I didn’t think I would originally come to UChicago when I first was accepted. At that point (roughly one year ago, or a little more), I had been accepted to several other schools, some of which were higher in the US News rankings and some of which offered me much more generous scholarships. But, I decided I would visit the school anyway just in case and see if I was missing anything. After all, I had never been to Chicago and thought this might be a great opportunity to visit a new city. When I got here, I found something extremely unique (to reference the Admissions Committee’s 0L e-mail titles). Professors were actively conversing with students not only about legal doctrines and principles. But also about their favorite beers, Cubs or White Sox games, and other non-law-related topics. It seemed like everyone (student to student, faculty to faculty, and faculty to student) genuinely got along. It was this feeling of community that ultimately drew me here. While other schools were certainly impressed me with who they got to speak at their Admitted Students Weekends or whatever, I preferred Chicago.

After coming here and experiencing life as a 1L for almost two quarters, I can say that this first impression was pretty correct. Every week at Coffee Mess (free bagels, donuts, fruit, yogurt, and coffee) on Wednesday mornings, you can frequently and often see several deans and professors sitting down with students to chat about really anything. Yes, sometimes it’s kind of annoying in that your group might be talking about something incredibly inappropriate and then be quickly stifled by an oncoming sexagenarian … no pun intended, get it? Yeah, that was a lame joke. Anyway, it can sometimes be annoying, but most of the time it’s pretty cool. As another example, we recently turned in our winter memo (the open one that had me doing crazy amounts of research and what not). Just next to the “turn-in boxes” the Wine Mess Committee or something (wine mess = crazy cheap drinks and free food every friday afternoon at The Law School) provided free mimosas and several of our 1L professors cooked the lowly and depressed first-years some delicious pancakes for breakfast.

Point in brief: where else can you get that? Maybe other law schools have similar professor-student relations and maybe I’m wrong. But anyway, I just thought it was cool.

Sorry if this post was pretty lame and there is less complaining about how lame law school life is. The truth is, after a certain amount of weeks of the same grinding routine, you get kind of used to it. Now that the memo is done, it’s time to get to outlining … which, by the way, is the most boring and trivial (and yet necessary) activity created by man … besides maybe ice dancing, although this last activity is by no means necessary.

Lastly, maybe things aren’t looking so gloomy anymore for me partly because I’ve recently been pursuing a new special someone and I seem to have somehow managed to get her to like me. So that’s nice.

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