What I’ve Learned In Law School So Far

by Mike Band
Orientation
I’ll admit that I remember precious little about orientation. I know that I was wearing a tie and that by the end of the week a small but important piece of my soul had withered and died… I think maybe that was the point.
Law students prefer to sit when drinking
Towards the end of orientation week, though perhaps slightly before it technically concluded, Luke “I Am Montana and So Can You” Casey and I felt the need to socialize a bit. It didn’t take us long to figure out that, aside from the library, the best place to find a bunch of law students on a given night is at the bars. Perhaps I ought to qualify what I mean by “bars,” as both the plurality and inspecificity of the word may be a bit misleading. Obviously by “the bars” I mean “The Garden” because for a long time it seemed to be the only damned place anyone in this school ever hung out. Pool tables evidently frighten law students. Coincidentally, this would be both the first and last time anyone from the 2L class was seen outside of the law school.
Nightmare on Elm Street, starring The Law as Freddy Krueger
Sometime in early October I had my first law dream. It was very troubling. Law school had invaded my precious slumber like [insert generic blitzkrieg reference here] and before finally waking in a cold sweat, I had spent what felt like a miserable eternity toiling to find the issue and rule for a baseball game played on the moon by me and a bunch of talking dogs (don’t judge me). Here’s the thing: moondogball doesn’t have an issue or a rule. It just doesn’t, man.
The Consequences
All law students (or at least this one, and my milkshake brings all the boys to the yard, so I think the rest of you should be happy to have me as the basis of generalization) have to balance two important but conflicting needs: the need to procrastinate and the need to get shit done. Years ago, I managed to convince myself that I can accomplish the latter most effectively by indulging in the former until I have no choice but to frantically assault my keyboard from late-evening the night before a due date until sometime approaching or after dawn on the due date itself. In the past this was fine, as I could just hand in the assignment and then either zombie my way through class or, more likely, go home and induce a coma. It turns out that in law school, however, one is expected to attend and be ready to participate in class on a daily basis. Immediate consequences for being a zombie in class include a hopeless fight against drifting off every 25 seconds for a nice game of moondogball and, if you’re especially lucky, incoherently bumbling your way through the case you didn’t read the night before by attempting to simultaneously read, comprehend, and summarize it and looking like/sounding like/being a dumbass. The consequence for missing class is mostly limited to putting up with the army of oh-so-clever turncoats who will be flipping you shit about how very responsible you are for the entirety of the subsequent day and then probably again later that weekend. Sam Thilo, I’m looking at you, buddy boy.
Thanksgiving is a good time to get work done
I really did plan on getting a lot of studying in over Thanksgiving break. Instead I played Guitar Hero 2 and slept until noon every day. I regret nothing.
How to study
I, like many of you, never studied for a thing in my life prior to this delightful little adventure. While that freed up a helluva lotta time for the first 16 years of my education, it also left me completely inept when it came to studying. I seriously had no idea how in the hell it was accomplished. Even more mysterious was the idea of actually studying with another person. When friends/associates/secret enemies mentioned that they were planning on getting together to study, I would nod and then, when they left, begin furrowing my brow in a vain attempt to understand their meaning. In my head, I envisioned a pack of wolves fighting a large bear. I did this because I had no idea how to even begin picturing how more than one person would study and because I wonder if a pack of wolves could take down a large bear. Eventually I figured out that you don’t study with another person to try and learn more, you do it so that intermittently you can stop and have a 15 minute exchange about how much you both hate law school/law school/law school and also share YouTube videos.
And in conclusion…
At this point I’ve successfully wasted an hour or so and should probably get back to work on this damnable paper.