The filtration begins...

It certainly wasn't fiction on Friday when I looked around in Civil Procedure and saw a lot more empty seats than I remembered. Now, it's pure speculation, as I have yet to hear of anyone abandoning their quest for a law license, but there will always be the inevitable casualties of the work load and the fear factor that comes bundled with the academic study of law.

Take my Torts professor, for instance ... it's 9:30 a.m. on Tuesday morning, on the dot, and he strolls into the classroom that's already packed with students who think that they're prepared for class, having done the assigned reading the night before. The professor walks up to the podium, arranges his materials, looks up, and asks, "Is Adam One-el here today?"

Adam raises his hand. "All right sir, you'll be helping us out with VOSBURG v. PUTNEY." Adam's face turns ashen. Our professor then proceeds to explain how he will never ask us to recite the facts of a case, because if we can't understand the facts then we don't deserve to be in law school and should get right up and go collect our 100% tuition refund. After that, he took it upon himself to show us how little we actually knew.

Personally, I walked into that class wanting to be called on. I left that class immensely glad that I wasn't.

But don't let it fool you. After one week, law school is already more fun than any other scholastic undertaking I've ever been involved in. It's so intellectually stimulating and interesting, it's like drinking from a firehose. You read real cases involving real parties with real disputes and real judges who determine a winner and a loser and then flesh out the legal reasoning for their decision. Then you extract the legal rule from the case and synthesize it with the other legal rules, exceptions, and standards that you've learned in that area of law. Then you tie them all together to form a framework for the law that shows its birth and evolution to its current point. Then you apply the principles of the framework, forest, tree, and leaf, to new situations which demand a fresh advocate to ensure that justice is done. It's exhilirating.

All in all, the first week was great. You don't have a chance to stop and catch your breath. You wake up, go to class, go to the library to read a bit more and prepare a bit better, go to your next class, come home, prepare and brief and outline for the next day, go to bed, and then do it all over again. The stress got to some people, I noticed. It was palpable. But for me, I'm not stressed at all. My anxiety is being slowly lifted away as I notice, bit-by-bit, symptoms of it lessening or disappearing altogether. It's a blessing. I look around and I see how lucky I am to be in the position I'm in. No job, no girlfriend, no worries or distractions to prevent me from completely devoting myself to this. I can just drop everything and apply myself, and I'm thankful. I feel like I'm where I'm supposed to be, doing what I'm supposed to be doing.

Finally.