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.”

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