First Day of Orientation

Well, here we are. The end of the first day of law school orientation. After all these months and years of thinking about, planning for and looking forward to law school, it arrived with surprising suddenness. I went to bed last night early, with the knowledge that I would be waking up around 7 for an 8:30 registration session. I lay in bed, nervous about today, unable to sleep for a while. I finally fell asleep, got a few hours, then woke up to my alarm thinking "what am I doing?". This was no ordinary cliche "what am I doing". This was an all-out "who have I been fooling here? I am totally unprepared for this, and I'm in too deep to back out now, and omigod what have I done to my life?" moment. It's the feeling you get when you talk a big game and get on the biggest, fastest roller coaster in the park, and then start going up the first big hill, and have that horrible feeling of regret, but there's nothing you can do about it because you're in too deep. Except this was multiplied by about a million. Anyway, after my initial feelings of nausea and desire to vomit, I got out of bed, showered, got ready and headed to school, feeling like a bundle of nerves.

I got there, and everybody was sitting around quietly, but shortly thereafter, we were ushered into the large atrium, where we picked up orientation materials, and hung out at tables of 6. I chatted it up with the 5 other people at my table (and for those of you familiar with me, you will be unsurprised by the next part), and ended up having a pretty good chat with the 3 girls next to me, and only really talked to the guys for a couple minutes. After that, it was time to move to the big auditorium for orientation to really get started.

This is where I should probably state a general purpose for this blog. I did not intend to make it a blow-by-blow of law school. Rather, I wanted people to understand the experience of being a first year law student from a first-hand source, including primarily my feelings, reactions and all-around sense of law school. Therefore, I am omitting the remainder of the actual events of orientation thus far, as they do not serve the general sentiment of this blog.

After orientation, however, the unofficial get-to-know-you festivities began. The SBA (Student Bar Association) made an arrangement with a bar (less than 2 blocks from my apartment, conveniently) that allowed a ton of 1L's to come in, show a school ID, get a wristband and have discounted drinks and food for a good deal of the evening. I attended, purely for research purposes of course, and took depositions from a couple beers and cross-examined a shot and a cupcake (don't question the combination!).

There were definitely some times today when I felt like other people were having an easier time than I was at making friends, and a bunch of people seemed to already have a relationship with new classmates that extended to showing up to and leaving the bar simultaneously, and I am a little worried that I may have missed some hidden opportunity to make all my life-long friends and contacts that supposedly I will be making this year. In the end, though, I ended up with 2 new phone numbers, a new facebook friend, and a handful of people that I know by name and who now know me by name, including several from my section (yay section 4!!!). So a total loss it was not. I have high hopes for orientation day 2 tomorrow, which will finally include discussion of the book we read, and some real-life law classes (ungraded though they may be). Also, tomorrow's bar du jour is also within 1/2 mile of my apartment, so I intend to be in attendance for more "legal research". Until then, I hope you enjoyed this first installment of True Confessions of a 1L!