Before I started law school, I read in one of those "Read this before you start law school" books about how law school, a professional school, differs from other realms of graduate and undergraduate study. Everyone knows that it's an overwhelming amount of work, that competition is fierce, and that the people with whom you are in class are the people with whom you will work in the near future. Reputation building starts now. What I was not aware of, however, is how one's reputation is pretty much cemented beginning on the very first day, or at least by the end of the very first class, which, in my case, was Criminal Law this summer. How you dress, how you comport yourself, the way you talk to others build your reputation, and once this has been built, it's very hard to change.
Maybe I'm being too judgmental. I know that there are people in "nontraditional roles" here, just as I am. There are mothers, fathers, grandparents, people who work full time, or a combination thereof. I understand being so overwhelmed with the other stuff that how you present yourself may take on less importance.
But it really shouldn't.
There are a few students- perhaps one of the 22 year-olds, perhaps older- who regularly wear low-ride jeans (is that even the term anymore?), baseball caps backwards, track suits, extremely tight dresses, enormous high heels, and even those see-through-off-the-shoulder things that my former high school students had to cover up before they could attend school.
I may be judgmental, but, being that this is a professional school, and we are preparing ourselves to be professionals, we should at least make the effort, as they say, to "dress for the job that you want, not the job that you have." I may have spit-up and baby drool on me, but I do attempt to look a little more professional than I would if I were spending the day at home.
Second, the intense competition can make some people go crazy. I get that. Yet having taught high school for several years, I am familiar with today's high school students. And here, I am finding myself feeling right at home. As in with high school students. It's a little... disenchanting, actually. I look up to law students. I've wanted to be one for so long. But in the end, I guess we are all students, and in that general forum, we start to act just like students. With all the cliques, "popular kids," and other labeled people that come with it.
I don't like the feeling that I'm being compared with others. I HATE the "grade talk" that is inevitable after each term when grades are posted (Really? Joe-Bob got an A? SO WHAT!?), and I intensely despise the feeling that I'm being judged each and every time I talk, walk, move, breathe, type, eat, drink....
Even though I do the same thing.
There's got to be a middle ground here. There's got to be a way to retain some semblance of intellectual decorum while working with people whom I find to be... unpleasant. This, I know, is something that is never going to change-- even in the professional world.
There's got to be a balance here.
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