Is it just me, or does the whole law school experience seem like high school all over again?
Our orientation week was a series of events force-fed to us, where people tended to talk to us like we were little children. Especially that little lecture on ethics? Come on, we're not at Harvard or some other school with cutthroat competition.
Then, once school started, you couldn't help but notice that there are a bunch of these cliques that had formed already. They latched on to each other so quickly that I couldn't help wonder if I'd somehow missed a "Make Best Friends Day." Where was I? I was just busy trying to get through that damn Intro to Law class. Honestly, I don't know how these people found each other so quickly.
But really, it's like high school all over again. People are constantly talking about each other all of the time, they hate you if you seem too smart, and don't get me started on the different cliques. Here are a few cliques I've noticed: the smarties, the two socialite cliques that I'll call BB1 and BB2 for short, and the one guy clique that never talks about anything but golf, sports, or poker.
Smarties are the people who work harder than other people, and their members contain some of the people who speak out in class more often than most. Not only that, but what they say is actually on point. You know that they probably have all their reading for the coming week done by the weekend.
BB1 and BB2 are the girls who are some of the more outgoing girls in class. Their groups frequently intermingle with each other, and one strange thing about them is that a disproportionate number of them are named Kate or Katie or at least have one of those as a middle name. Also, they're the ones who ran in the ISBA elections. You just know that these girls were the ones who ran for student government in high school, did the homecoming committee, were in the sororities and dated the football players. This reminds me of a cartoon I used to watch called the Oblongs. Anybody heard of the show? They had a group of girls in there called the "Debbies." You can guess what the similarity is. The thing was, who knew that kind of thing could actually be true?
Macho-macho men is the guy clique that talk all the time. ALL the time. Anyone who sits on the same side of the room knows what I mean. Sometimes it gets so bad that you can't hear the prof (gasp). Otherwise, they're the typical macho males who always talk about sports, playing golf with each other, or poker. Nothing else really seems to matter. For instance, a few weeks back when Hurricane Ivan was terrorizing the southeast, the only thing that they cared about was that the football games that had been scheduled in the area were all canceled. Talk about tunnel-vision.
Labels, anyone? Oh, the other thing that really gets me is that everyone is labeled. I know, I am guilty of doing it myself, as you can see from the above. But I don't go around labeling everyone. I mean really, just because I like to have a life outside of school, is it really that fair for me to be labeled a slacker?
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15 comments:
It's so true, law school is like high school. But then, so was college in a lot of ways. Everyone is so concerned with labelling everyone else as a gunner or whatever, but what's really going on is that we aren't sure where we fit at all, so that's why we're going after everyone else...just like high school. We should just be lucky that we aren't at an ultra-competetive school, and even our so-called gunners are pretty nice and helpful in person.
I guess I must be outside the 'in crowd' because I haven't heard anyting bad or otherwise about any of our classmates. Hmmm. Maybe they're talking about me and I don't know it.
Don't worry about labels or the cliques. Everyone will soon shut up when finals roll around.
The Faux Populars: They think you're charmed to meet them, but you aren't. Lots of those in BLB.
Faux Populars? I love it. So very very true.
I happen to like those macho men, they are fun to eat sushi with and they are great at saki bombs...
I'm sure they are, they seem like the perfect people to chill out with.
I think it's horrible that everyone is so hard on everyone else--I've even seen some of the "smarties'" post some pretty rude comments on blogs. Not that lawyers have reputations for being the nicest people in the world, but what's with all of the pointless hatred? We're here for 3 years that will go by super-fast, and then we'll all scatter around the country for our various jobs,probably never seeing one another ever again--unlike high school. I think the only solution to all this pointless gabbing is to kill them with kindness--get good grades--and then bid them farewell in a few semesters.
You claim that you don't label "everyone," making it OK to label some people/some social groups. I don't really see a difference here. Creating sweeping generalizations about people you've failed to meet and know is not fair or acceptable. We are nice, fun people, and contrary to your belief that we have no life outside of law school, we really do. We just have found new friends in law school as well. We're going to be here for 3 more years. Is that really such a bad thing? Try approaching any member of the social groups you've labeled. I guarantee they will ask you what you are doing tonight and invite you to go out, go bowling, get ice cream or any number of social activities. They really are nice people and don't deserve this ridicule.
Get over it. People form social groups throughout their entire lives, not only just in high school. So what?
I don't make these generalizations without any experience with meeting some of these people. I have gone out of my way to meet as many people as I could, and what I write about is based on my actual experience. I do try to give people the benefit of the doubt when I get to know them.
Also, it's not that I'm against social groups, as you said people are in these kinds of groups for the rest of their lives. What I do think is a bit "high school" is how some of these groups are rather exclusive, which I thought was a notion we left behind when we left high school.
We live in a world where people generalize other people. People believe they have common interests bond together b/c they believe only these other people have been through the same torment they have (aka broke a nail, lifted a weight, had a pimple, whatever). Its easy to reject people who you see as weird
See like 10 years ago, kids who were punks/rockers were considered the outcasts. You could see it in the media always. They were dangerous
Now, punk kids are cool. But now its those whiggers. Those kids who wanna be black. They are the ruffians the people undesirable. The urbanites... who damage the nuclear lifestyle of the suburbanities...
Face the facts. you people who say "blah blah is bad" When was the last time you saw an Indian, Arab, or someone with olive to darker (not black) colored skin and thought TERRORISTS!!!
There is one group of cool guys: 707 Melrose. Stop by, all you dorks.
Well, if I knew who you guys were maybe I'd stop by.
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