It Begins

Tonight is the first session of my week-long Orientation at DU, which will run Monday through Friday, roughly 5-9 each day. It’s a remarkably full docket (little legal jargon for ya there). Tonight alone we are scheduled for a box dinner; tours; a welcome from the Chancellor, the Dean, and the President of the Student Bar Association; an Introduction to Law School; an Introduction to Student Affairs; an Alumni Council presentation; a talk on something called “Denver Partnership with Community Day;” a talk on the student health center; something on “Colorado Lawyers Helping Lawyers;” a presentation on Lexis Nexis (a legal research tool); and an introduction to the various administrative departments -- all in three-and-a-half hours. The other four evenings are similarly packed. I only hope things aren’t too rushed to be especially helpful.

So, on this my final day of anticipation, what am I feeling? Hard to say, really. It’s not actually the first day of classes, which I’m sure will bring a whole new set of worries, but it is the day I’ll meet the people I’ll be spending a significant portion of my life with for at least the next year-and-a-half. (First-year law students, or 1Ls, are assigned to a “student unit,” and all the students in each unit take all the same classes together for the first year. And the first “year” for part-time evening students such as myself takes a bit longer than a real-world year.) So today, at least, I’m less concerned about my academic abilities and more about my social skills: Will there be “mingling” preceding the box dinner? Will the other students already have met each other at one of the pre-first-year get-togethers, all of which I have been unable to attend? And what the hell do first-year law students at DU wear, anyway? And is it different for something like this from what you would wear to class? (Some of you might be surprised to see me worry so much about clothing, but it’s a natural outcome of the combination of [a] knowing the undeniable impact of first impressions, and [b] being fully aware of my own lack of competence both in meeting new people and in dressing myself -- for which I like to blame my color-blindness, but let’s face it: that has nothing to do with whether to wear a button-up and slacks or a T-shirt and shorts, now does it?) But then all of this is balanced with the sneaking suspicion that it’s all ridiculous and baseless, and most of the other 80 students won’t know each other either, or know what to wear for that matter. And I remind myself that this is the evening program, which means my fellow students will all be actual grown-ups, not 23-year-olds who have been out drinking together all last week, but who have jobs and families and more important things to worry about than why Chris Curtis turned up in flip-flops and his shorts and T-shirt don’t even match. So to sum up: I’ve got some butterflies, but I know they’re ridiculous, and I doubt they’ll last the day.

For now, I have seven hours before it all begins, and I intend to spend it reading something unrelated to the law, drinking coffee, and just kind of hanging out. After checking the Advance Assignments page one more time, of course. Just in case...