divine angst

I’ve been getting a lot of hits lately from people searching for things like this, and this, so that must mean it’s time for another advice post.

Firstly, I am fully convinced that there are two kinds of law school applicant: the early bird and the laz-e-boy. Some law school applicants get everything lined up early–they prepare for the LSAT for weeks or months, go through twenty drafts of their personal statement, keep spreadsheets of information on the schools they are interested in. (I fell into this category.) And there are the applicants who are much more laid back–they take the LSAT, but don’t fret about preparation too much, churn out a personal statement in a couple of hours (no more than a weekend), and send apps out to schools based on their proximity to the beach, or the mountains, or major shopping.

Yes, these are extremes. But I don’t think they’re unfair: to a certain extent, every law school applicant leans more towards one side or the other. For those of you in the laid back category, congrats on being laid back and relaxed, but you probably don’t want my advice.

But you neurotics? I was just like you a year ago. So my advice might be spot on for you. And here it is:

I know that with every letter you get–whether an acceptance, rejection, deferral, or waitlist–the entire landscape of Law School (capital L, capitall S) changes. And each one sends you running for your spreadsheet, or for lawschoolnumbers.com. I know that you’re probably watching what’s going on with the competition. I know that you’re starting to plan for admitted students’ weekends. You’re wondering if you’ll need to send more than one deposit, because you don’t know if your dream school will come through for you in time.

A year ago, I wish I’d taken a few more deep breaths. I wish I’d relaxed a little more into the whole process. Most importantly, I wish I’d had a broader perspective on my self-worth. It’s really easy, no matter how chill you started out, to get dragged into the bullshit–the bullshit that tells you that your value is measured by the highest ranked law school you got into. So try not to. Remember the reasons you actually applied to law school in the first place–and then remember the reasons you applied to the particular schools you did. (If those reasons boil down to “its rank,” of course, you might want to do some more research into the school, so you know why you might actually choose it.)

Mr. Angst and I went for drinks tonight with some of my fellow classmates. Oddly, 80% of the folk who showed up were in my section! We had a good time. Some beer, some chat, some discussion of going and finding pierogi later this week….things are looking good for the year.

That is all.

Update: Mr. Angst has been a little goofy tonight; he just informed me that it’s because he’s HAPPY. That makes ME happy. Yay.

Unpacking is going frightfully well, so much so that we both took the afternoon off to do some wandering. Mr. Angst went over to his campus to check on some details with financial aid and student services; I came over to my campus just to see how the walk would be and to set up my connection preferences for my laptop.

The walk? Not bad at all. Lots of different ways I can go to vary things up and if my feet get tired, there are buses all over the place.

My campus? Setting up my connection on the campus VPN was easy enough. But that’s not what is preoccupying me, as I sit here and type. No, what I’m thinking about is OCI.

OCI? Why are you thinking about OCI? you may be asking. Well, I’m thinking about OCI because it’s going on right now and everyone else who is here (mostly everyone else) is all suited up for interviews. It’s a little disturbing to think that that could be me in one short year. I know I’ve posted about that before, but it bears repeating.

Also, I don’t feel too old. I don’t feel exactly YOUNG, but I certainly don’t feel like I stick out as the old married lady here. I guess I never thought that would be the case, but I did have a niggling worry.

It’s hard for me to believe that this place, that I’ve visited a few times now, is actually MY place. I still feel like a guest, and I suspect I will for a little while yet. But it’s beginning to get more comfortable.

You know, I wasn’t really feeling the pre-law panic until Citations started talking about hers.

Now I can’t possibly imagine how I am expected to start law school in two weeks. Two weeks! That’s nothing! No time! A mere blink in history! And yet, my entire life is going to change. It’s already happening—I’ve got this new apartment in a new city and I don’t have a job for the first time in over six years and things are just…changing…before my very eyes. But I could still say, “No thanks, I think I’ll go get a temp gig and just go back to work.”

I’m feeling the twinge in my gut. It’s not a BAD twinge, but it’s a twinge nonetheless. Part excitement, part fear, part holy shit….there it is, in the gut.

Two weeks. But of course, Orientation starts even sooner than that.

Wow! Blogging in my new city is going to take some forethought and consideration! There’s so much to do here—especially when you have visitors—that I’ve just gotten on my computer today.

My brother is still in town, you see. (He’s staying at a hotel, never fear.) So Mr. Angst and I (and my brother) all slept WAY in. When we finally made it outside, it started to rain. We escaped into a local brunch place (excellent) and then trucked off to Target. (Brother drove up here with us, remember, and he has a CAR and we took advantage of that.) And hey, right next to Target was a T-Mobile store, so we changed our numbers and got on a family plan and Mr. Angst got a new and much better phone.

We spent the afternoon wandering around, seeing the sights. I even walked us over to Law School campus. I tried to go into the bookstore to price my books, but it was closed.

Books? you may ask? Yes, books. I got an email yesterday, informing me that we had been assigned to our sections and our classes had been scheduled. I have class at 8:45 am three days a week, and 10:25 the other two. On Fridays, I’ll be done by 1:30. I have a big break Monday through Wednesday, and a slightly smaller but still significant break on Thursdays.

Things are coming together. It’s exciting and nervewracking and fun and terrifying, all at the same time. I’ll be keeping y’all posted on the great adventure.

I’ve been waiting to leave my job for so long, it’s hard to believe the day has finally arrived.

It’s even stranger to realize that, in one week, we will be done moving into our new apartment. We won’t be unpacked or settled by any stretch of the imagination, but we’ll be moved in. Holy hell.

Eyes a little better.

Just a small thought:

Having been in, you know, the “real world” for several years now, I know how quickly a year can pass by. Before you know it, that project you always work on in the spring is coming back around. or it’s your birthday again, or football season is starting back up.

So it’s particularly odd to realize that, in a year, I will preparing for OCI (God willing). In one year, I will be preparing for a ritual that could possibly result in the job I’ll have AFTER law school. That’s just weird.

CM has been talking about her goals and hopes for law school. And in another, different, post responding to CM’s post, I mentioned that one of my goals was to make sure I got to spend quality time in My New City.

And that made me start to think about TIME.

From what I hear, 1L is a huge time suck. Lots of reading, lots of time-consuming reading, a fair amount of writing in Legal Writing, and then, of course, finals.

The schoolgirl inside me says I will have to spend a lot of time doing all the right things for class if I want to do well. This is the voice I normally ALWAYS listen to—the one who says, “You can’t call in sick! You have a big project to finish!” or “Skipping class is BAD!” or “I know they don’t pay you enough, but you should still think about your job at home and on the weekends!”

Lately, though, another voice has been speaking to me. She seems more reasonable, too.

I have made no secret of my eventual goal after law school. I want to teach. Whether I go into full legal scholarship or teach legal writing as an adjunct (or teach legal writing full-time), that is my eventual goal. Right now. So the schoolgirl inside is someone I’m going to have to listen to a fair amount, because she’s the one who will prod me into doing my best work (and hopefully into my best grades).

But the other, reasonable, voice is one to take note of, also. She reminds me of the horror stories of the arbitrary nature of law school grades, about how law school grades aren’t necessarily the best indicators of, um, intelligence. See, I know that, just because I work hard, I won’t necessarily get the grades I think I deserve. Or, maybe I’ll just fall at the bottom of the curve. I don’t know. I know that I’m not used to being at the bottom of the curve, so the prospect of that makes me nervous. But I also know that my grades, while important, aren’t going to keep me from getting a job. Really.

So I guess what I’m trying to figure out right now (and it’s a foolish thing, since I haven’t started school yet and don’t know how it’s going to be) is how to balance my schoolgirl desire for good grades—which will push me into working like a madwoman—with my pragmatism and the understanding that, no matter how hard I work, I can’t do better than I’m going to do, and I should try and enjoy life some.

I want to explore My New City and I want to spend time with my husband. I also want to work hard for my classes because I find the subject matter interesting, not because I’m afraid of having to realign my ambitions with my grades.

So I guess those are some of my main goals for law school. To work as hard as I can for the right reasons. Working hard because I’m afraid of failure….that’s not a good motive, I think. Working hard because I want to do well—sure, that’s a good thing. Working hard because I WANT to understand? Also a good thing. Working so hard that I never look around and see the city, see my husband, talk to my friends, go to the gym, try a new restaurant? Bad.

CM has a post up about things she wants to do in law school and I started to comment about it, but decided to just post, because pretty much everything on her list is on mine, though maybe not for the same exact reasons.

She wants to study at the library; I want to try and NOT study at home. I just know I won’t get much done if I do work at home. Plus, I want home to be HOME—a place to read fiction, cook meals, listen to good music and dance around like a fool, watch TV, sleep, and enjoy my husband. I don’t want home to become a place I associate with stress and frustration. So I, too, want to study at the library, or at least on campus rather than at home.

CM also wants to be social. I don’t usually have trouble being “social,” per se, but I do have trouble making friends. Example: my best friend in the whole world is someone I met freshman year of college. We had many mutual friends and were in the same organizations, and were often at the same parties, moving with the same groups of people from place to place. But we didn’t actually become friends until our senior year. It took me that long to let her in. What I am saying is that I am slow to make friends. I always have been. Not casual “acquaintance” type friends, but good friends, the kind of people I’ll call up at any time of the night just because I need someone to go get Chinese food with. I spend too much time inside my head, trying to figure out if I “really” want to be close to someone. And I think I just want to get out of that habit right away and meet people and make friends without all the inner monologue. Sigh.

CM also talks about making the most of opportunities and staying healthy and remembering the point of it all. Those are important to me, also—just not as important as the above points. More important to me will be taking advantage of Our New City, spending time with my husband, and trying to meet people who AREN’T fellow students. It would be nice to be able to call up someone for pizza and not sit and talk about school.

After many long months of waiting, the great exodus has finally begun.

I refer, of course, to all the 0Ls moving for school. A few of us have a long way to go, while some have a shorter distance. But most of us (though not all) have to suck it up and move.

This time around is easier for me, conceptually. First, everyone else is going through it, too. Misery is better with company. Also, our possessions are much thinner now—having given away a full bedroom/office worth of furniture the first time around.

Still, it’s starting to keep me up at night again. I guess I’d better get some boxes out of the storage closet and start packing up books and CDs. So I can sleep, if nothing else.

One good thing about my new commute is that I am getting used to carrying my new bookbag around. I’ve been bringing my laptop with me, since my transfer stop is Wireless Mecca. I can get online while I wait for the bus.

So I’ve noticed two things about my bag—one, it’s not too bad to carry, even full of stuff (computer, current big fat novel, lots of cables and cords, camera, wallet, keys, CDs, some papers and files, etc.), and two, I really need a few accessories before school starts.

Big accessory 1: a strap pad, and possibly a shorter strap. This bag was not made for someone my height and, even with the strap shortened as much as it will go, it’s still not resting on my back, it’s resting on my butt. Also, the securing strap my bag came with was a WAIST strap, not a cross strap, and I’m thinking I want the cross strap for the added stability. The waist strap does me almost no good because, again, the bag doesn’t quite sit on my body in the right place.

Big accessory 2: a coffee cup that will fit in my bottle pockets. I’m thinking of something like this. I’m a little bothered by the name “briefcase bottle” but hey, it’s just a name, right?

So I am getting a little nervous about carrying everything in my bad for school—namely casebooks plus notebooks, etc. Still, I am planning to use E. Spat’s cut-book-method, where I can carry one binder with the week’s readings in it. And I won’t be living so far from campus that getting home to get something I forgot will be a problem (or vice versa, going back to campus). Still, it’s been a long time since I was a student, and I am a little worried about my bag load being more than I have planned for. I guess we’ll see in a month.

I am so tired of people with law degrees telling me that law school is awful and traumatic. I am tired of old school lawyers telling me that my professors will throw me out of class if they don’t like what I say. I am tired of hearing, over and over, from people who went to law school 30 years ago, that I MUST take bar courses because I will not be able to learn anything in a bar review course.

The fact is that all of these things may be true. But isn’t it just mean to belabor the point? Particularly when you went to law school so long ago?

Over the weekend, Mr. Angst and I had a chance to sit down and discuss the logistics of our move. Recall that my pop is going to move us to Our New City. My brother will also be helping us, and driving behind the moving truck in his SUV. (This means I get 18 hours in a truck cab with my dad, and Mr. Angst gets 18 hours in the sweet SUV with satellite radio and DVD player. Bastards.)

But here’s the kicker: we, dad, and Said Brother all live in different cities. Also, Mr. Angst is currently driving a surplus vehicle of my dad’s. Also, we’re going to leave my car, which is fully paid off, at my dad’s house. One of my younger stepsisters will be starting driver’s ed soon and I thought my car would be a safe, if cheap, ride for her.

So we have all these questions of getting the cars to my dad in Nearby City, getting us back to Our Fair City, and of getting my dad to Our Fair City for the move. (He’ll be flying back to Nearby City at the end of it all.)

What it looks like now, then, is that we’ll be doing a lot of driving between cities in the week leading up to our move. First, Mr. Angst and I will take two cars to Nearby City, drop one off and drive back to Our Fair City. Then, the day before the move, I’ll drive my car back to dad’s. Said Brother will drive to Nearby City, pick up me and dad, and the three of us will drive to Our Fair City. We’ll pick up the truck, load it (with some extra help—another of my brothers who lives here will be swinging by to help us load, and a cousin might stop by as well), and take off. Except that someone has to stay behind to do the final clean and walk-through with the landlord. This means, probably, that dad and I will leave first and Mr. Angst and Said Brother will do the walk-through. They’ll catch up later. (Not a problem, since Said Brother averages 85 mph on the highway.)

While there’s relief in knowing the plan—the who, what, and when—there’s also nervousness, what with getting everyone where they need to be when they need to be there and all. I keep reminding myself that it’s really not a big deal and when it’s all over, no matter how it all goes down, we’ll be moved to Our New City and starting school.

WhyLaw asks about my upcoming ten days of Orientation.

Apparently I forgot to post about this—it might have been because I received it right before the four hour drive from hell—but I finally received my Orientation packet. And this is what I learned:

Orientation starts on a Friday but all we have to do on Friday is register at Law School, letting them know we’re in town. This is, apparently, MANDATORY. Even though no other mandatory events will occur until Monday, we HAVE to be there Friday. (This is fine by me, but I could see problems for someone else.) If one doesn’t show up on Friday to register/check-in/pick up one’s stuff, one forfeits one’s seat. Ouch! Friday we also take pictures for things—student ID cards, and maybe our facebook.

Saturday and Sunday are light and fun. (They’re trying to fool us into relaxing before the week starts.) We can participate in some community service activities and a kickball tournament! Oh, and there’s a breakfast with a panel called “Living with a Law Student.” I think Mr. Angst and I will go to that one. None of these events are mandatory, by the way.

So far it sounds kind of like camp, right? Hah. Monday morning, we report in for the official Welcome and…class. That’s right, we’ll be meeting all week with our Legal Writing sections. Sometime next month, we’ll be getting a reading assignment (and we’ll have to go BUY THE BOOK); during Orientation week, we’ll be assigned further reading. The sense I get is that there will be actual WRITING about this assignment, and certainly discussion of it. And lots of meeting with our section.

That week will be interspersed with other events—lunches, dinners with faculty, a mandatory reception with some law firm types, Bar Review, and even a baseball game. Those events, though, are a smokescreen. Because that whole thing about Orientation being kind of like camp? Yeah, not so much. Orientation being a lot like SCHOOL? Yeah, that sounds about right.

(Of course I am totally excited. Really!)

Stag asks what I’ll miss while on a student budget.

Um, so, I’m pretty cheap. And I’m one of those people who, in the grocery store, looks at the per-unit price that’s printed on the price tags on the shelves. And I rarely splurge on stuff for myself.

So realistically, there won’t be much I’ll miss. I’ll miss being able to go out to a nice dinner every couple of weeks—or going out to a nice dinner and being able to get the nice bottle of wine—but that’s a minor thing. I’ll miss being able to buy the clothes I need and afford them (I suspect that I’ll spend more on clothes before interview season than I do NOW, which is frightening). I’ll miss…um, yeah, those are probably the main things.

Because, honestly, I don’t spend a lot of money. I color my own hair. I have it cut rarely (once every six months or so). I don’t get facials and I have a friend who works a salon who does my eyebrows for cheap. I shop at Target and Ross and Payless. When I can’t find what I need there, I go to Steinmart. I buy the grocery store brand if I can and, if I can’t, I get the next cheapest option.

I’m cheap, OK? It’s actually something I’ve started to see as a sort of flaw—this reluctance to spend money on things I can afford because they seem sort of unnecessary. Things like nice dress shoes and a brake job for my car. (Yes, the latter is something I’ve waited to have done because I have been too cheap to spend the $70.)

So I think what I’ll miss being on the law school budget is, perhaps, the progress I have made towards doing nice things for myself. In the last year, I’ve gotten better about buying myself nice clothes or shoes and getting a more expensive haircut. I’ve found the joy in buying figs at $9/lb. when they’re available, just because I love them so much. And I won’t be able to make those splurges as much any more. I think I’ll miss knowing that I CAN splurge (even if I almost never do).

Law School Health Center requires that I send them my immunization records. This poses a small problem, since they require that my physician fill out the immunization records section of my health forms. Unfortunately, my physician doesn’t have my immunization records on file because, duh, she hasn’t been my physician my whole life.

I have a copy of my immunization records that I somehow obtained from my undergraduate school’s heath center. But I don’t trust that they still have my records on file, and I don’t trust them to send any forms to Law School Health Center.

My physician says they will take my copy of my immunization records (an original, stamped copy) and Xerox it and forward it to Law School Health Center along with the rest of the form that they’re supposed to fill out (or that I think they have to fill out; more on that below). But they can’t certify any immunization dates and records for shots that they didn’t administer. And I haven’t had any shots done by my physician.

How do people get this stuff done? Unless you’ve been going to the same doctor your whole life, how can you get your immunization records certified? I know I’ve had all my shots—after all, I was allowed to enroll at my undergraduate institution, and they required all the shots—but how do I prove this to Law School when I’ve changed doctors so many times over the course of my life?

I guess I have to call Law School Health Center and find out if I can bring that stamped, original copy of my immunization records to them in person (thankfully, the deadline for turning it in is not until September 30) to fulfill that requirement. Meanwhile, I have to figure out which parts of the other forms are required—the main instructions say, “Law students don’t have to fill out Part II,” and page 2 says, “Law students don’t have to fill out this page.” But page 2 has part II (not required) AND part III (required?). I have no clue. And those pages are required by July 15!

Gah! Bureaucracy! Infuriating!

Update: Law School Health Center was wonderful. The guy I spoke to laughed when i said my doctor wouldn’t sign the form because they didn’t give me any of my immunizations. He said, if that copy of your immunization records has been signed at some point by a doctor or nurse practitioner, we just need to see a copy of it (not even the original!). And I don’t have to have my doctor fill out part III on page 2. I just have to fill out pages 1 and 4 and attach that copy of my immunizations and I’ll be done with it. Relief! Joy!

TP asks how I plan to keep my sanity 1L.

Right now, I’m not really sure. Not having yet gone through 1L, I can’t say with any certainty what things will work and what things won’t. In general, I cope with stressful situations in a couple of ways—I nest (start baking, making up recipes, rearranging furniture or tinkering around the house) or I burrow (hide in my room and read books, watch sappy movies, drink). The first of those methods is probably the more healthy approach; the latter is somehow more satisfying. I can see myself falling into either of them during 1L if things get particularly hairy.

But I’m hoping to stave off any stress breakdown by keeping organized. I’ve worked an 8-5 job for the last 6 years, so I think I’ll try treating law school the same way: get to campus early, study and do my work while I’m there, and then, when I get home, spend the evenings with my husband. He’ll be in class at least two nights a week, so those can be my stay-on-campus-late days, if I need them (and I think I will later in the semester). I want to have Saturdays or Sundays free, so we can explore the city, see movies, continue our culinary experiments (I like to try out new recipes on the weekend), and generally spend quality time together. I think if we can manage that, my sanity will be safe. Mr. Angst keeps me sane, really, so we’ll HAVE to manage it!

Other ways I hope to keep my sanity? Staying in touch with non-law-school friends. Finding a little time to watch a favorite TV show each week. Squeezing in a reread of a favorite book. Flipping through trashy magazines at Barnes & Noble. A well-balanced life = sanity, so that means trying to do other things besides law school for at least a few hours a week. Maybe I’ll join a choir, if I can find one without onerous rehearsal requirements. I think Mr. Angst and I will try to continue practicing Aikido, and that can be a nice outlet, too.

What do the other 0Ls out there think?

Things that happen in six weeks:

Things I remind myself as I cross the days off on the calendar.

Just reserved our moving truck. To all who might be moving this summer, and doing it themselves—I highly recommend Penske if they’re in your area. Half the price of that other company whose name is synonymous with moving trucks. Free mileage, too.

It’s just one more thing to keep making it real.

It’s really happening! Law School wants paperwork: my official undergraduate transcript and a certification of enrollment. (I got to check the “I will be enrolling and I have removed my name from all other schools’ lists” option. That was nice.)

I’ll pop my transcript request in the mail today, and Law School should get it by the end of the week if the post is cooperative; I think I can email the the certification form.

In other news, I completed my other loan applications last night, so I have asked for all the money I need for the school year. I’ll have a few more pieces of paperwork to sign later this summer, but I’m essentially done even with that chore.

It’s getting more real by the moment.

A little searching on Craigslist today has proven fruitful; I’ve emailed a few people about apartments and even gotten a response from one. Yes, this effort is largely about keeping our options open, but I don’t feel I’ve wasted any time on it, particularly because it’s getting me excited about our trip.

Up till now, I’ve been looking at this weekend jaunt as a housekeeping measure—a chore, if you will, something to be endured. Now, though, four days out, I’m remembering that this is, in fact, a mini-vacation, and to a city that we both love.

I’ve been checking the weather, and it looks good for the weekend—rain is predicted for Thursday, but we’ll miss that by a few hours, thankfully, and the temps Friday and Saturday should be very mild. We’re staying with a friend (who just bought a place and hasn’t yet bought furniture….so we’re going to schlepp our own air mattress with us). He’s even offered to pick us up at the airport, so chances are good we’ll be able to head out for dinner right off the plane.

I want this weekend trip to jump-start my excitement. I am still excited about the fall, starting school, and moving, but as the tedium of the summer wears on, those changes seem so far away. Maybe a little peek into the future will pump some life back into my veins.

So this is the week we go to find our new apartment home in Our New City. I am crossing my fingers for much good luck—that we’ll find the perfect place on the first day, that we can start our lease on the day we want to, and that it will all be totally affordable.

Yeah, my optimism might be getting the better of me here.

So I’ll also be doing some looking on Craigslist and some other, similar, websites this week. I want to have some backups in hand if we need them.

Looking for an apartment long-distance is a pain.

I was just thinking to myself how, three months ago, I was still waiting to hear about my last application—to that really big school in our nation’s capitol. And I remember thinking that I would probably end up on the waitlist, but that I wouldn’t be too upset by that. And that we’d probably end up going to that city anyway, so I could always switch enrollments at the last minute if I got in off the wait list.

I’m so glad that’s not how things happened.

I’m glad we know where we’re going, that we are free to go find an apartment next weekend. I’m relieved to know that I am going to My School and not to Some Other School. I am, if not happy, at least satisfied? or, again, relieved, to be applying for loans to My School knowing that I won’t have to scramble around at the last minute getting loans to Some Other School.

Basically, last fall, when I started all this, I had no idea how it would turn out. I had high hopes. My high hopes didn’t completely pay off, but in the end, everything turned out the best way it possibly could, I think. My School is a good fit for me. Our New City is a good fit for us. Even Mr. Angst’s school is a good fit for him. Everything fell into place the way it should have.

I can’t discount the possibility that things seem to have turned out so well just because we are both pretty flexible people and were willing to go where we needed to go; or because we are both pretty optimistic people and have spent some time getting excited about the schools we are attending. Even given those personality traits, though, I think things still turned out pretty well. Almost pat. (Not too pat—after all, Mr. Angst will be in class at night, which is still not an ideal situation. Just a little wrinkle, though.)

Last night, as I was drifting off to sleep, I had one of those nostalgia moments, if you can call the emotion nostalgia when you’re remembering things that were only a few months ago. I was thinking about our house, our home, and how comfortable it was and how easily we could have stayed there. (I think these things a lot at night as I’m lying in bed. I’m not sure what about lying in bed provokes this sort of thing.) And I felt twingy, anxious almost, that we’ve really turned our lives upside-down.

But the morning light makes it all better. And more exciting. This is probably a pretty boring post, because I think I’m repeating things I’ve written before, but this is what’s on my mind right now.

So law school is something like 2-1/2 months away and we’ll be moving in about two months and yet many things are still up in the air. True, we’re going up to find our apartment in two weeks, but finding a place to live is pretty low on my list of things to worry about. What things are high on that list?

Well, for one, I haven’t received paperwork for my “financial aid package” (student loans). Law School said they’d send that stuff in early June. Hey! It’s early June! Mr. Angst is already filling out his promissory notes and doing his entrance interviews for his federal loans. Me, though? Just sitting here, waiting for information. Argh! I guess I could be trying to secure my private loans, you know, for that remainder that my federal loans and “need-based” loans won’t cover (I guess they call that the “estimated family contribution”) but I don’t even know who my school’s preferred lenders are. I like using preferred lenders. They’re preferred for a reason, after all. Truth be told, I’m starting to feel a little nervous about the loans and their procurement and whatnot.

What else am I worried about? Well, I’m not really worried about it, but I haven’t gotten any information on Orientation yet. I think a list of fun stuff Law School has planned for me in the last week of August might brighten my spirits a bit, during this dry, waiting period.

Update: Welcome, JD2B readers! Wander about and stay awhile.

I’ve been lurk-watching the boards for the last few months—no longer really participating at all, but still keeping track of what’s being posted. But I think I’m going to have to stop even that, at least for now. The cycle is coming back around, you see.

The newest posts now are inevitably about studying for the LSAT, dealing with LSAC (or figuring out their not-that-arcane grade-normalizing procedure), and other details of interest to the folks about to enter the admissions process.

Maybe after school starts I’ll be able to look at some of those posts, but right now these issues interest me not one little bit. First, I never want to think about the LSAT again, much less proffer advice on how to study for it, or how to diagram a given game. Urk. No thanks. And the LSAC? My experience with them was pretty pain-free but I still feel an anxious twinge remembering some of the horror stories I heard last fall.

I guess I’m passing through that pre-law stage. Well, that’s not a guess, that’s a fact; what I mean is that I don’t really feel “pre-law” anymore. I keep looking at the countdown and realizing that school isn’t that far away. I’m feeling more and more like a student. I’m almost out of limbo and I don’t really want to revisit the uncertainty and angst that permeated last fall for me. So no more boards for me, at least not for the rest of the summer.