Realizations while navigating 1L
The subjectivity of human experience can make simple existence feel novel. We all live within our own vantage points, and each moment is shaped by the unique configuration of what preceded it. Yet, some feelings and realizations are so pervasive that the invocation of their name can summon stories from almost anyone nearby. Wanderlust, the urge to travel and nostalgia, a longing to return to a past time, are such feelings. Others are just as common, but have names too obscure to elicit anecdotes so readily.
In 2018, I learned of an epiphanic realization that falls into the latter category while sitting in my high school lounge, watching a trailer for the second season of Atlanta. The song behind that trailer, “Too Fast” by the R&B group Sonder, piqued my interest. Then, after I listened to it on repeat for a few weeks, I became curious about what the group’s name meant. I thought that they might have made it up. However, once I googled it, I found more than just articles about the group; I also found its origins in John Koenig’s The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, where it was defined as “the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own.”
I have thought about sonder often since that moment in 2018. As a matter of fact, I thought about it in a basement classroom of the Jackman Law Building on the first day of orientation during a makeshift lunch-hour Q&A. During that period, I asked an orientation leader, “What was the most intimidating thing about law school that turned out to be a non-issue?” “The people,” they responded. I wasn’t expecting such a loaded answer. It was terse and open-ended, but was eventually narrowed in application to feelings of imposter syndrome through subsequent comments. Nevertheless, that initial open-endedness gave my mind some room to run, and I thought about how everyone at law school is doing something challenging. The stories I had heard from graduates and upper years, where 1L sounded like a biblical trial in which everyone was pitted against each other, also arose. Looking back, I likely misinterpreted the answer because of my own peer anxiety. But, without a name for the overarching theme of the thoughts that occurred—the communal aspect of law school—I doubt my initial reaction would have been to consider the complexity of everyone’s experience rather than just my own. Without sonder, that experience would just be one memory amongst a myriad of others from orientation, rather than a standout that encapsulates certain aspects of the peer anxiety I had as the year began.
Now, a month and a half into law school, sonder has become a near-daily phenomenon. It comes to mind whenever I am presented with evidence of how common peer anxiety was amongst my classmates when they were entering law school, with concerns ranging from the curve to the potential hyper-competitiveness of the community often arising in conversation. It results just as frequently from countervailing evidence: that people are friendly, that the atmosphere is less cutthroat than rumoured, and that cooperation is genuine. After all, law school brings together a striking diversity of backgrounds, interests, and views, which deserves respect as an integral aspect of the student experience. As a result of this diversity, notions of a homogeneous, self-interested, and cutthroat cohort can hardly reasonably survive contact with reality.
However, I can still understand why the misconceptions are so widespread amongst incoming 1Ls. Applicants are immersed in a constant stream of accounts of law school life. From forums and subreddits to coffee chats and family advice, opinions about what law school entails are often inescapable. With that ubiquity, the most that can be expected of anyone is that they hold onto the more accurate opinions, thus maintaining optimism about their social prospects. Yet, doubt is natural, and there are times in life where all one can do is weather the storm—entering law school might be one of those times.
So, to conclude, I believe that realizing how everyone has a life as vivid and complex as your own can quiet peer anxiety. Sonder, in naming that realization, serves as a reminder of the complexity of the law school environment and how many stereotypes about law students and the 1L experience, which might cause one to fear their peers, collapse under closer scrutiny. More than a band name and more than an obscure neologism, sonder is a word worth knowing, especially for the anxious 1Ls who have only recently found reassurance that their social life in law school might not be as sad as they—understandably—thought it would be.