Night of the Living Law School: (S.)tudents(A.)re(R.)eally(S.)ick
Cargo shorts, sandals, and a t-shirt. That was my wardrobe at this time last year. Every day I would wake up 15 minutes before class and throw on these garments, bolt out the door, and enjoy the windows-down ten minute drive to a palm-tree lined campus filled with scantily clad “students” and home to an air conditioned business school that you were glad to get inside on the warmer days. If and when there was a breeze it was a welcome one and when you talked to your friends up north you’d laugh in their stupid frostbitten ears as they walked to class in the slush, scuffing their boots over dirt-laden snowy curbs.
All this is playing now like a Corona commercial in the front of my head. It’s cold out now and I’m pissed when I think back to what I was wearing at this time last year. The terrible decision to move back north was most assuredly the bonehead play of the year. What’s worse is the feeling I get every morning that leads me to suspect that I’m fucking pregnant, sick of waking up early to go to class.
I get in my car and turn on the heated seats, which after two years of ownership were first used around mid-November. It’s that Punxsutawnically pathetic time of year and the day is fast approaching when Bill Murray realizes that he either has to do a Wes Anderson comedy or a Jim Jarmusch indie for the next six weeks. The windows are up and it’s not long enough of a drive for me to enjoy any of the hot air. Luckily I’m in law school and this is not that big of a deal.
I park on the street and am careful not to slip on the black ice that the city has not had the time to salt.[1] I’m not a big fan of dressing up and my attire usually just consists of shoes, t-shirt, zip-down sweatshirt, and jeans.
Amazingly though, I have yet to become sick this winter. I say amazingly because of the plague infestation that seems to have befallen the majority of my classmates. The classroom is a cacophonous orchestra of coughs; sneezes met with obligatory G-d bless yous; blown noses propelled into discarded Kleenex. It seems like every time I turn my head, somebody coughs in it and the only lump to check for is the streptococcal one in my throat.
Today I was on call for my criminal law class and was prepared to the point where I was only slightly unconfident that I wouldn’t look like a complete fuckup. I think that the important thing in situations such as this is to take the audience down a peg or two. After years of trying I’ve finally come to the realization that the classic everyone-in-their-underwear visualization just doesn’t work and is largely disturbing.
The only real issue that I have with being on-call is how I come off to all the ladies in the house. I think I’ve finally figured it out, although it took me until after I was called upon to fix the problem. Just think to yourself that every girl in here has, at one point or another, sucked at least one dick and further, has probably taken at least one scoop of money shot to the cranium. I’m not sure why, but this is somewhat comforting and may be employed for future classroom discussions.
Nonetheless, I still had one of those tunnel vision blackout type episodes where you get called on at 3:00 and wake-up to find that it’s now 3:30. I felt like Charlie Sheen in Platoon, like people were yelling in my face and I couldn’t hear them and Tom Berenger and Willem Defoe are super-pissed because the “token black guy who dies” just killed Phong’s goat. I’m run back to my foxhole as fast as I can, all the while trying to remember what the hell just happened. The following are excerpts taken from the professor’s comments to several of my answers. “
1. [nodding his head in agreement ] “Yes, sometimes role play is good,”[2]
and upon my final answer…
2. I now release you. You are now free to drive drunk Mr. Cole.
This is just a minor indication of what goes on when I am expected to answer a question.[3]
While all of this is going on I’m supposed to be looking for some kind of summer job. These are not really jobs though and are more like coffee-making gopher internships where you don’t get paid because you haven’t finished your second year yet. There was a career fair this week with a lot of organizations and public law groups like the National Whistleblowers Center[4] looking for their respective cabana clerks. Career fair is a bit of a misnomer to me. There’s no three-legged race, pie-eating contest, corn-on-the-cob eating contest, or any other kind of contest besides who has the glossiest paper for their resumes. If there’s no funnel cake, it’s not a fucking fair.
The teacher is saying something now and I can’t help but wishing that either I or the teacher was stoned. It’s time to get the hell out of here and back out to the heated seats. Off to buy some Vap-O-Rub to spread it on like a fucking force field from the law school zombies attacking on all sides. Luckily there is an escape route. I just booked a ticket to Vegas where I will revert to last year’s sandals and shorts attire for at least one March weekend. I’m out this bitch, I got a doctor’s appointment in the morning and then it’s on with the one-sided fight. I’m turning my head, but I’m not coughing.
[1] Although they do have the time to give me a parking ticket despite the fact that the meter had failed and the same parking attendant who gave me the ticket told me it was okay to park there when I asked her about it an hour ago.
[2] To be fair, this comment was made in response to a joke I had made that somehow elicited laughter from both the professor and the class (real or fake laughter, I’ll take it). No matter. Going to law school for the jokes is like shopping at Nordstrom’s for the piano music.
[3] Speaking of final answers, I’m really loving the demographic makeup of my international law class which is coincidentally multicultural. Ever since I saw Slumdog Millionaire I’ve had this uncanny attraction to Indian girls…and Regis…and millionaires.
[4] Not joking.
Second Semester: Taking a piss on the apocalypse
After a three week break, classes have once again resumed and I enter Monday’s class at 10:58 a.m. At this point in my legal education I shouldn’t really be surprised that everyone is already seated, laptops at the ready for the class to begin, but am nonetheless disgusted and reminded of why law school sucks. I think that some of these people have somehow managed to forget this nugget of truth as there is a vibe in the room that is quickly approaching some kind of zeal. It’s all very disconcerting and I take the seat closest to the door, open my bag, and remove my laptop. The wireless isn’t working and I can’t get to Google to pilfer someone else’s summary of the case we were supposed to read for today. Shit. Having just purchased my books on Saturday, they have not arrived. It’s the first day and I’m behind on the reading. More importantly, I can’t get to ESPN. Fuck me right?
My new professor walks into the room and sets her books close to the podium. She doesn’t move around nearly as much as my first semester professors and seems nervous. When she does walk, she cautiously touches her back heel to the front part of her other foot. She sounds like a cross between Mary Kathryn Gallagher and every character that Kristen Wiig has ever played on SNL. Her voice is cracking and she folds her arms as she tells us how to “wrestle” the assignments. I look around the room at my fellow students and notice a few changes in personnel.
In the past semester, every student was grouped into sections whereby the only people we would share classes with would be those within our designated section. These are pretty much the only people you notice or associate with for the entire first semester of law school and by the end of it you’re fucking sick to death of seeing the same gloomy faces. If it’s any consolation, they all probably feel the same way. Although this is still the case, each student may take an elective class whereby there are no section barriers. This is my elective class and to me it is a welcome sight. Scouting the room, I now realize how deprived I was in terms of my section’s talent pool.
There’s a portrait on the wall of one of the founders’ of the law school that looks exactly like a kid in the third row except thirty years older. But this is not important and I look away from Dorian Gray. Another dude walks in with his shirt tucked into his jeans and he’s now closer to the door than I am. I go over all of this quickly and look to the aforementioned influx of attractive women.
In the front row, where a lot of hot girls always sit, there’s a redhead with a visible star tattooed on her foot and just below her pinky toe. I’m sitting in the second row and have to look back like a creep to check out the rest of the class. In the back of the room there’s a girl with a Grateful Dead sticker affixed to her laptop with no visible signs that she could actually like the Grateful Dead. I feel the girl sitting next to me nudge me with what I presume to be the course syllabus and I lock eyes with her for maybe a quarter second too long.
There’s another one in the front row, blonde with a dull look on her face and permanently pursed lips, typing away at something the teacher’s saying. Apparently the teacher has just said something important as there’s a chatter of typing around the room. She’s wearing a white sweater and pink meet-me-in-the-back-of-the-library shoes. It’s at this moment that I decide that I will remain here on the class seating chart.
Note: In the interests of full disclosure I’ve remained abstinent (not by choice) for the past four months so I’m taking out an indulgence for the previous and subsequent paragraphs.
The girl with the star tattoo clutches her pen. She has this fascinating oral fixation with the thing and twirls it about that facial vicinity whenever she’s about to raise her hand. I’m inclined to inquire further into the matter until the teacher answers her question, prompting her to bite down hard on the blue ballpoint. Nevermind.
The real reason, besides boredom, that I’m looking around at everybody is to see the general disposition of the class after our initial examination period. Personally, I have adopted the unflattering habit of crossing my arms and lightly squeezing my puny biceps. A lot of people in class have other body tics similar to this, such as putting their hands close to their mouths to look as if they have nothing to say, or people who squeeze their hands for reassurance when it only appears that they are cold. This is primarily due to the absence of our first semester grades that we all await with morbid anticipation. Besides that not much has changed.
People keep telling me that law school is a means to an end but at this point it seems that it’s just plain mean. As for an end, I can’t say that there’s one in sight. It has been almost a month since we’ve taken our last exam and I’ve probably checked my grades multiple times a day, every day since December 18th and the start of the winter break. I have even developed a facial tic akin to the one that you get when you’re about to get punched in the face. At the same time, I usually cover my eyes like you do when you don’t want to see “guy butt” on Skin-a-max but still don’t want to miss anything.
Thus far, I have gotten two grades back and can’t say that I’m surprised to find myself in the lower totem pole of the class. The rest of the class looks similarly uncertain and I really want a beer. The girl with the Grateful Dead sticker blinks her eyes hard enough to stay awake and I look back at the clock. 11:07. Fuck me right?
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