Status Updates From One L: The Turbulent True S...

…an effort to regard the place more realistically, to keep myself from looping into either ecstasy or despair as I meet up with the diverse range of what is offered. And the arrogance…is one of the things I am most eager to escape. It makes the environment even more claustrophobic and consuming and leaves me grateful for whatever few reminders I get that…the law school are not really the center of the universe.

Amid the adversities of the first year, we have all been particularly susceptible to this kind of thinking…It must be special, you tell yourself, why else, in God's name, am I going through this?

"You just wait'til those first-term grades come out," he told me, "it'll be a whole different ball game after that. They'll be those fellas with two As who think they've sprouted wings and a halo, and they'll be a whole lot more folks who won't give one little goddamn after that. Brother, it is not the same."

Stumped by a question in a Criminal Law class, a student told Bertram Mann he was feeling uncomfortable. "I think that's the nature of the Socratic method," Mann replied; "we stand here and make each other uneasy."

I haven't felt that kind of outright glee in victory in years. Maybe it's something else law school's done to me-more childishness- or a sign of how praise-starved I am. Maybe I just felt I'd finally done something roundly good with the law.