“Maybe I’ll just sleep here tonight!” I said – manically – to my friend, as we wrapped up day 1 of the OCI process down at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre. It had been a long and exhausting day, but I had grown strangely attached to the carpeted floors and black leather (or was it pleather?) chairs of the OCI area at the Centre. In a Stockholm Syndrome kind of way.
In the weeks leading up to OCIs, some upper years talked about the process with pained looks on their faces, as if they were recalling their time in ’Nam, while others seemed to think OCIs were borderline fun. Common pieces of advice were: “just be yourself and you’ll be fine,” “don’t dwell on bad interviews,” “don’t let everyone else’s nerves freak you out.”
Surprisingly, the process overall wasn’t so terrible. Yes, it was weird to be trapped in a corner of a very large building for two days. Yes, I wasn’t really that comfortable with the idea of talking about myself for hours on end. Yes, I was still breaking in my OCI shoes. But being myself came pretty naturally. Bad interviews just made it clear that I wouldn’t want to work at that place anyway. And I didn’t find my peers to be an overly nervous bunch; everyone was able to joke around during the in-between-interview times and let loose a little bit. It was almost like going on a field trip from school. A field trip where everyone wears suits and heels and stays inside all day talking to lawyers.
Some other things surprised me too. On day 1, I had three back-to-back interviews and was dreading it. I nervously stood outside the doors to the OCI room, and waited to hear the ‘you can now send in the students’ voice (where was that voice coming from anyway?). Then, all of a sudden, I was back out and had finished three interviews. They went by so quickly, and I realized I actually liked that – I could ride the same wave of adrenaline. The 2-hour wait until my next one was subsequently brutal. I also found that I genuinely enjoyed speaking to the lawyers (most of them), and I did feel like I got a little flavor of the personality of each firm. Lastly, everyone stopped caring about who had OCIs with which firms and who didn’t. Instead, people swapped stories about the kinds of questions they were getting asked, and genuinely wanted to help each other out and prepare each for the next interviews. I wouldn’t say the vibe in the student room was relaxed by any means, but the whole thing was something of a bonding experience. We were all doing this weird thing together.
