Law School can feel a bit like a train heading at breakneck speed to the rest of your life: Survive 1L (make sure you have enough extra-curriculars!), find a summer job (do OCIs and infirms!), get a job (hopefully), spend second year summer chained to a desk (and pretending to adore every minute of your indentured servitude), finish 3L (why do we even bother with this year?), write the bar, article (more indentured servitude!), get called to the bar, become an associate, etc, etc…
Some people choose law because they like this train and I don’t blame them. The lure of a relatively stable life-style in an increasingly unstable workforce is appealing. I, however, am not one of those people. I chose law because I wanted to do something challenging and exciting with my life. (To all of you snorting into your coffee at my “naive” idealism: just let me keep telling myself this dream for a couple more years, it’s gotten me this far.)
Usually I feel good about this decision. However, by the beginning of 2L second semester, after agonizing over another paper that was going to fall on the curve where it always did, I started getting that “OMG I NEED TO GET OFF THE TRAIN!” feeling and decided I needed a detour. STAT. Like magic, the email arrived in my inbox, “Exchange info session (Free pizza)”.
[Skip forward two months.]
“GLASGOW!?! W.T.F.”
The words spoken (yelled) at my computer screen last March when I found out where I was going on exchange. I hadn’t even put Glasgow on my list, having opted for the more “mature” masters of Comparative Constitutional Law at Central European University in Budapest.
“You’ll love it!!!” My mother said that evening as I pouted into my soup. “Remember that program on TLC about Glasgow I told you about? I’ve wanted to go ever since!”
“Mom, that was about innovative ways Glasgow deals with its heroin problem…”
“Details… It looked like a lovely place, very green!”
“It rains all the time! I’ll get depressed with the lack of sun!”
“You’ll finally get to make use of those over-priced rain boots of yours. Besides, your father and I have been dying for a reason to visit.”
“…”
More pouting into my soup.
However, after researching the University (and rewatching Trainspotting and Braveheart), I decided, why not? I asked for a challenge and they gave me one heck of a challenge (have you heard a Glaswegian accent?!), Glasgow it is.
One thing you should to know when applying to Exchange programs is that Canada and the US are just weird when it comes to Law. The rest of the world does it as an undergrad degree. This can lead to lots of awkward questions about your age/quarter-life crisis in which you start finding imaginary wrinkles/intense frustration when no one understands you bitching about the constant engagements that keep popping up on your newsfeed. 10 months from now you’ll be starting your articles and entering the adult world and most likely your flatmates and classmates were born in the early to mid 90s. Thus you arrive and are faced with two options:
Option 1: Decide to be mature about things. I decided it would be fun to “branch out” and didn’t bring anyone from U of T with me. In a position like this, you can cling to the one other Canadian law exchange student. You’ll soon realize you have 25 mutual friends which gives you at least 4 weeks of gossip to fuel conversation. Consider your time on exchange as an opportunity to visit cultural land marks, get in shape, learn to cook and pursue posh European hobbies like skeet shooting and horseback riding. Maybe even start doing your readings for class.
But this is 3L, and I didn’t work my ass off for two years to spend all my weekends in a library twice the age of Canada! As Renton in Trainspotting so aptly put it “Choose life… But why would I want to do a thing like that?”
This leads to Option 2:
Remind yourself you’ve only got 10 months left of freedom, pat yourself on the back for going it alone (if no one from Ontario sees you sitting on the curb eating fish and chips with your hands at 4am, did it even really happen? My money is on no…), tell anyone who asks you’re 20 (up it to 23 if you want to scare off a barely legal fresher on a mission to get laid), join the most aggressive student union you can find on campus and sign up for every single course you always wanted to take but didn’t because it wasn’t “marketable”.
Okay, so I cheated and went with both options… but having that freedom is the beauty of being on exchange! Some days I wake up and a hipster themed pub crawl ending with Kamikaze shots at a bar called Vodka-Wodka sounds like the best idea in the world! (Downside of Option 2: Coffee in Glasgow is expensive… Alcohol is not. This makes hungover class the next day doubly painful.) Other days my unmarketable “Institutions and Jurisdictions of the EU” class is so fascinating I find myself working in the law library until close. I still haven’t learned to cook, but I did join the running club (“the University of Glasgow Hares and Hounds”) and the Law Society (Bi-weekly open bar events… I’m not sure if this is an amazing or terrible idea on their part).
Going it alone was daunting at first, especially with very few other Canadian students. However, it’s been refreshing being surrounded by people who don’t understand (or care about) OCIs/articling/Canadian law jobs/where U of T even is. It’s embarrassing to say, but I’d kind of forgotten I could define myself in other ways.
So here we are, seven weeks into my adventure, how’s this little detour working out for me? FUCKING AWESOME. See you in January Everyone!!
