My first year of law school!!!! (continued)

This is a continuation of my story of my first year of law school.  Again, I want to state that I applied to a lot of really high ranked schools at first, as I did not know about the stupid ranking system that the US News and World Report had on law schools.  Of course, it seems that now a days everything is ranked and for what reason really?  Is University of Oregon really x spots better than University of Toledo, and is that school really 7 spots better than whatever school is below it?

However, I want to continue my story.  Mainly, I want to talk about the orientation and maybe dive into some of my first classes.  Orientation, as I said before, was where I, along with a group of other students, by a 3L student who claimed she was upset to not have gotten on law review, was told, "even if you graduate in the very bottom of your class, you will still be called esquire."  Of course, we were not told what I was later told by my Contracts professor, "the school makes me flunk out at least one student."  So, the reality of the situation was that you may not graduate.  You may be flunked out and out over $30,000!  Of course, this would not apply to me, but I did find myself sometimes terrified of getting a low grade in one of my courses.

I remember sitting in my classrooms on the first day and having the teacher introduce themselves.  They stated that, unlike undergrad, we would not be let out of class early.  One of these classes was Criminal Law.  I remember the professor well.  She was a big boisterous lady with a pounding voice and eyes that seemed to literally gaze into your soul.  She told us that she did not care how much work we had in our other classes, that all that mattered to her was that we read the material for this course.  Further, she dove in to the case State v. Utter, in which a man fell asleep drunk in his pickup truck and the police were trying to get him on drunk driving.  Immediately she called on a helpless victim, squeezing everything she could out of this poor individual.

I was so thrilled that it was not me who was called on, but I knew that it would eventually be me.  You can imagine how terrifying it was, knowing that no matter what answer I would say, I would be wrong.  Further, some of the students in this class were the kind of people who think they know everything.  Of course I would probably be wrong and look like a fool.  Although she told the class that we could get up to 3 points for participation, I never took advantage of that, as I was too scared that I would be wrong.

1L was the most "colorful" year of my law school education.  You should have seen the highlighter collection I had!  Deep purple, azure blue, deep sun yellow, legendary orange, and greed-inducing green.  I had a system for my law notes that I was proud of. 

Yellow = important
Blue = key term
Pink = hella important
Orange = similar case mentioned
Green = Rule

I wish this was my criminal law text.  How fun!

I also wrote all over my case book.  You should have seen it!  Some of my books looked like something out of Reading Rainbow!  There was a friggin' rainbow ejaculating from the page!  It was amazing! 

Many of my classmates would look at my notes and books and I think, even though I can not be sure, they were jealous.  I had an arsenal!  One girl who sat next to me would often compare pens and such with me.  She was an art major in college and was just as excited as I was about having a colorful arsenal of weapons at her disposal. 

We were not the only people in 1L who had colors.  Steve, the gunner in the back rocked a nice array of highlighters.  Chelsey, a girl who was a proud lesbian (and member of OUTLAW) sported an array of colors that would make a gay pride flag blush.  Sadly, Darcy Hookhands was without colors.

Some other students were content to do their notes on OneNote, a program that was advertised fiercely during orientation.   I had no want or desire to use a computer to do my notes.  Why would have I when I had such nice highlighters?  And my notebooks, oh don't even start!  One day I may scan some of my old notebook pages here.  I am sure you would be impressed!  In fact, I will make it a point to do that.

As the year went on, my highlighters seemed to lose their ink.  I sometimes found myself mixing colors as I was too lazy to buy a new set.  Well, one day I just had to buckle down and make my way to the law school store and get a set.  Oh me oh my you should have seen the look on my face when I saw the amount of cool and awesome essentials that were ON SALE!!!!  I must have spent nearly a Jackson on markers, note cards, note books and other materials that would guarantee my success in law school. 

When I got my midterm grades back it was proven to me that the more colors one has the better grades one gets.  My Contracts exam, which counted for 20% of my grade pulled in a 95, which was tied for 2nd highest score.  My Property exam, which counted for the same amount, thrust me into a world of eliteness with a 96%.   Torts and Criminal Law, both semester long courses, gave me high grades as well.  My Torts exam was an open book, and my book was, I guarantee you, the MOST COLORFUL of all books in my section.  I was proud.

Of course, law school was and is a lot more than fancy colors and expensive highlighters.  In my second year, for instance, I barely used a highlighter as I rented my books (HUGE MISTAKE).  I ended that semester with a VERY LOW GPA.  I won't say it was the highlighter alone that got me top grades.  But, it was funny that with varied inks I got top grades and with no highlighting and very little pencil marks in my books I ended up with bottom of the class grades.  Now, when I fill out a survey that asks race, I have a hard time not marking myself as a person of color. 

I have so many more stories and tales of 1L.  It was a big year for me.  Perhaps the most intense year I had lived.  I was moving along through life and I was not only the first in my massive family to graduate college, but I was slammin' and jammin' my way through law school.  You can rest assured that this will be continued.  I have so much more to say.