12/09/22

I’ve mentioned this before, but earlier this year I graduated from law school, took the bar, and I am now officially a licensed attorney. anyway, this was my not-so-humble of way of saying that I went to law school. law school was so hard and exhausting and mentally and physically taxing, but there were a lot of good aspects about it. the second week of my first year of law school was NOT one of those aspects.

your first year of law school you’re split into “sections” and for the entire school year you only take classes with the people in that particular section. that means for 5 days a week, for an entire academic year, you are only taking classes with the same 70-80 people. so in an ideal world you would imagine that you would want to become close with that group of people, because of the proximity and shared time together.

that was not my experience. there were like 7-9 real characters in my section, and they made the experience bad for everyone. I hated my section, and the other first year sections heard about how mean and catty we were. the level of competitiveness was just out of control, for no real reason.

anyway, during our second week of law school, my section had a public meltdown. basically, we had this girl in our section that asked WAY too many questions, always taking the class off on tangents, low-key wasting time – like, just talk to the professor after class type beat. and for one of our classes we had to pair up and present the assigned case in front of the whole class, which can be kind of intimidating. so, it was the very first pair of the semester in front of the class and this girl just ripped into them with all her questions, like with the limited amount of exposure we’d had to law school (less than two weeks) there was no way they would know the answers to what she was asking (there was also probably no way she actually knew what she was asking either). so, one of the boys in this pair said to her, “I can’t wait for your turn to present, I’ll be sure to have my questions ready.” and the whole class was like “ooooo burn” and stuff like that. and most of us thought that was the end of that (this all happened on a wednesday).

well, turns out that a small group of classmates had a groupme chat outside of the larger section groupme, and they were gossiping about this girl and how much they disliked her. well, one of those classmates added another classmate to said groupme, and that classmate SHOWED the messages to the girl. and apparently this girl started crying or something (this all happened outside classroom hours, so I don’t know). so imagine my SHOCK when that friday, the 10th day of law school, a different classmate went up the front of the classroom, SAT ON THE PROFESSOR’S DESK, and said, “it has come to my attention that there are certain members of the class that took it upon themselves to RIDICULE another member of our class. and we are prepared to go to the DEAN unless everyone in the groupme stands up.” (let me remind you, this groupme contained like 8 people tops, in a section of 70-80, the rest of us were like “?????? what is happening”)

and when I tell you, the RAGE that ensued from those members of that groupme that got caught gossiping. they were yelling things like “this is a witch-hunt” and “if you want to see these messages, meet me outside” and then they actually took the conversation to the hallway and you could hear them yelling at each other all the way in the classroom LOL. and to top it off, my professor for that class just started teaching as if nothing happened. and then my professor that afternoon started crying saying we were the meanest class he’s ever had and he was failing at being a better example of how to behave as a lawyer. it was literally so dramatic that I’m laughing as a type this, like that man had no reason to be crying, he had known us for two weeks.

and so, that is the story of my second week of law school. it’s funny now and I wanted to memorialize it so I never forget, though I doubt I could.

things I am grateful for: the passage of time that eventually makes bad memories into funny ones; Chili’s 3 for me dinner; and the weekend.