Friday, August 13, 2010

Feels like the first night...

Tonight is my first night in Atlanta. Storms a'brewing all day but thankfully I got all my stuff moved inside safely dry. No rain has fallen yet but the forecast calls for rain all weekend.

Traveling was hell. I'm not opposed to road trips per se but I definitely prefer to sleep in a hotel room as opposed to the back seat of a pickup parked in a Wal-Mart parking lot. I hurt my right shoulder again. It happens every few months when I sleep on it wrong. Apparently along the backseat of a wide-cab pickup was wrong. I really need some yoga therapy right now. Too bad there isn't any place as great as Yoga Yoga here in Atlanta.

Atlanta is quite a beautiful city. Very green. Evergreen trees surround my entire apartment and I live very close to a nature preserve. I even took a little trip down to the campus. Clairmont reminds me of the Drag in Austin or that one street Matt, Salena, and I strolled near Berkeley. It was teeming with little shops and restaurants, even an independent record store called Wuxtry Records. It feels a lot like home.

I noticed an Indian food place nearby that bills itself as vegetarian. I guess I shouldn't be too surprised this near campus. Colleges tend to be hotbeds of "liberalism" and "left wing nutjobs," even this far in the south.

I received notice by email that my class schedule is available online. Emory, like many if not all law schools, operates on a "lottery" system for first year classes. All 1Ls take the same curriculum but obviously can't be crammed into the same class room at the same time with the same prof expected to grade coursework. Instead, the registrar assigns you a schedule. In other words, you the student have no say in when or by whom you will be taught during the first year. Since variations in teaching styles, grading philosophies, etc. exist, some sections of the same core class may be preferable to others. It is all up to the luck of the draw as to which section you will be assigned. Since I have not received my Comcast modem yet, I have been unable to review my schedule. This situation should be remedied tomorrow.

The Emory Public interest Committee (EPIC) is hosting a discount law book fair on campus next week. They will be offering 1L books at steeply discounted prices on Wednesday. Who has two thumbs and will definitely be there to save on his text books? This blog writer. But you got to bring cash or check because they don't take American Express. Or Visa, for that matter.


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Thursday, August 12, 2010

Bye bye Austin, hello law school

Today I got into a truck to begin the 15 hour drive from Austin, TX (my home of the last 18 years) to Atlanta, GA to attend Emory Law. I attended high school in Austin, got my undergraduate degree from the University of Texas at Austin. I've met most of my friends and all of my exes in Austin. 18 years is a long time to accumulate memories, both good and bad. So it is with mixed emotions that I depart. I am sad and scared to leave behind so many important people and familiar surroundings. But there's also a lot of pain left behind there. Moving away quite literally is moving on. UTA has a great law program, no doubt, but they don't offer the area of study I'm most interested in. Emory does.

Moving is also a chance to start over, to shed the scales of the past to become somebody new, hopefully somebody better, happier. That doesn't mean anybody is getting cut out. I'm just interested in ch-ch-ch-changes.

So it's a new city, major educational endeavor. Big changes. A number of my friends have had the law school experience; most have not. I'll start by sharing my 1L experiences here on this blog as (legal mullet). If you're hoping for something salacious like Lena Chen's Sex and the Ivy (the infamous Harvard sex blog), you'll be disappointed. I'm not like that and I certainly don't kiss and tell. I'm almost 32 for crissakes, not 19.

Instead, what you'll get is an idea of the brutality of the Socratic method, study groups, exam hell, and the reading, reading, reading (among other things). I'll also review those handful of Atlanta places I can afford to frequent on my student allotment of money and time.

Orientation officially starts on Wednesday, August 18 and runs through Friday, August 20 from 8 am to approximately 4 pm. Attendance is mandatory. There are also some events scheduled on the 16th and 17th. Kaplan/PMBR are sponsoring Building Community Day on Tuesday. They say it's an opportunity to meet about 90% of my fellow 1Ls and includes, among other things, a scavenger hunt. I'm looking forward to it.

I'll let you know how the lottery goes on class draw. If you are unfamiliar with this concept, I'll explain it when I receive my fall class schedule.

Classes starts on August 23. In the meantime, I have to get to Atlanta, sign my lease, and move in to my apartment. Then I'll need to scout out the neighborhood for essentials like the grocery store and a yoga studio (more on that to come).

I'm really excited to start this new phase in my life. It has been a long time coming.


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