Archive for May, 2009

Okay, okay, I get it. Nobody feels sorry for me because most people have to make cross-country moves for law school and I’m probably only going to move a couple blocks away. But still! Finding an apartment in New York City is super stressful and makes me believe that Dante forgot to include a circle in Hell reserved for real estate brokers.

Columbia is one of the few top law schools that guarantees housing for all three years. As with most things that at first seem too good to be true, so was this. Right now I’m living in a converted three bedroom apartment with two other girls on the upper east side. I thought University housing would save me a considerable amount of money so I wanted to take a tour of the apartments when I was at an admitted students program a few weeks ago. Only the studio apartments interested me since, at 25, I’m far too old and ornery to throw myself into a random mix of strangers for the next three years like I did in undergrad. So I toured a studio and it was cute, but FAR more money than I expected to pay. I don’t know if you’ve heard, but we’re in a somewhat troubled housing market right now. Incidentally, that works out quite nicely for me, a renter. But apparently CLS hasn’t gotten the memo.

So I’ve decided to find a new apartment on my own. I’m torn about moving to the west side though. I really don’t want to do it. As it is, I’m far enough away from my friends (who mostly live in Brooklyn or Queens). But my tour guide said most students (something like 95%) live on campus and I worry that I’ll feel socially alienated living so “far” away. Then again, I want to make sure I maintain my non-law school life (see: Resolutions) which means putting in face time with my friends in the boroughs.

In New York, apartment listings generally pop up about 30 days prior to move-in. Browsing Craigslist.com, I’m still seeing ads for June 1 move-in dates even though May is more than half over. I understand that not everyone has an obsessive compulsive need to plan out every detail of their lives months in advance, but this is a little ridiculous.

All that aside, here is the REAL dilemma: I put in my notice at work and informed my boss that I would like July 2 to be my last day. I really wanted a nice long break before law school starts and I give my soul over to Columbia. Six weeks ought to do it. But what I failed to consider is New York’s collective procrastination when it comes to apartment listings. Ideally, for a September 1 lease (as my current lease runs out August 31 meaning I get to move after classes start – but another ranting post on that later) I would start apartment hunting in late July/early August. But at that point, I will no longer be gainfully employed. Landlords like to see recent pay stubs, the previous year’s tax return, a letter of employment, etc. from a lease applicant. I need to prove I make 40x the rent. Failing that, I would need a guarantor who makes 80x the rent. But I don’t have one of those lying around.

I’ll wait until the June listings come out and if anything acceptable turns up for September, I’ll jump on it. If, however, I’m forced to wait until later in the summer…well then I might just be forced into committing some kind of crafty deception. I’ll keep you updated.

Last night I dreamed that I was sitting in the audience at Columbia’s annual Law Revue show. (For the uninitiated, a lot of law schools stage a live show in the spring semester that parodies life in law school. At Northwestern’s admitted students weekend, I got to go to their show – Wigmore Follies. I thought it was great – although a lot of it did go over my head.) Anyway, I can’t remember too many of the details of the CLS show in my dream, just that it was mind-numbingly boring.

While most rising 1Ls seem to be concerned with the workload, the unfamiliarity of the study of law, exams, and job prospects, all I can seem to think about is the potential nerdiness of my classmates. Even though I was mildly assuaged by our placement on the party rankings (if not the actual rank, at least the company is good – Vandy* and GW? I’ll take it!), I keep hearing stereotypes of CLS students being super pretentious, uptight, and gunner-ish. And that’s just so not me.

At Wellesley, the gunner equivalent was called a That Girl. That Girl was usually a sophomore, (and as a rule, sophomores never have anything relevant to say) and she would raise her hand and proceed to monopolize the class hour bragging about her latest humanitarian trip to Uganda and generally wasting everyone’s time. Not to be obnoxious (which, by the way, is how I like to preface every intentionally obnoxious thing I say), but for $40,000 a year, I want to hear the one with the Ph.D talk, thankyouverymuch.

End gunner rant.

To be fair, I did meet a couple of very cool people at one of the CLS admit days. But who knows, they might all decide to go somewhere else.

I think what’s bothering me is that I had a really hard time giving up Northwestern in favor of Columbia. While I was never keen on moving to Chicago, I really fell in love with the school when I visited last March. I met some really awesome people and I really believed them when they spoke of the collegial, note-sharing atmosphere of the school. In the aforementioned Wigmore Follies there was joke about a student being called on in class and waiting for someone to IM the answer via Gchat. You really got the feeling that it was a tight-knit class and people genuinely wanted to help each other out.

I don’t know why, but I don’t get that feeling as much from CLS. I was pretty certain I would be going to Northwestern, but I was waiting until the last day possible, April 30, to pay the $750 deposit because I was waiting on Columbia (who took their damn sweet time in sending me a decision). Don’t get me wrong, getting into Columbia was probably the best day of my life – but it was still very hard to turn down a school I loved for one I didn’t know, no matter how much sense it made.

Even though I knew shockingly little about CLS when I forked over the deposit, I know that I made the right choice in choosing to attend. My life is here in New York, my whole family is in New Jersey. This is where I want to practice, this is where I want to be. In case CLS does live up to its uptight stereotype, I’ll have to keep all that in mind.

Besides, Chicago is f-ing freezing.

*A friend of mine is a rising 3L at Vandy and he was less than thrilled to share the honor of the #40 spot with CLS. His justification for Vandy’s “sub-par” placement? “We were too drunk to take the survey.”

When I moved from high school to college, I spent a lot of time and energy thinking about what it meant to be making that transition. It was a rough spot – an entire system of living had to come to a close so that a new one could spring up from nowhere. Of course, about 3 days into orientation all of my lofty thoughts about transitions and growing up were lost in the shuffle of finding classrooms and making friends. I’m positive that once my feet hit the ground in law school I will, once again, be unable to imagine being anywhere else or doing anything else, yet I’m finding myself thinking a lot about what in life will change – and what will stay the same.

I’m definitely nervous about grades. I can vow every morning and every night not to become a gunner, but the facts of the situation make it hard to approach law school in a laidback fashion. The legal job market is contracting (for visceral proof, see the daily posts at abovethelaw.com ) at a painful rate, and even during the best of times it is a fact of legal life that in many (most?) cases, first semester/year grades -> get you 1L/2L summer work -> get you a job. Which means that there’s not a hell of a lot of time to make mistakes or try things out – we’ll all be shooting from the hip with huge stakes.

I’ve heard without deviation that pre-1L prep is useless – from current law students and any book I’ve picked up on the subject – so for now I guess it’s just a matter of waiting and hoping things ‘click’ when push comes to shove. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t thrive in high stress environments, so a (big?) part of me is kind of excited for it all to begin… but with that said, you know those infamous ‘taking a final for a class I never studied for while naked and falling from an airplane nightmares people have? Last night I dreamt that I was trying to buy books for my first day of classes at UVA only to find the bookstore sold out, rendering me incapable of preparing the massive, important assignment we had due on day one.

This from the guy who hasn’t had a class in 4 months and won’t be starting for another 3.

Some things never change!

Hey all! So hopefully this trend does not continue throughout law school, but I happen to be the last person to turn in their introductory “assignment.” As my infinitely creative and yet mysteriously anonymous blog name suggests, I am an incoming 1L at the University of Chicago. I would love to comment on the complexity and intricateness of what is known as the admissions cycle, but mine is not yet entirely complete as I still have wait-list offers out at Stanford and Harvard in addition to a “reserve” list offer at Columbia – basically a glorified name for a wait list (though I am fairly certain I would not accept a place in their class if offered admission . . . sorry Soleil). I would, however, love to make comments on the process of applying to law school in forthcoming posts and would be delighted to respond to any questions, comments, suggestions, etc. viewers may have about applying to law school, getting into a top 14 school, or any other “life as a law student” questions you all may have. As Ivylife suggested, please simply e-mail me at chicago_1l@t14blog.com and I’ll do my best to respond in a rather timely manner, or I may decide to answer your inquiries through the blog itself instead – so stay tuned.

For a little insight into my background, I am not a native of the Midwest and, thus, moving there will be somewhat of a change for me as I have lived my entire life in only one American city (I have spent some time abroad.) I have heard, though, that Chicago combines the feel of a large city along with the overwhelming friendliness of the region and, after having visited the city for a bit, I am extremely excited to begin my pre-professional career there. Who knows? I might end up enjoying the environment so much that I settle down there following graduation (though I understand the weather is difficult to get used to.) I also have some family in Chicago and have already met my roommate for next year so it shouldn’t be too terribly lonely from the outset. I attended an undergraduate school that often likes to think of itself as a top-tier public school, though I have seen little to legitimately prove the claim. I majored in history and law school was always sort of my planned track because in all honesty, there’s not much else you can do with that degree (not if you want to make any money anyway). I was actively involved in many student organizations and managed to get fairly high grades while also maintaining a surprisingly strong social reputation in and around my fraternity. Overall, I feel I’ve tried to live my life by the creed: “Work hard. Play hard.”

My current employment is less than rewarding as I figured I would just try to take a year off and relax a bit between undergraduate school and law school, which I strongly suggest. As parting a thought for this introduction and in a first attempt to provide some words of wisdom for those considering law school, I’ll leave you with some guidance offered to me by my omniscient pre-law advisor: If you’re even thinking about taking some time off before entering law school . . . do it. That’s all for now kids and as I said, stay tuned!