Grasshoppers!
My dear, sweet, bacon-scented, dahling 0Ls: calm down.
So this is what happens: Your type-A student gets accepted, picks a law school, and then proceeds to freak out and annoy everyone.
I did it too, but it’s obnoxious. So stop.
If you are going to UMN law school in the fall, just email me if you have questions. Plenty of your future classmates are already in contact. I’ll either answer your questions or put you into contact with someone who can.
I’m reliving orientation as an orientation assistant. The law school is really responsive to student feedback, so a lot of the boring and useless things from last year’s orientation were axed. Some of the 1Ls were still bored, but they have no idea how much better their orientation is.
Besides an awkward, overlong vegetable analogy, orientation has gone well. None of the speakers said anything crazy and none of the 1Ls irreparably embarrassed themselves. I think asking for anything more is unrealistic.
We even did a quick etiquette session in my orientation group where the other orientation leaders and I told the 1Ls how not to be obnoxious.
I figure if my 1Ls can avoid doing those five things, they’ll be fine.
I thought about writing a grand “1L summer retrospective” post, but that would be duplicative of my “one year in Minnesota” post and way too exhausting to do right now, so, quickly, the highlights of summer:
The summer was hilarious, but I’m ready to start the school year.
It’s the first day of summer school. So of course I’m in front of my locker – juggling book bag, tumbler, and my pricey shrink-wrapped textbooks – absolutely incapable of getting my locker open.
I try, and I try, and then I think I hear the locker click, so I try to pull it open….
…and it doesn’t work. I then lose my grip on my textbooks, which slide intomy tumbler….and after a brief moment of panicked juggling, there’s a loud CRASH and a Charlie-Brown style “ARRG!” …
Then I hear Jill’s voice from the next locker row:
Jill: “Welcome back Jansen!”
Oh bah-humbug. Seriously.
I sort of stumbled into summer, and it was messy…
My civil procedure exam variance smudged the line between spring semester and the first week of summer. The finals period ended on Friday the 15th but I had my last exam on Monday the 18th. I moved some more things into the apartment Monday and Tuesday, and spent the rest of the week working 10 hour days.
The rest of that week went like this: walk dog, iron, work for 10 hours, walk dog again, bed.
I also picked up my petition packet that Friday.1
Last Sunday I moved the rest of my things out of the gamma house, which created an organizational nightmare – boxes and shitkram cluttered my apartment – even the dog gave me the “this is some bullshit” look… so I spent the beginning of week 2 cleaning and unpacking. The rest of the week consisted of work, hanging out 2 with friends, and ignoring the periodic bitch-slaps from the petition-monkey latched to my back.
Two of my coworkers – Cheryl3 and Nadine – have kept tabs on my non-progress on the petition. Cheryl is mortified and amused. Nadine takes a more gung-ho approach since she is also petitioning at her law school:
Nadine: “I don’t understand those people who pick up petition packets and don’t finish them. I mean, there’s no such thing as not getting it done – even if I have to pull a few all-nighters – it will get done. It just has to.”
Amen.
I decided today that finishing the petition is a win-win situation because I’ll either get on a journal or have the satisfaction of showing out by completing the petition. So I spent today outlining my note. I will write it tomorrow. The petition is due Friday, and summer classes start tomorrow.4 We’ll see how this goes…