Welcome to the Jungle

I've been in Boston a few weeks, living in Jamaica Plain (JP) and slowly being inducted into the 1L cult. 1L for all you innocents out there, means first year law student.... I'll dispense with some of the cliches about constant studying, the stress, etc. Frankly, it's only the first month and I'm still not really sure what the hell I'm dealing with.

Initial impressions...

Yes, I feel like I'm being transported to middle school. Giant backpack. Dining Hall (okay so I've never had that...kind of neat actually). The same 70 odd classmates in every...single..class. Lockers that I never keep stuff in anyway. AND Name CARDS. Yes, name cards. After years of bio major anonymity, going (or not) to giant science classes and keeping only the most superficial of relations with the professor....I'm being outed, name first, for the purposes of the Socratic Method.

Speaking of which, I've tried to look at it from all angles..you know, like a lawyer would, and I've come to the conclusion that the Socratic Method is barbaric. It makes every 50 minute class period like a pressurized sweat box where the only thing driving you to analyze the minutiae of each case is this paralyzing fear of being shamed in front of your peers. I'm gonna give it a couple more months before I won't even care about that anymore... But for now... well, it's keeping me on my toes.

That is, to say, this morning in Property was hellacious. The guy who teaches it is normally pretty jovial and won our undying love the first few weeks when he proceeded to crawl through the assigned cases and completely forgo the usual harbingers of the Socratic Method: the ceremonial making of the seating chart and putting out name cards. Also, he usually spends class drawing weird things on the board, going off on tangents no one gets, and making irreverent jokes about the Midwest (something we could all get behind.) We thought..we were safe. Finally, a refuge from the terror running rampant in the other classes (Contracts, I'm looking at you). Well, we were freaking wrong.
Something must've set off the Prof. because mid-way through he started getting really worked up. Maybe it was that kid who didn't bring his property book that got to him (hey, he never told us we had to!), but there was a sudden shift in the class atmosphere. The prof randomly runs around sitting next to people and grilling them about this clusterfuck of a case (don't ask me what it was about, I was too busy trying to avoid detection.) For 20 minutes, he stalked the aisles, scanning the student list and calling out people. No one was safe. This guy knew our strategies cold. Gulp. (Side note: I'm so freaking glad I kept my last name, I'm sure he took one glance at that and kept on roving.)
Point being: Property has ceased to be the slack off class. Damnit.

A brief run down of the other classes:

Civil Procedure: Boring. Boring boring boring boring. Although I manage to surreptitiously get nearly all the way through my copy of the Weekly Dig by wedging the magazine in between my casebook, behind my name plate (displayed occasionally, when I'm feeling young and reckless).

Torts: The new slack off class by default. Although, after today, I'm starting to get wary...this could be another evil ploy to catch us poor 1L's off guard.

LPS: Legal Writing, the miniseries. A frightening glimpse into the future.

Contracts: Apparently doing the required reading still doesn't guarantee you'll give the answer the Prof is looking for. Or even a comment he won't feel compelled to look simultaneously baffled and disdainful at.

Criminal Law: Murder, Intrigue, Sex, Lies, Videotape! Okay, so the class itself is pretty ho-hum (sensing a pattern here) but at least I don't cry looking at the cases.

I'm still waiting on the "Ally McBeal" side to being a lawyer to show itself. But until then, I'm just gonna have to suck it up and brave another battle in Property over some guy's porch encroaching 14 inches into his neighbor's yard. Oh the horror...the horror...

Random Quote of the Day:

Mr. O'Neill: Okay then. Jodie?

Jodie: I failed to convince my mother and father to let me have this summer off.

Mr. O'Neill: Excellent! And see, you've learned that failure isn't so bad now, is it?

Jodie: No, I've learned that my parents would rather I dropped from exhaustion than missed the opportunity to shred some congressman's incriminating phone bills.

--Daria