The End of the Beginning

So that's that. Three days ago, I took my second and last final of the semester, and with no further ado, it's over. Four months of intensive reading, briefing, fretting, outlining, memo-writing, stressing, and of course, occasional blogging, and suddenly . . . nothing. I'm really not sure I've fully absorbed the idea that, for an entire month, I don't need to think about the law at all (as evidenced by a general dazed lack of focus, and by the fact that I continue to have anxious dreams about civil procedure). Just what am I supposed to do with myself for the next four weeks? OK, there's the holiday season, and there's that long list of neglected household tasks I've been compiling all semester, and there are still two kids to take care of and a wife to hang out with, somewhere around here, but still: shouldn't I be puzzling over some turn-of-the-century judge's convoluted prose, or trying to edit five pages out of a memo, or convincing myself I'm not going to flunk out of law school? Well, maybe I can still do that last one over the break, but the rest of it? All gone. The first semester of law school is over. So now what?

I'd like to offer some sort of grand, retrospective, insightful synthesis of it all, but I don't think I have the energy. Or maybe it's the desire. Or maybe on some level I know there's just not that much to be said. Yes, it was difficult, as everybody says, and no, I was not prepared for its demands, either intellectual or emotional. But I'd like to think I met those demands, however haphazardly, and that I came through all right in the end. Perhaps the greatest measure of this is that I am OK with waiting six weeks to get my final grades, and I'm not really concerned about whether or not I passed -- the hyperbole of my first paragraph notwithstanding. I doubt I've reached the level of nonchalance exhibited by the character in The Paper Chase, who felt no need even to look at his grades when they arrived in the mail, and instead cast them into the sea (nor will this likely be an option, as I don't imagine they'll be sending them by the post), but I have no doubt I'll be allowed to return in the spring. I may yet find a good sized puddle to throw my torts book into, but that would be more like an act of vengeance than of emancipation.

Anyway, here I am, on the other side. I really do think next semester will go much more smoothly, going into it as I am with some awareness of such basic things as how to take notes, how to read the cases, how to study, and how to prepare for finals. All of that really would have come in handy these past few months. But c'est la vie. It's over and done. Time to hang out with the family and enjoy four weeks of normality. Because let's face it: those advance assignments for the spring will be arriving before I know it.