Schedules and Salads (but not necessarily in that order)

After a year of general bumitude, there is nothing more jarring then receiving an email from Stanford Law informing me that my class schedule for the fall semester had been published. The worst part was the tone of the message--whoever wrote it made it sound as if this were a happy occurrence. It was not. I've gotten used to a lifestyle where the biggest decision of my day was what I was going to eat for lunch. Compared to hours in the library, choosing between Ted's and Tommy's seems like a happy dilemma (though I'll admit a less healthy one than I'd like).

As is usual with Stanford, anything that can be done easily, well, isn't. They provided us with two sites: one listing our course numbers and date/time, and another with the corresponding course names and professors. Why they couldn't provide all of that information on one grid is frustrating, but all too expected. So after a few minutes of putting everything together on iCal, this is what I got (click to see it full-sized):


What makes the first semester of law school different than any of the other constituent parts is that all classes are mandatory. The idea is to force everyone to take survey courses in the core subjects of the law every lawyer should be familiar with. I suppose the first semester is the crucible in which they intend to take our legally untrained minds and shape us into lawyers-in-training. As you can see, the core classes are Criminal Law, Contracts, Civil Procedure, Torts, and Legal Writing and Research. Criminal (or Crim), with its "Law and Order" appeal, sounds like it could be fun, and I could see Civil Procedure as potentially interesting. As for Torts, well, I definitely don't want to pursue it as a career, but at least the cases will be fun to read (imagine reading accounts of the stupid things people do everyday, and you have a torts case...I've read one involving a circus elephant pooping on a woman in the stands and whether or not the circus was liable for the emotional damage she suffered as a result). I also get a perverse pleasure out of assigning blame to people for their negligence. It appeals to the J in my ENFJ personality.

One of the cookie cutter, getting-to-know-you questions everyone asks one another at this embryonic stage of law school is, "What section are you in?" Like some high schools, there are certain sections of people who have the same schedule day in and day out. For whatever reason, your criminal law class determines which section you are assigned to. I have yet to meet anyone in my section, but I'm sure that'll change once more people move in. I'm in no rush--I'm sure I'll get to know those people pretty well anyway (I think it'd be impossible not to get to know one another after sharing five hours of class a day).

As for the difficulty of the schedule itself, I'm actually a bit relieved. I was convinced it would be much worse than this. I envisioned hours of lecture every day followed by even more hours reading at the law library. Shower, rinse, REMless nap, repeat. This isn't quite that bad. The good news is that there are no classes past 330 PM. Now, despite my propensity to avoid sleep, I actually prefer having classes in the morning so that I can get them over with, allowing me to veg out for the rest of the afternoon. I'm not looking forward to a 9:50 AM class (definitely the bad news) but at least the lunch break is pretty substantial, leaving more time than I had as an undergrad here. Apparently Stanford thinks that lunch should be long enough for you to either A) rush back to your dorm and eat fast enough to jet off to the next class or B) stand in line at UnionSquared for twenty minutes and scarf down your southwest chicken salad without tasting the rich yet tangy cilantro dressing.

Man, just mentioning that salad makes me hungry. Silly as it sounds, that salad was not a small part of my decision calculus between Stanford and Harvard. In college, the mere promise of that salad was enough to get me through the week. The song says everybody's working for the weekend, but not me. I was just trying to survive until Friday for the "dudes" lunch with my crew and the opportunity to enjoy that salad.

Speaking of which, Union Squared is open tomorrow. Is a southwest chicken salad in the cards? Or should I be frugal and have leftovers? Kinda funny--I'm at law school but without a meal plan, what to eat at lunch is still one of the most important decisions I make on a daily basis. Maybe this won't be as big a departure from the last fifteen months as I thought it'd be?