The woes of transitioning everything from online to back in-person
How do you adjust to in-person school and social commitments when all you’ve known for the past two years is sitting in your PJs at home, with just a bucket of ice cream and a Zoom link to keep you company? As you’re all surely trying to figure that out, we have some insights…and some concerns.
We welcomed the in-person announcement with open arms. It was certainly a relief that classes were in-person, especially after having signed a five-figure yearly lease—and that is without considering the exorbitant amount of money we spend on tuition. When most of us were accepting our admissions offers, we weren’t even sure whether class was going to be in-person. This led to some anxiety-filled months. Even with the in-person announcement, there is still some lingering anxiety that we will be hit once more with a switch to online learning. Yet, with all the readings, memos, and social events going on, that is the least of our concerns.
In our (humble) opinion, it feels as if there is more stuff to go to than ever as people make up for lost time. To be fair, this is completely understandable. But balancing a social life while gunning for that HH is challenging. For 1Ls, everyone is trying to get to know each other. By this point, we assumed that the beginning of term late-night drinks and meet-and-greets would have worn off. But if anything, these social meetups are just getting started.
Everyone said that law school was a lot of reading, a lot of work, and a lot of time spent at the library, but it did not quite seem to hit everyone just how much the law school experience would entail. Let’s just say the balancing act still needs some work. There are some days where the textbook stand comes out, and we don’t move for hours. We hunch over the table, further complicating back problems that are bad as they are. Other days, it’s “let’s go apple picking” and the day is spent picking some (very addicting) orchard apples while the night is spent in a panic trying to get through all the criminal law readings that we should have been doing instead. Being online for the past two years changed how we manage time; you did not need to factor in travel time, or the crazy notion of “what do I wear to class that isn’t wrinkled?” The amount of times that we have realized there is no food in the fridge to take for lunch, because meal-prep time was swapped for happy hour, is too many to count, and it’s only the middle of October. It’s not even the adjustment to in-person classes, it’s all the minuscule things that go along with it. It feels like the “work hard, play hard” aspect of law school has been combined with “making up for lost time.”
In conclusion, we’ll say this: the law school experience isn’t actually about the law, but about all the other stuff that comes with it—and we’re just going along for the ride.
