I am currently faced with the task of choosing a law school. It’s tough. To help the process along, I have been visiting the schools on admitted applicant days. Most recently I visited my top choice. They started things off with a “coffee hour”. The corralled everyone into a hallway that featured high ceilings, endless coffee and stale muffins, and, most importantly, no cell reception. Not even internet on cell reception. There was no distraction from the hellish atmosphere this corridor provided. Put 100 23-28 year old aspiring lawyers in a hallway, and I’ll show you an unbearable 1/2 hour. Admitted students on these days can be grouped into 3 main categories: the pretentious, the socially incapacitated, and the overly friendly. The pretentious ones are people who bought those super hip glasses specifically to look smart, the catch? they don’t need glasses, there aren’t prescription lenses in those babies. Watch, they’ll take them off halfway through the first speaker and won’t make an appearance until the next free social time. The socially incapacitated have potential. They are usually just too shy to make introductions and then have trouble carrying the conversation past “so, where did you go to undergrad”. Get them started as to why they’re at this school though, and you should be ok for another 10 minutes. The overly friendly introduce themselves left and right, waiting for someone they find entertaining. Outliers include those who are so terrified of awkward conversation that they bring wingmen, and the over 34 crowd, who just don’t want to put up with this shit. They are usually married. I fit in the overly friendly category. After weeding through wingmen, I finally found my law school visiting day soulmate: Lauren. Visiting days are a long series of events and through the entire thing, no one sat with us. We were seemingly avoided. Even the socially incapacitated were at crowded tables. Maybe it’s because we smiled sometimes, maybe it’s because we ate the entire dessert plate from our table during the introductory lunch speeches, or maybe, because she’s biracial and I’m Jewish and this was a Jesuit school, we were intimidating as a minority power team. Either way, the only people that sat with us were faculty and current students that were assigned to the table we were at. Pity seats. Despite being a social pariah, I loved the school that was described as “law school disneyland” by a visiting professor. “No hitting OR stealing”, she said. “Can you believe it?”. I have two more of these to go to, and I can only hope that I make it through alive, with my personality and will to live intact. This is a difficult and stressful time where I feel sorry for myself until i remember that some little Jewish girl somewhere only got into one school and this decision making agony is a privilege.
