a certain strain of senioritis

So yesterday turned out to be the big day. Today was just the day after.

Today's email brought a bunch of introductions and welcome messages, invitations to various law review yahoogroups, information on training and citechecks and office protocols, and numerous other tastes of the life I'll be living for the next four months. It's scary to stand in the shadow of this monumental labor and attempt to stare it down. But I asked for it, and as much as it's clearly about to devour my life, I'll be doing it for the love. (Much love goes out, as it must, to everyone who sent their support my way. Thank you.)

Two things have occurred to me in the past few days. First, while I was on tenterhooks waiting for the committee's decision, I couldn't get any reading done. Then, once I'd learned the decision, I was so excited that I couldn't get any reading done. Now, I'm going to have so much work to do (not two but three cite checks) that I'm not going to be able to get any reading done.

Second, I realized, I didn't really care. I'm not yet far enough behind in First Amendment to worry. I should probably be a bit more concerned with Legal Profession, but eh, it'll work out all right. Suddenly classes are way the heck down at the bottom of the to-do list. I'm still going through the motions of going to class, but this is about as disengaged as I've ever been in law school.

I've finally arrived. It's finally just school to me, as it always should have been, as it's been to other people all along.

It's funny, the sense that I'm still just a bit out of phase, even now. I've suddenly been graced with the workload of a 2L on law review, which feels just about right for a transfer student who treated last year as a 1L do-over. At the same time, I've just passed midterm in my seventh (!) academic term, my fifth at this school, and am starting to feel like a dyed-in-the-cloth 3L. I guess this is the kind of temporal identity crisis that is best resolved by graduating.

thus spake /jca @ February 3, 2005 10:58 PM | TrackBack