Dinkytown is still one of my favorite places to spend my breaks in between classes. Dinkytown is the University of Minnesota’s student village, and just far enough from school to not be infested with law students.
Dinkytown is home to most of UMN’s Fraternities and Sororities, including Gamma Eta Gamma, the law school fraternity. I lived in Dinkytown during my first semester of law school and love passing by my old haunts.
The Kitty Kat club is where the Twilight lesbian parties were held:
These are pictures of the area around the Kitty Kat Club.
The Kitty Kat Club is on the edge of Dinkytown, which is the college village where UMN’s legal fraternity (Gamma Eta Gamma) is located. I lived in the neighborhood most of 1L year.
As a senior in college, I relied on law student blogs to find out what to expect for my first year of law school. Part of the law school experience that was ignored by a lot of blawgs is the late law school application process (ie, deciding where to go, and then getting there.)
This sucked.
So, for all the 0L’s out there, here are four things that happened to me:1
1) Applying to more law schools? Waiting for more money? When it’s time to quit:
The problem is that the law schools that have given me full tuition scholarships (Drake, Stetson, etc.), are not top tier schools, and the other schools that have given sizable scholarships (Yeshiva, Temple, DePaul, etc.) are still not in UMN’s league. (keep reading)
I applied to dozens of law schools. I realized that applying to every school that sent me a fee voucher was a waste of time, especially when the schools started harassing me for deposits. The only school I paid to apply to was UMN (my first choice school). And that’s where I’m at. The lesson? It’s good to have options, but there is a such thing as overkill.
2) Financial Aid. Patience is a virtue.
They were not kidding when they said late July. And once I accept these loans that I will supposedly receive, how long will it take for me to get the disbursement? (read more)
I go to a public law school, so financial aid is based on the FAFSA. Students who take out the full amount of loans get around $7,000 a semester for living expenses. Check with your school and don’t be afraid to ask the financial aid office, “How much do students have to live on after tuition and fees?” if that’s what you really want to know. And yes, loans came in about a week before class started.
3) Minority Followup: I am not Tyrone.
So what are law schools doing to recruit minorities? According to National Jurist, law schools are now taking “a personal approach” to admissions.
I saw this “personal approach” at work this past year. I was more aggressively recruited by law schools than when I applied to undergrad, even though I was a better applicant coming out of high school. (read more)
This included aggressive calls from deans and questionable tactics from minority organizations within law schools. The Lesson? Being an minority made me more desirable to law schools, but the best school for me was one that didn’t want me for my skin tone.
4) Housing: House me please! The apartment search was sort of a crapshoot. I spent a lot of time on rent.com, but I couldn’t really make any decisions without a financial aid award.
The lesson? Ask your financial aid department about your monthly budget (assuming you get all of the loans) and save up enough money for your first month’s rent and security deposit because you won’t get a reimbursement check until the eve of classes.
Also, check out the law school discussion forums. There are school-specific threads where upperclassmen from your school will answer your questions. This was very helpful to me because a lot of the UMN students I spoke to at campus preview weekend were local, or had rich parents…so they couldn’t help me find affordable housing.
I hope this helps.
1 This is my experience, it may not be true for you. Please communicate with your law school and current students at your school.
2 If you are applying to UMinnesota (and don’t have children or pets) you can apply to the Gamma Eta Gamma house. Gamma is a co-ed legal fraternity that is close to the school and rents rooms at $400/month.
Today is the third day of Minneapolis’s 40 degree heat wave.
40 degrees means that the ice from the sidewalk now blankets the entire lawn and half of the street in a misguided attempt at melting.
Everything is so slick and disgusting that most people walk in the middle of the road. We’ll take our chances with the cars.
Getting to the front door of the house feels like a real-life version of Mario Kart’s ice world, minus the cool little car and Donkey Kong of course…
Yesterday was my breaking point: I almost took a nose dive into the slush in front of our house, so I decided to take out the pick and start hacking some ice:
THAT took an incredible amount of effort. When I saw how much I had left I decided to leave it to the housemates (hint hint!)
My last exam was civil procedure.
Civpro is my favorite class, but the exam was… difficult. My housemate felt more strongly about this:
Housemate: “That wasn’t multiple choice! That was multiple rings of hell!”
Half of the gamma (legal fraternity) house is cleared out. The rest of us are leaving at the end of the weekend.
Most of us are tired… and others…
Since the semester ended there have been lots of festivities. I’ll have a legitimate post (and vlog!) tomorrow!
We received this email today:
University Police are re-issuing to campus the following crime alert from the Minneapolis Police Department. Over the weekend there were four robberies of person in southeast Minneapolis. In three of those cases, University of Minnesota students were victims. These are Minneapolis investigations, however University Police in cooperation with Minneapolis are directing patrol resources into those neighborhoods.
*Minneapolis Police Department Crime Alert:*
*Facts:*
Over the weekend, the 2nd Precinct had six armed robberies. The
victims have been females who have had their purse or possessions
taken. They occurred at:
. 14th Ave NE and 3rd St NE — 11/15/2008 7:55 p.m.
. 20th Ave NE and 4th St NE — 11/16/2008 1:15 a.m.
. 2500 block of University Ave SE — 11/16/2008 2:53 a.m.
. 12 Ave SE and 7th St SE — 11/16/2008 3:07 a.m.
. 10 Ave SE and 7th St SE — 11/16/2008 9:25 p.m.
. 12 Ave SE and 4th St SE — 11/17/2008 12:52 a.m.
And no, the University of Minnesota isn’t some decrepit, dangerous place. The main campus is less than a mile from downtown. The list essentially includes all the muggings that happened in downtown Minneapolis and surrounding neighborhoods this weekend. It’s a city. People get mugged.
The University of Minnesota also has over 50,000 students. So if a 20-something gets robbed in Minneapolis there’s a fair chance she goes to the U…especially if she’s skipping around the streets from 1-3am on a weekend in 30 degree weather.
I spend a lot of time studying in the business school and the surrounding cafes. That part of campus is overshadowed by multicolored project towers that we affectionately call the Stacks.
I live in a different neighborhood, on other side of the river from the Stacks.
Law students make jokes about the Stacks and the supposedly seedy neighborhood that surrounds them…but the irony is that the last location on crime email’s mugging list is literally one street from the Gamma house.
The mugging didn’t happen by the Stacks, but in cutesy-little “oh so collegiate” Dinkytown, where all the Fraternities, Sororities, dorms and student orgs are.
Dinkytown is a pretty high crime area because it’s essentially a student-town (read: easy targets). Our fraternity house was already broken into this semester, and a housemate’s car has been robbed twice.
And yet we make fun of the Stacks.
I haven’t convinced the housemates to let me get a pitbull yet, but one more robbery might do the trick…
Last night the Gamma House threw a party, and I promised pictures:
Before the fiasco in St. Paul – most of the Gamma house went to trivia night at Burrito Loco. Pictures!
We two-stepped. People stared. It was hilarious. This is what we do.
We had a Gamma potluck. Pictures!
Housemate #1 stumbles in, screams “Wee!” and collapses onto the couch.
Housemate #1: “I’m going to f-up everyone in this house. I’m going to kill everyone and use their skin for my book covers. I like book covers…especially when they are made of people’s skin. Can I kill you now?
She then goes upstairs. A few minutes later another housemate comes down…
Housemate #2: Apparently we need to lock our doors tonight because [housemate #1] is on a murderous rampage. Especially you guys. You have balls.
Yes, the law fraternity has parties.
I played DJ.
The best part of the night was when the Irish exchange students walked up to me, fists balled, and screamed “RIVERDANCE!”
And they did, indeed Riverdance.
“RIVERDANNNNCE!”
This weekend was mostly shopping madre and hanging out with the Gammas.
Madre flew up from Miami this weekend to help outfit the room. We took the rent-a-car to the suburbs and got, well…lost. We eventually found Wal-Mart, the madhouse that is Ikea, and Mall of America…
When law students go out: Lucy’s Birthday celebration with the Gammas.
“He would need to do serious gymwork once he started his job, days away now. It was no good spending eight hours at the office, ten hours, then going straight home. He would need to burn things off, test his body, direct himself inward, working on his strength, stamina, agility, sanity. He would need an offsetting discipline, a form of controlled behavior, voluntary, that kept him from shambling into the house and hating everybody.” – Don DeLillo (from Falling Man)
My schedule has been (fairly) lawless this summer. The goal for July is to reign in my sleep schedule and step up my workouts.
Freshman year I was 160lbs and worked out religiously. I graduated at just over 200lbs and yeah, that’s not a good look. I can’t make up for three years of neglect in one month, but I can start in the right direction.
The plan is to move from treadmilling to outdoor running. I want to improve my endurance without the guilt-inducing dreadmill dictating the pace for me.
I hope the newly earned endurance will correlate with better grades. Some professors say that marathoners are among their best students. I’ve also seen students (like Jessie, from Boy in Suit) express regret that they didn’t work out more. I’m toying with the idea of a marathon…but I’ll be happy with just maintaining the running schedule during the Minnesota Winter. Yikes.
Other things:
Crap. So I got behind again…oodles of snippets…
I got into Gamma Eta Gamma. Vöt!
I also finished reading Scott Turow’s One L, which is about Turow’s first year at Harvard Law School.
I don’t believe that my first year is going to be as bad as his – I have more of a take names attitude towards law school. If I thought it was going to be easy I probably wouldn’t be doing it.
After reading “One L” I realized that there was something fishy at my law school’s open house: the student ambassadors seemed to deliberately downplay the workload and stress of law school.
The word “collegiate” was thrown around.
One girl even said she stopped studying at 8pm.
I see how “Hi, we are going to torture you, ruin your health, and have you cowering under your study carrel” isn’t a hot way to attract students. But hm, is it as easy as they claim or was that just a way to lure students into the school?
Minnesota certainly wasn’t as aggressive as some schools, like Drake, but I guess I will find out if things were sugarcoated (or not) in the fall.
Next on the law school reading list: Getting to Maybe.
So! I got the financial aid and housing information from the school. I actually had it in my inbox while I was bitching about not having it yet. Sorry.
The financial aid side of things is still “wait and see.” More waiting than seeing obviously.
The housing information is a little more hopeful. I’m speaking to another first year who I may end up rooming with.
I also applied to Gamma Eta Gamma, a legal fraternity which offers housing for $300 a month. Holler.
