Law school, I'm finding, is a learning experience.
Ha ha, right? No but really. For instance, the living situation. I live in a dorm. There are four of us in this apartment, and until the day we moved in, none of us had ever met. We have a tiny kitchen. We have one refrigerator. We have no dishwasher. We have tissue walls, and different habits, and study methods, and tastes in music. We have different personalities.
On the one hand, it’s a lot like dorm life in the apartments in undergrad. And yet, so not. We are in an extremely high-stress situation. Due to studying, we spend most of our time in the dorm, so we practically live in each other’s pockets. We don’t have much time to clean. And while a family of four who all share groceries can easily fit a week’s worth of food in the freezer, four people buying groceries separately have a hard time doing it—I think there’re three or four bags of taquitoes in there right now.
Getting the hang of balancing all of that has been a huge learning experience. We stagger our shopping days, so the freezer never gets too full. We keep a list on the fridge so we know whose turn it is to take out the trash. Everyone washes their own dishes. We have roommate meetings to discuss things that need to be changed and dealt with. We try to keep to the quiet hours. It takes a lot more patience and forgiveness and compromise than I expected.
Learning how to budget when you’re living entirely on loans has been a learning experience too. 1L’s don’t usually get paid for summer jobs; we’re slaves. So no money will be made this summer. Maybe not next summer either. That means that every dollar spent has to be carefully analyzed first—do I really need to spend this? (No, I do not need this ice cream, much as I may want it. This chocolate, however, is a necessity…) If I really need this item, is there somewhere else I can buy it more cheaply? Because the more money I save now, the more I have to tide me over if my car breaks down (Heaven forbid! Dory, I order you to remain in perfect working condition for at least the next two and a half years!), or if my books are more expensive next year than expected, or if I can’t find a roommate in London next semester to help lessen the cost of rent, etc.
Then there’s time management. How much time can I afford to spend studying for this class and still get my work done for the rest of them? Should I put in the extra time to make this (completely gradeless) paper perfect and not get the reading for class tomorrow finished, or should I get the reading done and do slightly less well on my paper? How much will not reading effect my ability to understand the subject of class tomorrow if I choose the paper? Combine time management and budgeting together: is time or money worth more? Do I spend the time to drive the twenty or thirty minutes to the store, shop, and drive back to save on shipping; or do I save my time and pay to have the item shipped directly to me?
So you see, my first semester of law school has taught me a lot of things. And, you know, I’m learning law stuff too. ^_^
