Paper Chase?
On the drive to the airport, I remember joking with my dad that in one year a single institution had managed to take The Tonight Show, the White House, and his first born son. He chuckled a little, but I think he could tell that I was just trying to work out some jitters. The day I was admitted to Harvard Law I made the mistake of renting a copy of The Paper Chase. In the lead up to the big move I kept asking myself, was I really prepared for the endless reading, grueling professors, and overly competitive students?
After being here for almost a month, I am proud to report that my nervousness was unfounded. At first, 1L year felt more like a reversion to high school than an advancement to the top of the academic pantheon. I keep all of my books in a locker, take all of my classes with the same group of people, and eat most meals in a cafeteria. However, as the days went by, the unique academic experience that this place offers began to show through. Life here is a surreal hodgepodge of traditional student life mixed with unparalleled legal opportunities. In an average day I can go from hanging out with friends in Harvard Square to listening to a Supreme Court justice speak. Yesterday, I had to decide between watching my properties professor sit on a panel with two Nobel Laureates and going to a mixer for a student practice organization I’m interested in. Literally as I write this I am coming from meetings with a flurry of well respected policy journals, all of whom brag about the amount of substantive editorial work they give to first year students. As soon as I finish writing this I will be meeting friends for the the law school’s weekly “bar review” (bar here means pub not scary law school test).
The story that best sums up this contrast between quirky student life and unmatched academics took place my first week of classes. My section was assigned a criminal law professor that after 45 years of teaching at Harvard, had decided that we would be his final class. Somehow our section also learned that our first day of class just happened to coincide with this professor’s birthday. We knew we had to do something to celebrate the occasion. We eventually planned it so that when the professor walked in, he was greeted by a sea of students all wearing party hats singing a chorus of Happy Birthday. Without missing a beat, the professor grabbed a party hat of his own and proceeded to introduce the class in it. To any scared potential 1Ls out there wondering if law school is really that terrible, I would like you to picture one of the most senior professors at Harvard Law School giving the introduction to his final class while both students and teacher are wearing headgear intended for five-year-olds. If that scene was in The Paper Chase, I definitely missed it.
- Anit
