Legally Liza

My friend A.M. was in town this weekend and found it amusing to refer to me as "Legally Liza" every time he had the opportunity. The truth is, I've completed only half a semester of law school and I still feel like maybe I am here illegally. Pretty soon ICE is going to come and deport me back to undergrad.

Being in law school is like returning to high school. We have lockers. We have class together with the same group of people. I've had to return to using my backpack, because I am no longer just carrying around paperback versions of the Iliad or Uncle Tom's Cabin but 1,000+ page casebooks, notebooks, supplements, and 20 highlighters of varying colors. On any given day, it probably weighs close to 50 pounds. I have a lunchbox. And because we are around each other all day every day, there is gossip. Lots of it.

Don't get me wrong, most of the time I LOVE Law school. I like reading the opinions, figuring out the rules of law that apply, and trying to guess the ending before I get there. I like how after I finish underlining all the relevant things in the case in my color-coded strategy that it looks like a rainbow of information. I like how my professors make jibes at us if we are unprepared, and continue to find ways to make us laugh at ourselves and the material. I think that without this humor (and the fear that I will get called on and ridiculed), I would fall asleep in every class.

And that's probably what I was most unprepared for. I spend roughly 15 hours a day in class or reading. I typically go to bed at 1:30 or 2, and wake up at 7:00. Thursday and Friday get a little better, but for the most part its grueling schedule. Before I was to lazy to make a pot of coffee, but now it's the first thing I do every morning. Yesterday I bought 3 12-packs of diet coke so that I have some variety in my caffeine intake. The other thing I was unprepared for was the extreme loneliness that haunts you every day. Studying law is not really best done in groups. Its done alone, in your cubicle, surrounded by books. Luckily I have great classmates that plan some social events to break up this monotony, but usually I am alone. For an extremely sociable person like me, it's my equivalent of hell.

The other life-saving thing about law school is my acapella group, Headnotes. Its the one thing I look forward to, and we rehearse twice a week. For some reason, belting out high notes and hearing all of our voices come together in perfect harmony is a better stress-reliever than yoga. We have a few performances coming up next month and I am really excited to finally be performing again in front of people.

Although I occasionally feel upset about things, I try to remember that every transition takes time. Maybe soon I will begin to feel like I am part of this institution; but for right now I still feel like a stranger in a strange land...