Missing the law school
As I sit in my classes and work on my papers for my Masters of Social Work program, I often catch myself thinking back to what I was doing this time last year. I’ll be in Laboratory class practicing therapy skills, and I’ll flash back to a fevered moment, cramming for Contracts. I’ll be browsing databases for articles on group dynamics, and I find my mind floating to papers I wrote last year on causation. Do I miss the law? Nah, probably not. I cannot even believe I am hearing myself say this, but I think what I miss is being a law student. Without the all-encompassing intensity of it, who am I anymore?
For better or for worse, the intensity of 1L bonded me deeply with my fellow students. One might even call the experience slightly traumatising. If I was cramming for Contracts, it meant that I was doing it along with my classmates, who were also feeling the same way. I miss that terrible sense of camaraderie, even if it was over coffee at 11:30 pm under the too bright lights of Bora Laskin. Social work is interesting in and of itself, and the people are lovely, but the nature of the program is very different. Many people commute. We have several classes a week. And at the end of the day, people really, truly, go home. The program does not take over your life quite like law. While finding out your practicum placement is definitely a formative experience, it doesn’t have the same gut-wrenching, identity-forming quality as call day for the 2L OCIs. It may be an exciting moment, but it doesn’t chew you up and spit you out. It doesn’t give you some sort of twisted blood bond with others who know what you have been through.
My friends have moved on. We comforted each other over exams and papers in 1L, but I’m not there anymore to share their struggles. They commisserated over their OCIs with other people— people who knew exactly what they were going through. I won’t really know what it was like for them. I will go through OCIs (or not, but that’s the subject of another article) with the incoming 1Ls, who are having their own deeply formative experiences, also without me. When I return to the law school, I will be stuck between two groups – one that left me behind, and one that has deeply bonded in my absence. I wonder where my place will be.
You could say I have Stockholm Syndrome. You could say that I don’t know how good I have it right now. But I’ll say it — I miss the law school. I miss the friends I made, I miss the connections I forged, I miss the connections that I know I am missing as my friends move ahead in their journey without me.
I’ll say it — so sue me.
