The sweet simplicity of 1L (aka nostalgia)

A 2L named “Trees” at Nolo Contendere is yearning for his/her first year of law school :

I’m not saying that first year was easy. It was anything but easy. It was, however, fairly uncomplicated. I went to class, I did my reading (most of the time), I studied for my classes, I did what my LRW professor said I needed to do. I focused on my five classes. I remember how irritated I used to be that a single test would form my entire grade for a class. Now I actually find myself wishing that all I had to do was take a test.

“Trees” dismisses this yearning as stress talking, but I can completely empathize. Looking back on 1L from your second or third years it begins to take on a sort of rosy patina of simplicity and innocence. You realize that it was only hard becuase you made it that way, and that 2L and 3L can get super crazy with the myriad things you have to do (papers, internships, interviews, activities, mpre, bar exam applications, etc). The single-minded focus of 1L can start to look pretty nice, actually.

I wonder if this is how law school as a whole is going to look from the perspective of practicing law...

Posted March 17, 2006 09:20 AM | 3L