The law school building contains brilliant people, but has the aesthetic appeal of a leaky basement. This is why so many of us sneak over to the business school, which has windows and a full-service Starbucks. Behold:
Usually the view is great, but today’s snowstorm makes the usual view of Downtown Minneapolis a little hard to see…
Downtown is still there, somewhere, sort of... but the snowed-out view is still preferable to the dungeon law school building.
It is easy to fall into a funk during finals.
Joel and I had a conversation about law school on the way home from Thanksgiving dinner. It was a familiar whine-fest and the gist was:
“It’s funny how law schools don’t tell prospective students how irrelevant “prestige” is or how shitty our employment prospects are. This is something you realize halfway through, when you’re stuck.”
I felt like a student who found out his online technical college wasn’t accredited. This was an expensive waste of time. Shitty-shitty-bang-bang, wah-wah-wah. The whining and apathy probably wasn’t easy to listen to, but luckily Joel couldn’t figure out a good way to kick me out of the car at the nearest bus stop.
I try to take the dog on at least one 5 mile walk every day during the few hours of winter daylight. These extended walks are perfect for thinking things through. During today’s walk I reminded myself of why I chose to go to UMN and not a free school:
The ass busting skill is the most vital one to develop in law school. Most of the other stuff is superficial and unspeakably irrelevant in the real world.
I am MacGyver, and I attend a school of MacGyvers.
This is exactly why this is going to be a stress-free finals season – it’s not about the grade, but about working hard and learning the material. The point is not being able to make a rocket out of a ballpoint pen and a paper clip better than the next guy, but to be able to make the rocket out of the ballpoint pen. Once we get outside of the McGuiver academy we can use our skills in the real world, and good things will happen.3
1 Work hard, smart, and crushing the competition with a smile. One of the best ways to teach people to work hard is to find the smartest students and grade them on a curve. Even the C student in that situation knows how to bust his (or her) ass, and will be fine in the real world. This is why the vast majority of UMN students pass the bar, and go on to succeed in a variety of random career fields.
2 What is outrageous is that one of my orientation speakers told me this last year – she said that the point of law school is not the perfect grades, the journal position, or national ABA moot court team – the point is to learn how to work hard and graduate. I guess I just had to come to that conclusion myself…
3 Method vs. result… akin to the true athlete and the person who ruins their health for the temporary beach body.
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.
We had a mandatory statutory interpretation research lecture today. The research librarian was pretty funny:
Librarian: “You know how there are those people who get scared talking in front of large groups of people? Well, I should have checked where they keep the defibrillators beforehand…”
Librarian: “This is a diagram from Westlaw. I don’t think it’s that helpful but other people have told me it is. Personally it makes me a little dizzy, a little nauseous..”
Librarian: “And everyone just loves microfiche! Typically when we tell someone that we have the document in microfiche they suddenly don’t need it anymore…”
He also mentioned that there was a Soulja Boy version of School House Rock’s “How a Bill Becomes a law”… and sure enough…
So what happened in 2008?
I graduated from college. During my last semester I did everything from bowling…
…to exploring haunted missile bases/ insane asylums.
There were also trips to the clubhouse (South Beach, Little Havana, Wilton Manors, etc.)
Hark, orientation is over.
Four years ago, during orientation for undergrad I was told, “You’ll never meet a more interesting and diverse group of people than in college.” This was a lie.
In undergrad diversity was superficially measured by skin color and nationality. The range of experience and talent at law school is far greater than in college. A big chunk of the students in my section are changing careers, have traveled extensively, are married with young children, ie, developed passions and ambitions and done something interesting with their lives.
The conversation at orientation’s social events was seldom dry.
As one of the least experienced, fresh-from-undergrad kids, I at least have the grace of coming from somewhere exotic. But after answering a few Miami questions and getting yet another ominous description of a Minnesota winter, I tend to do more listening.
During orientation day #2 we had breakfast with the section, a few lectures, and then a student activities fair. Yes. We had Canefest: The law school version.
And, like a freshman at UMiami’s Canfest, I signed up for just about everything. My inbox might regret that decision. We’ll see.
I was also on black watch for day 2 of orientation – after day 1, one of my housemates said, “Yeah, you’re the only black guy in our class.”
Me: “Really?”
Housemate #2: “How do you not notice that you’re the only black guy in your section?”
Me: “I don’t sit down and do a headcount. I don’t think like that.
Housemate #1: “Well, I’m pretty sure you’re the only one in the entire class.”
Me: “How in the world…there are like 200+ of us. I’ll check tomorrow. I’m on blackwatch.”
And sure enough, when the entire class assembled in Lockhart Hall, I realized that I’m the only black person in the class. Well – there’s one guy who may or may not be another halfling like me. I’m not sure. Who knows, we may have a few Mariah’s hiding in the class too, but I doubt it.
At the activities fair I went to the Black Law Students table. I met one of the members and said, “Um, yeah. I think I’m it for the class.” He agreed and welcomed me to the club.
On the bright side I’ll probably have an e-board position next year!
And the law school is not devoid of racial minorities. There are several Hispanics, Asian, and East-Indian students and probably others that I haven’t run into yet. The experiences and ideas of my classmates are more valuable than their shade anyway (although 0.5% black student percentage is pretty weak for a top 25 law school.)
Oh, and there was another person signed up on the Black Law Students enrollment sheet. Turns out he’s from Miami but attended the University of Florida. At least I’m not the only Miamian in the class. 305, DJ Khaled and all that jazz. We are global aren’t we?
After the activities fair we had information sessions which were important, but at varying degrees of interest. We then had a section dinner at a local restaurant.
Friday began with a library tour, then a case briefing session. There was then this awkward hour where some people were getting their books and lockers, and those of us who had already done that had nothing to do.
During that sort-of break, Stella (a housemate) and I went to the other bank to the Health Services department to figure out how to cancel our student health insurance. (UMN, like most schools, automatically bills health insurance to all students.) I also picked up some allergy meds at the pharmacy since the generic whatever-they-are-called from Target weren’t working.
We then ran errands at the student union and were about two minutes late to the, DUM DUM DUM Laptop session!
And the law school knows what it’s doing. They waited until the last possible minute to give us those student laptops because the second we got laptops the entire class tuned out.
One thing I was not happy about was that the computer people HID windows calendar. Windows calendar is Vista’s version of iCal and XP’s Outlook calendar program.
I live by Windows calendar.
So I was a bit worried when it wasn’t on the start menu, or available through search…or on the installed programs list… Wtf eh?!? It took one of the computer tech people 10 minutes to find it on my laptop. Hmf.
But apparently I’m the only person in my section who is dependent on Windows Calendar so it was just my problem… dork moment? Maybe.
Afterwards about 8 of us went to Chipotle, and then I went home. I was thoroughly orientated and I wanted to try out the school gym – which is huge but slightly awkward… More on that later because this is way too long.