unoriginal, I wish I could tell you that I am a certified sky-diver, but I’ll give an accurate representation of myself. I cannot survive without 2-4 cups of coffee a day, I hate caramel, I will not choose between being a cat-person or a dog-person, and I highly recommend naps.

Most importantly, I am so excited that I will have the opportunity to share little pieces of my life here! I think that it is incredibly important to know what you are getting yourself into when you commit to law school, so I will try my best to accurately illuminate the details of law school life over the next year.