The Adjustment

The adjustment to 1L life is a two-pronged adjustment: adapting from a do-nothing summer, and adjusting from Georgetown (this is only somewhat Georgetown--more later).  First, from 3 months of relaxation and very few, if any responsibilities:  obviously, there's a bit a system shock.  While over the summer, I was able to kick the collegiate habits of staying up until 3 am, eating complete garbage, and Guitar Hero, I developed new ones.  A renewed appreciation for television? Check.  Google Reader? Probably the best, worst thing to happen to me.  An obsessive focus on the 2008 campaign? Inevitable.  Now, spending hours on end reading, with easy access to both television and internet, has been a bit of a challenge, but my desire to be learning about something a bit more important than how the team looks at Kenner League has been able to subordinate those other things.  

The adjustment from Georgetown life has been helped by a number of factors:

-The amount of work I have.  It's just... more.  Or, more accurately, it's more work, more consistently.   Think of it as having a 5 pager due each day in terms of how much time you put into it.  Then repeat each day, Sunday-Thursday/Friday.  You simply don't have as much time to screw around as much.  Doesn't mean I don't get out to socialize, it just means that I have to really sock away the work a bit more.

-The summer off in between school and college.  Huge benefit.  People often ask, "what did you do before you came here?" I tell them that I came straight from undergrad, which is true, but I really want to tell them that I took 3 months sabbatical, because that's what has been just as helpful.  In that time off, I was able to recharge my batteries spiritually, economically (somewhat), and infrastructure-wise.  It also helped give me distance between My Georgetown Experience™, filled with extracurriculars, late nights, and tons of people, and 1L.  Instead of trying to relive Georgetown on a new campus, I've made my peace with my time on the Hilltop, drew lessons from it, and then focused my goals for the next 3 years.  As a result, I've resisted the temptation to join every club, I don't go out for the sake of going out, and I've prioritized getting the most out of my classes and trying (the next 2 years) to position myself for a job/field that I'm interested in, through class and through clubs/activities/internships.  Obviously, I was massively lucky to have had the opportunity to take 3 months for myself, but it was also essential.

I'm also much cleaner and more organized than I used to be, as an added plus.

The Classes: Translating Section 3

I'm in the alternative curriculum here, known as Curriculum B or Section 3, so my classes don't line up exactly with the standard first-year curriculum.  I've got Legal Justice Seminar (an overview of American legal thought, particularly since Reconstruction, which is definitely unique to Section 3), Property and Time (basically, a property class, taught by a legal historian who has uncanny knowledge of arcane legal details), Legal Process and Society (Civil Procedure), Legal Practice (Research and Writing), and Bargain, Exchange, and Liability (Torts and Contracts).   

Often, Section 3/Curriculum B gets called "Hippie Law," due to the non-traditional format of the curriculum, the leftward tilt of the faculty, and the leftward tilt of the students.  As far as I can tell, only the first element--non-traditional classes--seems to distinguish the Section from the other sections, as most professors here appear to lean to the left, regardless of section, as well as the students (although there does seem to be a sizable bent toward public interest careers in Section 3--not sure how that compares across other sections).  But if learning about the philosophical/historical context for legal thinking makes me a hippie, then pass the tie-dye and the granola (especially the granola).  Maybe it's my interdisciplinary background in American Studies that attracts me to this sort of approach, but for upwards of $60,000 a year, I don't mind doing a little extra reading to have more in my intellectual "backpack" and to get more than just a "recitation of spells."