Wednesday, July 19, 2006

Each To His Own

During Law School orientation they tour you through the campus. You look around during the tour and it smacks of familiarity: classes with the same people all day, lockers, a cafeteria. Then it hits you and you realize, ‘This place is set up exactly like high school!’

Naturally, you revert to your high school instincts and your mind races, ‘Gotta fit in! What clique do I belong to? Who am I better than? Who am I beholden to?’

I quickly found a group of similarly preppy white guys (which in law school are in overabundance) to hang out with. Comfortable in my clique, there was nothing left to do but hope they’d open up football tryouts as I was now 60 lbs heavier than I was in high school.

Not all people see law school as high school, though. Some see it as a “do over” for undergrad. For them, law school holds the promise of parties, girls, and drinking. One such character was a fellow by the name of Jonathan.

Jonathan hadn’t matriculated directly into law school from undergrad but had worked a few years and was glad to be back on campus. While the rest of us were still dipping our toe into law school social scene with trepidation, Jonathan was wallowing in it. Jonathan talked to everyone, hosted social events, invited himself to others.

When we all picked our seats the first day, everyone segregated themselves: Me and the preppy guys in the middle left, some jocks discussing fantasy football in the back row, and 50 nerds taking most of the other seats (I think I saw some Magic cards, even). Jonathan refused to fall into a clique, though. In fact, he decided to sit in the hot girls row.

I have to admit I was impressed. Jonathan seemed to be having good and regular conversations before and after class with the hot girls thanks to that seat.

‘Maybe this wasn’t high school, actually,’ I thought, ‘If those hot girls will talk to Jonathan then the high school social dynamic must truly and finally be broken. At last, law students have risen above the base human need to divide and conquer through social positioning’

Then one day the hot girls all showed up early to class. The entire “hot girl row” was filled because now there was one chair missing, Jonathan’s chair.

When Jonathan finally showed up he had to sit in the front row with the old guy and the LLM, literally inches from the professors spittling lectures.

After that day, a new calm pervaded the room. The hot girls occupied their row unmolested. The jocks dominated the last row. Jonathan slinked in each morning to join nerds in the front, and once again, the universe was in balance.