Student Blogs: 1st Year

It is sometimes easy to forget how many changes actually occur when you show up at law school. Sure, your class schedule and living situation change, but unless you had a large contingency of law aspiring undergraduate friends, you’re also going to have to start from scratch on the friend front. And while your professors and class schedule will affect your experience, a group of good friends can mitigate any misfortune your school work may bring.

The first week of law school is a super meet and greet where everybody is friends with everybody. You latch onto the few faces you know. Suddenly, the guy who sat next to you in orientation is your best friend and the girl that lives down the hall from you is your other best friend. As time passes and you meet other people, you realize that friend selection based on spatial proximity may not be the best criteria. It’s an evolving time where you grow closer to some people and further away from others much like any other social situation. Law school doesn’t change how you make friends or what you look for in friends; it just makes you do it again.

Last winter, I went out to lunch with my old rowing coach, who is also a lawyer, and he asked me if there were a lot of cliques. I replied something to the effect of no, and that I just hang out with a few people and don’t really interact all that much with everyone else. Well, I had pretty much given the definition of a clique and feeling very silly, I conceded the point. But looking back, I’ve come up with a better defense. Yes, I did really only have a few people that I was very close to, but I wasn’t close to them at the exclusion of everybody else. It is just a matter of convenience that a large group will break into smaller ones and, while everyone had their groups of close friends, there is a sense of “we’re all in it together” that bonds the whole 1L class. And while there will always be that guy who annoys the crap out of you, there will also be those two guys that make you laugh so hard at lunch that your face hurts, that console you as you walk to your car after a seemingly horrible exam, or even take that late night phone call to listen to you whine about the amount of material we have to learn.

Your friends you make at law school will save your sanity because, after all, they are the only ones that know what you’re going through. Your mom will tell you everything is fine and your other friends will tell you that you’ll be ok but, in the end, they have no idea what they are talking about. The only voice that will bring any sort of comfort will be that of someone who knows what you’re going through, who is suffering right beside you, and who will be there next to you at the finish line.

Feel free to ask questions by emailing aaronsblog@mail.widener.edu or clicking the discuss link.